[00:00:03] John Craven: Hello, everyone. I'm John Craven with BevNET, and we're here for another BevNET podcast, this time in London with my dear friends over at Ugly Drinks, Hugh Thomas and Joe Benn. Hey, guys, thanks for joining me. No worries.
[00:00:15] Hugh Thomas: It's good to have you here. The pod's gone international.
[00:00:18] John Craven: I know it has. We've managed to stuff all this stuff in a bag and get on an airplane. Pretty crazy stuff. You guys are sort of beverage veterans, I guess, at this point, having helped Vita Coco launch over here in the UK and now having your own brand called Ugly. And it seemed like it'd be a good chance to help maybe school some of our listeners on just what's going on over here and kind of trends, packaging, whatever. We've got a pile of drinks here that I guess we'll get to in a little bit. Maybe you guys can just sort of start and give us a quick kind of background on yourselves.
[00:00:54] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, so Joe and I met whilst we worked Vita Coco when that launched in the UK. Joe was actually the first employee in the UK office and I joined not long after. This is in 2012, so you could walk up and down the street in London and nobody would know what coconut water was. And we worked there for three and a bit years, myself and Joe for about four, building the coconut water category in the UK. And by the time we left, it was in all the major supermarkets in the UK, so from Tesco's to Asda, and available in corner shops up and down the streets in London. But whilst we were working there, we really kind of found a passion for beverages and obviously following content like BevNET we got a thirst for it so to speak and we noticed that there was a real issue with sugar and sweetener in the UK and especially in beverages and things like diabetes and obesity which I know you have the same problems in the US but we have the same issues here and Joe and I decided in about 2013 that we were gonna instead of getting another job after Vita Coco would start our own company and We wanted to create a drink without any sugar or sweeteners or artificial ingredients, and Ugly was born from there. So what Ugly is, for anyone that hasn't seen it, is 100% natural infused sparkling water, which I know you have products similar in the US, but this is the first in the UK and Europe, and it's in a 330ml can. We launched in January this year in market.
[00:02:12] Joe Benn: That's an overview. Sorry, I thought you were going to say something else.
[00:02:16] John Craven: No, it's all right. So you guys are a couple months in, and it's, I guess, in what kind of retailers here?
[00:02:21] Joe Benn: Yeah. So it's been nine months in market now. We originally launched it into probably your typical retailers. You'd expect to find a new innovative product. So it was Whole Foods. Over here we have Planet Organics, Selfridges, As Nature Intended, all kind of similar specialist stores. But something that we've also done maybe that we learned from our time Vita Coco was get it into Also your kind of premium coffee shops, independent convenience stores, and really just get it into the right areas where the right demographic were going to find the product. And we've just been growing that. So it's myself and Hugh, and we have two employees, Bina and Ola. They work really hard kind of every day. They're our kind of feet on the street, putting it out there. And for us, it's just about getting it in the hands of people. And usually we find when people try it, they like it once they understand. Which is always good.
[00:03:06] John Craven: I bought my first can yesterday and, well, I decided to still meet you guys, so that tells you.
[00:03:11] Joe Benn: Yeah, that's good.
[00:03:12] John Craven: You still showed up. It's funny to, you know, for something that I've seen many pictures of, but I've never tasted it until yesterday, and I kind of, you know, wondered what the, you know, UK version of, you know, a sparkling flavoured water would be. tastes, well, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it definitely tastes like something that, if this were in the US, it would be very on trend.
[00:03:35] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, what we tried to do is pick flavors. So we have lemon and lime and grapefruit and pineapple that, I guess, mimic, in a sense, certain soda flavors that we have in the UK. So a traditional clear lemonade, and there's tropical sparkling drinks here that are very popular. And so that was really the idea, is that for people that drink a lot of sugary or sweetened carbonated drinks, that this is a nice alternative. We were very clear that we wanted to make a brand that felt fun and didn't feel too overly healthy. And so for people who want to make a switch, kind of switch out of sweeteners or sugar, can make that without feeling like they're making a dull decision.
[00:04:08] Joe Benn: Hence the ugly brand name? Yeah. Joe can explain that. Yeah, I mean, having come from the beverage industry previously, I think we were just very aware of some of the claims and promises that certain brands would sometimes make. And for us, this product is quite simply nutritionally, it's water. And so what we're saying is, you know, it's not going to help you get fit in the gym. It's not going to make you beautiful. It's just water. If that makes us ugly, then I guess we'll be ugly. But the idea is it's beautiful on the inside.
[00:04:34] John Craven: Nice. And I guess it's also interesting to see the blue color palette didn't stray too far from the Vita Coco days, right?
[00:04:43] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, we were heavily influenced by that. But no, that wasn't intentional. I think we were trying to communicate, I guess, clarity and water without having a clear packaging. So blue felt like it stood out on shelf, and hopefully the name with the packaging really kind of turns people's heads. And I guess, again, when we were starting this, we were really into kind of health and wellness trends and healthy beverages. And a lot of the time they can be quite expensive, especially in the UK. And so we wanted to make a healthy drink that was affordable to as many people as possible. So accessibility in terms of where you can find it, but also can I actually buy this at lunchtime? Because as I'm sure you guys can relate to having a green juice habit can get quite expensive. That's not necessarily the easiest thing for people across the UK to get their hands on.
[00:05:24] John Craven: A green juice habit, kombucha habit, cold brew habit, craft beer habit, all expensive things, right? But flavored water is something that shouldn't be, is kind of what you're getting at. As far as the market for this type of product here, you know, there's, as you probably see reading BevNET, lots and lots of competition for this type of product in the US. What's it like here?
[00:05:49] Joe Benn: In terms of a direct comparison, there's nothing here, kind of canned sparkling water. We were the first to do it. We're definitely seeing a switch towards lower sugar and also maybe some more natural sweeteners. So you're seeing a lot of things like iced teas coming out, which, you know, 4 grams of sugar per 100 ml as opposed to 8. and things like that. What we do have going on here is it was March this year, they introduced or they announced that a sugar tax was going to be introduced. And so that is now 18 months away from coming into play. And therefore, you're seeing a lot of particularly the larger brands sort of scrambling around and reformulating products to try and dodge that tax to an extent.
[00:06:25] John Craven: Do people protest in the streets for sugar taxes like they do in the US, which is one of the most insane things ever, by the way?
[00:06:32] Hugh Thomas: We haven't seen consumers protesting much. I think a lot of this came from consumers really making the move themselves. And Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef, was a big part of that consumer movement. But having worked Vita Coco, we'd noticed that consumers were moving away from it themselves. So we haven't quite seen protests. Maybe the guys protesting are the people producing sugary sweetened beverages, maybe.
[00:06:53] John Craven: Yeah, it's a pretty, you know, funny thing to watch. I think everyone in the beverage industry, you know, U.S. and sounds like here, people want to make less sweet offerings that still have great taste, right? I mean, I think that was sort of the thing for so long that didn't exist. It was either artificial sweeteners or really compromising flavor or that kind of experience for your palate. But now we're able to do that. I mean, you guys seem like you've successfully done that. as they have cold brew coffees and other stuff that's more assertive in flavor. So it's kind of funny to think about something like a sugar tax as a bad thing in the long run. But I guess we'll see.
[00:07:32] Hugh Thomas: No, yeah. I mean, we decided on the run of packaging we have now to use the word unsweet.
[00:07:37] Joe Benn: Right.
[00:07:38] Hugh Thomas: I don't know if it will use the word forever, but we see it as there is an emerging category of drinks in the UK that is unsweet, whether it's cold brew coffee, like you say, or matcha teas or or products like our own that have decided to stay away from sugar and sweetness totally and let flavor and just functionality do the talking, I guess.
[00:07:56] John Craven: So I guess for you guys who've worked for an American brand that's come to the UK, as well as probably just seeing some of the other, you know, American brands that are coming this way, I think I saw Drink Maple and Whole Foods yesterday, for example. Do you feel sort of pressure to take your product and go the other way to the U.S.? Or, you know, how do you view that type of thing as an emerging brand? I think it's less about- Or startup brand, excuse me.
[00:08:23] Joe Benn: Yeah, less about pressure, more about ambition. I mean, we are massively inspired by the U.S. beverage industry. We love some of the products and the brands that have come out of it. And for Hugh and I, I think that's kind of definitely a sort of goal we'd like to tick off. It's just, for us, maybe the most exciting beverage space in the world, and therefore it would be incredible to be able to launch over there. At the same time, we're very aware of, for example, with the canned sparkling water, it's quite a developed category over there already. You would have to be launching at the right time and with the right resource to support it as well.
[00:08:53] Hugh Thomas: I think typically UK brands have had Europe on our back doorstep, so to speak, which I'm not sure how that's going to change following Brexit. But I guess it's still a complex marketplace and there are reasons why distributing in the US would make a lot more sense with language. I think there's 42 languages in the EU or some number like that. Obviously, the UK is leaving the EU, so not quite sure how that will impact the drinks market in the medium to long run. But I guess that's where UK brands typically move. They'll head towards the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Scandinavia, and then maybe France and Germany if your brand's able to scale that far. But moving to the US is, like Joe says, something we'd love to do in the long run. I mean, we say it's the home of the brands that we aspire to be like, so it'd be nice to try and get amongst it.
[00:09:39] John Craven: Well, that's a good segue to my next question. As observers of the U.S. beverage industry from afar, and I know you guys have been over to New York and such, what sort of stuff do you look at and aspire to? Or maybe, I guess, on the other side, are there trends that we have going on that you're just like, what the heck is this?
[00:09:58] Hugh Thomas: I guess Joe and I are quite strange in the sense that we follow BevNET religiously, so maybe stuff doesn't shock us quite as much as it might shock some other Brits if they were checking it out, but it's the edges that I think are most interesting in the US. I think maybe in the UK we lack the ability to go towards the crazy, and because of the size of the market, you maybe have to create more mainstream flavors and more mainstream blends before you can really go too fast, we maybe miss out on some of the really crazy stuff, whether it's drinking vinegars or, I mean, kombucha's just coming through in the UK now, so it's been around for years in the US, and maybe miss out on some of those kind of wackier drinks, so to speak. But I think we're catching up, and it's exciting to see brands here, and friends of ours as well, create products that we've been following on Instagram for the last three, four years, people actually bringing that sort of taste here, which is exciting.
[00:10:49] John Craven: Well, it's funny you point out drinking vinegars as, you know, a wacky sort of idea, right? I mean, I think it's something that, you know, I don't know about Brits who aren't in the beverage industry, but I think even for Americans who aren't in the industry, friends of mine or whatever, who look at BevNET, they're like, what is all this stuff? I mean, it's... Something that always is kind of interesting to watch things go from like, you know, these things that everyone in the industry knows about as if they're normal to actually like mainstream. And that is something that is a pretty far ramp up. Whereas right now, you know, to use your own product category, flavored and sparkling waters are like, everybody's all over that. You know, LaCroix is a big phenomenon, things like, you know, Spindrift are picking up steam. So, you know, you guys have picked a category that's probably a little safer, I would imagine.
[00:11:38] Joe Benn: Yeah, I mean, it's just a matter of time, I'm sure, until we have some pretty direct competition over here. And that's definitely what we see when a category begins to get traction. It's not long before you see, I think there's probably now easily kind of six, seven cold brew coffee brands in the UK. There's a number of, there's a lot of cold press juice brands. So it's just a matter of time really.
[00:11:57] Hugh Thomas: I think what we admire, well, I mean, we admire lots of things about the US beverage industry. I mean, we love the edges. So we love the kind of interesting products, things like Monfifo, Joe and I have loved since we went to New York, three, four years ago now, I think we were drinking Monfifo and loving that flavor profile. But what we really love and aspire to is those brands that are able to transcend channels and from what it seems go from coast to coast in the US and kind of really are able to kind of introduce new products, new flavors, brand extensions and really scale, which is I think exciting for us when we wanted to create a healthy product. We want as many people as possible to change their habits.
[00:12:34] John Craven: Any examples or names you want to name? I'm just curious.
[00:12:38] Hugh Thomas: I mean, there's snack products as well. So in beverages, I think obviously Vita Coco one we have massive affinity to.
[00:12:43] Joe Benn: Sure, near and dear to your heart, of course.
[00:12:45] Hugh Thomas: They're very near and dear. Vitamin Water, the way that's scaled in the US and the way it's branding and it's packaging and the colors kind of at that right moment in time, scaled, is incredibly impressive. And then I guess recently, brands like Buy, which are able to kind of play in a number of different channels, and HealthAid right now as well, I'd say. When I was in New York earlier this year, I think that's, from what I could see, doing a really good job from place to place, from store to store, and having a range and a brand that really takes kombucha to another level. I don't know about you, Joe.
[00:13:17] Joe Benn: Yeah, and also super interesting to see the brands that come over here. Recently, Sparkling Ice have launched with a big fanfare and plenty of cash, and they seem to be doing very well so far. Obviously, we also see the likes of Popchips and those guys come over. And again, it's always kind of fascinating to see what catches on and what doesn't within coconut water. We saw some of the U.S. brands come over and some did well and some did less well, so always interesting.
[00:13:42] John Craven: Yeah, I thought the Coconut Water set was particularly interesting, just, you know, what I've seen around, which is not all that much. I mean, there's the, I guess, ones that we've seen in the U.S., the Rebel Kitchen, which I guess was formerly Yunoko, Vita Coco, of course, and some of the canned ones, but that's pretty much it.
[00:14:03] Joe Benn: Yeah, I think if you've been here two years ago, you would have seen double, maybe triple the number of brands. And I suppose natural selection has meant that maybe only a few have survived in terms of scale.
[00:14:14] John Craven: Sure. And none of the cold-pressed juice brands. I mean, that obviously has sort of a logistical issue of transporting from the U.S. to over here. Wouldn't make any sense. But really interesting to see how many brands there are in that space here, too. You know, it's definitely something that is hard to read as whether or not it's just a US phenomenon or it's catching on anywhere else.
[00:14:35] Hugh Thomas: I guess there's two elements to it. There's the retail side and the in-store side of things. I think in the retail side, like with Coconut Water, we've maybe seen a few winners emerging in that space in London in the last 12 months, maybe even shorter than that, maybe six months. It's all about location and where you are. Then the brand's coming through the same. Obviously, we've got Mojo on the table here, and those guys really trying to make a more mainstream feeling, cold-pressed juice, which is exciting. It really comes down to, I mean, from understanding that side of things, it's logistically challenging and ingredient-wise can be a hard process to make work, so it's quite complex from that side of things.
[00:15:12] John Craven: So one thing that seems completely missing here compared to the US market is just the pile of like certification logos that we have, you know, be it organic, non-GMO. I mean, there's gluten-free seals, fair trade. That stuff doesn't really exist over here, does it?
[00:15:33] Hugh Thomas: There are versions of those things. I think, I don't know in the US whether you're pressured to put those on or if it's a legal requirement. I think, rightly or wrongly, I think small brands here are kind of given time to emerge and maybe not police so strongly in terms of labeling, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending what side of the fence you sit on. But there are certain standards that are at a certain scale and size we will have to follow through with things like traffic lighting on sugar and calories and things like that. Yeah, there are symbols you can add on. Quite often you have to pay to put those symbols on the packaging as well.
[00:16:06] Joe Benn: I think there are brands that maybe have products which are maybe less healthy, and therefore it makes sense for them to go harder on things like Fairtrade and Organic. Yeah, definitely see a lot of, maybe like more craft sodas and things like that, pushing hard on that kind of thing.
[00:16:24] John Craven: Yeah, I mean, there's no legal requirement for use of those seals in the U.S. It's just something that I think back, geez, I'm trying to think, I think it was Honest Tea was the first one that put the organic seal, I actually, I think they put it on the cap on the top. And it was just sort of a domino effect of everyone wanted to basically have the seal. And still to this day, it's probably pressure and almost, you know, from retailers and maybe an expectation that you're going to use it. And now we have all these other, you know, again, the GMO and all that stuff is really hot too, so.
[00:16:56] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, I think there's maybe been confusion from consumers about which symbol means what and things like Rainforest Alliance versus Fair Trade versus some of the other kind of nutritional labeling. Maybe there's confusion and consumers maybe see through it a little bit in terms of actually what the labels mean here. And maybe we're going through a period of kind of change on that. And maybe we'll come out the other side with something a bit clearer for consumers. Because I think from my point of view, that's all that really matters as long as the consumer knows what they're picking up and what they're getting into.
[00:17:28] John Craven: Gotcha. So you guys are a couple months in. Usually, when we're talking to startup brands, we kind of just, I don't know, what sort of challenges does a brand face over here? Is it I don't know, raising money, is it brand awareness? You know, how do you sort of, I guess, see similarities and differences between, again, what you see from the companies we cover on BevNET that are American?
[00:17:51] Joe Benn: all of the above is the answer. Probably one of the clear differences is the period of kind of proof of concept for Brad Avery here. There are nine Whole Foods stores in the UK. And so, you know, you get Whole Foods and you get Panorganic and, you know, your company is still pretty small at that point. And whereas maybe in the US you can you can get into, you know, 50 or 100 Whole Foods stores. So that's always an interesting time. I think we see a lot of brands who kind of nail that first six months, 12 months, and it's that next step which is very difficult. And of course you have to raise the money and be able to scale. The retail environment in the UK is, having spent some time actually selling Vita Coco New York I was amazed by the sort of store I could walk into and influence in terms of buying and building displays and things like that. You just can't do that in a big grocery store in the UK. It's pretty much all done at head office and that's definitely a challenge for smaller brands when the large beverage companies are locking in huge deals at head office level.
[00:18:52] Hugh Thomas: I think we also have, obviously London is the major hub in the UK, so it has over 10% of the population living here. Most of the major media outlets and ways to spread word of mouth come from London as well, which can be a challenging thing when you want to access 90% of the rest of the population. Like Joe says, you need to access retail outlets outside of London, which is where the scale really comes from. Taking the brand to the next level outside of London can be a challenge if your product is maybe more expensive or slightly more niche in flavour profile. But it also comes with opportunities as well in that if we are able to be successful in London and influence tastes around the country from here, then we can work that way as well. So it has its ups and downs having one major hub, so to speak, in the UK.
[00:19:38] John Craven: Do you have any advice for maybe American entrepreneurs that'll hear this and say, geez, we should go check out London or England just as a whole?
[00:19:47] Hugh Thomas: We obviously worked Vita Coco and the team started here as a startup. And I think for any product that tastes like coconut water does, which is maybe something you need to be educated about, I'd definitely suggest the team's going to play an important part. And it will be very challenging to come here and expect it to stick straight away and scale very quickly. Maybe other products, maybe something like Sparkling Ice, which is maybe a little bit more mainstream, is able to do that. But I'd say that building a team and having the right people who understand the UK and the, I guess, cultural nuances are able to really help things move.
[00:20:19] Joe Benn: Yeah, I mean, I think it's safe to say when I joined Vita Coco and then I'll give a shout out to Adam Cervelli. He was a guy who was, He was Field Sales Manager for Brooklyn, for Vita Coco, and he came over about a month after I joined. And having someone with that kind of like American hype, who had no fear of walking into a store and getting everyone excited, made a huge difference. And I think that impacted our early team in the first few years Vita Coco. So I would say, I guess, don't be ashamed or scared to come with the energy and the hype. Just because it's not what people tend to do here, doesn't mean it's not effective.
[00:20:55] John Craven: Well, I mean, for Vita Coco, it was always something that impressed me. It was just the energy of the team. And, you know, I was visiting Vita Coco HQ last week and talking to Mike Kerbin a little bit. And, you know, he still sort of speaks to the, you know, UK market is a big critical one for them, which I think is great. I mean, you don't hear that from a lot of American beverage companies that this is an important market. I guess, you know, you mentioned Sparkling ice and you know, they've said things are doing really well over here so far but it does seem like coming at it with energy, especially when it's international is sometimes hard for American companies, but I guess it's obviously worked out really well for them. And it seems like it's given you guys a good foundation to work with too, right?
[00:21:42] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, it's great for us to learn in that environment. And we've obviously admired the way US brands build and that omnipresence and the energy that comes from, I guess, an American style of doing business. And Joe and I both learned a lot from that and also adapted that for the UK in the right way as well. So that's what we've been trying to do ourselves.
[00:22:01] John Craven: Nice. Well, I guess I hope you guys have a good rest of 2016, what's left of it here, and hopefully we'll see you guys stateside sometime in the near future. I hope so. Well, before we wrap this up here, we've got to do this beverage tasting here. These guys have gone through the trouble of getting a bunch of different drinks. Usually we have this what are you drinking segment. I guess I'm not really familiar with any of these products outside of I've seen them on your various Instagrams. So I don't know, maybe we should do an impromptu tasting here.
[00:22:36] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, definitely. We've got a few of our, I guess, favorite brands and friends who we think kind of deserve a shout out for doing interesting things. The first product you've got here, John, is the Sandals.
[00:22:48] John Craven: Sandow Cold Brew. So this is a cold brew that's in a glass kind of flask, you know, like one of those whiskey bottle type of things.
[00:22:56] Hugh Thomas: You have a little... So this, yeah, started by two friends of ours, Hugh and Luke, and they've been working on cold brew and bringing cold brew to the UK for the last two, three years. Okay. And yeah, really innovating in that space. They're both baristas by background and coffee experts.
[00:23:11] John Craven: Nice. It almost, I swear, has a little, maybe like chicory flavor to it almost.
[00:23:17] Hugh Thomas: I don't know what witchcraft and wizardry these guys use in their production facility.
[00:23:20] John Craven: Yeah, it tastes like some craft and wizardry, I guess maybe is the way to put it. Yes, it's neat. I mean, you don't... This package, I think I've only ever seen one other cold brew that comes in it. I like it, it stands out. Again, you look a little maybe weird drinking that on the street in the early hours or anytime, but yeah, tasty stuff.
[00:23:42] Hugh Thomas: They named it after the Victorian strongman Eugene Sandow. He is the original strongman and he spent a lot of time working on his body and they aspire to that same level of expertise, I guess.
[00:23:58] John Craven: Interesting. Well, this one next is a Jimmy's iced coffee.
[00:24:03] Joe Benn: Jimmy's, I guess he's a bit of a celebrity in the small food and drink scene. Really nice guy, lives outside of London, very much into his surfing and things like that. Big beard, kind of iconic look. And he actually I don't know if you've seen it, John, they did a rap video which kind of went viral and they got over a million views on their video. So interesting approach to marketing. I think they basically try and do fun stuff and they do it pretty well.
[00:24:30] John Craven: So this is like a, let's see that coffee. I think this is just coffee with milk, right?
[00:24:35] Joe Benn: Yeah. It's a, it's a relatively, um, I think Jimmy was over in Australia and there's loads and loads of iced coffee brands over there. Just, I guess, asked himself the question that most entrepreneurs ask, which is like, why can't I get this back home? And originally started with his sister Suze and, uh, yeah, used to come in like a different kind of old school milk carton. And, uh, yeah, they sort of iterated it. Yeah.
[00:24:55] Hugh Thomas: One of the personalities in UK food and drink. And if you check out his website and his, Content on social media. That's him. He's definitely worth checking out what Jimmy's up to.
[00:25:05] John Craven: Yeah, it kind of looks like the Vita Coco Cafe a little bit, but no, you know, coconut in it.
[00:25:10] Joe Benn: Yeah. Pretty tasty. They tend to be, you see Jimmy's and Vita Coco Cafe sitting next to each other on shelf a lot. They're good friends. Compliment each other, hopefully.
[00:25:19] John Craven: Alright, so next I guess we're trying, what is the, is this the UK's only bottled kombucha? Or one of?
[00:25:26] Joe Benn: It's, I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's one of. It's relatively new. The guys are brewing it out in Hackney Wick in East London. Yeah, this is the original kombucha. They also do a passion fruit one and a ginger as well, which is delicious.
[00:25:38] John Craven: Yeah, it's pretty classic kombucha flavor.
[00:25:42] Hugh Thomas: Adam, who is one of the guys behind this, is from the west coast of the US, and so he's brought, I guess, kombucha expertise over here, but doing it in his own style. And yeah, it's pretty delicious, we think.
[00:25:53] John Craven: Yeah, it's got, I mean, the bottle's pretty cool. It's just, you know, one color. The liquid smells a little vinegary, but I think it's probably, you know, again, a typical sort of classic style kombucha. Definitely wouldn't be bummed if I picked this up.
[00:26:09] Joe Benn: They're doing, over at the brewery, they have a little bar as well, and they make all kinds of kombucha cocktails and things like that, which I can testify are very good. They were effective.
[00:26:20] John Craven: All right. Let's do this cold-pressed juice here. Moju, is that how you say it?
[00:26:24] Hugh Thomas: Yes. Again, a couple of friends of ours started Moju, and they're really trying to take, I guess, cold-pressed juice more mainstream with the positioning. This stuff's great, and they've just launched a couple of ginger shots and a turmeric shot as well in the last two weeks, which we couldn't find earlier, but it'll be out on shelves very soon. There you go.
[00:26:41] John Craven: Well, yeah, I picked up a couple of cold-pressed juice products since I've been here. They're all... You know, I don't know, cold-pressed juice is one of those things, it's hard to make it that much different from... others, I suppose, at this point.
[00:26:53] Joe Benn: But I think for these guys, they've seen a lot of cold-pressed juices over here aimed very much at kind of health and core and wellness. And they've gone with a slightly more kind of fun approach, a bit more personality to it. And I think that's getting a lot of traction. They do incredibly well in kind of the independent coffee shop scene over here.
[00:27:10] John Craven: And then I guess this last one, I don't know if we have any more cups, but the Soda Folk Cream Soda. I actually saw this. I thought it was a beer.
[00:27:19] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, so Ken's actually from Colorado, and he did work in beer as well, I think, in New York. And he's moved over here and tried to bring, I guess, cream soda and root beer with him in an authentic style. Yeah, Ken's a really good guy. And yeah, it's just an example of kind of a craft soda scene in the UK, which is really booming at the moment.
[00:27:39] Joe Benn: I think he actually kind of, he was working for a brewery, like you said, and he was pitching to a major burger chain over here. And they had just mentioned that they'd had to stop working with their root beer supplier because they had an ingredient in there, which was banned. Whoops. Oh, it had just been banned, you know. And so Ken said, you know, what are you going to buy now? And they said, well, there isn't one. So I think that's when he kind of started to think about whether he could make a higher quality, kind of more natural root beer. And that's what he did.
[00:28:10] Hugh Thomas: And there, yeah, been a boom in, I guess, American style food restaurants in the UK and Europe in the last five to 10 years. And he's leveraging that from burgers to barbecue food.
[00:28:20] John Craven: Yeah, the amount of burger places over here is... Mind-boggling, I'm not going to lie.
[00:28:26] Joe Benn: Joe's one of the UK's experts in this field. There was an interesting time a couple of years ago when it was like five guys and Shake Shack came over and they opened, I think, within the same week, within 100 meters of each other. Both had queues like down the street. I think that was when it was at its peak. But there's a couple of places in the UK which I guess are flying the flag for England in terms of burgers.
[00:28:50] John Craven: Crazy, I kind of just want to apologize for that. But yeah, I mean, I've seen a bunch of Five Guys and the Shake Shacks and all that stuff. It's interesting to see, you know, if there's sort of demand for soda, I guess that kind of maybe begs the question of just, you know, something I probably should have asked earlier, which is, do you have pressure here from the larger beverage companies? I mean, in the US, everyone talks about Coke and Pepsi. You know, what's that sort of climate like over here for someone like yourselves?
[00:29:18] Joe Benn: Absolutely, in terms of any discussion with a larger retailer, that's always the first obstacle you have to overcome. It's like, so you're telling us that we should delist or make room for your small brand that doesn't have any serious backing behind it in terms of potential for marketing spend and things like that, and take out this thing where a big company's 10th or 11th brand. Definitely a challenge. It's been really interesting watching how big beverage companies are responding. I was at the UK soft drinks conference a few months ago. Sort of a split in the room in terms of people who were maybe seeing the sugar tax as a positive thing which would allow for innovation and definitely some people who didn't see it like that at all.
[00:29:57] Hugh Thomas: Yeah. I mean, I think we think consumers are going to shift in the long run. In the short run, it is changing already. So hopefully that does impact the beverages that are on shelf from a buyer's point of view.
[00:30:07] John Craven: And have any of the large beverage companies launched products that directly compete with this yet?
[00:30:14] Hugh Thomas: We don't have any direct competition from the large beverage companies. I guess what we are seeing is reformulations of traditional products coming Coke Zero, which is a repositioning and rebrand, which has relaunched in the last two, three months here in the UK. So moving the Coke Zero brand to Coke Zero Sugar, which I guess is a more mainstream play. So we're seeing quite a bit of reformulation from, I mean, all the players are going to have to in the next 18 months in terms of sugar, if they want to avoid tax. So we're seeing that, but yeah, no direct competition as such yet.
[00:30:45] John Craven: Fun stuff. Well, hey guys, this has been really fun. I guess we should probably wrap up, especially now that we've chugged all these kind of conflicting beverages here. So it's probably only a matter of time before, I don't know, something bad happens. But anyway, definitely if you guys ever get over to the US and up to Boston, we'd love to have you.
[00:31:04] Hugh Thomas: You need to check out the famous BevNET fridge.
[00:31:06] John Craven: Yeah, and maybe, you know, come see Jon Landis and Ray Latif, who, you know, always make these podcasts a little better. So I'm just holding up the fort here by myself. Anyway, thanks again, guys. Thank you, Hugh. Thank you, Joe. And I guess for our listeners, thanks again for listening. Hope you made it to the end. And as always, if you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to email us at podcast at BevNET.com. So thanks for listening. Until next time.
