[00:00:03] Ray Latif: Hello and thanks for joining us for another edition of the BevNET podcast. I'm Ray Latif. I'm here with John Craven and Jon Landis. How are you guys doing?
[00:00:09] John Craven: Excellent. Delightful.
[00:00:11] Ray Latif: Isn't it nice and warm and humid outside here in the Boston area?
[00:00:14] John Craven: Love it. Best time of the year.
[00:00:15] Ray Latif: It really is. It's much better. I like it when it says it's 82 outside. It's much better when it's the reverse. Much worse when it's the reverse and it says 28. I can't stand the cold. I don't even know why sometimes I manage my way through these six months that it's absolutely freezing here. Don't know.
[00:00:27] Jon Landis: I mean, right now it's really nice out. The humidity could go down a little bit for me to be a little bit more comfortable, but I could also cut my hair to be a little bit more comfortable. So there's that.
[00:00:36] Ray Latif: Hippie. File that under TMI there. Exactly, exactly. As many of you know, we've been on the road quite a bit the last few weeks and meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of folks who have started beverage companies or have been in this beverage business and they got started in a lot of different ways and, you know, or succeeded in a lot of different ways, failed in a lot of different ways. And for some of the new folks coming into this industry, we get a lot of questions about how do you make your way in this industry? How do you make your first few steps to ensure some traction, to ensure some success? And John Craven, you're probably best equipped to answer that question, having been involved in this industry for 20 plus years. How do you talk to folks about this?
[00:01:16] John Craven: A lot of it comes down to what their reason for getting into the business is in the first place. The ones that are certainly most easy to talk to and kind of get a dialogue going with are the ones that are really passionate about the food and beverage industry as opposed to just purely going after some opportunity that they see to make a buck and You know, not that there's anything wrong with that at the end of the day. This is business and that has to be a part of the equation. But I think for people starting out, making a buck part is something that probably doesn't happen all that soon. It's probably more the losing a buck part or losing many bucks. So I think it really is just kind of finding your footing and having a sense of what you're getting into. And look, I mean, none of us in this room have ever operated, or I guess for that matter, worked at a beverage company, but we've certainly worked in our own little microcosm of BevNET that's also a small business. And I think that's the type of stuff that as time goes on, I often find myself getting questions about just the journey that we've been on too. I think people want to know that it's not all just, Hey, you know, we built this company and sold it to Coke for billions of dollars, that there really are, you know, missteps that everyone, no matter how successful they end up being, has to go through.
[00:02:26] Ray Latif: Yeah, and I think he hit the nail on the head when he said, you know, it all starts with something related to passion or an enthusiasm for what you're selling, what you're offering. We've heard that from a variety of entrepreneurs. The first one that comes to mind for me is a person like Jenny Hoffman from Mama Chia, who went through a lot of health issues and health problems and came to the conclusion that chia as an ingredient was really something that her body needed and that she really embraced as a healing ingredient, for lack of a better word, and has shared that as many people as she can. She's going to make a buck or two, you know, with her business. She has, but it's pretty great to hear stories like that and how you started a brand based on health, wellness, and passion. And John Craven, you know, your foray into this industry started in your college dorm room, which, you know, not everyone knows, but you were really into beverages and you wanted to start writing about them and you started a blog and 20 years later, this is what BevNET has become.
[00:03:15] Jon Landis: A blog before there were blogs.
[00:03:17] Ray Latif: Correct.
[00:03:18] John Craven: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty funny thinking back to what for a lot of people is the Stone Age of 1996, where I actually had to go to the library and look at Beverage World magazines to find out what new beverages were coming to market. And making a website was like a huge, crazy hurdle at the time. and somehow figured that out and didn't really have a nice label for what I was doing. But, you know, it was something that started out as a hobby and basically stayed a hobby for a while. I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years now, and the first 10 were sort of just my own trying to figure out, should I keep doing this? Why am I doing this? Where exactly is this going? And I think that's, again, something that I often hear from a lot of people who just looking at companies that are doing things that are really innovative where the market that they might be going after is not really well identified or even doesn't really exist yet. And I think that's something that in hindsight was basically what I was trying to figure out. I mean, it was something that I guess at the time the competition for BevNET was traditional print publishers. So we had our own little strange, you know, innovation. I mean, granted, I was also trying to figure out how to build a website. And I remember reading things in the school library about, you know, this crazy guy who was building a database of books with the hopes to build a book retailer. And it was, you know, being labeled as crazy and it was Amazon. So. Point being, maybe I should have started something else, but, uh, uh, stuck with beverages and, and certainly at this point, you know, looking back, no complaints, but we had the same, but slightly different struggles that every entrepreneur has of just, again, not really knowing what path you're on and, and where it's leading you. And I think that's something that there are very few businesses out there where people figure that out, like just super fast. And ours was no exception.
[00:05:00] Jon Landis: So it seems like there's a really important aspect of kind of strategizing and planning out where you're coming, especially when I see it with entrepreneurial brands starting cold brew coffees or kombuchas, like you said, these categories that aren't really fully established yet. We do see the difference right away between some people who have really sat down and talked to a lot of people in the industry, have figured out, you know, what they want to be, where they want to go. And the other ones who are just like, oh, wow, look, cold-pressed juices selling at $10 a bottle, I bet if I put something quickly together, I would make a killing doing that. And those guys, you know, fizzle out really quickly.
[00:05:38] John Craven: Well, I think there's also a part of it that is just being flexible with whatever plan and expectations you have. I, for the record, had no plan or business model or any of those things. It was purely just seat of the pants and kind of doing what I felt like doing. And fortunately it worked out, but I think that's not advice I would give to anyone to do that. But it's easier when you're whatever, 19 years old and have nothing to lose. So for a lot of brands, the initial plan and what they're after, and then what the real opportunity is. is something that they don't figure out until they're out in the market. I mean, one that always stands out for me is Harmless Harvest, which when they first launched, it was basically this platform that was going to have all these other products. And they happen to have Coconut Water as one of their first offerings. And for a little while, those guys really wanted to continue with that initial plan. But it's kind of hard to argue with the success that they had with Coconut Water. So they pivoted And I think that's something that when you're just kind of sitting there and building out a plan, like you don't know. I mean, you never know until you're out in the market. It might be something substantial like that. It might be something little, like people want, I don't know, a can instead of a bottle or different flavors. But again, that's something that literally every brand out there goes through, no matter how successful they end up being.
[00:06:53] Ray Latif: Yeah I'm always reminded of a quote from Warren Buffett when he talks about entrepreneurship and investment which is he asks folks what is your competitive advantage and how sustainable is that competitive advantage versus the competition out there and you know with a company like Harman's Harvest at the time their competitive advantage was the use of HPP coconut water which At the time, no one had done. Now there's a few different HPP brands out there and even Harmless Services sort of moved away from that and they're doing microfiltration now. But they were first to market and they really honed in on the messaging of super, super premium, ultra premium coconut water. And it's led that path for them for a long time.
[00:07:27] John Craven: Well, even for them, I mean, their first point of differentiation wasn't HPP. even. It was originally just being first to market with organic. Reason I bring that up is that, again, for a brand like that, that now is really far from where they started in terms of just the point of differentiation, the technical aspects of the product, it just is this journey where There's kind of stops along the way. And I definitely know that those guys didn't have HPP or, you know, micro-filtered coconut water as like their end game. It was just sort of the steps they took to just keep making things better. Yeah. So I think that's another thing that looking at people and again, looking at our own sort of what we do here at BevNET, you have to just always want to keep taking steps forward as opposed to being either content or avoiding challenges that might seem hard, but are probably necessary to overcome.
[00:08:17] Jon Landis: This is a little anecdotal, but I always thought that their brand told a whole story too. Harmless Harvest is, it's a very, very powerful two words that you put together. And it's something that I don't know if it just came to them one night and they were like, that's genius, or they really, really studied and tried to figure it out. But for me, that was always a point of differentiation for them as well.
[00:08:38] Ray Latif: Well, it goes back to the original point that we were talking about, which is that you started out with passion. You started out with an idea that wasn't about immediately making a buck. Again, you know, everyone wants to make money. Certainly we live in a capitalist society. If we didn't, we wouldn't care about making a buck. But these guys, their message at least is always about protecting the ecosystem that they live in, protecting the ecosystem that we all live in while offering the highest quality products that they can produce.
[00:09:04] Jon Landis: It's interesting too, because there's another brand that I've always thought that the two words they put together were really genius as well, but it comes across a little bit differently, which is Daily Greens, which I think is just absolutely couldn't be better. They're literally telling you to buy their product every single day. And she has a similar passion for wellness and whatnot as a cancer survivor. There's a lot going on with the story behind that brand, but just having kind of like a well, formulated, well-thought-out brand presence can go a long way.
[00:09:35] Ray Latif: Similar to Janie Hoffman, Shawna Martin, who started Daily Greens, started drinking green juice every day to sort of fight the effects of chemotherapy after she had breast cancer. And really amazing story and amazing to see how well that brand is doing. As many questions that we get and John Craven gets about how he started this company, sometimes people are like, how did you get started in this company, Ray? How do you become the managing editor of BevNET? And I sometimes wonder that.
[00:10:01] John Craven: Or you mean, what is it you do here?
[00:10:03] Ray Latif: What is it exactly that I do here? Aside from thinking that I have a very nice speaking voice, which, you know. That's the only reason you're here. That's the only reason I'm actually here. But yeah, I came to BevNET in 2011, March 2011. And prior to that, I'd been working for myself, but one of my hobbies was the local wine or sort of investigating the local wine, beer, and spirit scene here in the Boston area. And I started a small TV show on Access Television in Brookline, which is a part of the Boston area, called French Oak. And I went to various breweries and wineries and distilleries in the area, and I came in with a camera, and I thought I was superstar producer Ray Latif. my big camera that I didn't know how to use, but people were very responsive to it. I think in the same way that some people weren't necessarily doing something different with covering the beverage industry back in 20 years ago with BevNET, no one had really been recording the sort of evolution of the premium craft scene, whether it be in beer or spirits or wine. people were really receptive to the idea of sharing their stories to as many people as they could. Now, on AXS television, you don't necessarily share as many stories, you know, you don't share it with as many people. But we got a lot of traction by posting segments online. And it was really interesting to see and to look back on some of the folks that I met and that I interviewed and that I have become friends with since. For those of you who are in the Northeast or in the Boston area who know Trillium Brewing, I met JC, the owner, he and his wife, a long time ago in 2010. They had found me, he emailed me and he said, Hey, I saw you doing an interview with this guy. Why don't you come to my house? And I'm a home brewer and that was it. And it was really crazy. And I saw his small apartment and he was brewing and he had some fermenting kegs in his bathroom. It was just, it was crazy now to think about the kind of stuff that they're doing now. You're running up on, you know, 20,000 barrels and being one of the darlings of the craft beer industry nationally. It's pretty amazing to look back and see. And that's actually one of the things that brought me to BevNET. I had seen randomly an ad on Craigslist, assistant editor at BevNET. I had my own job. I was just, you know, doing well for myself. I was like, hey, you know what, the beverage industry, this could be kind of interesting if I could actually make this profession, if I could make this my career. And although the focus is non-alcoholic beverage, I'd seen that Bevernet was also doing something with craft beer on the Brewbound end, which is now a pretty successful sister site to Bevernet as well. I came over, I met Jeffrey Klineman, I met John Craven, I met a couple of the folks here. And when I left the second interview, I was like, there's no way I'm getting this job. I just blew that. Then I got a call from John Craven and he's like, hey, you know, we'd love to bring you on. I was like, really? This is incredible. Started my first day, I think it was March 1st or when I say March 1st, 2011. At the end of the day, I was like, oh man, oh, what am I getting myself into? I'm not a writer by trade. I know how to produce some TV or some video. But lo and behold, the industry really took hold of me. Seeing some of these stories, seeing some of the innovation, tasting beverages that I never thought I'd taste or ingredients that I never thought I'd see in a beverage was pretty amazing. And it still is pretty engaging and amazing to see today when you go to a convention, like a fancy food show like we recently went to, and I'm tasting beverages and I'm looking at things that people are seeing for the first time. And it's a really fun and rewarding experience in that regard. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. Landis, how the hell did you get here?
[00:13:08] Jon Landis: Oh, let's see. I have a bit of a background in food and beverage in the restaurant industry. As early as my freshman year in high school, I was working at the local deli, stocking the shelves. And I remember talking to the guy there, always trying to get some new crazy stuff in. And like whenever like Snapple came out with new flavors, I always encouraged him to try to get like a case. And I definitely had, I think what I'm driving at is I had a passion to work and I loved to eat. So it kind of worked out. Things never change. You know, it's funny. I mean, I've worked at countless restaurants, catering kitchens, sandwich shops. I mean, if you add them all up, at least a dozen or so different establishments, a number of them here in Boston. I got out of college with a marketing degree and I was like, You know, I don't think I should be waiting tables for the rest of my life. That's not what I got a college degree for. So I got a job doing door to door sales for Verizon Fios. I got a job doing some telemarketing for some credit card processing services. It was nothing glamorous about any of them, but it was work. And that's what I always, you know, I just, I knew that whatever I had the opportunity to do, as long as I did it as best as I could, I would be successful at it. So I think that when you're trying to hire a sales guy, you can bring them in from a different area, different industry. And it's not always, you know, the experience. It's about the hustle. It's about the work ethic. It's about, you know, how hard are you willing to work? How many hours you willing to put in? How many people are you willing to talk to in a day? So that's always been kind of my mantra, just get as much done every hour, just clock your hours and make sure it's working. So I was actually reading Brewbound. I remember watching the live stream of Brewbound Session San Diego 2012 and I was following it. I was tweeting with Chris and tweeting all sorts of beer stuff. I was home brewing myself and I found a job for like a jack of all trades sales guy posted and just on a whim kind of applied knowing that I wanted to move back to Boston at this time living with my folks in Jersey and Also felt like there's no way I'm going to get this job after taking the trip up and, you know, having the conversations and even the first phone interview I did with you, John, it was, uh, I think I was like thanking you for just the opportunity to get on the phone and, you know, it's, it's okay. Like, you know, I wanted to hang up really bad. It all ended up. All ended up kind of working out pretty well. I started February 2013 and haven't really looked back. The opportunity to work and talk to entrepreneurs is something that I guess I was looking for when selling credit card processing services and telling myself that that's what I was doing. Oh, these guys have new businesses, they're go-getters, they're upstarts, but a lot of them weren't. A lot of them, they were doing, you know, Avon and things like that. It really was a poor excuse for the type of individuals I was looking to be talking to. And now I have more opportunity to talk to these types of people than I could imagine. But I attribute my personal success here to work ethic and It speaks to both of our stories. When you're hiring a team, it's about finding the right people who are passionate, just like you are about your brand, about starting this company. You're passionate about the industry, about the product that you're making. And you got to surround yourself with people who share that passion with you and not really get hung up on, you know, how many years have they been selling products? How many years have they been doing X or Y?
[00:16:32] John Craven: Well, the benefit I guess we have of, you know, what we do, there is no temptation to hire people who have, you know, this roster of a hundred different beverage companies that they've worked at. And obviously there's a time and a place for that, but in our world, it's not like we look for publishing veterans or something like that. It is just the passion and fit and energy more than anything. Those are the things that you can't teach somebody, right? If you just don't have that, you're not all of a sudden going to go from not caring about food to caring about it.
[00:17:01] Jon Landis: It's interesting, I have a friend at a chocolate company and he has like almost no experience CPG food and beverage sales. He was a sommelier and he worked at on-premise accounts but went into this place and he knows how to work and has been doing tremendous stuff for them. That's kind of what I would advise people to look for when you're building out a team is just people who know how to work, you know, get it done.
[00:17:22] Ray Latif: People know how to work and people know how to bring something to the company beyond what you see on every resume. I mean, even social media to a certain extent. I mean, it's funny how many people don't know how to use it, don't use it on a regular basis. That's how you found BevNET. That's how sort of we got to know you before you came to BevNET, Jon Landis. And so it's amazing how easy it is to kind of get into certain things like that. Even video to a certain extent. I did a ton of the behind the scenes stuff. I don't know how many people know that. I mean, like they see me on camera all the time now and it's funny how many people are like, Oh, I saw you. I know you and so on and so forth. And for a long time, I was the guy behind the camera filming at booths and stuff like that. Something I actually did at Fancy Food Show recently. So we'll see how that turns out in the video. But the more you can bring, I think that sort of differentiate yourself or something that you can talk about as saying this is a plus that, you know, you could use in your company, that you could use me for in your company. And being a sommelier, I think, is something, you know, that's your friend. That's a pretty impressive thing that just being able to know wine means that you can know quality. And so, you know, you can sort of trickle down from there and work at a chocolate company, perhaps.
[00:18:19] Jon Landis: It's a good point that you make to, you know, try to bring in someone who has somewhere where you can grow into someone who has ideas and wants to evolve the company. Because if you're just going to be selling coconut water for your entire career, like there's somewhat of a limited life cycle to something like that. The opportunity to innovate into new areas can prove to be very fruitful. when the company is ready, when the time is right for those types of things. And that's kind of what we have done here at BevNET. We innovated into video, into podcasting, into educational content and all this type of stuff that five years ago wasn't really on our radar, but now it's a major part of what we do.
[00:19:01] John Craven: And of course, along the way, just like everybody else have made mistakes, there's that graveyard of things that we don't do anymore. It is what it is. It happens. The other thing here is we're just not afraid to try something. And if it doesn't work out, then it didn't work out. At least we gave it a go. I suppose maybe at some point people will say, Hey, you guys suck on that podcast. Stop doing it. I don't know.
[00:19:20] Ray Latif: I hope not. We work really hard on this podcast, folks, and it would be terrible if you sent us any bad feedback. But if you do have feedback, please send it to us. We don't get enough good or bad feedback for that matter.
[00:19:32] John Craven: You know, we got a lot when we were walking around the fancy food show.
[00:19:35] Ray Latif: That's true. I mean, email-wise or email-wise, text-wise.
[00:19:38] Jon Landis: I mean, I get it personally.
[00:19:39] John Craven: Carrier vision-wise.
[00:19:40] Jon Landis: Yeah.
[00:19:41] John Craven: To follow on what Ray said, I mean, if there are topics or things that listeners out there want to hear, we're all ears, so to speak.
[00:19:49] Ray Latif: It's funny to encounter or run into people who do listen to the podcast. We met these two fine British gentlemen at the fancy food show, Chris and Will, I'm forgetting the name of it. Overly.
[00:19:56] John Craven: Overly. Overly.
[00:19:58] Ray Latif: Yes. Wonderful brand, wonderful guys, and had a great conversation with them about how they watch BevNET videos and listen to the podcast. So cheers to you gentlemen. All right, it's that part of the program where we're gonna talk about our beverages of the week, what we're drinking right now, what we just love in general, and I don't mean, you know, your wife or girlfriend, I'm talking about beverages. Please tell me what you're drinking and why, Jon Landis.
[00:20:20] Jon Landis: One of the things I saw this at BevNET Live. I saw it again at Fancy Food Show. I was talking with their team there. The Thea's Original Tea. It's unsweetened tea. It's really, really fantastic stuff. It's zero calorie, full of flavor. But my favorite one is their White Blueberry. It's a white tea. It looks like water. It has some blueberry flavors added, but I believe it's all organic. It's really, really tasty stuff. It completely shocks your senses because it straight up looks like water and it's very, very flavorful. And there is brewed tea in there and you can taste it. Great packaging, great team. Shout out to Ariel, who is a fantastic person. I had a great time talking to her at the show. I was really very, very blown away by that product and what they're putting together on that one.
[00:21:05] Ray Latif: Yeah, really nice looking bottle that thick glass bottle they have is just screams premium. Good stuff. John Craven.
[00:21:12] John Craven: Well, I think lately I've probably been drinking a lot of the Spindrift Seltzer, not just because we visited their office recently, but it's one of those things that's sort of a staple purchase that I get from the grocery store. You know, I'm always really impressed by products that manage to to create a lot of flavor with few ingredients and still keep the calories and the sugar low. And I think, you know, adding carbonated water to fruit juice and it not being 100% juice, it's totally the type of thing you can drink all day. The cucumber flavor in particular is my personal favorite. So I see myself going slightly broke on those since I think they're like $5 for a four pack or something like that.
[00:21:48] Ray Latif: Four for a four pack.
[00:21:49] John Craven: I don't know. At Whole Foods, maybe it's a little more, I don't know. But anyway, you know, really fans of what they're doing, so.
[00:21:55] Ray Latif: Yeah, I was going to say the same thing because I've got one right here in my hand, but now I can't do that. So I'll just talk about the raspberry lime flavored seltzer that I'm drinking from Stop and Shop. It's a one liter bottle. It's pretty cheap stuff. I drink it at home all the time now. In all seriousness, just looking at what we have in our refrigerator right now, there's some pretty interesting things to look at. One of the things that always stands out for me is that little Frisa bottle. You know, I haven't really consumed much of it, but it's a sort of a high-end sparkling soda beverage. And just packaging-wise, it's sort of like it's in this amber colored bottle with a crown top. And it just strikes me as something that I really want to grab and start drinking. And from remembering the taste, I'm kind of cheating here because I haven't tasted one yet. But from what I remember at different trade shows, it's a pretty tasty product.
[00:22:35] Jon Landis: It's a really good format for like hospitality on premise, like a very premium looking product.
[00:22:41] Ray Latif: Yeah. So as soon as we're done with this, I'm gonna go grab one from the fridge and drink it. All right, great stories today, guys. Really interesting to hear. I'll talk to you both about where you came from and how this, we're all here speaking on a podcast in Watertown, Massachusetts. Good conversation. Awesome. Well. Sorry, that wasn't intended to be.
[00:22:59] John Craven: An awkward pause. An awkward pause. Anyway, for listeners out there, we have this exciting new email address, podcast at BevNET.com. Send us your feedback, suggestions, anything. And if you really think we suck.
[00:23:13] Ray Latif: if you really, really think we suck. Just in the subject heading, just put suck. Just put podcast.dev.com and just suck. Obviously, we're hoping you don't do that, but in any case. Now, thanks for all the positive feedback we got at the Fancy Food Show. Thanks for all those folks who are continuing to listen to the podcast. We really, really appreciate it. And we hope to talk to you again soon. So thanks again for listening.
