Your 'Crazy' Idea Could Be Worth $1 Billion. Proda Is Up Next.

28:01Hot honey street corn barbecue sauce. So, you know, it feels like something that you could just kind of put on anything. Tacos, non-Mexican food, whatever. That sounds amazing. There was another Mexican barbecue sauce brand at Expo West. Did you guys see Paco Jones? It's a Mexican ketchup specifically. And that is awesome. Yes. Really Yeah. I mean, it seems like there's a theme happening or at least a groundswell for these types of products because Tia Lupita, which is a Mexican-American inspired brand of snacks and sauces, introduced a barbecue line of products at Expo West as well. Our colleague, Shauna Golden, wrote about Tia Lupita and its expansion into new products in a new article on Nosh.com.

28:53You can read all about it. In fact, she interviewed founder and CEO Hector Saldivar at Expo West, one of the good guys. I mean, obviously the American consumer is pretty familiar with the fact that there are Mexican condiments and sauces, right? And now there's like, I don't know, it feels like maybe an explosion of products that are trying to take additional ideas mainstream, which is cool. I just feel like people are done with bland chicken, right? I mean, how many times have you purchased chicken from the grocery store and all you have is like olive oil, some salt and pepper, and it's gotta be a better way.

29:31There's gotta be a better flavor. I've never had that problem. No, I don't know. I sometimes... You're getting the wrong stuff shipped to your house. Maybe that's what it is. I put sauce on my chicken. Well, maybe it's just me. And maybe I'm one of the very few or one of the millions who don't get enough flavor out of their proteins. And, you know, these kinds of products are there for us. Learn to cook, bro. No, but to your point, though, that's what these sauces are for. That's what these sauces are for. They would not exist if there weren't demand and interest for people like me. Also got to mention Tiara Negra again.

30:01That's like my personal favorite. It's not really a sauce. No, it's sort of in between a salsa matcha. I think it's described actually as a salsa matcha. Salsa matcha. It's thick, you know. Right. It's more pasty. And that is a delicious product. Love that stuff. They need to send us their new products. Or we could go buy them. Oh, yes, please. Can you buy all those? I'm sure you could go to their website and buy it. Well, I guess I could do that. Is it oil-based, like a salsa, matcha? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You could spread an entire layer of their, again, salsa matcha on a steak, which is the first thing I think he said was you can use it as a dip, you can use it as a condiment, or you can use it as a marinade.

30:38And he said, the founder, I did exactly that on some steak last night. My jaw dropped, my mouth took to water. Would you just eat it with a spoon like John's eating the ground up? that's uh that's aggressive in the studio too i was not doing that in the studio i was using my finger oh god kidding kidding did you try this at the alley rally oh my dessert butter i believe i did yeah yeah that's another one that i don't know exactly what the occasion is but give me a spoon and put it in front of me yeah do you want more repeat buyers on amazon well this free resource in collaboration with Straight Up Growth will help your brand turn first-time buyers into long-term subscribers.

31:19Download Winning the Repeat Purchase Game on Amazon now at tasteradio.com slash sug. That's tasteradio.com slash s-u-g to start building retention-driven growth for your brand on Amazon. Scaling a beverage brand into major retail comes down to operational readiness. From packaging lead times to co-manufacturing strategy, the details can make or break a launch. In a new ebook in collaboration with Octopi and Asahi Beer USA, industry leaders share what they've learned in helping brands scale. Download it now at tasteradio.com slash octopi. If you're developing a cannabis beverage, formulation choices matter, especially early on.

32:04Source Technology's free guide shares practical insights on stability, dosing, and scale-ready development. Download the ins and outs of creating a cannabis beverage today at Tasteradio.com slash cannabis. All right, it's time for our featured interview for this episode. At Expo West 2026, I sat down with Suja co-founder and former CEO, Jeff Church, and Peaky Blinders actor, Matthew Possilthwaite, to talk about Prota, their new protein soda designed to deliver nutrition in a lighter, refreshing format. They discuss the inspiration behind the brand, their focus on taste and positioning, and how they're approaching a competitive beverage landscape with an exclusive launch at Sprouts.

32:54Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am supremely honored to be sitting down with Jeff Church and Matthew Postlethwaite, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Prota. Gentlemen, it's so great to see you. Jeff, you and I have known each other for some time. How are you? I'm great, Ray. How are you doing? Fantastic. Matthew, good to see you as well. Good to be here. Thanks for having us. This is your first Expo West, Matthew? This is not. I've been here about 10 years, but this is my first time bringing some type of product here. 10 years? I didn't know that. Okay. So you've been interested in CPG for some time?

33:23Well, I have, but just as a consumer, really, not as someone building something in it. Now you're an entrepreneur in the thick of it, visiting Coleman's and doing interviews with BevNet over here. So you're really, you're neck deep in this business now. Yeah, I mean, I learned from the best for this guy here. Yeah, Jeff, I'll call you an industry legend because that's what you are. I don't mean that you're an old guy. I'm just old, right? No, no, no, no, not at all. But you are behind one of the great success stories of the past 15 years in Suja. And obviously you've been following your career for some time and really excited to hear that you're getting back into the space with a brand like Prota.

34:01I think intuitively our listeners might know exactly what this is given the name, but what is Prota, Jeff? Prota is a protein soda. It's a product that Matthew created about 18 months ago, actually for his grandmother, who was having a hard time getting enough protein in her diet. So he wanted to create something that as we get older, it's really hard to get 60 grams of protein a day. So we created it really for that. And I met him about eight months ago in July. And I had wanted to get into this space for a long time, into the soda space, the new soda space. And actually, when I started at Suja, I started it because I have four kids that are millennials and Gen Zers.

34:38And I thought that they, I knew that they weren't going to give Coke and Pepsi to their kids. But I missed it by about that much. And Alipop and Poppy were right there. So I wanted to get into it, but I didn't want to get into just a prebiotic soda because it's already been done. When I met Matt, he had created these great sodas. So, you know, we kind of we decided to do it together. So, Matt, I think the question that our audience would have, and it's a question that I remarkably have as well, which is why soda? Because, you know, if you were going to give your grandmother you wanted to supplement her diet with added protein, I don't know, I'm going to be ageist here.

35:12Say maybe milk or like added protein in milk or tea or something. But why soda? That's a good question. One, she loves soda. So that was that was a no brainer. But I've been in the face of different protein brands for the last six years in my career in Hollywood. Perfect Aminos, some other RTDs. And what I actually found was that I was sending her these really thick protein shakes. And she couldn't consume them. She's 80. I think she's 82 years old now. Sorry. She'll be fine. She's 82 years old. And she just couldn't consume these really dense, thick shakes. Or she couldn't take all the tablets, like the Perfect Amino tablets that I was sending her.

35:48She couldn't consume them all. And what I wanted to create was something that was refreshing and fun and enjoyable that almost you can't taste any protein in it. And that's what we did. We created a product that there's virtually no taste of protein. Like I can't taste the protein in this. And it's just we really lean on our pillars being refreshing and craveable. And being in the fitness space as well, like I created it for my grandma, but also for like I was working out at the gym and I was like, ha, and I wanted something refreshing. And there's nothing on the market like this. certainly 18 months ago when I started the idea.

36:20And what people don't realize is that 60 % of adult U.S. consumers have to take some kind of protein enhancement or supplement, and 50 % of adult consumers drink soda. So there's this incredible white space that's out there with the clear protein now is opening up the doors for that, that it didn't used to exist. It's always existed in the thicker shakes, but not in the clear proteins or waters, which is where you're seeing them now. Well, Matthew, you made a bold statement, which is that you can't taste the protein and that this is a refreshing soda. Well, the proof is in the pudding. I'm going to try some of this, right?

36:48I'm going to try the classic orange. This sounds great. And what's great about protein in general, I think, is that any amount, any additional amount is probably good for you. But how do you know, how did you determine that 10 grams was the right for a 12-ounce can of soda? Well, 10 grams is the minimum that you need in order to call it a good source of protein. Anything below that, it's 20 % of your daily value amount. What we were specifically focusing on is getting a complete source of protein. So it's got all nine essential amino acids rather than a collagen, which is only three of your nine amino acids.

37:23This has like a complete protein. So it's a really good source in terms of like muscle protein synthesis, in terms of like hitting a bunch of goals that you have in your life. So. Yeah. And I think the other interesting thing about what you're doing is that it is a complete beverage as opposed to one that is singularly focused on one thing. I mean, in so many ways, you are selling protein soda and protein is the lead, but it certainly sounds like this is more of a complete beverage than, you know, just a, again, one-dimensional type of functionality. It's meant to be really a refreshment, a craveable refreshment.

37:57So it's refreshment first and we want people to drink it. And when they're done with it, say, oh my gosh, there's protein in this. You know, it was really good because most of the companies, the brands that are out with protein, first of all, they came out higher with higher protein levels and you just can't mask those levels, you know, properly, but at 10 grams, you can mask it. But even at 10 grams, most of them aren't masking it. So we want people to repeat, which is, you know, one of the most important metrics in all CPG. They can't have that chalky taste. Yeah, it's excellent. It really is.

38:23The orange flavor, it almost tastes like not a classic orange, but like a classic orange creamsicle kind of flavor. It has a little bit of creaminess to it, which is fantastic. The other question that is always important for an early stage founder to answer is who is this for? So I would think, you know, looking at the can that you could be marketing to a lot of different people. It doesn't say one particular type of consumer on it. But Jeff, you know, who do you expect to be drinking these products? I mean, it's going to be a large swath of people, as you can imagine, but it's going to be Gen Z up to, you know, 50 year old type people.

38:57We designed the can to be kind of equally split between male and female. So it's not overly male, it's not overly female. And the honest answer is we don't know yet. So we'll get into it and we'll see what really It resonates with people. The really good thing about it is that the science behind it and the protein, it is such a good source of protein. It is a complete source. And that was really important for us to hit. And a lot of companies haven't hit that, the science behind it, quite like we have. Collagen, for example, isn't a complete protein. Yeah. Well, you touched on this. There's a lot of people getting into this new subcategory of protein sodas.

39:34What do we see? About 10 of them on the show floor here at Expo West. And there's probably another 10 more in development. And it just seems like everyone's jumping into the pool. Differentiation is going to be critical and key. Refreshment is a great angle. I love that as one angle. Is there another way? Are there additional ways that you can differentiate and help yourself stand out from the competition? I think the first is the refreshment is really the focus of it. But we're going to make it a fun brand. It's not about fitness first. It's about refreshment first. And a lot of the brands aren't doing that.

40:02And I think, you know, there's a lot of brands coming out, big categories, you know, pulling big, you know, lots of competitors, and they'll probably be 40 or 50. I remember when we started Suja, you know, three years later, there were 61 cold-pressed juice brands pitching to Whole Foods for their reset. So that's okay because we need good competition. And a lot of them, you know, there'll be two or three winners, and we're planning to be one of those winners. Jeff, based on your experience, do you expect retail buyers are more inclined to replace what they currently have on shelf with protein sodas?

40:31Or do you think there'll be incremental room added to coolers and ambient shelves for products like these? That's one of the great things about being in this space is they're expanding the space pretty dramatically, given the modern sodas where Poppy and Olipop are. They're expanding from four-foot sets to eight-foot sets to 16-foot sets. Because what's happened is with Coke and Pepsi taking interest in both Poppy and Olipop, they pretty much put that whole$40 billion soda category in play. As you know, energy drinks took 20 billion of it in the last 20 years. And now it's a situation where I think protein sodas and prebiotic sodas are going to take a bunch of it.

41:08I think in 10 years, we'll look up at the soda industry and it'll be significantly different than it is today. I mean, it's already very different than it was five years ago, which is crazy to think about. I mean, the idea of soda and soda was that four-letter word that nobody wanted to touch. And now all of a sudden, everyone wants to be in the soda business, which is really interesting to think about. So, Matthew, you said that this is about refreshment and you talked about how, you know, this is not necessarily a fitness first beverage brand, but you're a strapping young man yourself. And I've seen your Instagram account and, you know, a lot of it is about fitness and whatnot.

41:38So how do you incorporate refreshment into what you do from a promotional standpoint? Yeah, I mean, I work out a lot. So do I. Can you tell? You guys are basically, I couldn't tell who was who when you walked in. You know, it's not a case about hiding away from who I am. I still love the fitness space and I'm still very much a part of it. But where we're able to lean in is we're able to lean into this kind of duality of the fitness space but also the wellness space. And I think that's the perfect position for this. That's why we're zero sugar, but it's non-caloric sweeteners we're using. It's a very natural product.

42:18There's a very big halo around it in terms of like, I think it's probably the best protein soda. I mean, I would say that, but it's probably the best, healthiest protein soda on the market. That's my claim. And we're not running away from fitness either. One of our board members is an individual named Joey Gonzalez, and he's the former president of Barry's Boot Camp. So we're focused on those channels for awareness drivers. So they are important. Also, like we're a little different and we are fun. But also our photography is a little bit more higher end and the whole branding ecosystem is going to be hopefully a little disruptive.

42:56Yeah. I mean, when you launch on April 1st, is that when you're launching? Yeah. I mean, what does that media blitz look like? What are you trying to get out there? What channels are you using to promote the launch? So we have a pretty big planned out strategy that expands a lot of D2C stuff. TikTok, we're going to lean in pretty heavily on Instagram. A lot of my followers, but also a lot of my community that have built up over the last six, seven years as a fitness. And you have about a half a million? About half a million. On Instagram. Yeah. There are a lot of protein brands specifically used to come to me to kind of help them launch theirs.

43:31So this was kind of a natural fit for that. So we're going to blast it out to all of my kind of community there. But yeah, Big TikTok strategy, big Amazon strategy, and a big Instagram strategy, as well as PR. We've got a great PR team working behind it. And brick and mortar will be Sprouts. So we're launching nationwide at Sprouts in all 500 of their stores. And we're really excited about that. We're actually doing an exclusive with them. So we'll only be in Sprouts in brick and mortar retail for the first year. And we're doing that because I've made the mistake in my career of going into 20 ,000 doors too fast that I did with Rowdy.

44:08And then I watched one by one by one the doors come down because I didn't have the marketing budget to really cover that large number of doors. So rather than go into 10 or 15 different retailers in the first year, we're going to put all of our marketing dollars into Sprouts. And it's really building a proof of concept. And we're getting dual placement both in ambient and in cold. So we're really leaning and heavy with Sprouts. I think Sprouts today is where Whole Foods and Target were maybe 10 or 15 years ago. They've become really the innovator in that. They're just a wonderful group of people to work with, really down-to-earth people.

44:40Yeah, I would agree that Sprouts has become a very, very influential retailer, especially for emerging and early-stage brands. Are they carrying all five of your SKUs? Actually carrying seven. Seven? Seven, yeah. We'll have five in the cold case and seven in the ambient. I see five here. I don't see a cola variety. Do you have a cola product? Well, cola is interesting. That is on the horizon, but I think we're on our 453rd version of cola, and we haven't quite nailed it. but we will get there. You do have a root beer though. We have a root beer coming out, which is also challenging to make. But my favorite is Shirley Temple that we have coming out.

45:14So there's a lot of Shirley Temples you see in the modern sodas, but nothing in the protein space yet. I think it's probably one of my favorite drinks, Shirley Temple. Yeah, Shirley Temple is definitely an on-trend flavor, especially for younger consumers. A golden apple is something I wouldn't expect. I'm going to try this one right now. I originally thought it was golden apricot and I was like, oh, wow, that sounds really interesting. But golden apple. That is, I might take that idea for that flavor. it's really good. You know, an apple soda isn't necessarily the first thing you think of, but it's a really great tasting flavor.

45:43And again, you don't really taste, I don't taste it in the protein. I don't know. What sweetener do you use for this? It's a combination of monk and stevia. Okay. It tastes like a soda. Like that's what we didn't want to create like a sparkling water. We wanted to create like a full quality soda. Yeah. I mean, in terms of the sweetener deck you have, It's not cloying or overly sweet. It's a good amount of sweetness that really works and isn't sort of in line with what you would expect out of a soda. We had sucralose in it in the beginning, but we really wanted to pivot into more of a natural sweetener.

46:14And the sucralose has such extreme sweetness that you get very decadent in sweetness and it was just too much for what we wanted to do. Sucralose is a really, it's a sweetener that you can use to mask protein very well. It's kind of the easy way to mask protein. And then when Jeff Church joined, he was really adamant, and I'm so glad he was, to switch to the natural sweeteners. And it was so hard to balance it and get a right level of sweetness. But we eventually, we cracked it. And after that, it was like, we changed every seven. That's Jeff. I would advise anyone listening not to use, I mean, I shouldn't say that.

46:53But like, I would advise folks to consider natural sweeteners first. I mean, because I think at the end of the day, most consumers are going to, especially if you are in Sprouts or especially if you're looking at the natural set. I mean, a lot of those places aren't even going to accept products that are made with sucralose. So if you want to get into those retailers, if you feel like your brand is in line with what they're selling, then you got to figure that out. Here's the great thing about it. Like with energy drinks, you kind of have a blind eye with sucralose. But with a soda and a better-for-you soda like this, I drink two or three of these at night because I have a sweet tooth.

47:27And there's just that halo around, oh, I'm not consuming sucralose at night that I like. I don't want sucralose to sat in my body while I'm sleeping. I think the other thing from a consumer standpoint, I was going to work out a couple weeks ago, and I walked by a little kid's birthday retail outlet that they do birthday parties at. And that party hadn't started yet, but at every table, there was an olipop or a poppy at every single table around. And I think, you know, moms, I know my daughter has three kids and she gives this to her kids, you know, totally. I mean, she's totally fine with it because it doesn't have any caffeine in it.

47:57It doesn't have anything bad in it. So it's just I think there's a whole demographic that is opening up for moms with their kids for products like these. It's really surprising because that hasn't been an initial target for us. I think it's fair to say, but I think so far every person that we've given it to has also given it to their kids as well. So it's interesting learning. Well, you're going to learn a lot more once the brand launches. And I think the goal for any entrepreneur is to minimize the amount of mistakes that you make in those first few months in that first year. It's difficult because sometimes those mistakes are just impossible to avoid.

48:35But Jeff, given your experience, you know, what do you see as the potential pitfalls, the biggest challenges in the first six months that you're out there on the market? Well, given that you said I've pretty much made every mistake, there's no demand out there and fatal flaws and fatal mistakes. You know, it's always about creating awareness, you know, getting the awareness to get trial. Because if you create a good product and you get the trial, then you'll get the repeat. And if you get the repeat right, then you're in a really good spot. I mean, I think we've put the variables in place here with a good product, a really good product, really good branding, you know, a good team.

49:07I've been the guy out in front, as you know, on a lot of brands. And I'm really happy being the guy out in behind. I work with Kim Perel on Junie, and I love being the guy in the back doing the, you know, crunching the numbers and doing the strategy type stuff. And, you know, that's really the role I'm going to have in here. And he's going to be the guy out in front. He can do that stuff. He's used to doing it. And I'd rather focus on, you know, the inner parts of the business. But, you know, always creating awareness is the biggest challenge. Getting people to try it. You know, making sure you have enough money.

49:34You don't run out of money. You want your capital to last for at least 15 months that you first raised. We've raised$3 million, you know, for this. So we're, again, leaning in mostly with marketing to, you know, to do that. We've got a really good team of people that I brought along the way from, you know, from my previous company. So, you know, I think, I think we've kind of set the ingredients in place and, you know, you got to get a little lucky and you got to get, you know, you got to get a little bit of timing on your side. Yeah, I would agree. It's tough because there's so many new beverage brands coming to market.

50:02There's so many existing ones and to get someone to care about what you're doing is really difficult. and, you know, it does start with taste and getting liquid to lips to use that classic adage in the beverage industry. So, you know, demoing is going to be critical. At Sprouts, what does your demo strategy look like? What is it going to look like? Yeah, we'll demo every other month in the top, you know, 100 stores or so. First, we'll demo everyone. We're also going to give every employee a free can, kind of get them excited about it. We'll do that twice. We'll do that twice during the remainder of the year.

50:31And then Sprouts is putting up a really large display for us, almost like a large end cap for three months. So we'll have the product in there that we designed that's got a big, strong orange kind of attractive look to it. So between all those things, we're going to test and learn. I've learned along the way, you don't want to say you're going to do something forever in a certain way because it may not work. I mean, three months of something, and then we'll pivot if we need to. But you always got to be just continuously changing and continuously finding out what's going to really resonate with that consumer and how you're going to get them to pick up that can.

51:01Not to give away the secret sauce entirely, But how did you get Sprouts so excited about the brand? I've had a long relationship with them. Junie's had a great relationship with them. Suze's had a great relationship with them. And I just feel like Whole Foods is maybe because of the Amazon acquisition, but it's just not quite the same. I know they're trying to do it. And Sprouts used to have a great program called Made to Matter. It was a great program, but they kind of moved away from that. And now Sprouts has had this innovation forager set for some time where they bring emerging brands in, and they give them three months of a trial.

51:30And then if they do well, then they graduate to the set. And that's a version of what we're doing here, but really just a really great relationship with people. I think sometimes founders don't really take advantage of collaborating with retailers. And it's kind of like going to your professor's office hours. Not many people really end up going to that. But if you collaborate with these retailers, they'll collaborate back. They picked our two flavors, the root beer and the Shirley Temple. They actually picked those flavors because they fit in with their set well. And just if you do that and they trust you, they want to work with people that do what they say they're going to do.

52:03And I think they have some trust in me. And obviously, Matt's got a strong background as well. I think for Sprouts, they took the time to find the one that had the best halo around it. So the best tasting, the best quality, best macros. We've also got the three grams of fiber in there. And there's nothing like it on the market. So all of those things combined and the branding, they really wanted to lean in hard with it. Well, my last question, Matthew, is are you ready to start flying around the country doing demos? and shaking hands and kissing babies and doing all that stuff? Oh, yeah, he's doing it right now.

52:36I'm doing it right now. Oh, boy. Sleeping two, three hours a night. Yeah. Well, make sure that you sleep as much as you can, yeah, because it's not going to end for a while, being in the beverage industry. It's a 100-yard sprint for a marathon. I thought acting was hard. This is another ballgame, the CPG world. Like, it is tough. Everyone who's come from another industry and entered CPG, I often ask, which is tougher. And immediately, CPG, CPG, oh, my gosh. This is a tough business, but the rewards are pretty remarkable if you do succeed. And I think you've got a great chance to succeed with Proto.

53:10So thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today and really excited to stay in touch and see what the future holds for Proto. Thank you, Ray. Thanks, Ray. Thank you.

53:22That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. our audio engineer for taste radio is joe cratchy our technical director is joshua pratt and our video editor is ryan galang our social marketing manager is amanda smerlinski and our designer is amanda huang just reminder if you like what you hear on taste radio please share the podcast with friends and colleagues and of course we would love it if you could review us on the apple podcast app or your listening platform of choice check us out on instagram our handle is bevnet taste radio as always for questions comments ideas for future podcasts please send us an email to ask at taste radio.com on behalf of the entire taste radio team thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time