[00:00:03] John Craven: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the BevNET podcast. I'm John Craven. I'm joined here with Jeffrey Klineman, Jon Landis, and our very special guest, one Max Goldberg. Thanks for joining us, Max. Thanks for having me, Jon. It's a pleasure to be here. So we're all here fresh, I guess, off the plane or whatever mode of transportation you use, getting back from Expo East. It was a pretty big show. I think we're all still a little, little ragged from it. They claim, I think it was 28,000 attendees this year, which is a record for it. We talked a little bit about this in our roundup, just how busy it was and, you know, certainly the biggest one that I had ever been to.
[00:00:41] Jeffrey Klineman: I definitely noticed more booths. I don't know if I noticed significantly more foot traffic.
[00:00:46] John Craven: People seemed a little more spread out, I guess, right? Yeah, it was definitely, you know, it's always hard to tell, like, how real that that is and isn't. Jeff here is chugging on some coconut water.
[00:00:56] Jon Landis: A lot of companies there. A lot of companies there. They opened up two new spaces in the halls.
[00:01:01] Max Goldberg: 1,500 exhibitors. Well, it's nice to know that I'm not the only one who feels rundown.
[00:01:07] John Craven: Yeah, I think it usually takes like a week before my legs to get back to normal. We're old, I guess.
[00:01:13] Jon Landis: I feel like $100, man. I feel good. You feel good? Yeah. It must be my lack of yoga and constant wine consumption.
[00:01:24] Jeffrey Klineman: Or that $100 juice you're drinking.
[00:01:25] Jon Landis: Yes, yes. Neil and Beatles. How many people do you guys send?
[00:01:31] John Craven: Geez, well, I think we had 10 people there, I want to say, maybe a few more.
[00:01:36] Jeffrey Klineman: Yeah, we hired the video guy.
[00:01:38] John Craven: We had video freelancers. We had our staff for both Benet and Nosh. Don't forget Barry. We had the wonderful Barry Nathanson there. I think I saw him once.
[00:01:48] Jon Landis: Who was covering Snapchat? I think we forgot to Snapchat. We did a lot of Instagrams. Yeah, lots of Instagram.
[00:01:55] John Craven: That's what we kind of did a throwback and just did Instagram this time.
[00:02:00] Jon Landis: Max, I'm interested, because you're even older than me. How did you arrive at Snapchat as your method d'emploi?
[00:02:10] Max Goldberg: You know, I feel like I'm the second oldest person on Snapchat. I know one guy who's older than me. He's like 60. Donald Trump is. You know, I made the big mistake to get on Instagram. I was I was late to Instagram. And I said, I can never do this again, be late to one of these platforms. And so as soon as actually one of my friends is was an early investor in Snapchat, and he explained it to me. You know, I didn't get it. And then later on, I finally started to get it with the Snapchat stories. And then once you start hearing about Snapchat all the time, I just embraced it. And I actually think it's the most fun platform there is. I think it's much more natural than the Instagram stories. And I always say to brands, I say, are you on Snapchat? And almost none of them are. I mean, Yes, some of the big sort of cutting edge brands are, but a lot of them are not. And I think that's the biggest mistake that some of these brands make is not being on Snapchat. Because with Snapchat, you just get a behind the scenes look and it allows the brands to really personalize their story and the brand. It allows them to personalize the brand. And I think brands, any brand that's listening right now and they're not on Snapchat, that should be, item number one on the agenda is to get on Snapchat and really, really embrace it.
[00:03:25] John Craven: So that's a good sort of segue to the introduction to you since we kind of went off on a tangent of being tired and beaten down and all that other stuff.
[00:03:35] Jon Landis: Don't forget that Max is old.
[00:03:37] Max Goldberg: You know, they can't see my gray hair on the podcast.
[00:03:41] Jon Landis: If you can't go to livingmaxwell.com, you will see it's magnificent.
[00:03:48] John Craven: I just want my gluten levels to return to normal after that show, but. You know, anyway, Max, you're someone who I think, you know, the talk about social media is a good one, but you have your blog, livingmaxwell.com, the press juice directory that's out there. And I guess you're also just finishing up a book, right?
[00:04:08] Max Goldberg: Yes, I have a book. It's something I've been working on for a long time. It'll be out in early November. It is actually not an organic food book. It is a memoir. I was on antidepressants for close to 11 years, went off in the summer of 2001, took me about three and a half years to recover, was suicidal. So it talks about before, during, and after, and how I got into organic food is a big part of it. The book's called Finding Maxwell. This title right now, Freeing Myself from a Decade of Antidepressants to Building a Life in Organic Food. And it's before, during and after the antidepressants and how I got to where I am now. And one of the reasons that I decided to go off of antidepressants was because I found organic food. I said, I'm running around New York City looking for food that doesn't have chemicals in it and yet I'm popping a chemical into my mouth each morning. I said, this doesn't make any sense. So, that was one of the reasons. So, organic food, while it's not an organic food book, there's definitely an organic food theme weaved throughout.
[00:05:04] John Craven: And now that's sort of the whole theme though, right? Is living organic, right?
[00:05:10] Max Goldberg: Yeah, I mean I've been eating close to 100% organic since 2001. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, anything like that and it's really just... And that's kind of the lens that I look at through when I look at products. I mean that's... I look at products with this and I believe this is the trend as food as medicine. So I really believe, you know, when I'm looking at products, what are, you know, do these have real medicinal properties? And those are the ones that I tend to be attracted to. And I think those are the ones that ultimately will be successful in the marketplace. Yes, it has to taste good. But but that is really how I look at products. And I think some of the most innovative people out in the marketplace feel this way as well. And in terms of their ingredients and how cutting edge they are and what they're doing, these are the people that are constantly pushing the envelope when it comes to ingredients and really making a healthier product, because that's where I believe the world is moving.
[00:06:05] Jon Landis: When you say that you look at foods for their medicinal properties, just for the audience, what qualifies you to evaluate the medicinal properties of a food?
[00:06:20] Max Goldberg: Well, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist, but I look at things like, take something like turmeric, which has real anti-inflammatory properties that is, you know, widely regarded as one of the best foods for inflammation. So it's finding these foods that have those types of properties and, you know, going away from, you know, even if it's organic, away from the junk organic food.
[00:06:43] Jeffrey Klineman: Can I ask you, so you eat like exclusively organic. Do you ever find yourself looking for something, a particular type of food and you just can't find it and you just find a workaround because you don't have an organic option like for a recipe or if you're going, you know, you wanted to try something different or you just have a craving for something and you just can't ever get that organic variety?
[00:07:05] Max Goldberg: I'm not vegan, so grass-fed red meat, if it's not grass-fed organic meat, I'll do the grass-fed red meat. But I don't really, I don't have that craving, no.
[00:07:15] Jon Landis: Arby's versus a bag of organic palm sugar. What are you going for?
[00:07:24] Max Goldberg: Arby's versus Arby's. Do we even have those up here? I would starve myself probably. The sauce is so good.
[00:07:34] Jeffrey Klineman: I used to eat all that stuff. Yeah. Did you try the pork rinds at Expo East, the Epic or the 4505? No. Oh man. Are those organic? Oh, I'm not sure if they're organic. Organic pork rinds? Or grinds. I just know, I just, if you're not a vegan, I thought that they're amazing. John, how much, how much jerky did you eat at Expo East? Really not that much. Although I will say as we were leaving, we're going back to the hotel or we're going to, we're rushing to the airport and whatnot. And a woman is out handing samples and she just like kind of gives them to me and I, without thinking, grab them and put look down and it says, smart meatless jerky. And I'm like, what the heck did I just grab? Why did I take this? I don't recall eating a whole lot of jerky at this show. I think the convenience store show is my jerky attack.
[00:08:26] John Craven: So I guess maybe the question for you, Max, then is what sort of products did you see at Expo East that were of interest to you?
[00:08:34] Max Goldberg: You know, I think there were multiple, I mean, I'm putting up my top five products of the show today, but a few that really stood out to me were, I really am impressed with Forager Project. I think what they're doing is very, you know, a lot of, they just don't want to be a pressed organic juice company. And they really had a mission to expand outside of that. And I did a story and I think you guys did a story as well on their vegetable chips and how they're using the leftover pulp. to create vegetable chips. And that's a great, great story that, you know, a great initiative that they launched. And so not only did they do those vegetable chips to reuse the pulp instead of either throwing it out or composting it, but what they're doing with their cashew yogurt, I think is very interesting. And I think that's a trend that we're going to see more of. Someone actually showed me behind the scenes another nut yogurt that I had never seen before. It's a very uncommon nut. And they're going to be launching in sometime early 2017 with their nut yogurt. That to me is a really interesting and promising trend, whereas yogurts continue to be really hot. And so they're saying, OK, let's some people don't want the dairy yogurt. So let's let's do a nut based yogurt. I think that's a really interesting trend. And, you know, I think for forager to really go outside their comfort zone, which is the juices and the nut milks to go into the yogurts and the chips, I think that's really admirable and it's really impressive. I think they have a real sustainable mission. I think what they're doing with the cashew yogurt, the cashew milk yogurt, I think was one of the more impressive things that I saw there. The other thing that I've noticed is that the quality of these plant-based foods has really gone up. And so I have a lot of conversations with my vegan friends and we just talk about it a lot. There's just so much vegan junk food out there. Yes, it's vegan and they're not killing animals, but a lot of this stuff is just not healthy. So I believe that there's a trend that some of these plant-based companies are really trying to make much healthier vegan plant-based food.
[00:10:26] Jon Landis: You're right. There is a market for healthy veganism. I'm convinced like I bet you could capture at least one third of the vegan marketplace if you were to produce all those healthy vegan food Well, did you guys try Hillary's breakfast sausage? No, I was too busy watching her last night. But if it's half as good as she did last night, it's gotta be great.
[00:10:58] Max Goldberg: Well, Hillary's out of Kansas. I mean, one of the ways that I, when I do my top five, at the end of the show, I say, what's the booth that I just couldn't leave? where do you just keep snacking and you're, it's at the point where you're embarrassing yourself, where you can't leave the booth. And one of those was, even though I didn't name it to my top five, because I named them last year to my top five, Hillary's, their breakfast sausages. I mean, it was real ingredients. And is that a vegan sausage or is it a real sausage? No, no, no, it's a plant-based, all vegan. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, it's not. So that and Tolerant came out with a new beet and green lentil pasta. Tolerant, their red lentil pasta is one of my favorite foods.
[00:11:35] Jon Landis: Hey Max, you know, in talking about sort of nut-based yogurts, you know, all dairy-based yogurts and plant-based nutrition and these brands, you know, it's John Encounter Vegan Jerky. I want to think about the lens through which you see them temporally. How far along on the development of these alternative classes of food are these products? They're making great improvements in taste. I mean, are these the best we'll ever be able to do? Are these far from the best we'll ever be able to do? Are these, you know, the cutting edge or are they sort of a stop on a journey that has not, that has a long way to go?
[00:12:27] Max Goldberg: I think it's got a long way to go. Cause I think when you, when you look at, there's a brand that I did not write about because they're not certified organic, but they're in the process of getting it. They're out of Austin, Texas, good seed.
[00:12:41] Jeffrey Klineman: They were on the top for the burger.
[00:12:43] Max Goldberg: I mean, that guy, Oliver, who's the founder. I mean, that guy is brilliant. his veggie burgers were insane, they were amazing. And so, I think when you get people that are super, super talented chefs and get them into the plant-based arena, I think we're in the early stages here. So, I think when you get these really talented chefs who say, yeah, we want to make plant-based food taste really good, give it an outstanding great texture, great flavor, I think it's only going to improve.
[00:13:14] John Craven: Well, I think it seems like we've made a lot of progress, though, just in terms of availability and taste. I mean, it seems like, you know, maybe not for you living in New York City, but elsewhere, I think at a certain point, you know, vegetarian and plant-based is like French fries and iceberg lettuce, right? We're now at a point where, you know, you can eat a lot of stuff that is plant-based. It probably is organic in a lot of cases, and the flavor is there. And I think that's something that really wasn't there probably 10 years ago, even. I mean, I don't know if we're early on or not. I guess from my perspective, I just feel like we've made a lot of progress.
[00:13:53] Jon Landis: Yeah, no, I think it's... Jeff's a tough critic here. I know. I'm not a critic. I just, in terms of evaluating the industry, I'm really interested because I know that you've seen it for many years. There's always a sense that it's further along than it has been and certainly people are investing. to prove that point out. But then there's this notion that a lot of this is still kind of trying to green up or substitute for, you know, as you said, sort of crappy products where we can develop a vegan alternative crappy product. And if we're talking about really changing what food is, I think we have to move beyond crap and come up with very good, established, quality, tasty products. And I think there are a lot of investors who are looking at that as the long term play, and that many of these brands that we're talking about might have some incremental value. but aren't getting us all the way down the road. And so I was just interested in hearing where you think we are in that regard. Are we almost to the point where we've developed a fully autonomous, organic food system, or are we still pushing a long way up the hill?
[00:15:23] Max Goldberg: Well, in terms of organic, we have major issues on the supply side. I mean, we are organic industries, roughly 4 to 5% of the food industry, and we're producing less than 1% of it domestically. So we're importing still a ton of organic food. So just in the supply side, there's a major bottlenecks. But in terms of, you know, where investors are looking, I mean, I think that ultimately consumers are going to move towards these plant-based foods that taste better. And so maybe some of the bigger brands that have more marketing muscle and have more resources are attracting the attention of consumers just because they're able to build their brand where smaller brands aren't right now. But ultimately, I think these brands that are doing high quality Great tasting plant-based food will rise to the top.
[00:16:11] Jeffrey Klineman: What do you feel about these meat substitutes like beyond meat? You know where they're trying to make a burger that's plant-based but like bleeds and like lab cultured meat, you know, where do you ripple? Ripple Foods. Yeah, like the milk that they're making that's you know, basically milk, but it's plant-based.
[00:16:31] Jon Landis: I mean, are you trying to ask how you feel about sort of the airsots replacement versus letting just veggies be veggies?
[00:16:43] Max Goldberg: Well, anything that's using genetic engineering, I'm not a fan of. And, or, you know, you look at, I'll leave the brand names out, but a lot of these alternative... Oh, you're safe here, go ahead. You know, you look at the ingredients and these are ingredients that I just, these are products that I just won't eat. Now they're not killing animals and supposedly they're more, you know, friendly for the environment, but the ingredient list on some of these are just not for me, there's not something I'm going to put in my body.
[00:17:13] Jeffrey Klineman: Right. So like any lab grown meat is off the table.
[00:17:17] Max Goldberg: I don't know if they're using, you know, genetic engineering and, and the ingredient list is, you know, in my view, sort of horrifying. I'm not going to put it in my bar. Let's see what comes down the pike. You know, if it's, that's where I am right now.
[00:17:33] Jeffrey Klineman: When I hear Jeff talk about taking a step back and looking way down the road, where are we headed? That kind of thing stands out to me as budding, emerging type of technology that should maybe get some more support from, you know, maybe organic communities and things like that. It seems like they're both fighting a similar battle.
[00:17:53] Max Goldberg: I don't think they're fighting a similar battle. I think it's a different battle. I think a lot of these people are doing it for, you know, in one regard, yes, because organic and what some of these people are doing is they want, they care about the environment. Exactly. Okay. So they care about the environment. How do you get to an end product? is the differentiating factor. So for me, I focus on organic. So when I go to these shows, if it's not organic, I don't really pay much attention to it because I've got so, it's just me. I have to see thousands of booths and I've got such little time that if it's not organic, I do my best to see everything, but you know, to see everything and to have conversations with every booth is just impossible.
[00:18:33] Jon Landis: Yeah, it's impossible. I think you could have gone to two booths, though. And we talked about this on the way back. You could have gone to two booths that were right across from each other and really seen the sort of twin poles of where the natural organic Expo East industry is right now. And that is New Barn. On one side, a, you know, really close to the organic roots, almond milk, alternative dairy. And ice cream. And yeah, well.
[00:19:08] Max Goldberg: That was one of my top five picks. Great stuff. What's that? I said that stuff is good.
[00:19:12] Jon Landis: Great stuff, you know, backed by the Rob family and of Whole Foods and with some really veteran, talented people on board. On one side of the aisle.
[00:19:24] Jeffrey Klineman: Shout out to Billy.
[00:19:25] Jon Landis: And on the other side of the aisle, you had Ripple, which is this long-term environmental play, almost re-engineering milk out of natural, and I don't even know if they're organic sourced or not, but re-engineering milk out of plant-based proteins. And these are sort of the twin poles that you can walk into any Whole Foods and kind of explore. And I wonder if they can kind of coexist if they should coexist in our world? What do you think, Max?
[00:20:10] Max Goldberg: Should they exist is a real sort of... If it's legal, I guess it should exist, right? But, you know, it's just really of what the consumer stands for. So for me, I'm not consuming anything that's... I saw them at a food tech conference and that's when I first learned about them. But I'm just not in favor of supporting putting these things in my body that are using genetic engineering. There are no long-term studies on the safety of these foods and not to mention how the super toxic chemicals sprayed on them, but I support organic. For me and I think everyone else, it's like, what do you want to put in your body and what do you support as socially and politically? So for me, as you know, I'm very politically engaged and organic. And I think it was the second interview I ever did was with Joel Salatin, who's one of the more famous farmers in the country. And one of the things he said to me, I still will never forget it today, is every single dollar you spend, you're voting with your dollars every single time you go to the supermarket. So for me, I really take that to heart. So if people are okay with genetic engineering, they can purchase these products. For me, it's not and I don't purchase them. I don't really pay much attention to them. It's not a product that I am going to write about, consume, endorse.
[00:21:22] Jon Landis: if they're able to develop organic sourcing for something like Ripple. So your gate is really the ingredients need to be organic.
[00:21:30] Max Goldberg: Yes, that needs to be assured.
[00:21:32] John Craven: And no genetic engineering whatsoever. I think it's a good point from the perspective of, you know, what is really like the goal with a lot of these products? Are we just trying to rebuild like literal carbon copies of milk? Or is it, which is more of the New Barn thing, just make the best damn nut milk we can make, right? I mean, I think those are sort of the two paths that those particular companies are on.
[00:21:56] Jon Landis: But that takes us back to the sort of beyond meat versus what's a good seed. Yeah. And question. Are you making a veggie burger or are you making a veggie burger
[00:22:10] John Craven: It's a weird proposition in that I think some of these companies are effectively saying, hey, you can eat healthy and whatever. Maybe it's vegan or vegetarian. I don't know. Maybe it's organic if it's made from organic ingredients. you don't have to compromise sort of that much of what you know and love. You know, it's still a burger, it's still a glass of milk, right? But I think in reality, don't we sort of need to evolve our tastes and our palate and what we want to eat and what we crave if we're actually going to like adopt kind of what you're talking about with shifting to organic?
[00:22:46] Max Goldberg: I think the foods, there's supply issues is getting that supply of all these foods. I think that's a real, real issue. And then it's also, yes, evolving the taste. And I think a lot of companies are looking at it from a different way. A lot of companies have no issue with genetic engineering and are trying to introduce foods into the marketplace that don't currently exist that they can... Some people, you know, they don't want dairy products. So, I think everyone is looking at this from a different angle and it really depends on what your personal philosophy is and some people have an issue with genetic engineering, some people don't have an issue with it. Some people have an issue with dairy, some people don't have an issue with dairy. So I think, you know, everyone's trying to develop products that the market will embrace and that, you know, I think most people try to embrace products or technologies that will be better for the world.
[00:23:35] Jeffrey Klineman: You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time.
[00:23:40] Jon Landis: Well, but what I like hearing is that Max and I can both be pleased with a veggie burger with cheese and grass and grass-fed bacon.
[00:23:50] John Craven: Grass-fed bacon. There you go. Well, it's think about lunchtime here. Maybe we're out of time for this podcast. I don't know. I'm starting to get a little hungry now. Anyway, thank you very much for joining us, Max. It's been great to get your perspective. I guess we'll have to go check out your top five products, which should certainly be out before this podcast since that takes us a few days.
[00:24:11] Jeffrey Klineman: I think I got the newsletter already. You got the newsletter before I sent it out. You were on Periscope last night. That's what it was.
[00:24:18] Max Goldberg: Yeah, I did it. I put it up on Periscope and Facebook Live, but you know, there's still plenty of people who don't see that. Yeah.
[00:24:23] Jon Landis: Max, congratulations on the memoir. Oh, thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to reading it.
[00:24:28] Max Goldberg: Thank you.
[00:24:29] Jon Landis: And good luck with Finding Maxwell.
[00:24:32] Max Goldberg: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, guys. This was a lot of fun. Those 25 minutes went by really, really quickly. There you go. We're efficient here, too. Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of what you guys do here at BevNET, and great to spend a few minutes with you.
[00:24:45] John Craven: Awesome. Well, thanks to our listeners. And as always, if you have any feedback or thoughts for future episodes or whatever, feel free to email us at podcast at BevNET.com and otherwise until next time.
[00:24:58] Jeffrey Klineman: And you can subscribe on iTunes.
