[00:00:03] Ray Latif: In front of me, I see a t-shirt that says Fish 2015 Summer Tour. And it is the summer, but it's not 2015. Hey, I'm Ray Latif with BevNET. I'm here with Jon Landis, John Craven. This is the BevNET podcast. How are you all doing, Jon Landis?
[00:00:19] Jon Landis: Excellent, man. This is, I don't know how to harp on it, but I did do eight shows on a motorcycle on this tour, and there's a motorcycle featured on the shirt, so I love it.
[00:00:27] Ray Latif: If only people could see what you're wearing right now.
[00:00:30] John Craven: I've got a Brewbound t-shirt on.
[00:00:32] Ray Latif: Yeah.
[00:00:33] John Craven: Do you want to hate on that too, Ray?
[00:00:34] Ray Latif: I'm not hating. I'm a lover. I'm not a hater. You know, everyone knows that, you know.
[00:00:37] John Craven: Craving an always on brand. I know. I try. I try. Well, I don't have these nice blue shirts and Man U hats. Don't see. Okay.
[00:00:44] Ray Latif: Let's talk about this for one minute. Allow me.
[00:00:47] John Craven: Then we'll talk about something useful. Yes.
[00:00:48] Ray Latif: Allow me to kind of expound on this topic. So it was really interesting. We ran into Will and why am I blanking on the folks that we ran into?
[00:00:58] John Craven: Well, yeah, for Overly. Getting a second plug, mind you. A second plug here.
[00:01:03] Ray Latif: And we had been talking about Euro 2016, the soccer tournament. And they had mentioned, oh yeah, we know that Ray's a Manchester United fan. I'm like, how the F do these guys know that I'm a Manchester United fan? They've only been listening to the podcast. And I don't wear this hat outside of, well, Boston. And they're like, oh, we heard about it on the podcast. I'm like, did I mention that on the podcast? I guess I did.
[00:01:21] Jon Landis: You must have. Yeah. I don't remember.
[00:01:22] Ray Latif: It's all a blur to me. So I guess that's three times that we've mentioned that I'm a Manchester United fan. So today we were going to talk a little bit about interacting with supplier companies, interacting with brands and sort of best practices for working with the media and sort of working with BevNET specifically. We get PR sent to us, we get pitches from companies asking us if they can be promoted in terms of a story, if they can have a story written about them on the site or in the magazine, if they can be included for coverage for magazine story or a specific category roundup that we're doing. We often get people asking about advice on how to move forward or expand in terms of line extensions, distribution, innovation. This happens all the time and every single week we get a lot of pitches, a lot of questions from suppliers and we love it. But what we wanted to talk about today was sort of the best way to approach us, the best way to pitch us, the best way to send PR that is going to be compelling enough for us to want to post and perhaps go further with it. So first off, Jon Landis, you had some ideas on how suppliers can approach you and call you, you know, with asking for advice or asking for ideas about their brand or their story or their brand story, as it were.
[00:02:32] Jon Landis: Yeah, I mean, I'm the first line of contact here for beverage brands and entrepreneurs. So oftentimes I'm talking to a lot of one or two man teams. They're really busy and just getting a product out there and this and that and don't really know about PR or anything like that. So just explaining, draft up a press release, send it to us, make sure that it's formatted properly, read the press releases that we post, kind of get an idea of what we're looking to post. Don't call and say, you know, I can't really tell you about this product because it's a, you know, super top secret and this and that. There's a lot to be gained out of submitting a press release, and we're certainly happy to publish the ones that make sense, that are newsworthy, that trade is interested in reading, not about sponsoring a marathon or something like that, but having some well-written content sent to us that we can then turn around and post. I mean, I think that that's, as far as entrepreneurs are concerned, that's probably the biggest problem is having something that's well-written, that like we can just repost without really having to do anything to it because we're not sitting here rewriting people's press releases all day.
[00:03:37] Ray Latif: Right. I should sort of clarify on how the whole process works. Let's kind of backtrack for a moment. So we have a few different parts to the site. Most of the time information news as it were is going to be sent or is going to be included in a couple of different ways. One, we have our Newswire, which is basically a compilation of press releases that could be about anything. It could be about a line extension, distribution, new hires, anything like that. And a lot of times, press releases will just end up there. Occasionally, a press release that's sent to us that we deem as newsworthy, as a headline story, will follow up one way or another. Either we'll take key elements from the press release and write a story. We'll usually follow up with a phone call to the person who sent us the press release and produce it as the main feature story on the site. And then, you know, sometimes we don't get any press release. We just get information from a PR company or the supplier company itself, and we'll be able to write a headline story. That said, as Jon Landis mentioned, we won't just publish a press release based on some information that you send us. If you have information that you deem as newsworthy, it has to be presented and it has to be formatted. in a standard press release style. And again, if you have questions about what that looks like, go to the Newswire section of our site and you can take a look and see some of the ones that we published. And that's pretty standard for, I think, most media companies, most trade publications, that that's kind of the way it works.
[00:05:02] Jon Landis: And it's not us trying to be like sticklers about this type of stuff. You know, we often receiving, you know, two or three sentences. Here's my press release. It's important to note that if you have something newsworthy and it's in a well-written format, like a PR format, you're at least going to get posted to the newswire, right? Might not be a featured story, but if you take the time to actually craft it, it will at least go out on our social media streams and in our newsletter and whatnot. This can also really help you, as an entrepreneur, crafting your message in a concise way, in a professional format, can really help you when you're trying to pitch your product, when you're trying to talk to consumers about it. Getting those ideas and getting the wrinkles ironed out, so to speak, what you're trying to say about your brand, how you're trying to present it to the world. Key talking points, for sure.
[00:05:51] John Craven: Yeah, and I think it also part of why you should do this stuff is that far as communicating with the trade, you can either operate in a way where people have you top of mind or don't send anything ever and your brand kind of is off the grid a little bit. And if you look at some of the companies that are successful in terms of high sales volume and have sold out, And pretty much all of those are companies that have done a lot of outreach to the industry and have done things like press releases. And it's hard to look at any one press release and say, wow, that's going to move the needle or raise a new round of investment. Although that's happened for people too. But I think in general, it's just, you want to get people thinking about your brand. I mean, there's so many beverages out there and the ones that send us stuff frequently and end up on our site frequently are certainly the ones that everybody knows, whereas, you know, there are plenty of products out there that we stumble upon in the market that we haven't seen or heard from that, again, I mean, no one in the industry is talking about you. Now, I don't know, maybe that doesn't matter if consumers will buy it, but it's still just kind of a free resource and a way to build momentum for your brand and build awareness. And I think those things will matter in terms of when you go to try to hire people or When you go pitch a distributor, it'll be great if they knew who you were.
[00:07:04] Ray Latif: Let's expand on this idea of sending press releases for newsworthy information. Number one, yes, send press releases, send news about your brand, your company on a regular basis. It's not going to hurt you. At the same time. If you send a press release or two every single week, you're going to be lost in the clutter. You're going to be a brand that is just sending the same thing over and over and over. And oftentimes, you know, you do get the same information with one sentence or one paragraph tweaked here or there. That's really not the best practice.
[00:07:37] John Craven: With some of that, I mean, there have been brands that I remember I used to joke back in the day about Izzy when they were launching. It was like, if someone opened a can of Izzy somewhere, we'd get a press release. And, you know, I'm not really making your point in that strategy. I guess I'm making my earlier point though. It definitely created some buzz about them. Like they must be doing something. And the point I would make with that is that there's a lot of stuff that we get where people want to talk about what they're going to do in the future. Whereas press releases and stuff that we cover are more about what you are doing or what you have done. To some extent, they're about what you intend to do, but within reason. It's different when we're talking about a company that has a track record or entrepreneurs that have a track record, and if they say they're going to, I don't know, go revolutionize something, that's different than a brand new entrepreneur saying that. And even then, it's sort of, how much mileage do you get out of that? this is an industry where you really have to be able to back up what you're saying and we get a lot of stuff thinking about even our last podcast on cold brew we've gotten so many pitches where it's like somebody again to use the revolutionize they're gonna revolutionize or it's a game changer or whatever and then you look at it the actual product and it's really just some kind of nuanced change, it's not actually going to do any of those things. So you really have to find people or if you're doing it in-house, you know, think about being realistic in your message. I think it's sort of human nature to want to throw big lofty buzzwords at things, but it's okay if you don't have those too. There are other ways to say these things. And frankly, I think they catch more ears if they're a little more grounded in reality.
[00:09:14] Ray Latif: Brandon, in reality, let's talk about what makes for a headline story, whether it's sent to us in terms of a press release format or pitched. What are the reasons that a pitch or a piece of PR becomes a headline story or even more than that? You know, when does it become like an important, noteworthy part of an ongoing emerging trend that we can reference over and over?
[00:09:38] John Craven: Geez, I'd love to know the answer to that. I mean, I write all these pieces and they just get deleted by you, Ray. Total joke. I haven't written anything.
[00:09:44] Ray Latif: Well, from my perspective, we do write about investment quite a bit. And that's definitely something where if somebody gets significant investment from an established financial institution, That is definitely something that we cover and we often put a lot more time and effort into reaching out to the supplier company and perhaps even the financial institution.
[00:10:05] John Craven: And look, I mean, this being a business to business publication, when you cut through it all, certainly the financial impact of any news is always something that determines that, right? Right. If someone is acquired, certainly that's a no-brainer, raises money, somewhat of a no-brainer. Even things like lands a new major retailer, right? It depends on what that potentially does for that company, that category, the industry as a whole. I think that's sort of the pecking order of stuff. And then, of course, there are things that are just like, wow, that's interesting. You know, from our vantage point, we see whatever story as something that is interesting innovation or a different strategy that other people could learn from. I think the things that unfortunately aren't all that interesting to us and they're probably interesting elsewhere, Landis touched on this before, things like signing athletes, sponsorship of things. Those are things that are kind of, I would say, like just routine things that all companies do. Nothing wrong with them, but it just doesn't really make them much more than sort of Newswire.
[00:11:10] Ray Latif: We should note that for most companies referencing sponsorship with athletes, it's usually the ones we often hear are the ones who are not the superstar caliber type athlete. I mean, if you're going to talk about a partnership with LeBron James, well, yeah, that's probably going to be a headline story.
[00:11:26] John Craven: But even then, who's sending us that press release? Like it's probably Coke or Pepsi. And to my point before, that's not all that newsworthy to the industry that we're in. Somebody with a lot of money spent big on somebody who costs a lot. Right. That sort of stuff is always challenging for brands to actually make newsworthy within the industry. I think there's certainly useful resources, but again, it's just something that I think we get a lot of that. And the only reason I touch on it is that sometimes it's kind of brought back to us, like, why didn't you cover this? Again, it's kind of that weird, it's exciting for the company and we get that and we're not trying to rain on anyone's parade. But I think for us, certainly back to what you were saying, Ray, the investment in the sort of financial and the long-term impact to the industry are ultimately kind of what determined things.
[00:12:09] Ray Latif: Yeah, and the last thing I want to say about in terms of things that are newsworthy for feature stories is you mentioned distribution. Certain distribution gains within a channel was important information for us to keep an eye on. Distribution gains for, say, a natural brand to go into a different channel, say, even convenience or drugstore or these are things that we definitely pick up on. And if it's a large enough gain, that is also something that could turn into a feature story as well, especially, I think, for, well, I guess most of what we cover these days is natural brands. anyway. Right. Jon Landis, I see you like perched over there waiting to say something. I apologize because you take it up all the time.
[00:12:45] Jon Landis: I just wanted to there's like something underlying here that I don't think we touched upon really is how much we depend on these press releases as well for our news. So having this larger discussion about why you should do it and how you should do it and what you shouldn't do and this and that, I don't want anyone to feel discouraged because we absolutely get a lot of press releases and we depend on the brands themselves to inform us so that we can stay informed. I mean, we're not going to spend our time reading other outlets to try to know what's happening. We want to have these relationships. I hope not. We want to have these relationships and it's important that when your company gets a certain size that you have someone on the team that is going to stay in touch with us and keep us informed and up to date on what's going on. And to John's earlier point, there's a lot of leeway to be gained in the industry by simply keeping people informed and having someone to create those bridges and have those relationships, not only with us, but with other people in the industry that are talking.
[00:13:45] John Craven: And look, I think, you know, one other thing I would just point out is that sometimes I think it's easy for companies to forget about this. You know, it's sort of an annoying task, right? Writing a press release. Frankly, the couple of times I've had to do it, it's like the most painful thing ever. And it totally sucks if you go Google the BevNET press releases that are out there.
[00:14:01] Ray Latif: They're not that bad. Hint, hint.
[00:14:04] John Craven: Thanks to the great editing of Ray and Jeff. But I think it's one of those things that it's easy to not do. And then what sort of ends up happening is when brands need to raise money or they need something, they're kind of in a position of trying to build this story that they haven't been telling the whole time. And it's like anything, if you wait until you absolutely need something, I'd use the old going to a bank to raise some money. It's like the bank wants to give you the umbrella when it's sunny out, not when it's rainy, right? And I think that's ultimately, we're not the bank in that case, but I think getting the industry to listen to your message and your story and care about it, I think that's just something that should be done kind of from the beginning, whatever it is, raising money, distribution, a new hire. I mean, we might not run all of it as a big story, but if it's in the Newswire, if it's in any of our roundups, you know, we have a variety of those. There's no harm in us knowing this info.
[00:14:57] Jon Landis: And even if we don't post it, we read it. We read everything, right? When one of our guys here is going to be writing a story on sports beverages, if there's some nascent sports brand out there that is chugging along and maybe we've posted a press release or two and they've sent us a ton more. Maybe there's an opportunity to do an interview or make a mention of them in a future story because they're on the top of our mind because they're constantly keeping us informed. I think that there is definitely a lot of benefit there to kind of what you were saying.
[00:15:26] Ray Latif: And I want to wrap this up with one quick note on line extensions because people often ask and they send us information or PR about new products or entire new lines in some cases and how we sort of sort through that as well. Again, it's one of those things where it's sort of a case by case basis. But I will say that around trade shows, we are definitely looking for that information. So for the upcoming, say, Expo East show or the upcoming Knack show, if you're going to be featuring a new product at your booth or a new brand extension at your booth, send information about it, promote it.
[00:15:58] John Craven: Or even a revision. I mean, I think that's totally fair game too. You know, new packaging, label tweak. new flavor formulation, whatever it is. And I think those are the easiest and that you could literally just go and look at an old one and kind of copy and update to.
[00:16:13] Jon Landis: That's what we're at the trade show for. That's what we're looking for. You can go out of our way to dig up this information and reach out to people. But yeah, if you take the time to shoot us a note, let us know what you're up to at these shows. We'll stop by and talk to you for a while and you know, we'll get some pictures and that's how you create that bridge. And there's a lot to it.
[00:16:31] Ray Latif: Yeah, I would definitely say with the upcoming trade shows, if you have something new coming out, let us know ahead of time. We will come to your booth and that information will definitely end up in the site one way or the other. One more thing about reaching out to us and talking to BevNET and interacting with us on social media is also one way. We work with a lot of brands. We get sent a lot of samples here. We get sent a lot of new products here. Pretty much everything that we get sent, especially if it's single serve in single serve format, shows up on our social media accounts. Or Ray's Snapchat.
[00:17:02] John Craven: Or my Snapchat. At BevTrade, you got to follow it.
[00:17:04] Ray Latif: It's just out of control. It's what they call the hotness. See, I'm dating myself by even saying that. It's on fleek.
[00:17:10] Jon Landis: But anyway, we do try to post everything that we get in this office on social media. It doesn't always happen, but you know what, just follow up with us. You know, if you sent me samples and you didn't see them on Instagram after a few weeks or a month or something like that, say, hey, are those still there? You know, we'd love to get something. If you're just nice and maintain some communication with us, that's all I ever ask is that I have an open line of communication with people. So I can't make any promises on when something will get posted, but if you send us some product and you're nice about it, we're going to post it.
[00:17:46] Ray Latif: This might sound pretty simple, but the product has to look good. If you're sending us product that have labels that are all over the place, crushed product, if it's not packed correctly, It's going to be hard for us to post that anywhere. And I know that sounds like a pretty simple thing to do, but I can't tell you how many, how much stuff comes into the office, crushed, broken with labels that are just all over the place.
[00:18:06] Jon Landis: Please pay attention to that. I tell people like, uh, get a box full of your beverages, throw it in your back of your trunk and drive around over a bunch of speed bumps and stuff and toss it on the ground and mishandle it like you think the UPS man might.
[00:18:18] John Craven: Toss it on the ground? No, seriously. This is the Jon Landis beverage packaging tips here.
[00:18:23] Jon Landis: Yeah, package up your product and throw it around. You don't know what's happening to those boxes on those trucks.
[00:18:28] John Craven: Very scientific stuff here.
[00:18:30] Jon Landis: And then you can figure out how to package your product so it gets here without breaking. It's a pretty important thing.
[00:18:35] Ray Latif: It's a big magic marker, but fragile.
[00:18:36] John Craven: That is true. If you operate a beverage company, inability to successfully ship product samples without damages
[00:18:43] Jon Landis: Yeah, and I mean, if you want to test something and send it to me, you're better off sending it to me, because if you send it to a retailer that you're trying to get in, and they get a bunch of broken bottles and labels that tore off, you have no shot of being in that retailer. They might give you a second chance if they're feeling nice, but they receive a lot more products than we do, and they have the power of choice. Very true. Okay.
[00:19:04] Ray Latif: Mr. Craven, our fearless CEO and founder over here, has a whole bunch of stuff lined up.
[00:19:10] John Craven: Wait, let me do a sound effect here.
[00:19:11] Ray Latif: Okay, sound effect.
[00:19:12] John Craven: Uh, that was, there wasn't much disappointment. Wait, I've got this too.
[00:19:19] Ray Latif: Can you explain what exactly what's going on right now? We've sort of moved on to the, what are we doing?
[00:19:24] John Craven: What are we sampling? Nice little, uh, sprays that look like perfume testers that are from this company called Alice and the magician.
[00:19:32] Ray Latif: You've mentioned these guys before.
[00:19:33] John Craven: We have, so now we're gonna, we're gonna try this stuff.
[00:19:35] Ray Latif: What else in the position?
[00:19:37] John Craven: What is this again? Yeah, it's basically, I guess you'd describe it as sort of a spray for a cocktail. It's like a scent. It's a flavor enhancer. Flavor enhancer, yeah.
[00:19:46] Ray Latif: Flavor enhancer and aerosol, sort of.
[00:19:48] John Craven: Not an aerosol. Again, it's like a little perfume tester type thing. Yes, not aerosol. But idea is you basically spray it in whatever cup you're gonna drink it out of and pour your liquid in and you've got sort of an enhanced
[00:20:00] Jon Landis: experience. Before you spray that, can you just not spray it on the microphone?
[00:20:04] John Craven: I'm going to not. Well, I was going to try to do a sound effect, but since I failed so hard on the first one.
[00:20:08] Jon Landis: I'm just saying it's going to make that microphone smell forever.
[00:20:10] John Craven: So I was going to make you guys a little spray here with some coffee.
[00:20:15] Ray Latif: What was the spray? Was that orange?
[00:20:17] John Craven: This one's called a autumn bonfire. I also have a tobacco and an orange scent. I'm no mixologist here, but I felt like this might work with some coffee.
[00:20:28] Ray Latif: I think with this coffee. Maybe it's a little too brutal. I, I, uh.
[00:20:34] ??: Whoa.
[00:20:35] Ray Latif: Clearly there's a hole in my cups. Blue shirt down, blue shirt down.
[00:20:38] Jon Landis: It's a good thing you got four more of those shirts in your dress drawer.
[00:20:41] John Craven: It's a good thing this is a podcast and not a video.
[00:20:43] Ray Latif: And good thing Stern is on vacation because he'd never let me live this down.
[00:20:47] John Craven: Well, Ray also, you guys can't see this, but it's kind of like the jockey in a horse race, you know, they have those goggles on where they just rip one off when it gets dirty. Ray actually has like four layers of blue shirts on. So he's pulling one off right now. You know, Albert Einstein did the same thing. So anyway, we made iced coffee that kind of tastes like campfire.
[00:21:04] Ray Latif: That smokiness really comes through on the nose, less so on the palate.
[00:21:07] Jon Landis: I don't really taste it at all. I just taste coffee. Yeah, you can't get the smokiness right on the nose? I smell it, but I don't think that's what I want to be smelling when I'm going to drink coffee either. Okay, well what else do you got? We need to do one more.
[00:21:17] John Craven: Okay, we're gonna do one more. We're gonna do the orange one.
[00:21:19] Jon Landis: Oh no, I taste it for sure.
[00:21:21] John Craven: Here you go. I have an orange iced coffee. The lesson from this could be... Leave it to the professionals.
[00:21:27] Ray Latif: Ooh, that is a powerful orange scent. Yeah, I like the smell of the orange.
[00:21:31] John Craven: I'm far from a professional here.
[00:21:33] Ray Latif: That's good. That's a good pairing right there.
[00:21:35] John Craven: I like that. I'm going to get my notice right now. I'm going to go be a bartender. Can you give notice to yourself? I guess so. It's probably not overly effective.
[00:21:43] Jon Landis: To me, there's something about the orange that seems OK, because it literally smells like the zest of an orange just got sprayed into the air. Yeah, it's really, really aggro tasting. So it's very natural, and it's something that I'm familiar with. And I would be OK coming out of a little spray bottle. I'm not so much OK with bonfire, like liquid smoke coming out of a spray bottle and being edible.
[00:22:02] John Craven: Well, this one, they said, was meant for, and I gave this a little try with some bourbon a little early here right now for that. It was pretty nice. Yeah, I can see it with some tequila. And they've got a whole host of other ones that, I don't know, I just grabbed three.
[00:22:16] Jon Landis: Well, we got to grab a Bud Light, because apparently they have a hops and grapefruit. And if you spray it on a Bud Light, it makes it taste like pale ale.
[00:22:24] John Craven: It tastes like Bud Light.
[00:22:24] Jon Landis: I mean, I hope. I guess. I don't know. There's a time and place for that. That I got to see and believe.
[00:22:29] John Craven: All right, well, enough about me. How about you guys here?
[00:22:31] Jon Landis: So I got this mate energy, which I know has been around for a couple years out of the Durham area in North Carolina. Tatiana, she hasn't come to any of our events. I haven't met her, but this has been a really, I've had my eyes on this beverage for a long time. And this is the first time we've actually received samples after seeing it for so long. And I'm a little confused because I thought this was a mate energy drink and it's a guayusa energy drink. And I don't know if, that's recent. I'm pretty sure when I first heard about this it was Mate and that was kind of the Mate namesake.
[00:23:07] John Craven: Sounds logical.
[00:23:08] Jon Landis: But now it's Gua Yuso, which I'm a fan of. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect there. It tastes pretty good. It really Tastes a lot like the Runa Energy drinks though, so I don't really know how this is going to stand on its own. It's definitely very interesting and I think they have a couple new flavors coming out, but I like the organic tea-based energy drink play. I think that that's better. This would be really good with some vodka. What do you got next to that? Oh, yeah. This is Shine H2O. It's also out of South Carolina, Charleston. This guy's a doctor, Philip Davis, really, really nice guy. And a little bit of backstory. Keep it short. My dad has been sending me vitamins D supplements every fall, like for years, because he's a very, very strong proponent that in the winter we don't get the right amount of vitamin D that we usually get through sunlight. And that is how you get colds and your immune system really gets a lot weaker in the winter because of it. So this is a beverage that its aim is to provide you with that vitamin D boost. It's got 250%. I get it now. I'm a little slow. Yeah, and I like the idea and the little vitamin D emblem at the top. I think it gets a little lost up here. Also, there's maybe an opportunity for it to be a little tighter and just delivering vitamin D instead of like caffeine and vitamin B and all these other things as well. But it tastes like vitamin water. It's really good. I really like the way it tastes. I don't think you can taste the stevia too much in it. It's a little too sweet for me, but really, really great concepts to a potentially a really big problem in society with vitamin D deficiency. So I'm a big fan of it. Really big problem per Mr. Landis. Yeah. The senior. Yeah. It's well researched and there's a lot of leading clinicians and physicians that are on vitamin D deficiency having like major, major impacts in our society. Interesting.
[00:24:58] Ray Latif: Very interesting. And I say that sincerely. Okay, in front of me right now is a bottle of lemonade called Hey Honey, from the brand Hey Honey. It's a honey lemonade, artisanal lemonade, 100% sweetened with wildflower honey. It's pretty darn good. I mix it with a little bit of hot water, as is my routine before these podcasts. And it's only got 26 grams of sugar, which is not too, too bad for one of these. Well, I mean, this is a pretty big bottle. It's got two servings. This is pretty tasty stuff. I will probably finish this bottle at some point over the next couple of days. And right next to me, right next to that are some balls. Balls go around a zero. You know, in my entire life, I've never had a sip of balls. I can honestly say that. And I think I'm going to go for it right now. Very quickly, very quickly.
[00:25:42] Jon Landis: Well, that's the... I mean... There goes another blue shirt. Uh-oh.
[00:25:46] Ray Latif: All right. Well, let's get the... Okay. I hope that came through. Hold on.
[00:25:52] Jon Landis: Okay. Yeah. It's Guarana soda. I mean, it's really popular in South America. Some cream soda action going on there. Yeah. The zero is, I like the regular one, but you need to have a high tolerance for sugar for that one. Indeed. Indeed. Do you have one? What? No.
[00:26:09] John Craven: Sorry, I fell asleep over here. No. Oh, this other drink that I have over here. Yes, I have the, I guess it's called Sun Up Green Coffee. This is another product that fits into the coffee space that we're just constantly talking about. I feel like every other post on our site right now mentions coffee in some capacity. This stuff, this is definitely different. It is brewed, unroasted coffee. So just green coffee beans. You know, I don't know about this one. It seems like it tastes okay, but trying to retrain people on how coffee works. I mean, I feel like this is similar to the challenges of people who are putting out just straight coffee fruit juice at one point. You know, I feel like the branding needs a little work, but taste is pretty decent. It's nice and light. It's almost looks like iced tea.
[00:26:56] Jon Landis: Yeah, it does look like iced tea. I always found that one of the biggest challenges for RTD Coffee is that everybody has their own way that they like to drink coffee. You know, they want it with sugar or milk or soy milk or Splenda or whatever it is, and they kind of customize coffee to their own end. And this is an even further step down the line, telling people like roasting isn't good. Is that their message?
[00:27:21] John Craven: I don't know, but that's sort of you're selling people on doing something
[00:27:24] Jon Landis: When is someone coming out with a cold brewed green coffee?
[00:27:28] Ray Latif: This is coming full circle right here. Don't you see this? This is coming full circle. So the folks from SunUp, if you're listening, please follow up with, uh, you know, some information about your brand and perhaps some more clarification via PR or sort of a pitch. And they'd love to hear more about the product. Yeah. These just showed up. I don't even know.
[00:27:47] John Craven: Found it in our cooler.
[00:27:48] Ray Latif: There you go. That's the end of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening. You will definitely hear from us again. And we want to hear from you again. We got some good replies and some good emails to our podcast at BevNET.com email address. So keep them coming and we'll keep the old podcast coming. So until next time, this is Ray Latif and John Craven and Jon Landis. We'll see you next time. Ciao.
