826 Jash Mehta: Co-Founder & CEO of Pop & Bottle

0:00I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be.

0:09Kara Goldin:You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Have you ever stopped to think about what your daily latte ritual actually is, where it comes from, mystery ingredients, refined sugar, and the way, too often, a compromise on taste.

0:57Kara Goldin:Our next guest did. Actually, two co-founders did. Today, we have Josh Mehta, who is the co-founder and CEO of an incredible brand. Honestly, one of my favorite brands, not just because of the taste, but also because of this co-founder, but Pop and Bottle. And if you have not heard of it, maybe you've been living under a rock, but you must, must, must find this product and try it. What started as apartment-made experiments inspired by Californians' farm-to-table culture turned into a simple but powerful question of what if your everyday latte could taste amazing and be made with clean, intentional ingredients.

1:42Kara Goldin:So I cannot wait to hear more about the backstory of Pop and Bottle and how this all turned into the incredible brand that it is today. So, Josh, welcome. So excited to see you again. Thank you, Kara. So lovely to be here. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive. In time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing.

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3:14Kara Goldin:Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Super, super excited. So, okay. So for listeners just discovering Pop and Bottle, how would you describe the brand in, you know, a couple minutes or less of just basics?

3:59Kara Goldin:Like, what is it? yeah um so thank you again for having me i'm super excited to be here um and yeah like you said pop and bottle um was started to turn the beloved daily latte ritual which i know i can't live without into something more purposeful more wellness oriented so what does that mean for us that means um it's dairy free we use super clean um house-made almond milk and oat milks We use no refined sugar. So we sweeten with things like dates or coconut nectar, really, really clean tasting non-refined sugars. We use superfood ingredients enriched with things like cacao, collagen. We have non-caffeinated lattes with turmeric and really beautiful ingredients.

4:52Everything is organic certified. We try to source in the most thoughtful way, especially things like our coffee and our cacao. And yeah, the goal is to really take something that you do every day and replace it with something just as tasty, but more nutritious.

5:08Kara Goldin:And it is so, so tasty. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey, everyone. Kara here. let's get real about those early days of building a business, not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

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8:59Kara Goldin:And because everything is in one place, it's easy to keep your team aligned, stay on top of follow-ups, and move deals forward faster. It's powerful enough to grow with your business, but simple enough that you can start using it right away. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for sales people and join the over 100 ,000 companies already using PipeDrive. Right now, when you use my link, you'll get a 30-day free trial, no credit card or payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com slash cara to get started. That's pipedrive.com slash cara, and you can be up and running in minutes. When you started Pop and Bottle, what was on the shelf that you saw as, you know, potential competitors or comparison outside of maybe a latte drink with milk in it?

9:54We have celebrated our 10-year anniversary. So it has been a while and the industry has moved forward. And I'm happy to say there are lots of great products that come to market in that time. But when we started, there was really nothing that you could go into the grocery store in the latte space that had clean ingredients. Everything had so many gulms and emulsifiers, things that I've never heard of before. Certainly you would not find in your kitchen. Everything was loaded with lots and lots of sugar, in excess of 30, 40 grams of sugar in a serving, which is quite striking. um uh hard to find clean dairy-free options so there were a few um but had lots of oils and gums and things that you might not recognize really hard to find organic options um uh in a in a ready to drink latte we could almost find none um and my co-founder and i blair and i would meet up for our daily coffee ritual every day and we were surprised that um this thing that um we would so look forward to and really enjoy as a ritual, actually, it was really hard to find healthy options.

11:06And yeah, that's kind of really what sparked our interest in creating a better alternative.

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12:30Kara Goldin:Get Momentum today and they'll send you a free, that's right, free welcome kit and travel collection, a$70 value to get you started. Live better, longer with Momentum. So take us back to those early days experimenting in your apartment. So what were you doing before this? Why did you feel like you could do this? Because obviously, when you have this idea for a company, there's so many ideas that get floated out there. And I always say that ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution, which obviously you guys have been able to pull off. But what were the components that made you believe that you could actually get something off the ground?

13:19Gosh. So I will say first and foremost, it did require a healthy dose of naivety. I think I know a lot about the beverage industry today that I would think twice if I was doing it today. I know how hard it is. I know what it takes. And I didn't have that experience. I wasn't from food and beverage. I'd never worked in CPG before. And so I came from a business consulting background. I'd worked in lots of different industries, but from a kind of consulting perspective. And I'm the daughter of a business owner. My mom built a company. I saw her do that every day of kind of growing up. And so that was really foundational to who I am and the idea of being able to think out of the box to solve problems, to start things, to create things.

14:08That is part of my DNA because I saw her doing it every day. I think I could have applied that to lots of different things. It wasn't that it actually absolutely had to be F &B and had to be beverage, but I found myself in my late 20s moving from London to California. That was kind of part of that that was kind of part of the founding story of this business um my very uh good friend one of my best friends in the world happened to move to san francisco um within six months for completely different life reasons within six months of me moving um i'd left my career behind in order to move um she'd done something similar and we found ourselves in san francisco at the same time um with kind of a fresh slate uh an opportunity to do something completely new and And while the Bay Area does have a great industry of CPG, it's of course known for tech.

15:04And so it wasn't that I was bumping into food entrepreneurs every day, but I was bumping into entrepreneurs every day.

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16:38Kara Goldin:That's M-E-R-I-T beauty.com to get your free signature makeup bag with your first order. Meritbeauty.com. And that was really inspiring and also kind of ignited the belief in us that we wanted to do something in this space. And in moving from London to California about 13 years ago, one thing that was really stark for us was the difference in the food culture. and um for those of you who know london um it has an incredible diverse really cool food culture um back then and today um but when it comes to the farm to table nature of california eating um the plant forward nature of california eating um the farmers markets the you know the fact that we have a culture of growing in this state um that really um stood out to me and and blair as we started to kind of experience the food culture out here and of all the things that were new to us um that one really drew us in and so we started to just get more and more into wellness um you know it started off just really personally for ourselves um getting attuned to what made us feel good what didn't um also for our families um and it was really kind of the marrying of um this this beloved ritual that we look forward to every day and then this food culture that really felt different and exciting and purposeful to us and the marriage of those two things that made us excited to start this in this space.

18:14So I will say to answer your question, it was I had it in me in some form. I had a great example growing up of someone who did it every day and I loved that that was inspiring to me in my parents and my mom in particular. I had a built-in co-founder, someone I loved spending time with every single day. And we'd never worked together before. And that is a test of friendship. And that is a whole different dynamic to a relationship. But one that was also really comforting to have someone who wanted to do this with me. and in the days that I was doubting myself, she'd be there to kind of pep me along and vice versa and that really helped.

18:58And then the third is moving to this new place and my eyes opening to kind of a new experience of food and wellness that I was excited to be involved in.

19:09Kara Goldin:I love it. How did you find your first co-packer to actually create Pop and Bottle? And I guess on top of that, how many SKUs did you launch with? Yeah. So again, back to the naivety point that I made earlier, because we'd never bid in beverage, we had no idea. And that probably did slow us down. We probably, you know, if I was doing it again today, I probably could cut out the first three or four years of starting this business because I could shortcut so many things. But I didn't know that back then. And that was a rite of passage for us. We needed to do all of these little things ourselves in order to learn.

19:52So we actually started by producing the product ourselves. We got food, food licensed ourselves. We started a really small commercial kitchen in Berkeley. We would, we'd make the product at the weekends. We had small commercial equipment. We would deliver on Monday and Tuesdays. It had really short shelf life. And that's how we dipped our toes in. And yes, I would not want to do that again if I was doing this from the beginning, but it was really important learning for us. After we did that, we hit capacity very quickly and we moved to a larger facility, still self-manufacturing. manufacturing um so we opened a small facility in south san francisco um hired our first employee who is our production manager he ran the plant and and hired great people to help him and um that got us out of the kitchens um thank goodness and we were able to focus on the sales and marketing and brand building of the company um and yeah the first um couple years of the business we're doing it ourselves um and then we got to um kind of a tipping point in scale we got our first whole foods region, which was a really exciting milestone for us.

20:58And it gave us enough volume where we realized that we were going to be outgrown of a corn facility within a few months. That's when we made the leap to a co-packer. And that coincided with having about enough scale where we could justify co-packer volumes, at least those kind of introductory level co-packer volumes. um we found a copac near us in california um who was already making high quality plant-based beverages um worked with them to ensure that we could replicate the same process really high integrity clean process that we were doing in our small facility and just do it at a larger scale there um and and yeah and finding that right partner um it took a lot of networking a lot of conversations with other brands, finding out where, you know, figuring out the ecosystem in California.

21:50And then we landed on a good partner. And actually, we still work with them today.

21:56Kara Goldin:That's amazing. And how many SKUs did you launch with? Yes. So we, in order to figure out where to start, we did a friends and family tasting event. This is when we were still making, you know, testing in our personal kitchen. We hadn't launched anything at this time um i invited um basically everyone i knew in the city which was like 25 people because i was relatively new to san francisco um and um they came we hosted a brunch at my apartment um and i remember it was it was blair's birthday it was blair's birthday um we hosted brunch at our apartment and we had these large vats i still have pictures we had these large vats of these five different um flavors we had a coffee one and a golden golden turmeric one um uh you know a few different flavors and our goal was to we we put a form we put a simple kind of google form together on an ipad and we asked everybody who attended to just complete the form and rank their favorite flavors give us feedback um and we took that five down to three and we launched with three which is what we felt we could do um and really three felt like the right amount uh for any retailer to give us a shot at it didn't feel like we were gonna get four or five slots on a shelf at that point um so we launched with three and we still make those today um and um and yeah we just we used the 25 data points of feedback from our friends and family to decide what those three were.

23:27Kara Goldin:That's amazing. And you mentioned that those are still flavors today that you're producing. How have you expanded and how many SKUs do you have today in comparison? Yeah, okay. Gosh, we have so many that I'm going to actually not get the number right, but we have north of 20 SKUs now across different form factors, multi-serve, single-serve, and new innovation coming out every day. But yeah, back then it was three. And the way that the thinking has evolved and the way that we thought about innovation is really seeing what sold, seeing what people are asking us for, understanding where we sat in the market.

24:13Again, a lot of what we did in the beginning was intuition-based with the small amount of data that we had. And we didn't have all the answers. And so as we started to get it out to, you know, beyond San Francisco, Northern California, Southern California, we started to get data of what was selling. And at that point, I wouldn't actually say that we were a coffee company. We really thought ourselves as a better for you plant-based company of which we made coffee skews in that, in our lattes. But we had not, we had coffee, we had non-coffee. they were still kind of latte experiences tea um other things um but um but it was really seeing what sold that made us really recognize that okay coffee is the place where people want us to create this it is your daily latte um where people are coming back to buy every day has that ritual um and there is demand for this and so that helped us refine our thinking and so as we've innovated We've broadened more and more into the coffee latte space and the tea latte space, but we still have a couple of non-caffeinated SKUs that we started with.

25:23Kara Goldin:So education plays such a huge role in helping your consumers understand what they're actually consuming. How have you been able to do that? Because obviously you have to have a product that tastes great. There's so many aspects of building a brand. You have to get it on the shelf. The velocity numbers need to be there. All of these things, you have to build the best team. But then educating the consumers on why this product is different is also an aspect, especially if they're interested in making sure that they're only consuming certain things that fit your profile. So how have you been able to do that effectively?

26:10Yeah, I will say it's still a work in progress. I will meet people every day who recognize the brand but actually don't know what we stand for. And so it's still a thing that we're learning and growing as we go to border geographies, border audiences, different retailers. But there are a few things that have worked really well for us that we continue to do today. And these are things that we were able to do from day one on a relatively small budget. At the very beginning, we knew that we're in a beverage space, highly competitive in every aspect. The shelves are really full of so many options.

26:46The consumer has so many options. The retailers can replace you tomorrow if it's not selling. And we had very limited resources. We couldn't do big campaigns. We couldn't do kind of fancy marketing. But one thing that we could do and did do is make the packaging um you know in our opinion really stand out and um my co-founder had a design background um but not but not a food and beverage background she came from the fashion industry so she had completely different um understanding of design um and that was even today really refreshing but back then 10 years ago um was it really did stand out um and um she helped herself design um our original prototype bottles again um what we produce today is very similar to what we designed back then um it's just built a little bit more for scale but it's um but it's still very similar um and yeah our goal was this is really clean on the inside we're going to create a design that is really clean on the outside um so that it stands out on the shelf and immediately you kind of understand that we're saying that simplicity is part of our value system at this company um and and so the very minimal um design was the first thing we did using simple colors um uh really strong uh kind of uh fonts and a really really simple kind of negative space design um and it did stand out on the shelf um and that helped us create our first little mini billboard you know was the shelf and um those three skews starting sitting together on the shelf really did get attention and have people kind of take notice and try the brand.

28:31And then our hope was they'll try it and they'll like it and we'll start to bring more and more people in. So we used the packaging and made sure that stood out. These were also the early days of Instagram. And that was a great way for us to communicate directly about what we stood for. And people gravitated towards app um uh wellness influencers and um health food bloggers and they would reach out to us there was a good community in the bay area um that we're able to connect with and we would just send them product and um and the product you know spoke for itself in in the integrity of it um and we we got some fans that way and they would they helped us spread the word so um yeah we we kind of looked for ways that were not expensive at the time and could help tell our story without a budget that we didn't have.

29:24Kara Goldin:I love it. Scaling a brand is notoriously so, so hard. And as we've said, you've been able to kind of overcome those distribution challenges along the way. You're in the cold box, which for those who are not familiar with that term, it's it has to be refrigerated. And that is extremely, extremely hard. How have you been able to kind of get that space, but also continue to expand on that? Because there's only a limited amount of space in the cold box. And you've done such a great job of being able to expand that. And you're right, your bottles just pop. I mean, it's a beautiful product. thank you um oh yes the cold box um again when we started to know uh how difficult all of this would be but but being in the refrigerator is actually really really key to our success and it's a space that we fight for every single day um the simple answer to your question is um we have we achieve the space and have retained this space through selling well and selling through strong velocities data stories that we can go to the next retailer and next retailer and really just justify why we deserve to be there and none of that happened overnight which is why here we are 10 years in kind of still building the story um we we used each kind of proof point uh as a way to get the next and so um for example i mentioned whole foods earlier we started in one whole foods region.

31:06This is back when there would be a local forager who you'd work with to get yourself into a single region and then you'd get a couple more regions and then finally you'd get broader distribution. But that journey really was, okay, we're in Northern California Whole Foods. We have to make sure we sell and justify the space. And we didn't get it right straight away. We were a relatively new concept. We were bridging kind of dairy-free with functional beverage. And sometimes retailers didn't know what to do with us. Should we be in the dairy space next to kind of the alternative milk products? Or should we be in the grab and go space next to some of the functional beverages?