EP 106: How Bill Shufelt (CEO, Athletic Brewing) Built Athletic Brewing - Every Plot Twist Along The Way

28:29That's probably a little bit of a subjective analysis. Where do you fall in the regulatory paradox there? Yeah, so we catch a little of everything. We definitely have advantages, advantages in marketing, but in other ways, we can't use a lot of beer words. We can't use beer, lager, stout, ale, words like that. Because those are branded to mean... A certain level of alcohol. And so that's confusing for customers. IPA can or is that... We can that. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. But then we wish we could make health claims, which I won't do right now. We can anecdotally... I will make a health claim on your behalf that when I have two athletic beers, in a given night, I wake up feeling far better than when I have two of any alcoholic drink.

29:20My sleep is better. My, my, uh, aura ring is more forgiving. My eight sleep mattress doesn't yell at me. So I can make the health claims on your behalf at a very personal level. That's my experience. I can't reshare the post. But like personal anecdotes and experiences, I think are totally fine. And it's my, my opinion. My life is like a walking example of that. It's I went But the example of that is we're treading on a... That is a line of some of the... Yeah, I couldn't say because of athletic beers, I can run ultramarathons and sleep nine hours a night through the night and stuff like that.

30:00Yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting distinction that exists between all that. The commentary around the industry, though, is... Kind of circling back to that other point, is so strong, though. Out of really all corners of the country, it's from traditional media and governmental health agencies all the way to bleeding-edge lifestyle hackers of health information. And people like Andrew Huberman and Peter Atiyah providing the most cutting-edge health info out there. That podcast Huberman did, there's one just on alcohol that I assume has proliferated circles around the NA world. But I've listened to it two or three times.

30:44It's really informative about the derivative considerations and his scientific opinion about alcohol and the negative effects of it. I assume there's tailwinds or some anecdotal evidence that that's probably been a boon to the industry as well. Yeah, and I think there's a lot in there that we anecdotally knew by experience and my own experience with alcohol, but I didn't know the mechanisms and actually what was going on in the body and stuff. So, it's really interesting to listen to that. And yeah, that was the number one most forwarded podcast last year on Apple Podcasts. Is that right? Yeah.

31:21Out of everything. We were actually number two, three, four, but it's nice that we gave Andrew number one. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. He took the top mantle, but whatever. We'll let him have his one. So, the big shift, though, there were all these little micro-trends, I feel like. We talked about Huberman or Atiyah and wearables. And I assume, I don't know, cannabis probably became an alternative for drinking for some people. And we could probably come up with other things. But the de-stigmatization and the endorsement on some of the celebrity side and stuff, was there a single moment that you look back on and you're like, That felt like a tipping point when we got into Whole Foods or when J.J.

32:06Watt signed up or some moment that really felt like the conversation maybe shifted from getting made fun of at those races to people knowing and gladly accepting it? You know, the anecdotal evidence has always been so strong. Like whenever I can get a beer in someone's hand or, you know, I was our direct customer line into the company for the first two years and I was getting all the DMs. And so there was always like being that close to the customer and the brand. I almost immediately knew that my life experience was on track with what was going on in the world. And like, so the signs of progress were always there.

32:44And it's really hard to identify like any single wins. I don't know if other entrepreneurs are like this, but me and John are so... We have to be really intentional about being like, hey, celebrate this win. And also, let's be sure to hit pause and share it with the team. Because I'm such a problem hunter where I'm hungry for constructive feedback. And just like, you know, you very often don't take the wins and just celebrate on the losses. So I've always been really into gratitude at the end of the day. also is like part of my entrepreneurial journey is like actually pausing as I'm getting into bed and being like, what were three really good things that happened today and being like generally thankful for those.

33:28Cause like the best thing in the world could happen at 10 AM and I could even like forget to even like mention it when I get home. And I'm just like literally thinking about these like three really random, annoying things. Yeah. The, the, it's like the gambling adage or whatever, that losses feel 2x worse than wins feel good or something. I think a lot of entrepreneurs internalize that data point quite a bit. For sure. And not to circle back on the other question from before, but I think I just started walking down a different path. But there were so many incredible businesses born in the 2010s and so many entrepreneurial success stories across really all verticals.

34:10And like a lot of them had very little to do with the easy money policy. They're just like, frankly, incredible businesses. And there's so many long-term businesses that like finally came to fruition from, you know, businesses that had been being built that like really matured in the 2012 to 2018 area. Who do you hold in that like regard that you sort of think of? Well, obviously like Facebook is such a success case and it's always been successful, but they had their own valleys for sure. Just so many businesses out there that I think just in the past five years, or maybe slightly before that, we got so used to businesses being three-year success stories.

34:53Get product market fit, scale the hell out of it, and it's done so fast. One big thing in my journey, it relates to the unscalable behaviors and also So building a deeper brand and also reflecting on businesses of the last 20 years, time is very often a variable that's not that talked about. Everyone talks about how big a force compounding is, but then doesn't practice it. I'm really here thinking that if we just stay at this for a long time and are really consistent in our brand and our awareness is still so low that all the gains are going to come over a 10-plus year timeline probably. Yeah, it's a hard thing for time and compounding to internalize.

35:40I'll get the stat wrong, but something like if Warren Buffett died at 72 or something, he would have been worth like$50 million or something like that. It was the compounding that happened after for the next 25 years or whatever it is, 22 years. I'm wrong on the number, I'm sure. Maybe it's a billion dollars or something. But whatever the number is, part of it was the longevity at which he kept doing it that has led to such major financial gains for him. And I think that's true of the entrepreneurial journey as well. It's just like if you keep doing the inputs over and over again, there's a lot of stuff that tends to fall your way.

36:22Yeah. And to tie it into my own industry, some examples of that. companies that are enormous that people assume have always just been here, but Red Bull, Monster, Twisted Tea are all companies that are 25-year success stories. They have a 10 % cogger, and all of a sudden, they're just a$50 billion company. Yeah, you sort of forget about the vintage of those companies, I guess. It's an interesting point. And also, I feel like there's some, and I'll pretend like this is an original idea, but it's definitely plagiarized from someone else. But as we've moved from the four main television channels, whatever, when our parents were growing up, to the cable networks, to now the streaming services and the infinite proliferation of different social media and just personalized experiences, you're able to get much more tailored experience.

37:24You're no longer beholden just to Tide as your only detergent. There's actually all this. And then distribution is no longer tied at the choke point of the point of sale necessarily. And so, it's allowed, I think, all these different brands to survive, which is why Luxottica no longer just has a monopoly on the eyewear market like they once did. As you look back on the journey, one of the big distribution points was Whole Foods, or one of the big successes. What year was that in your journey? How did that come to be? Yeah. I mean, nothing about our launch was easy. From finding our co-founder was hundreds of conversations with brewers until I found John, who was absolutely incredible.

38:08Where was John before? New Mexico. And doing like a... He's just at a small brew pub. Not even canning beer, but they were racking up awards. And it was just, I was going to conferences and talking to like dozens of people every conference, having hundreds of phone conversations, literally trying to get someone interested in this job. And so you started a company, I assume you don't exactly, you're not exactly a maker of non-alcoholic beer if you don't have a maker of non-alcoholic beer, right? So at this point you're a, you're a founder, just kind of dating, looking for someone that will say that's a good idea.

38:45Yeah, it's basically a founder with a white paper who is really into finance and sales and marketing without a technical co-founder. Supportive wife and ready to go do this. And you needed... That's funny. Sometimes I'll hear from buddies that I went to high school with or college. They're like, I have this great idea. I just need a tech guy. And I'm like, all right, well, that's actually a pretty key requisite to having a good idea is having a good tech guy. So, I mean, you had a very good insight, but until you had someone to go execute on, you were sort of looking for that. For sure. And then it happened to be that John, as a co-founder, had so many complementary traits to me as a person, too.

39:27And it's like, that's worked out beautifully. Did he move? He did, yeah. And then we started homebrewing in an empty warehouse, two people who didn't know each other at all for like eight hours a day. And you had read a bunch of books. I guess the process of brewing and figuring out what was... Why does this, besides the pretty packaging and Walker Hayes on it, why is this such a better product than the O'Doul's that my dad's single friend drank? Yeah, it was definitely one of our first principles moment was, rather than starting at the end point and being like, okay, this is how people make non-alcoholic beer.

40:10We're going to get this equipment and make it and hope the hops survive this incredibly processed system. We decided to back it up and read textbooks about the background of, like, John already knew this because he'd been brewing, but I needed to start from square one. And think about it, how do you bring along those esters, aromas, products of fermentation that are so delicate? Beer is every bit as delicate as a nice bottle of wine in many ways. And we wanted to respect those ingredients and treat them well and carry that through to the final product. So, coming up with that brewing process in an all-natural way was a big technical challenge and scientific challenge.

40:51And we did hundreds of trials to try to get to that. And then the food safety challenges on the back end, too. Without ethanol as a preservative is a big one also. Can you elaborate on that? That's a fascinating point. But ethanol actually serves as a purpose other than the alcohol component, right? For sure. And so, we've invested a lot of money in things like tunnel pasteurizers, which aren't common in the craft beer world. But I know the word pasteurizer, it doesn't have the best image, but I don't think it's understood. Essentially, what a tunnel pasteurizer is, at least, is when this beer is in its finished container, It goes very slowly along a conveyor and basically gets a shower.

41:33So there's no chemicals or processing ever touching the inside of the can. It just gradually warms up the beer to a temperature that's just high enough to kill any bacteria, yeast, or anything that's going to be a spoilage organism in there. And then it cools it off again. But it's incredibly gentle to the product and everything. But no one else really in beer besides the mega breweries was doing things like that. And we had to invest in these enormous tunnel pasteurizers to be sure that our product was bulletproof from a food safety perspective. And there are all these technical challenges. John and I got food safety degrees and stuff, so a lot went into that.

42:15And in the middle of all that, we're just there churning homebrew, trying thing after thing. John approached our, we had a target method in mind, but he's like, okay, we're going to start all the way over here and we're going to change each variable by one degree or like time or pH any given day. And like that added up, I was like, but if we end up over here, that's going to be like at least a hundred trials if that's the method. And he's like, yeah, it's going to take us a long time. And so we stood around and did that. And then how much, how much did this process take money-wise of doing, like iterating on this?

42:54Because it's not like shipping bits of code, right? There's a lot of process that goes into this. Yeah, not much. Our rent was like$7 ,000 a month. And like there wasn't much outside of that. Getting the materials and stuff wasn't super expensive. For sure. So it was really just your time that was expensive on a relative basis. Okay. So you're going through this process. And have you raised outside capital at this point? Process of raising from basically the minute I met John, I started raising. And I thought I was going to have 10 conversations in two weeks and raise the... Sure. I was initially going to raise$1.5 million.

43:29And then I ended up raising three just to give a big cushion. I doubled the size of the brewery we were planning to build. And every contract brewer in the country basically had said no to working with us. So we had to pivot to build the brewery ourselves. And why did they say no? They just didn't believe in the idea? or orthogonal to their business? In fairness to them and their perspective, looking at what I was pitching to them. They didn't believe in 0.72 as a background? Great business decision on their part to say no. It's like, we didn't have a recipe. We didn't have the process. We didn't know what we were doing.

44:02We didn't have demand once it was already made. So, like, building a brewery was the right decision, and I just didn't know that. So, the verticalization, what did that allow you to do differently because you actually own the full process? So it's actually been a huge boon, especially through the COVID period and stuff, that we own so much of everything we do. And you can pretty much hedge out a lot of what we do, too, and get pretty good certainty. So it allows us to control quality, like every drop of liquid that comes out of our facilities. We can do everything from ingredient inspection to testing everything that's in tanks multiple times a day, make sure everything's within spec.

44:45And if not, it goes down the drain. And then we do 55 more tests on every run before it goes out the door too. And so like we hold ourselves to a really high standard of quality that we couldn't possibly ask of someone else making our beer. And so there's a lot of advantages there too. And like during like peak summer season or if there's fluctuation or we want to make something different in any given day for any given reason, like we have pure flexibility in our facilities to do whatever. And then we also fulfill a lot of our orders in-house, too. So it's like there's a lot going on within our spaces that adds to the economics.

45:20But yeah, back to your other question. So we were homebrewing in the empty warehouse. The beer started to taste good. So John started making it in his house, too, where we had a little bottling set up or hand bottling into plain brown bottles. And I was going around to the state of just all over the state of Connecticut because no distributors wanted to work with us until we like. Like, I knew if I proved I had a couple hundred stores that would want to buy the beer immediately unavailable, a distributor would be like, of course, we'll work with you. So I essentially went around and opened 300 accounts myself and would go with brown bottles, have people taste it, show them an image of what the cans will probably look like in three months.

46:00And brick by brick signed up a number of retail accounts, almost all of which were skeptical. and like i played all sorts of shenanigans around this like i would find people in the parking lot and be like i'm having a really tough day can you do me a solid and come in like two minutes behind me i'll be talking to the person at the cashier and just be like and like so people would pop over my show and be like did you say non-alcoholic beer that's an ipa get out of here or like a woman would like one time at this store in westport i had a woman uh come in and be like did you say 50 calories? No way.

46:35Where can I buy that? And the guy was like, yeah, we'll take it when it's ready. Oh, that's funny. Talk about unscalable stuff, the word of mouth, the validation and all of that. And so, the people that it resonated with on the investor side, were they people that just believed in you from the finance world? Or were these people that uniquely believed in non-alcoholic beer? Or what was the combination of that? Yeah, some were friends, family, colleagues, like a good portion of that. And then I did get a surprising amount of no's or non-responses among people I thought would definitely be in. But also, everyone's got different financial moving parts in their life.

47:17And I definitely was not begging anyone to lob checks in with low probability of return. But I was really lucky in that a lot of no's that I thought were probably yeses, all of a sudden those people would reach back out and be like, you know, I have this other friend that I think would be really into it. And like, there's this amazing network of like one degree away connections that I made. And like people I didn't know before, but are now like very good friends or awesome supporters. And I ended up doing about 120 meetings. So we'd homebrew during the day and then I'd go to meetings at night or travel or wherever and did 120 meetings.

47:55We had 66 investors in our angel round. ended up raising about$3 million. And it's been an incredible group. And they came right back on our Series A. And that group, I wrote monthly investor updates for four years. I do quarterly now as an accountability exercise. And I knew if all else goes south, I want this to be a fun, meaningful journey for these people. And writing those investor letters was actually a very meaningful, informative process for me in terms of accountability, progress, and keeping them up to speed. I had this army of ambassadors and a lot of our best connections as a brand have come through that network of people, of our angel investors too.

48:41So it's fascinating. Yeah. I got so lucky in that part of the journey and like, there's so much reflecting on the journey now that I like maybe got right by accident. What was that? Like what was the, yeah. picking the angel investors or sort of lucking into them, what was the things you got right? I think so often, both on the founder side and the investor side, there's so little alignment on what do we both want here before we jump into this. I've seen founders who are incredibly long-term and want to build a 20-year-old brand who have people who want to scale now and fast and go. On my side, I knew we had to lay out a very big network of manufacturing, hire salespeople, run deeply unprofitable for a while, and then start to really scale the business and get profitable.

49:31On that long-term time horizon, I got very lucky with the more private-oriented investors. But we did bring in a great consumer private equity firm along that journey in our Series C, which was probably the perfect stage, too, to have some support in business maturity, structuring board meetings, thinking about the long-term org chart, things that you know very well about that are great to introduce at a certain stage in business. But there is that earlier stage where the flexibility and speed is so key, too. Was the mission the unifying belief between you and the investors initially, and that the people that were doing, obviously, they wanted a financial return, but that wasn't the sole purpose.

50:16Similar to you, that it wasn't only about the financial opportunity that this presented. Was that the overlapping concentric circles between you and the initial investors? Yeah. I think that long-term belief in what we were doing and that ultimately, that I would deliver on that. But the details of how we get there, the time horizon, and things like that were pretty flexible. And I definitely don't claim to know that I had all the answers, and I've learned a lot of that in hindsight. And that's one of the top things I try to talk about with founders. I try to suss out, what do you want? What's your goal?

50:54How long will that take you to get there? That should be informing your investor decision in a big way, too. That's interesting. So what is... I mean, hard to say what the future holds, But is stuff outside of the beer category interesting to you? Will it, for the foreseeable future, sort of stay within the bounds? Anything that, as you kind of look forward, that piques your interest? Yeah, that's kind of the challenge. It's like everything always piques our interest. And John and I love innovation and we're tinkerers. Sure. The constraint is an important consideration. The ideal breakfast or lunch is finding a restaurant with a drinks menu with six different functional fermented things on it that I can surround my plate with.

51:43So the interest is there. But I think the constant challenge is to remember that we're still relatively early stage, low distribution, low awareness, and stay focused on the true opportunity and just kind of execute relentlessly on that. And then there is probably a time in the future to become a better diversified company or wait patiently until those true opportunities do emerge. They present themselves. Yeah, we definitely have ideas. But I think that discipline is, if those ideas are only 60 % as good as our core idea, it might be worth a beta test and testing it to make sure we're right about that.

52:26But at the end of the day, dollars in time taken away from the core is dollars in time markedly taken away. I want to talk a little bit about running the company and the business of beer or alcohol. But I'm curious, experiences that you took from 0.72 over, I'm sure there were elements of the day-to-day that didn't port straight over, but probably elements that did. What did you replicate from that experience? in athletics today. I'd like to say like a contrarian thinking mindset, you know, like from the moment a discussion emerges about an idea in a place like 0.72, like everyone's trying to help you think through the pitfalls of it to like, you know, try to keep things out of everyone's collective portfolios that could be right with gold mines.

53:18And so I think that's been part of it is just, you know, being a critical thinker and like the velocity of that too. But I don't know, there's other things that people in the beer industry might even find offensive, like the velocity of emails. I met John, who was in the beer industry, and I've heard him joke about it since. But the speed at which I sent him 100 emails after we met was probably outright terrifying. Yeah, sure. And then we hired more people from the financial industry, and all of a sudden the culture was just like... Professional persistence is something that I don't know if it's been totally imparted on all parts of mainstream business in general, at least what you learn in the finance industry.

54:03It might not be the most natural thing. But also, in so many industries, people try to put a pin in something and be like, okay, let's circle back on this on next Thursday. I'm like, wait, why are we solving this now? What is stopping us from literally solving this right now? or tomorrow and like what does next thursday have to do with this yeah like it's like i um and so there is like a whole different speed in some ways too um but at the same time um you know it's that consistency too and finance i was in the seat every day locked in like very specific routines and i think for that reason i have like no problem working like kind of relentless 10 hour days.

54:48I think I have like pretty good balance at this point. I have like good family time, but like a very clear 10 hours where I'm like getting stuff done every day. Yeah. And, um, I, I kind of think of it as like, you know, just very consistently going like 65 miles an hour down the highway. Like every single day I'm at it every year. And like so many people on our team is that way too, that we're just like really consistent making progress. I've heard you be fairly magnanimous in your praise for what ostensibly could be considered competitors in the industry or people that have similar-ish missions.

55:29Or maybe they're copying you guys, however, whatever the appropriate way of framing it is. But you don't seem very zero-sum from a competitive standpoint in the industry. I guess, first, is that a fair characterization? And second, if so, why is that the case? Multiple faces of that. I think anywhere where you're doing good work and adding value is ultimately positive some. And I think there also, even in big, big trends, does tend to be power law-type returns. So, I think I have an element of confidence in our execution and our staying power in the industry. But also with the size of the trend we think we're on, plus the populations we want to bring into the category, a really healthy range of well-supported brands is positive for that ecosystem.

56:22Heineken launched their zero-zero in the U.S. about six months after we launched as a brand, and I was really excited for that. A lot of maybe our investors or other people were asking me questions about being worried. And I was like, you know, this is one of the most thoughtful, well-branded companies in the world. And they're probably going to meaningfully enter the space and do a good job on marketing. And they've done just that. And then it's great to see a non-alcoholic Guinness in the space and a non-alcoholic Corona. So those are fun beers with name recognition that help people easily jump into the category.

56:59but if people like their experience in the category and realize like they don't miss the alcohol that much like my hope is eventually they get to athletic and are like wow that is a really good year too and um and kind of where i do have problems is where like you know there are chances and opportunists in any trend too sure um and so people who like really under invest and aren't necessarily telling an authentic quality proposition, aren't making the product themselves. But cut and paste the whole website. I've had people who we've had essentially the same words on our cans for six years now.

57:38And the whole paragraph has ended up on multiple websites. Our whole about page with basically just the names changed. There was also someone whose little brother did a business school project on athletic and didn't tell me that their brother was launching it. Things are dilutive. If you are stealing all the words and all the ideas but not delivering on those things, that is dilutive to the consumer, too. That kind of thing bothers me, but I love it when people are making a real honest go and investment in the category. I've heard you talk about leading with a why within your team and explaining to your company like the why behind a lot of things rather than more unilaterally making the decision or ruling with an iron fist on when things get decided?

58:32Why do you think that's an important principle for you guys as a company? Well, I think it helps layer depth into a decision, gives people purpose when they're doing something and may not see the reason to it. They're like, oh, this is why we need to do it. Yeah. I think that's helpful in adding just like day-to-day fulfillment rather than like wrote tasks, like people basically going down someone's checklist and they don't know the meaning for it. But also I'm, I'm like the expert of absolutely nothing. I have a lot of inherent brand intuition and customer intuition. Cause I've, I've dealt with tens of thousands of our customers individually and have been along for the ride on a lot of brand mistakes and stuff.

59:12So maybe we have already made certain mistakes already and stuff. So, But I also share, I'm very transparent with our team and share more info on why and stuff like that, so that our teammates who are very likely better at what we're talking about than I am can give that feedback in real time and disagree. And we like to have a very flat hierarchy where dialogue is appreciated, collaboration is encouraged and stuff. So you're not particularly disparaging or antagonistic to the alcohol industry. And I guess that's probably a smart tactic, given a lot of your customer base also drinks alcohol. But there are we talked a little bit about some of the health considerations around it.

59:59But one of the questions I had, and I alluded to this earlier, but why was non-alcoholic such a big thing in Europe? I think it's 10 % of the overall industry over there? Depends on the country. I think on average, so in Europe, it's like 5.6 % of the beer market. Which is in the U.S. today is what? Like 1.3%. 1.3%. It was like 0.3 % when we started. In a lot of channels in the U.S., it's getting up to 5 % to 10%. There are very large channels where it's still zero, basically, like convenience and stuff. Is the culture a reason, though, tying back to that prohibition point? Or what did Europe do right that's different than the U.S.?

1:00:46I think so. Europe has a bit more of a lager culture, so non-alcoholic lagers being very present and available. They had very well-respected breweries investing in it early on, so that's part of it. But I think prohibition is one of the key things. Spain is one of the biggest cultures. I think it's somewhere 12 % to 15 % of all beer in Spain is non-alcoholic beer consumed. Part of that is that it's very affordable. and I think I'm speaking of big generalizations, but the Spanish culture is prone to very long sessions and 10 p.m. dinners and shutting it down at 2 or 3 in the morning, even as whole families.

1:01:33And so I think a pace of moderation so you can hang out during that whole thing is something. I think business lunches in Europe and the UK are much more likely to potentially feature alcohol. A lot of these countries had low-alcohol popular styles to begin with, whether on the continent that's farmhouse beers, Cezanne, things like that. Or in the UK, bitters and mild ales and mid-strength beers, brown ales. Just so many really good 2 % to 4 % offerings where the U.S., there's always been this... Of course, there are the macro light beers that are like 4.2%. Sure. So much U.S. beer is high octane.

1:02:16It's crazy. Yeah. People slugging like 10%, 12 % of beers. But a big part of the reason why I'm not disparaging to the alcohol industry is the world is stressful. And while alcohol, there's a lot of health evidence out there, there's also the world's stressful and people need to take a break from that in certain ways. Like it can be that it can be socializing, can be exercise, it can be meditation or whatever is people saying. Also, a lot of great introductions in the world have happened that may not have happened. Like how many couples have gotten together and would have been scared to talk to each other if not for alcohol.

1:02:57You know, so it's hard to remember my wife at one 30 at a bar. So I, uh, who knows if not? Um, but, but some of the stats on, on like the negative stuff, even outside of health, I didn't realize, uh, how big, so 15. million plus or minus Americans. 14.8. 14.8. And that's like disclosed, let alone the whatever multiplier that's undisclosed, suffered from alcoholism or some form of alcohol abuse. Is that right? Yeah. That's the numbers I've read. Yeah. 14.8 million documented cases of alcohol use disorder in the country. I've read recently that 5 % of all cancers are suspected to be attributed to alcohol.

1:03:37There was an article on CNN a few weeks ago. All substances in general, 70 % of incarcerated people were under the influence of substances, 40 % of those being alcohol. I don't know what year these stats are, but there is a lot of potential good to be done in the world by moderate options. But the great thing is, it's not like we're going at the alcohol industry in any way. We are producing growth in the industry. This is volume. It's occasions. People are drinking very little beer Sunday through Thursday for the most part. This is a chance to sell people beer and give them a lot of enjoyment in those occasions.

1:04:22And it's something like 60 % adults have 0.1 drinks or less per week. So the Bev Elk world is also largely missing that cohort. Like that is a lot of people to include in bars and restaurants and menus and bring good times to, um, you know, I, I reflect on my generation. Um, you know, I used to live on the second floor above a great New York city bar. Um, and what bar is it? A village tavern in the West village. And like, me and my friends were probably in there three or four nights a week. And it was like very normal to just like stop in there and see if people were there. And like, I reflect on the experience of like what I hear from people who are 15, 20 years younger than me.

1:05:03Like the corner independent bar seems to be like slipping away. And like, I think by making exciting non-alcoholic options, great cocktails, great non-alcoholic beer, beer on draft, there's a great way to get people back in watching sports, socializing. Like these are important community places. Like have you been to the village tavern recently? I walked by it with my wife and son probably like a month ago. They redid it inside. It looks like a real establishment, not what we would have remembered, whatever, 10, 15 years ago. It's like actually, you know, they redid the TVs and it's actually, it's not as the nostalgia I had for the place that it once was is long gone, probably for the best after you walk inside.

1:05:48So it looks a lot better than it did a decade ago plus. Well, a little bit of my heart's in that old renovation. Yes, for sure. For sure. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. One of the things I heard you say, the term sober, do you think it has a negative connotation associated with it? Or is it just sort of an outdated, overly specific term? For sure, yeah. I think it's one of those things where everyone is sober most of the time. Yeah. Like, why isn't there a word for people who don't drink energy drinks or something? Like, alcohol is just a functional drink in many ways. And, like, why does there have to be a word for when you're not consuming it?

1:06:32Coffee, we don't have any term associated with that. I call them psychos that don't drink coffee. But, you know, I mean, whatever. There's no term that goes along with it. And so, like, I know there's words like flexitarian and other diets and stuff like. Whether it's flex sober or just like I drink alcohol occasionally and don't other times, like it should be a much more flexible mindset these days, you know? And I think keeping words like that around and like it's just so outgrown in modern society that it's like, why do people keep like using this out dead concept? But like when concepts like that are held on to, I think it really holds back the opportunity for like everything that's out there.

1:07:19Has there ever been a point that you've thought about like moderately like a glass of wine or anything? Cause it's been what, 12 plus years since you've. It's been probably about like 10 and a half years for me. And, um, uh, I've also lost track, but it's, so I guess that answers the question like, no, but it's, uh, you know, I have, I love good food, good drink. And honestly, the itch is totally scratched. I drink multiple of our beers all the time. There's now a number of good non-alcoholic wines. There are good non-alcoholic wines? I've never... Yeah, I've tried some recently. I really like Oddbird Leeds.

1:08:07There's a few of them, but getting better and better every year. We'll link these in show notes. We'll go investigate. it. I'll do a taste test sample on them. Yeah, I could share some. And then Ritual and other non-alcoholic spirits are making good spirits. And there's great bitters companies too. And so you can make pretty sophisticated off-the-shelf home cocktails and stuff too. And I honestly just never honestly find myself tempted at all. But I made a cold turkey decision because if I didn't have a plan, I just figured I'd never make the decision. And it wasn't enough of a friction and a drag on my productivity and where I wanted to be as an adult that I just knew I like that it was a worthwhile decision to go that cold turkey.

1:08:54And I also didn't want to keep the risk around that like, you know, I just never wanted to be the adult who has children who was like blowing himself up on Friday. Yeah. Like I wanted to like make sure that risk was off the table also. And, um, you know, one thing I always struggled with was, um, you know, I was like, Oh, I'll, I'll go out and only have one beer tonight. And like, you get home at 2am and you've had eight beers and you're like, well, that didn't work. And I'm like, well, what went wrong there? And it's like, because I had that one beer in like 20 minutes. And then like, what is the plan after that?

1:09:29There are no other options. There's nothing. And so like, Oh, I, by the way, I still will have eight beers. I just try to work in your product into five of them or something. I'll still do the same thing. I don't know what it is. It's the habitual of the taste. I'm curious, the psychological element of actually drinking a beer. I was at a family occasion, I guess, a couple of weeks ago. It was a Friday night. I think I put down three athletics just sitting there at the dinner table. No other beer. I was just slugging athletics. And I'm not really sure what that sensation is. It's probably some psychological trained thing that...

1:10:09I don't know. Yeah. And if athletic existed and good non-alcoholic cocktail menus existed at that time, maybe I wouldn't have had to make that choice and give up drinking entirely. Because there would have been an easy bridge from that plan. I'd be like, oh, I'm going to have one beer and then five athletics tonight. Yeah. You know, and... What is the sensation of drinking, though? I'm sure you've studied it a little bit at a psychological level, like the perception of, I mean, some of it's taste, some of it's the environment you're in from, you know, like after work or the sensations around it, right?

1:10:39I'm a big college football fan and I can't even imagine... I've actually done it with athletic now, but like going to a college football game without having a beer. It's just like there's all these little occasions that are sort of built into life, I feel like. Yeah, so it's exactly that. And I, I kind of like three takeaways I've realized is a, I just loved being in those moments and I really, it didn't take me long at all to realize that I just loved being in those moments and it wasn't about the alcohol because I was still having fun with all my friends with nothing in my hand. And, um, and very often like my favorite moments weren't the after two, three hours when the alcohol hits, it was when you get to a bar and you have that first drink and I see my brother who I haven't seen in a month and like, we're just catching up and like, like those were all my favorite moments.

1:11:27And like, I also love like, like I like, I realized I liked buying drinks and doing stuff like that more than I ever liked drinking it myself. Um, and yeah, to answer your more sensory question on the experience, like, you know, we've all been drinking alcohol as humans for like 5 ,000 years. And there's something about that ritual when you crack a beer and you smell the malt and the hops and that ritual that is like so much more ingrown and born of evolution than anything you've experienced in your own life. And so I think there is an enormous wave of a placebo effect that maybe isn't related to the alcohol at all.

1:12:04But like, hey, when I sit down and watch a sporting event or even in the afternoon, like very often I'll have an IPA at three or four in the afternoon. And it's got a very calming effect. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's probably, I don't know, nature versus nurture and all that, but probably some combination of both. Certainly growing up doing it, it's - For sure. I did have my 10 ,000 hours of mastery of drinking beer and relaxing. Yes, that's right. We perfected that. Maybe it's like a little less evolution, my own historical perspective as well. That's right. If you go back and tell yourself in 2014 or 2016 something about the entrepreneurial journey.

1:12:46Is there something that stands out that you wish you had known when you were getting going? I'm sure there are a million people that would definitely point out incredibly stupid things I've done along the way. But I think there's definitely an advantage to experiencing everything and learning. I wouldn't necessarily trade any step of the experience for anything. So, yeah, we have a lot of investors and all great people. And so, yeah, tough to pinpoint any single one thing. Yeah. I mean, I guess the thing that sort of resonates or stands out the most is like, and it's almost the founding tenant of the business, is the mission orientation of it.

1:13:31Or the true belief in what you're doing beyond the financial gain, the power running a big company, all of that. And so, not often are founders so uniquely passionate about the problem that they're solving. So, I think that probably helps you every late night when you're working on something or every early morning. Yeah. Yeah, no, I say this to my co-founder a lot, but if there was a button so often that, you know, I try to break for, I've structured my day nicely where I have like, I try to do some family in the morning, then have a great workday, family for two or three hours in the evening.

1:14:15And then like another mini workday where I like mostly do projects at night or the email flywheel. But there are so many times at 10 or 11 at night, I would press a button if it were there to give me an extra 12 hours of work, which is like something I never would have done in the past. So I'm very thankful for that, for sure. Yeah, well, thanks for doing this. Thank you so much. It was really fun. Thank you for joining this conversation with Athletic co-founder and CEO, Bill Shufeld. If you enjoyed this discussion, please share with anyone else that you think might find it also interesting. Also, please subscribe on whatever podcast platform you listen to this conversation on.

1:14:57And we'll see you here next week with another great guest on the Logan Bartlett show. Have a good weekend, everyone.