[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hey folks, I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Jen Batchelor, the co-founder and CEO of Kinuforix, a pioneering brand of non-alcoholic social tonics. Just a reminder to our listeners, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. What do adaptogens, nootropics, and botanicals have to do with the future of social drinking? If you ask Jen Batchelor, the answer is quite a bit. And based on the trajectory for Kinuforix, it's hard to argue with her. Founded in 2017, Kinuforix is steeped in the idea that there is a better-for-you alternative to alcohol when decompressing after work or enjoying a night out with friends. The beverages are formulated with functional ingredients said to enhance mood and relieve stress and, depending on variety, include 5-HTP, GABA, and L-theanine. Since inception, Kin has raised over $10 million in venture capital, a figure that reflects the brand's remarkable growth, particularly via e-commerce. While 90% of the company's revenue is currently derived from direct-to-consumer sales, Kin is making an aggressive push into brick-and-mortar retail. The company recently announced the hires of three former Fevertree executives who are tasked with expanding distribution of the brand into large retailers in all channels of trade. In the following interview, I sat down with Jen for an expansive conversation about the inspiration behind and development of Kin, why the brand adopted euphorics as part of its branding despite the word's association with drug culture, how Soylent provided a quasi-template for the company's business strategy, and the brand's association with Sober Curious Lifestyles. She also explained how Kin has built an effective D2C strategy, applying lessons from success at upscale retailer Air1 to other chains, and how she views MeToo brands that have emerged in recent years. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with Jen Batchelor, the founder and CEO of Kin Euphorics. Jen, how are you?
[00:02:43] Jen Batchelor: I'm doing great. How are you? So good to see you.
[00:02:45] Ray Latif: Doing fantastic. Doing fantastic. Since I saw you on screen, since the moment I saw you on screen, I've been wondering about that map behind you. What is that a map of?
[00:02:54] Jen Batchelor: This is an old map of Charleston, South Carolina, where I currently sit for the week.
[00:02:59] Ray Latif: What are you doing in Charleston?
[00:03:01] Jen Batchelor: Um, so this is just a hop over. I'm going to be in Pennsylvania next week chatting with some, uh, some manufacturers and then heading up to, to the city. So this is just a nice little halfway point hanging with family and just getting some work done.
[00:03:15] Ray Latif: Nice. Nice. Uh, last week you were in your hometown of Austin, Texas.
[00:03:20] Jen Batchelor: Yes, I was. Yeah.
[00:03:22] Ray Latif: And I bring that up because you told me you had a company retreat out there, your annual company retreat, which is nice. It's good that people can have retreats again. I wonder about the impact of that kind of a gathering. You know, what were some of the goals or some of the highlights?
[00:03:39] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, so I mean we're really lucky even pre pandemic we made a habit of doing a biannual retreat so you know twice a year we get together and one just with the team to refocus and do some, you know, next year planning, and then one with all of our family members so the immediate families significant others. Kids, it's sort of a thing that we like to do it we're sort of an inherently social brand as it is and so this this particular gathering was significant that we just brought in some new team members and we wanted to be able to not only get on board with an upcoming plan that we're going to be rolling out soon, but also just getting to know each other and hanging out.
[00:04:18] Ray Latif: You know, I've read quite a bit about you and in almost every story I've read, your childhood in Saudi Arabia comes up. You grew up in the country and it's interesting that your dad was a moonshiner in that country, which that's a whole nother subject. But I wonder about growing up in Saudi Arabia and what, if any, impact it had on your perspective on life.
[00:04:42] Jen Batchelor: Hmm, so much. I mean, it definitely, first of all, happened during some of my most formative years growing up as a young kid and then a tween, where we decide everything and learn everything about the world, of course. So I think it did a lot, not only what my dad was into, how my parents were sort of the center nucleus of their community, but also just the cultural aspects of living there and having the privilege to travel as much as we did, because, you know, my dad also, did have a day job and he worked at the airline, so we got to travel a ton and having that much exposure, I think, to different ways of life and what gathering and true community really meant in different countries and parts of the world certainly had a massive, massive impact on me and my value system and just what I wanted to bring into my life going forward. yeah, there are so many things impacted. And then, you know, the whole aspect of being a woman in that country, and there were a lot of layers to it. But overall, just walk away with so much reverence for that culture. And I think just so much more of an intuitive sense of what I want out of building my own community and how I want to feel from it.
[00:05:55] Ray Latif: Have you been back since?
[00:05:57] Jen Batchelor: I have not, no, sadly, I still have an uncle out there, but there's not much tourism in Saudi Arabia, as you can imagine. So yeah, I haven't been back since the early, early 2000s. And it's definitely something that's on my list. We actually have an upcoming project there, not to spill any beans. But yeah, later this year, we'll be spending some time there. So I'm excited.
[00:06:20] Ray Latif: I mean, it would make sense that Kin would be out there, right? Because when I think about Saudi Arabia, correct me if I'm wrong, it's a dry country. You cannot drink alcohol in Saudi Arabia, despite your dad being a moonshiner and risking imprisonment, I assume. I would think that, you know, Kin would fit in well as a beverage of choice for some Saudi Arabia.
[00:06:40] Jen Batchelor: Yes, and you know I mean if you look at our, even our branding and some do miss us but at the end of the day, we do pay homage to that part of my, my upbringing and the inspiration behind it and that, you know, folks that aren't drinking for any reason still deserve something that's reverent of that choice and something that sophisticated and beautiful. the logo itself is sort of hand-derived and a handwritten interpretation of the word kin in Arabic calligraphy. So I think as soon as someone from the Middle East or Arab nations see our brand, it's sort of automatically resonant with them, even though kin is not a word that's often used necessarily there. They understand and appreciate the sentiment behind it.
[00:07:25] Ray Latif: I wonder if they know what euphorics means, but we'll get into that momentarily. You know, your kin bio notes that you applied your expertise in Ayurvedic practice, psychology, neuroscience, circadian rhythms, and quantum physics to develop the brand. That's quite the background. How do you educate yourself about each subject?
[00:07:48] Jen Batchelor: Oh, goodness. I mean, it's all connected, right? I think, you know, from when I was young, I really took that old Einstein quote and the adage around, you know, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed, right? And so this idea that we really think about how we want to feel when we think about waking up as not a limitless, store of energy or intuition when we really look at ourselves as relative to what we bring to the table and reactionary to everything else around us. Coupled with my insatiable curiosity for you know everything related to science and how we feel and how we show up in the world and having a good time and socializing and how all those things come together I think is is just part and parcel of the education that I've come up through that I've sought out when it comes to Ayurvedic knowledge. And then what I've kind of just absorbed in the world Kin Euphorics as we've come to create it, as we come to love it and share it, and as it continues to evolve with our community. So all that to say, I think it just kind of comes in droves, whether it's sitting with an expert or going out and seeking that knowledge and seeing how it could potentially apply to beverage in a way that it's never applied before or ever been considered. So I think that's really where this multifaceted curiosity comes together in one sort of fun little square box we called Kim.
[00:09:13] Ray Latif: It's interesting because I Kin Euphorics is such a misunderstood word. It's so often aligned with drug culture. And when we spoke last, you said it was very intentional to use that word despite the uphill battle in educating consumers about it. Why was it so important to include as a part of the brand name and as a part of the company's general ethos?
[00:09:37] Jen Batchelor: Well, so for those of you who have been following us for a while, Kin started as Kin Social Tonics. And there was something very inherent to what we were trying to do with that naming convention. And that was to share that this tonic, this idea of something holistic that could bring a sense of well-being, no matter what social occasion you were trying to feel better in or change your mood in or state in, that there was also something healing about the social aspect of this drink. about actually just coming together in consciousness and having a moment together. So there was a lot of poetry, and then we gave a lot of thought to that, and then we brought it to the beverage world, and they were like, oh, social tonic, yeah, like fever treat. I didn't realize that there was healing properties to fever tree, but of course they were referring mostly to tonic water. So number one, it was a very like business driven sort of operational decision from that perspective or sales positioning decision. But outside of that, we just realized that what we're doing is so fresh and so new. and you and I talked about this when we first sat down, is there's a new sort of product launching every single day and a first of or first in class launching every single day. And we were certainly no different than that. We were just essentially saying, hey, this one social ritual has been happening the same exact way for the past 10,000 years. whether it's fermented grain, vegetable, fruit, whatever it is we can get our hands on, it still leads you and leaves you with this one particular molecule and ingredient and that's ethyl alcohol, right? So ethanol is the sort of common denominator between all these. For us, it was, if you want to have a nuanced mood experience, what do you have to do in order to play to that? And that's, first of all, think about the time of day. That goes into the circadian piece. Second of all, think about what's happening with the brain at that time of day. And then third, think about the endocrine system. If you could do it all at once, that's euphoria. Now, the etymology of the word, and this is a bit of a word nerd lesson for me, that I'm constantly beating my euphoria drum because I think it's really important for us to be able to own language in order to experience these things, especially on a constant basis and a collective basis. But the idea of euphoria being this term that was sort of hijacked by drug culture, you know, over the course of 20 years, the 60s, 70s, was really sad to me because it was coined back in the 1700s by physicians, actually medical practitioners, herbalists, that essentially wrote in their notes like, okay, this person achieved euphoria after the administration of this herbal tincture, that medicine, or this treatment. So it was really about like, Ray is sick, I gave him this thing, and now he feels like a million bucks. because he took this thing. So we have a word for that. It's euphoria. It's not patient got better, right? Like, no, they didn't just get better. They came back to life. They feel like themselves again. And that also to me is quite beautiful because it's saying to you, your natural birthright as a human being is to feel great. The things that make us feel shitty are the things that were constructed by our social dynamic, our circumstance, et cetera, et cetera. So again. sort of lengthy, you know, my own little Iliad here about taking this word and bringing it back and returning it back to our society so we can actually experience it. And that's what eFORX is. And we get that it's like a steep climb to get people on board for that. But once they understand it, there's no question, like, yes, I want to feel that way. I want to feel naturally good. And I don't want to keep imbibing things that make me feel like crap.
[00:13:25] Ray Latif: It's an even steeper climb, though, in recent years, given the HBO drama Euphoria, which is very much steeped in drug culture.
[00:13:34] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, it's absolutely opened the conversation, if anything. And, you know, I think there was no mistake as to why they use that term. I think there's a lot of folks that come to Kin sort of expecting this otherworldly experience. And then we have this conversation with them, and it's still otherworldly in a different way, but it allows them, I think, more control and just a better medicine of, living a better life, a better sense of self. And I think that ultimately is the gateway to how we want to feel. And honestly, if you want, there are a lot of people too that pair their kin with certain psychedelics and recreational tools that we don't manufacture. But we certainly are aware that they exist and we're aware that the brain certainly wants something that can help them you know, dive into experiences like that, but still feel good. So I think that's, that's the one thing for me. It's like, if you're going to be dabbling in anything like Molly or mushrooms or anything like that, shouldn't you be aware of your, what your brain needs in order to come back to a state of true bliss and true euphoria. So I'm not concerned about the, the branding sort of confusion around euphoria. I think if there's one, if there's a conversation starter that can bring people to the table, we're ready to have that conversation with them. So if anything, it made it more accessible.
[00:14:54] Ray Latif: It's interesting because when you have such a grand idea, when you have such an expansive idea for a brand, you know, where do you start? And I'd love to hear about the planning process for starting Kin. The story is really important, but you've got to get the liquid into a can, into a bottle. So where do you start?
[00:15:18] Jen Batchelor: You know, for us, it was just solving for one particular pain point in our own lives. And for me, it was always this thing that we're asked, especially living in an urban environment, working full time job or as an entrepreneur with a side hustle, whatever it is, you're just being stretched so, so, so thin. And the more that we do that, and the more we take on, the more time itself becomes the currency. And so in thinking about like, what is it that we want to do with this product? It was sort of twofold. It was reduced stress and return time to people, right? So you think about the time spent trying to power through like chronic cortisol or adrenaline spikes through work. It just like takes you longer, you're less creative. and you're enjoying life a lot less when you're exposing yourself to that much cortisol, literally zaps or libido, especially as women. So thinking about what that was doing to my life, coupled with the fact that like, also like my social schedule was incredibly demanding. And there were just expectations around that. And that's not a sob story, just like is what life is like when you're living. LA or New York, I was definitely straddling both coasts and straddling both lifestyles as well. You can think about LA and New York as sort of polar opposite, but still extremely social communities that I was part of. So this idea that I was sort of expected to have this like crazy day at work and then go and meet someone for first dates or, you know, just friends for happy hour, taking clients out or something like that. You have to be on it, right? It's like this thing that you don't want to be checked out at the bar and you certainly don't want to just like hit the bottle right away just to feel drunk. That's not the purpose, right? It's like, let me have something that's going to switch me from work to play. And then you want to be less stressed so you can be more present. So once you realize what you're actually doing to your system, it's like, oh, this is actually really counterintuitive because alcohol increases my anxiety. So the beginning of Kim is really just like, let's unpack this experience because it clearly doesn't work. And I've been stuck on this yo-yo path for the longest time, just like getting well, getting sick, getting well, being hungover, going to yoga, you know, waking up hungover the next day from a night out with friends. And it's just unsustainable, especially as you get into your early thirties. It's like, Oh God, like, it's just not cute anymore. Like commiserate over a pile of, pancakes in the morning over your hungover state and or like sob fest from the night before. So it started with that. It started with, okay, this particular routine is tired. This system is broken. I want to figure something out that makes me, okay, if I start my day with yoga and something great in the morning, I want to get to 4 or 5 p.m. and do something that's going to bring me back there without having to get back in the studio or be by myself. Right. A lot of those activities that were like wellness related were so siloed. And so, you know, you can do it with friends, but you weren't connecting. You weren't like, what's up? How's your mom? What's going on with your relationship? So those bonding moments were really healing for me. But at the end of the day, like the fact that alcohol was at the center of everything was kind of the derailment of the true value that I was getting out of those things. So it started with that. How do we want to make people feel? What is the most disruptable opportunity here? Like where can I truly help myself? And it was happy hour. That was, that was a clear answer. And we served thousands of people before we launched our first product. And that was the same answer. Like happy hour is the place where I drink by default. I want to relax, but like, I don't know why I drink. I drink because it makes me feel relaxed, confident, sexy, three modes that really one molecule and one ingredient, as I mentioned, couldn't really carry all those mantles all the way through, right? Give you the illusion of that. So we just started looking at all the different ingredients that could get us there. And we were very non-discriminatory around it. Early, early versions of Kin certainly had everything from nicotine to cannabis in them. You know, at first it was just like how to elicit a feeling that does not destroy my liver and does give me some sort of cognitive edge. That was kind of the genesis of why we started out and said, okay, fine. What seems to be working are nootropics for cognitive edge, daptogens for lowering stress, functional botanics, and tasty ingredients outside of that to make a drink that's sophisticated and fun.
[00:19:47] Ray Latif: Why a beverage? I mean, I'm sure you could have done any kind of consumable product. Why beverage?
[00:19:52] Jen Batchelor: I can't think of a more social thing in the world than a beverage. There's just this inherent thing when we're out with people, we need to have something in our hands. And of course, if you look at the decline in smoking, which frankly, even smokers are like, Two handed wonders right they want to have something to an oral fixation here and they want to have something in their hand here. But like I said, I really wanted this to be a social activity I thought people would get way more out of it, it would be more enjoyable and it wouldn't relegate you to only doing this at home alone.
[00:20:25] Ray Latif: But that means you'd have to crack the on-premise business that of bars and restaurants. I mean, happy hours happen at those places. I guess they can happen at offices and some other places as well. But, you know, typically when people are social drinking, they're out. That doesn't seem like who you are now and today. Were you initially focused on on-premise?
[00:20:46] Jen Batchelor: it was always designed for the bar because that's where the biggest pain points were, right? Like I was still going to a bar or a hotel with a bar or a restaurant that had a bar and or bar menu. So I think however you picture the environment, whether it's for me, for you, for your mom, for your sister, you know, your sister, brother, whomever in your life, you think about all these walks of life. And that's sort of the strange part about is we always end up somewhere no matter who we are, why we are, we always end up somewhere with a bar menu. That's just how it goes, right? Unless you're just really a homebody and not necessarily socializing a ton. And certainly that was the case as we all, especially like half our team now are parents and family folks. So that's definitely evolved since then. But of course, we're all social beings. And so you'll always find yourself whether it's at a home barbecue, Or, you know, a family gathering for alcohols at the center of the experience and so happy hour and just happened to be in the on premise experience happened to be a really beautiful canvas for what we're trying to do, and super illustrative of okay listen, hold your horses, you are your most depleted right now at 345pm. based on what's happening with your circadian rhythm and all of the impacts there with the sun going down, melatonin wanting to begin production, but you have cortisol like this after a long day of work, you're in fight or flight mode, rather than douse your system with ethyl alcohol, which your body and brain perceive as a poison and continue that sense, flood your brain. And same thing with, With our products and alcohol, we do incorporate something called GABLA, which relaxes the mind and does give you access to that part of the brain that makes you feel calm and relaxed. Being able to incorporate that in a way that actually boosts you and gets you to a place of homeostasis was actually really easy to do for happy hour. That was such a sweet spot for people. And so it was a great way for us to share the narrative. It was a great way for us to share this formulation. And frankly, bartenders were needing this. They really didn't have a tool in their arsenal that was any different from alcohol. And they were very, very confused by CBD. which as we're coming to learn some five, six, seven years later, CBD is really most effective at putting people to sleep. So you don't necessarily want that at 5 p.m. yet. You wanna be able to keep going, get to dinner and have fun and still be the life of the party. So still relevant today and was very much so in the beginning.
[00:23:22] Ray Latif: When you are building a non-traditional company in the beverage industry, how do you incorporate the fundamentals that have existed for so long for successful beverage brands into what you're doing?
[00:23:37] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, I have to say, I think I've been a bit of a black sheep in the beverage industry only because I came at this business very honestly, but also very, very green and very humbly. And I think what I was trying to do from the onset of this adventure was to say, look, I represent what I want, what my friends and what my community wants. And that might suck for most people. And like, I hope it doesn't. Like I hope we're onto something here because I am building this from an honest place and building it from an emotional place and building it from a place of wanting to bring more goodness to the world, more conscious connection to the world. And so it did come from a place of, I feel so good. I need to scream this from the mountaintops. But at the same time, we were very much unapologetic about the way that we showed up in the world, which I think the industry bulked out a little bit in the beginning. And certainly, everyone that you can think of was trying to build this as a strictly direct consumer business is a total mistake and a nightmare. And it does have its cost, but at the end of the day, what we were focused on was proving that this concept not only worked, but that it deserved a place. across the globe and not just, you know, on both coasts, but, you know, little tiny towns on the outset of, you know, the, the outskirts of Chicago or, you know, in Austin, we're so huge in Texas. I had no idea until really, like, I just, right before I moved there, it was like, wow, look at these numbers coming out of Dallas. And it just, it's just surprising to see that it's just strikes sort of this universal accord with people that, yeah, I could really use a break from the thing that makes me feel like crap. It's that simple. And so, you know, I think for us coming into it, really just representing consumer tastes that were evolving so, so quickly with consumer tastes changing. And, you know, I mean, it seems like it was overnight, but at the end of the day, it's a trend that you can watch over 10 to 20 years from the slow food movement. And what's crazy is it went from slow food movement to clean beauty, right? Clean food to clean beauty. And I'm like, hey, what happened to clean drinks? We completely missed that. You know, there are some beautiful functionals out there and some delicious teas and things like that. But when it came to the bar, you were really dealing with maybe at the time we were coming on the scene, like Kettle One Botanics was around and it's like, questionable how good that is for you, right? So the bar scene and the social scene was, I think, a total white space for us. And we're like, okay, we're just going to do it our way. And we would do it, we're going to do it the way that we would want to experience it as actual consumers. So it wasn't until like the last 12 months or less that we even thought about, okay, now how do we grow up and become a real beverage company? And can we even play in that sandbox? So we'll see the verdicts out.
[00:26:30] Ray Latif: Well, you had a bit of a point of reference. There was a comparable, I guess, brand, not in substance or style, but in sort of non-traditional approach to beverages in Soylent. Your husband, who co-founded or was a co-founder of Kin, was also a co-founder of Soylent.
[00:26:49] Jen Batchelor: He was.
[00:26:50] Ray Latif: Was there any kind of template there that you could pull from?
[00:26:53] Jen Batchelor: 100% absolutely and I think it was definitely much more around the way that he and his partners thought about innovating in this space was to say look, we don't need to reinvent the wheel here what we need to do is serve and underserved community. We need to take something, make it the most superior version of itself, package it for the use case that we're actually using it and are thriving through. And that was the meal replacement piece for productivity, having a better life. And it wasn't just for what it was used for back then, which was protein shake was very strictly around sports performance and fitness. they struck a nerve there too. I think they were also saying, hey guys, stop eating so much ramen about this full nutritional stack. That's going to make you feel amazing. And then you can code harder, you know, run faster, do whatever you need to do and cover more bases in your life. So from a template perspective, it was just wonderful to see and to be able to learn from him and still learn from him today on how they thought about serving community, how they thought about identifying and really building sort of this tribal experience for people. And then also like giving the keys to the community of like, hey guys, this was our idea and this is what worked for us, but we're going to run this like an open API and you guys can add whatever it is that you want to enhance the experience. And we're going to learn from you all. So it was very sort of communal in that sense. And we very much think about Kin that way. I think we've iterated on our first SKU High Road and other SKUs since then at least 18 times. That's kind of a big no-no with major retailers.
[00:28:33] Ray Latif: Yeah, and people who are not watching the video didn't see my eyebrows go flying up into my head when you said 18.
[00:28:38] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, at least. At least. And it was literally like... God bless our manufacturers because they really, they're just like, okay, what are we doing next? Because they know that there's going to be a tweak to the formula, something that changes a process, packaging, something, because we're constantly evolving it. And the reason for that is we want to be the brand that sticks around for a while. We want to get this thing right and be around in a hundred years. And it shocks a lot of people, but like, the funny thing is like, if you look at Coca-Cola and it's hundred some odd year trajectory, like they've changed their formula a couple of times. Like the, the anchor formulation and the flavor is so distinct now that it's incredible. And you would never ever in a million years think that it was ever any different, but we all know the first iteration of Coca-Cola had. actual cocaine in it. Some people may even be surprised to hear that the original formula did have alcohol. So it was really meant to be um or morphine and alcohol and it was meant to be a temperance drink against morphine. So this idea that these brands and products that are really intended to shift culture have to be perfect right out the gate is a total misconception on what it takes to innovate. You really need to leave yourself some humility and some flexibility to build a product that people actually care about. So yeah, that was a big, big lesson that I took away from the Soylent journey.
[00:30:05] Ray Latif: Soylent also came around at the right time, I think, right? And timing is everything in business. It could be everything in life, if you want to look at it that way too. But it seems like Kin came around at the right time in that there were people who were looking for exactly what you were talking about, a different kind of social occasion, a different kind of happy hour, reducing the amount of alcohol that they're consuming while still enjoying life and living a healthier life. There was this confluence of trends that came together to really support the brand. You talked about what you learned from consumers and how important it was that you continue to listen to your consumers as you were building this brand. But what did you learn about trial? What did you learn about those first interactions with Kin? And how did you use that information to guide the process of scaling?
[00:30:59] Jen Batchelor: Number one, it can't be too precious. I think one of the things about trial that people are scared of doing, it's just like shipping something out with a really generic label and not having it feel legit. I think you'd be surprised to see how many people really respond to the creative process and being behind the scenes on what's happening. And I think you get a lot of really great feedback that way as well. And plus you don't run the risk of skewing the data, which we just launched a product called Kin Bloom. That had been underway for about 18 months, and that we sent out a nearly minted can format version of the product carbonated and all about eight weeks before it went live to get some live feedback. And it was super helpful, but it was nothing like what we used to do when we were doing beta tasters, which was to say like literally ship a two ounce shot of kin, high road or any other concentrate and just say, do with it what you will, let us know what you had that day to eat and how you felt and what the flavor was like for you. And got a lot more out of it when you can leave it sort of as a blank canvas for someone to paint on versus like halfway baked. So that was a big one and then I think just the idea that you know people really do. It was very revealing to us in the beginning that people had already had this sort of collective consciousness burgeoning, and it was really just our presence that gave them the permission to make the leap. But there were certainly, you know, psychonauts and people that were trying to moderate consumption, as you mentioned, that were dabbling in their own kitchens and creating all kinds of concoctions. And so it was really just saying like, this is the commercialized version of that to the extent that we, you know, we can create it as a startup and it's yours for the picking, right? It's yours for the complete evolution if you so choose and if the market demands. So that's it. I think just learning that you want to make sure that your beta tasters sort of have full autonomy and sort of full responsibility to use their imagination. And that you're also prepared to integrate this feedback, right? Because otherwise it's just sitting in a databank somewhere collecting dust versus, you know, something that's truly a part of your production process.
[00:33:19] Ray Latif: When you launched the brand, and I didn't know this, you told me this the other day, you were ahead of Seedlip. Kin launched before Seedlip, and I was kind of surprised to hear that because everyone looks at Seedlip as, you know, the pioneer of non-alc cocktails, non-alc social tonics, drinks, whatever you want to call them. And it was very much tied to this micro trend at the time of sober curious lifestyles. And you know, it seems like you were or Kin was just as much a pioneer of that set as well. And I wonder, you know, now that it's just, you know, full steam ahead for that movement, do you tie Kin to this idea of being sober curious or sober? I mean, do you use those terms in your marketing? Is that a big part of your audience?
[00:34:09] Jen Batchelor: I would say sober curiosity has so much philosophical alignment with what we're doing in the sense that it begs the question, what's better, what's next, right? And is there something better out there? There's so much grace and so much thanks that I have for that movement. In fact, the woman who's responsible for having brought that movement to the US and certainly coined the phrase, Ruby Warrington is a really dear friend of the brands and mine personally. So there's certainly alignment there. I think to your point of Are we moving away from that? It's really just, again, we are a reflection directly of our consumer base. And so while people are not moving away from it, they're just graduating through that into new kin products, right? So like you think about how people come to sober curiosity and then either go back maybe to their typical routines around alcohol, or they actually do evolve their routine and ritual and say, I'm actually done with it. This was great. I love this experience. I'm actually done with alcohol. Who needs it? or they go a certain length of time. And kin is always, it seems to be the constant because it's delivering so much value to their lives. Not everyone, but to a lot of folks that have come to kin in that way. Whether they stay with kin because of their sobriety, curiosity is a whole nother story. I think the functional aspect is what gives us our edge. And so when we talk about our category, we see ourselves as the functional adult beverage, something that you're enjoying for you time, for friend time, for whatever it is. as opposed to trying to be the non-alcoholic version of something else, which we may call, you know, the category has a very, a very staid and tried and true name in mocktails. And so it's a different value proposition from that perspective. They're one in the same in many ways, right? Like you can be sober curious and enjoy kin, but not all kin products are necessarily designed for the sober curious movement. So yeah, again, it's like choose your own adventure. I think the pandemic certainly forced that because bar culture was done for a little while. I'm gonna have to hoard my alcohol from, you know, specs or total wine and now what's next? And then they realized like that wasn't that fun either. Like drinking two bottles of wine a night and waking up hungover for your Zoom calls, not the best. So people started drinking or happy hour drinks throughout the day instead of coffee, because there's about 50 milligrams of caffeine per serving. So again, it's just like trial and experimentation. I think when you build your brand to support and promote that, you get so many surprising answers as to what people are actually doing with your products.
[00:36:50] Ray Latif: Well, that being said, do you have a sense of how many of your customers are buying the product because they are living a sober, curious lifestyle or a sober lifestyle versus, you know, for the functional benefits of Kin?
[00:37:03] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, 100%. I mean, so when people come to the brand, as I mentioned, their first purchase, I would say it's about 50-50. They are turned on to Kin, whether it's through an influence or a friend, that really does draw them in to try it in a social setting. And so therefore, they are trying it instead of their nightly cocktail or glass of wine. Once they experience the brand, that repeat sort of purchase, the loyalty around our subscription numbers and things like that, when we survey those folks, when they've been in with the brand for a little while, then it just becomes like, this is just like my daily routine, my daily ritual now. I'm waking up, I'm having this, I'm having a spritz after my first coffee, I'm having a bloom for happy hour, and then I'm moving into lightweight, which mellows me out before sleep. amazing, like everyone has their, how do you stack it sort of method, but it does come with some experimentation. You know, you're not going to get that with the first sort of introduction to the brand. It's probably going to be either, or like, Oh, this looks like a great holistic product. I'm familiar with some of these new tropics. Let me try it for cognitive enhancements versus the person that's like, Oh, I don't, I don't need another Aperol spreads. I want to try something that's a little in the vein, but that's actually going to do some good for me.
[00:38:18] Ray Latif: Do you still drink any alcohol or are you done with the liquid?
[00:38:22] Jen Batchelor: Well, I am now halfway through a pregnancy, so I am completely dry. Thank you very much. It really depends on periods of my life. So outside of pregnancy, whenever I have a particularly stressful period, I am 100% dry. I just am not one for, for hangover during, during stress. And I would say as an entrepreneur, that's probably been the last four years, but I love beer. My husband and I love a good, a good craft beer. We have amazing breweries in Austin. and wine. I have winemakers in my family. So as you can imagine, I'm just saying no to that fresh rosé coming right off of the harvest. It's a really tough, tough no to some of my family members, but no, I definitely am a huge proponent of moderating just because I feel so much better. I sleep better. My skin's amazing because of it. And that's just honestly the best way I know how to live my life.
[00:39:15] Ray Latif: I tell my friends all the time, volume, volume is your problem. It's not the one drink you might have on a Saturday night. It's the eight drinks that you have on a Saturday night and then complaining about it for the rest of the week. You just had too much. You had way too much anyway.
[00:39:31] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, too costly.
[00:39:33] Ray Latif: You described to me, Kin, as an accidental direct-to-consumer brand. And at the outset of the pandemic, Everyone wanted to be a direct-to-consumer brand. Everyone was like, oh, you know, I'm going to kill it, you know, on e-comm. And, you know, that's the way that this company is going to grow. And certainly for beverage brands, that's not really the way to scale. But you can be pretty effective. with the direct-to-consumer business and gathering information about your customers, building influencers, and developing some real revenue there. But again, it's not the most scalable proposition. But the word I used before is effective. How do you build an effective direct-to-consumer strategy in one that isn't specifically tied to the pandemic?
[00:40:18] Jen Batchelor: I mean, the first step is realizing that it's going to evolve every 15 minutes. The right answer to that question is changing literally as we're speaking, right? Because e-com is just such an interesting and fickle beast, and there's new technologies and new platforms that are relevant. and changing in terms of relevancy by the minute. So I think for us, it was just because we were such an evolutionary and what we would consider revolutionary brand, we had to be where our consumers were having their minds changed, we're doing their research, we're being informed, we're sharing information, we're sharing experiences, and that was on social, right? So on social, on Google. And so for us, and really getting started, it was all right, we want to play there. However, and I mentioned this with respects to our initial launch and having had that all sped up because of a Vogue article in December, but we did have this sort of like tidy strategy of, you know, maybe we'll do 50% brand building on prem and then you know, some on trade stuff, if we get lucky with specialty retailers, and we really want to help contextualize the product and the brand by where it lives, we still want to do that. We really thought 50% of our business was going to be driven by those channels, IRL, and then 50% would be online. And that would be a nice little business model. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for for us, as it were, which is it? Well, through the pandemic to your point, super fortunately that we had not only the infrastructure built and that we went the direct to consumer route 100% from the get go, but that we had the marketing engine built. I mean, that was really, really important because we were able to sort of save the CAC and all the CPCs that were rising. The more players were sort of in the arena, we had our game plan already. we were probably more prepared than most. Still were able to double the business in 2020, which was really exciting for us. And then also, you know, we had also made some pretty expensive hires early in that year to build out our retail play that didn't get to really do what they came to do. And so everyone just sort of rallied around this plan to triple down on online. 2021 was a bit different with respects to And so it was just like drive harder through organic drive harder through brand building and storytelling. But at the end of the day, make a great product and people will try to find it wherever you sell it. That's certainly been true for us. But again, as I mentioned, really wanting to step into our power as a true beverage brand. ultimately requires us to have an incredible retail presence. And so we've been so fortunate to bring on the former commercial team from Fevertree, who just joined in May, and they're already off to the races. So I think being able to hold both has been an interesting, now we're doing some, you know, some branding and business gymnastics around how to sort of continue to pulse the loyalty play online and then really build retail as the acquisition plan.
[00:43:13] Ray Latif: You told me that 90% of Kin's business is direct-to-consumer right now. How much do you want it to be in 2023 or how much do you want Brick and Mortar to be in 2023?
[00:43:22] Jen Batchelor: We would love for it to be 60-40 reversed, right? So 60% on-premise and really being able to do online is just like very, very rich community where we support our loyalists because there are like, we call them the ritualists at Kin. It's like our true Kin fans. people that are literally on every single subscription and taking Kin with them to every vacation and things like that. They're not waiting for Kin to be at the bar, but that is a plus for them when they go out. It's like, oh, my favorite drink is here and you got to taste this. And they're better educators and ambassadors for our brand than we could ever be. But there's something so special about the way that they consume Kin on a daily basis and continue to teach us a thing or two about how to make our products better. we can get a lot out of that 40%. And so I think in terms of like creating more accessibility for new Kin drinkers, I think is a really important factor to the future of our brand.
[00:44:21] Ray Latif: Is Kin still available to everyone? Because I know that was one of your first retailers. Yeah.
[00:44:26] Jen Batchelor: Oh, yes. Are we ever. They've been such a great partner to us. And I think we've also in turn been a really interesting sort of, again, just giving them and other brands the permission to establish this category and sort of be the first retailer to get behind this category in a major way and really understand the nuance between here are your CBD functionals, here are your kombuchas. and here are your functional adult beverages. Like these are what you take to a party if you are an Erewhon, tribesmen or women or other. So I think for me, it really has been fun to work with them and to be able to experiment in all facets, you know, to play in the cold case and have end caps and just have a retailer really be a sounding board as well as, you know, just as much as a retail Mecca for folks that were looking for products like these. So yeah, we really love those guys. And I think they also sort of are like for the whole foods of the world and buyers that are trying to maintain an edge. They're definitely like making people sit up and pay attention to what this category is doing.
[00:45:29] Ray Latif: But that doesn't always apply to brands and trends that Erewhon adopts and embraces, because it's a very, very specialized kind of store. It's a store for discovery, for exploration. And I spoke with a top executive at Erewhon a few months back, and he talked about the need to cycle through or at least add new products to their shelves almost every two weeks, because that's what their customers are expecting. And for a beverage geek like me, I love going to the store and finding new products, but then two weeks, a month later, two months later, they might be gone and I'll never see them again. So how do you become that Erawan brand that not only makes it out of Erawan, but thrives beyond it? What lessons from the retailer do you apply to others?
[00:46:12] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, I mean, it is such a unique recipe that we were, you know, blessed with, frankly, because at the end of the day, Erwan is a discovery sort of tool and marketplace. But at the same time, it's also a social house. People love going there to hang out and to run into people or grab their smoothie and You know, I think for me, given that, because I've sort of seen it with my own eyes, and I've also been a part of that, where I'm going there to discover, but I'm also getting my staple mainstays. And I think the way that we became that for them is, number one, we chose each other early. We were, you know, Arrow Home was essentially an exclusive partner of ours really early on, especially in the LA market. And then as we continue to evolve as a brand, we brought them along the ride with us. You know, when we partnered with Bella Hadid last year, it was, you know, she was going to Erewhon every weekend almost and, and promoting and checking in on, you know, the team. And she was very much, you know, Hey, we're growing together. This is so much fun. And they really loved that. And so they felt like they were part of the process. So did the guests and the customers, I think, which makes it so that people really come in for Erewhon looking for Ken. when that happens and when the velocity numbers are so high, it makes it really hard for the buyers. I mean, I'm speaking for them now, but I would imagine it makes it kind of hard for them to be like, great, Ken, you're old news. Let's move in the next new school wave. I think it still gives them the credibility that like, we made this brand sort of together.
[00:47:41] Ray Latif: Yeah, Bella Hadid, I mean, quite the partner you have. Did she find Ken at Erewhon? Is that how she found the brand or was she a customer before that?
[00:47:50] Jen Batchelor: No, so she's been a customer. We launched Spritz, Ken Spritz, in the solstice of 2019. And when we share stories, she says that around that time, and she said it was probably like July 2019, she just found it in her fridge at home. So one of her friends had had the foresight to actually bring it to her. And Bella Hadid been super vocal about her, you know, challenges with Lyme disease and, and the neurological impact that she experienced through that. She, she actually got it when she was 14, a time when your brain is certainly, you know, deciding what information to store and how to evolve as a human and how we're maturing and all of these things. And so I think having come through that with this like probably very unique appreciation for her relationship to her cognitive states and her sensibility and her creativity and who she was as a person, I think, really early on in her age exposed her to a lot of treatments and modalities and herbs and things like that. So when she finally was introduced to Cannabis, she was extremely versed. She's like, I was already on 30 pills a day for one thing or another, and I wanted to stop doing the pills and powders that were prescribed, whether it was by a practitioner, a medical practitioner, or an herbalist. So I think for it was like, there are the things that I'm going to keep as my as part of my wellness routine. And there are things that can helps me do that I can't otherwise do just sitting here taking pills and powders all day. So there was this like really rich sort of personal story and experience around why the drink brought her so much joy and why she loved it and was obsessed with the taste as well. And I think she started showing her love, it was maybe a year in, when I started noticing, oh, she's posting about us, this is so fun, this is amazing. And then, yeah, at the tail end of 2020, I get that call from Ari Emanuel, the creator of Endeavor and WME, wanted to do something with us. And she actually asked him to put us in touch, which was pretty incredible. And frankly, at the end of the day, we really just wanted to help each other. How I could help her was another story. She had some things in mind, just in terms of the different products she wanted to see in the world and how she could help us bring Spritz to more people. So it was very, very symbiotic and we've had a lot of fun ever since.
[00:50:18] Ray Latif: Yeah, it sounds like a great partnership. And I'm sure, well, actually, I wonder, I mean, deploy is the wrong word, but, you know, with this new powerful team that you have from, or that you hired away from Fevertree, they're now the Kin family. I'm going to stop calling them the, you know, the team from Fevertree, your new Kin sales team. I guess, how do you deploy you know, Bella's star power and, you know, her celebrity and align it with what you're trying to do on the sales front, the retail sales front.
[00:50:49] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, I think anytime you have a celebrity, the question is like, what purpose do they serve? And it's typically a marketing function. And so I think what's been really powerful for our retailers to see like, Bella's also part of the product innovation roadmap. You know, she also is the voice of her generation. I very much made this for me, an aging millennial. specific needs. And she very much brings the voice of generation Z, which have also coincidentally been dubbed the sober generation. And so I think for her, it's less about sobriety in that traditional sense. And it's more about look like doing X, Y, Z things, whether it's being lack of sleep, staying up watching TV too late, working the schedule that she works, you know, modeling takes up literally she'll work 22 hour days, I mean, two hours of sleep on a plane, and then she's back doing her thing. or drinking copious amounts of alcohol, all of those things lead to a life that is more anxiety riddled and sort of depleting and just destructive in many sense, and this is coming from her, than it's worth, right? She really wants to be conscious. She wants to be present and energized. And that's also, I think, a pressure that Gen Z feels and something, a pain point that they all share. So she really brings that voice to the table when we sit with some of these buyers. And certainly when we talk to the team about like, what are the opportunities for a kin? Who are we focused on when we talk about audience? How can we cater to so many different voices and needs while we're still just starting out? So I think it definitely helps us to refine our focus as well.
[00:52:32] Ray Latif: Well, you know, people find out about the brand through people like Bella. They find out about the brand through better distribution. Accessibility is really important, but accessibility is tied to price point. And your Kin Spritz cans, you mentioned that the suggested retail price is $4 per can or around $4. Is that right?
[00:52:50] Jen Batchelor: Yes.
[00:52:51] Ray Latif: economic pressures right now. I just got an email from a brand that talks about why they're raising their prices. It seems to be happening all over. As you are trying to introduce this brand to more consumers, how do economic pressures and how do supply chain issues impact your ability to reach new consumers, given that the price point inevitably has to go up?
[00:53:14] Jen Batchelor: Sure. Well, that's the question, right? Is how are we going to be able to leverage the different channels now that we have built the infrastructure and sort of built economies of scale as a company? We are really lucky in that we started in 2018 with, you know, some incredible sort of demand, but I would say some incredible manufacturing partners that took a chance on us, but also, you know, did not give us any breaks in terms of how pricey it was to create our product. Obviously ordering in smaller quantities, whether it was the upcycled sake bottles that we use for our concentrates, or even the cans that we were using originally, the little stubbies, OG can fans, if you remember those.
[00:54:00] Ray Latif: I remember my first one from Alfred Coffee. I told you about that.
[00:54:03] Jen Batchelor: Yes. Oh my God, right. And if you remember that can was probably like seven or eight dollars.
[00:54:08] Ray Latif: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
[00:54:10] Jen Batchelor: A dollar an ounce. That's absurd and so embarrassing.
[00:54:14] Ray Latif: A dollar an ounce.
[00:54:16] Jen Batchelor: It was crazy. And honestly, we did it so that we could continue providing this. And so we could continue, you know, sort of the Apple model, you take your, you know, you find your early adopters, and they sort of help to cover R&D costs until you can get to a point of scalability. We've been able to do that it took us three years as it as it would sort of any, any innovation that's here to say, but we are now passing those savings on so for people that are seeing can for $4 when they're used to having paid, you know, whether they paid seven or even an arrow on I think you're still paying 550 sorry guys. you're seeing that as a discount. So I think that is definitely just from like a consumer value and perception standpoint, something that's voting really well for us. And we don't intend to raise them back up again. You know, I think for us, it really just says that we're catching this supply chain challenge at just the right moment where we have already planned and prepped to scale. We moved to the sleek cans because the studies became, you know, they were just untenable from a sourcing standpoint and a price standpoint, if we wanted to really get as close to that $4 mark as we could.
[00:55:20] Ray Latif: And as you continue to grow in retail, you're probably bumping up against, well, similarly positioned products is what I'll call them, I think. Yes. There's another term that I think you used last time we spoke called bandwagon brands. Some of whose ingredients and formulations you take issue with, no matter how you look at these brands, they're there and they are, essentially your competition. How are you navigating this just wave of new entrants into, I won't call it the euphoric space, but the space of social tonics and better for you, you know, non-alcoholic beverages?
[00:55:58] Jen Batchelor: Yeah, I mean, the ones that I would dub bandwagoners are folks that are carbon copying our brand and then incorporating ingredients that they perceive to be more potent or more effective or more trippy or however they're positioning themselves. And so we're not actively trying to do anything to dissuade those folks or try to keep an edge against those folks. There's really no point. The FDA will do that for us. and those will figure out their way out of the ecosystem. And that's just the way that history works, right? Whenever you're trying to get a competitive edge on something and you bend a rule here or two to do that, it doesn't take long for the ecosystem that already exists to weed them out. And I think for me, it really is about, we always sort of play within that, the realm and the boundaries of number one, the law, number two what's good for society and then we just push up against that edge as far as we possibly can to be able to you know increase curiosity and reduce stigma and to try to push and see where we can really make some change but we never do something for shock value we never do something that is going to be detrimental to society and so I think by staying in our integrity that's just how we naturally overcome some of those uh sort of potential infringing trends. And we don't worry about them from a market share standpoint. It's just, it's not a problem. From the standpoint of the category growing though, like other brands joining and seeing what we're doing, I mean, like, Oh, I want to add my version of that. We're so excited by that, by the way. I think first of all, like rising tides lift all boats and whether it's surely that's like, you know, they're not necessarily playing and functional, but they're definitely playing into this direct consumer, you know, sober curious trend, or if it's someone on the other side of it. doing something in the functional world like Gia, there's so much room for that, right? And I think as long as the brands are telling a unique story and they're catering to a different social occasion or a different audience, like the guest is better off. because that brand exists and the category thereby is better off because there's more variety and there's more credibility overall. So that kind of validation, that kind of growth that's making us all better and making us all look really good, we really welcome. And in fact, we've consulted a lot of these brands along the way. So we're really proud of that. I think like just seeing how it's grown and now I have a relationship with Ben Branson and the founder of Liars. I mean, this is really a community effort. We don't really see it as competitive. Although anyone out there that's bidding against Kenny Forks, please let's stop raising our CPCs. Let's keep advertising costs low for each other. Thank you.
[00:58:43] Ray Latif: All right. That's your PSA, folks.
[00:58:45] Jen Batchelor: That's my plea, my public plea.
[00:58:49] Ray Latif: Jen, this has been such a great conversation. Comprehensive, but somehow it's flown by. I feel like we could speak for another hour and a half easily. Maybe we will. Maybe we'll have to do a part two of this in a few months or next year, because I think Kin is on this incredible trajectory. And I congratulate you and your team for building something that, you know, doesn't really fit into any bucket and doesn't need to. And I think, you know, you've proven that. And I think you've given a lot of hope and guidance and opportunity to other brands that are trying to do something similar. And it's to be commended. So thank you so much, Jen, for what you're doing. And thanks so much for joining me on Taste Radio.
[00:59:27] Jen Batchelor: Thank you, Ray. First of all, that's high, high praise coming from you. And it's such an honor to be on Taste Radio. Thank you for having me.
[00:59:33] Ray Latif: And thank you so much again for joining us. Sure.
[00:59:36] Jen Batchelor: Bye, guys.
[00:59:40] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to our guest, Jen Batchelor. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening. And we'll talk to you next time.
