[00:00:03] Ray Latif: Thanks for listening to the BevNET podcast. I'm Ray Latif. I'm here with John Craven, Jon Landis, and Mike Schneider. We're here at BevNET HQ in the studio room where we record the podcast. This is podcast episode 58, and the date is May 19th. If you're listening on May 19th, then yeah, that's what it is. So anyway. Action-packed podcast on this one, and you can tell how excited everyone is by the laughter in the room. Mike Schneider, since you're relatively new to the podcasting, at least here at BevNET, how are you feeling about this episode?
[00:00:36] John Craven: I'm pumped about this episode, Ray. I couldn't be more pumped, actually. You can hear it in my voice, right? I'm pumped.
[00:00:42] Ray Latif: Listeners obviously can't see this clearly, but Mike actually took his shirt off and gotten like in a WWE pose to show us how pumped he actually is. I'm going to put Landis in the figure four at the end of this. The figure four leg lock. Figure four leg lock. Who was the guy who did that the most? Who was his finishing move?
[00:00:58] Jon Landis: Wasn't it Greg the Hammer Valentine? I think it was.
[00:01:00] Ray Latif: Yeah, I believe it was. Thank you. Yeah. You guys are dating yourselves. Who's your favorite wrestler?
[00:01:07] John Craven: Uh, Macho Man on Coke. That's a good question. No, but you can look that up on YouTube if you're curious.
[00:01:15] Ray Latif: That's his day part use. Macho Man's day part use. Landis, do you have a favorite wrestler? No offense to the Coca-Cola Corporation. Iron Sheik. Iron Sheik. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. He was awesome. He was. I was like Ricky the Dragon Steamboat. He was pretty cool too. I'm a Superfly Snooker fan myself. Nice. Nice. Top rope. All right, you know, by the way, this is about beverages, not wrestlers. Oh, and food, and food too, and beer in some cases too. But yeah, the Bed Fat Podcast is, you know, our attempt to talk with innovative brands and the folks behind them and talk about what's going on in the industries as it relates to trends, news, and innovation. And we're trying to keep it fun, informative, and entertaining. With that said, we do have a pretty great interview that John Craven, you did with the folks from Juice Press a couple weeks ago, and we're going to play it for the folks today. But can you cue that up for us?
[00:02:04] John Craven: Sure. So basically, on a recent trip to New York, sat down with Marcus Antebi, Why Is the Founder and Michael Karsh, Why Is the chairman, and basically, you know, went and saw their... Jeez, I don't know what the right word is to... Well, what is Juice Press for those folks?
[00:02:22] Ray Latif: What is Juice Press?
[00:02:23] John Craven: Jeez, well, Juice Press, as you can probably tell from the name, is a company that is based in New York that is a cold-pressed juice retailer. They're doing things that are totally raw. There's no HPP at this point, although I think there's some stuff in the works on that. But I'd describe them as sort of part beverage company, part quick serve, like healthy restaurant. It's all organic, all vegan. I think they talk about being upwards of 60 stores now. So for me, I think it's pretty incredible just that we've, on the BevNET end, been talking about cold-pressed juice for a while, and most brands have sort of shifted towards like this mainstream, like low price point, and Juice Press here just kind of doing it their own way, and they're doing it really well. I think that was sort of the starting point for why we wanted to go and sit down with them. Also, you know, we sat down at their Long Island City kitchen where they make all the stuff for all of their stores, which is kind of like this Willy Wonka factory for juice and the other stuff in their stores.
[00:03:30] Ray Latif: They make a lot of food, too.
[00:03:31] John Craven: Make a lot of food.
[00:03:32] Ray Latif: Cookies.
[00:03:33] John Craven: Did they have a cow river? No, but they had a... Oh, no, actually, they did have a kale river.
[00:03:38] Ray Latif: They had a... Did Augustus Gloop fall into that kale river and get skinny?
[00:03:41] John Craven: They had a piece of equipment that, you know, washes all of the kale. And Marcus has, you know, personally been involved hands-on in a lot of the machinery. He was, you know, very excited to show us all of that. I think his passion is always just, I don't know, really impressive to me. We've talked to him in the past. He's a very intense guy, but really knows his stuff. He's wicked intense. He's like, check out these cookies. Grab a couple, try them. They were awesome. Yeah, when he tells you to sample something, you don't want to say no. But it's also, in fairness, you know, pretty awesome tasting stuff.
[00:04:23] Ray Latif: He's also a Muay Thai fighter or at least trained fighter. And yeah, he could probably chop your head off. Yeah, he would snap me in half.
[00:04:31] John Craven: I wasn't going to mess with him. But no, we had a great conversation that I think we can roll. Let's roll it. All right, so today I'm here in Long Island City, right across the river from Manhattan, and I am at the Super Kitchen and offices of Juice Press, and I'm joined with Marcus Antebi, Why Is the Founder and Michael Karsh, Why Is the chairman of the board. Thanks, guys, for having me.
[00:04:55] Mike Schneider: Thanks a lot for having us. Thank you very much.
[00:04:58] John Craven: So for our listeners who I guess maybe aren't in areas where Juice Press exists or haven't seen you guys online or in other places since there's a good amount of buzz, can you give us an introduction to Juice Press and what it is?
[00:05:13] Mike Schneider: Juice Press was founded approximately seven years ago, and it's currently 66 stores, and it's in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Boston. We are the largest grab-and-go organic retailer, we believe, in the country. and we are exclusively plant-based. And what we believe we're doing is redefining the grab-and-go business and also creating a nutrition platform.
[00:05:40] John Craven: And I guess as far as, you know, it being now a grab-and-go business, the company started out originally as basically a maker of cold-pressed juices, right?
[00:05:49] Jon Landis: That's correct. Back when we started on East First Street, that was its first store, we were basically just trying to capture the same categories. There was a few companies around in New York. We didn't really innovate that much, except I think we showed the community that the process could be a lot more transparent and that the product was being offered the way I think the majority of people wanted it, which was truly USDA organic. And we had a tremendous smoothie bar that had incredible ingredients. We mixed with raw foods. And I think what we did differently with that one store is we made juice fun again. I think at that time, I feel like, as my partner likes to say, we took the juice bar industry in New York, which was very Birkenstock, and we made it Nike.
[00:06:34] Mike Schneider: And when I came in, what I saw was a platform of wellness and My goal was to figure out that we were in the business of delivering nutrients. We're not just in the... That's just one way. Pressing juice is one way of delivering nutrients to our customers.
[00:06:50] John Craven: And I guess as you, Michael, you got involved in the business in... Five years ago. Five years ago.
[00:06:55] Jon Landis: Right.
[00:06:56] John Craven: As you guys have been doing this, and I guess there's tons of competition out there in the juice bar space, certainly in Manhattan and elsewhere, as well as Products that are HPP juices in the store, you know, grocery stores, things like juicers and whatever else. How does Juice Press stay competitive and differentiate itself just on the sort of beverage end of things? Just on the beverage end of things, sure.
[00:07:23] Mike Schneider: So the question of competition for us is that how do you distinguish that you're doing something special when you're fighting with all kinds of companies that have the ability to create very innovative packaging and spend a lot of money to create very innovative words. when in fact it's well established that we definitively have and structurally have the best product in the market. And so that's what we spend our time constantly thinking about. What do I mean by that rather than just somebody empty saying that? Because we control the vertical integration of our product from our super kitchen where we produce it to our stores, We have by far the biggest selection and by far the shortest shelf life of any bottled product in New York. Definitely in Boston too, probably in the country. But on a chain basis, there's nobody who can remotely compare to us. And our 20,000 customers a day generally know that. But just like when we all judge people and we can't help but judge them by what they're wearing, or by the first things that come out of their mouth. We have to get people to figure out how to try our product and live with our product so they can taste and feel the difference. And that's the part that makes us have to keep working hard to market our product, get people to try a lot of products, and fortunately, Because we do have so many passionate fans and social media has become such an important part of getting the word out. We average over 100 million media impressions a month. And if you look back just in this past month, like for example, I have this Dirty Detox, you've been trying this Dirty Detox. We've had, I'm getting a thumbs up, so at least one of you guys liked it a lot. That product, one of the five top models in the world, maybe two of the top 10 models in the world, both for free without us knowing, gave us free exposure on that product. And we've been covered in numerous publications. But overall, that's why we have to just keep working on multiple fronts. And we still are really pushing hard and frustrated that people could think just because our green juice bottle looks in a bottle that looks like somebody else's, that that somehow reflects all that we're putting in versus what that other competitor is putting in.
[00:10:01] John Craven: And I guess you guys, that sort of speaks to one of the things we talk about a lot with juice companies is just the sort of commoditization of the liquid that's out there, at least from the, Maybe it's a, I don't know, maybe it's a beverage industry perception, but, you know, you guys have done a lot with what's actually in the bottle, too, to sort of make it different, right?
[00:10:22] Mike Schneider: Absolutely. Thank you for, because I'm not getting that point across. Let me tell you exactly what's the three things, at least, that are different. Number one is we have 65 flavors. There's nobody else out there putting out that broad level of flavors.
[00:10:35] John Craven: And that's just the liquid, not including any of the food products.
[00:10:39] Mike Schneider: Correct. Correct. Exactly. Thank you. That's right. Number one, both blended and pressed, depending on the product. Number two is we're putting probiotic, our own probiotic, in every single bottle. We strongly believe in probiotic and a product that's truly vegan probiotic. Our probiotic, which is founded by us, meaning we got the exclusive U.S. rights to it. So to the extent that anybody else is using this probiotic, probiotic, in America, it's because we're letting them do that. And this product, which has been featured by the Wall Street Journal and featured by Oprah in her magazine, and it's been researched by Harvard Medical School, it is the best probiotic we believe that exists in this country. So we're putting it as a free service in all our products. The next is that we are exclusively organic, and there are certain individual exceptions. If there was a drought or something where we disclosed it, like for example, arugula, we disclosed on our website that there's a shortage of arugula, and we handle that accordingly. But we are USDA committed organic. A lot of people are not doing that. And third and last, if you go to a supermarket, what's the average life if you pick up a bottled product, a bottle that looks like ours? You know better than me probably, from the time that that product was pressed, to the day that you see it on the supermarket, what is the average age of that product? I believe that it's somewhere in the 40 to 60 day range. And depending on what you'd call start of life, so to speak, but it's clearly not one, it's not one week, et cetera. We are doing a three day shelf life. and most of our products selling out the first day. So if you believe in, which most people do, you believe in that as a differentiator, time to market, when you think about what it takes for one of the distributors involved, and a outsourced manufacturer and stocking the shelves in the supermarket and how fast things turn in an individual supermarket. Very slow process. We produce, we sell over 10,000 bottles a day of juice.
[00:12:53] John Craven: And, you know, you guys gave us a tour here of the facility. Insane amount of stuff going on in there, by the way. I mean, I think we, Sampled juice, we sampled some cookies being made, saw some soup, salads. Honestly, very different than anything I've seen. I guess, you know, you guys have 60-something stores right now. This sort of short shelf life and quick turn, What is sort of the scalability of it from this point forward? And I guess just whatever insight you can give into kind of the goal of sort of, you know, continuing with that grab-and-go focus.
[00:13:30] Mike Schneider: So, look, the mission of this company is to uphold what Marcus originally set out as an incredibly high standard. Well, first thing I want to say is like, what we've tried to do, and I think we've done pretty effectively, is take his vision, and Marcus is as involved as ever, so when I say we, meaning Marcus included, and make it come to life as a real business, rather than as, what we like to say, as a science experiment. Because it was amazing what he did at that level. We're not sure the scalability is, that you can, you know, do thousands of store out of one commissary. In fact, I'm pretty sure that that's one of the reasons why that a lot of people aren't doing what we're doing. Because when you look at it as like a business school case or you look at it as conventional wisdom, It's a much, in theory, much smarter decision to do something to the juice, to extend its life, to build a $100 million facility, to drive down costs and get into 12,000 supermarkets and end it there, right? And hope that some big company buys you or some big company does it themselves. But in entrepreneurship, they say that doing what other people don't want to do, as long as it's somewhat rational, is something that could be very profitable. And so, you know, if we're never a thousand stores because we did 150 stores incredibly well, that's great. And we're fine with that. And the hundreds of thousands of customers who will benefit from that will be great. Having said that, what we found is the more we stare at the problem and the limitations and the more technology which is developing, the more we find that just when we think something can't be pushed any further without sacrificing quality, which we would never do, you find that the technology develops or you look at it a different way and it becomes possible. And so what we like to say is every time we figure out how to drive the cost curve down without sacrificing quality, that's another 25 stores that we can have. And that's our motivating force. And then we could think about other ways of scaling the business in less conventional ways, like the probiotic business, where we own our own probiotic company. There's a number of things that appear to us in terms of delivering nutrients, they may not be in the classical space that might be more scalable.
[00:16:07] John Craven: And I guess as far as just like models that you guys look at, it clearly isn't, you know, you're not trying to emulate the model of putting juice into 12,000 grocery stores with a long shelf life. Is there something that you would kind of say is a parallel to this?
[00:16:23] Mike Schneider: Right. Well, you know, I think we hold Whole Foods in tremendous respect. And when I think about the first time I ever heard about Whole Foods, I thought that they created so much excitement and wonderment about their product. I'm going back to when I first heard about them in the mid-90s. And I still was very inspired by them, but in a much, much smaller box. You know, we are creating, thanks to Marcus's vision, a retail experience. And that experience could be anything from the postcards, to the music, to the video that shows the Super Kitchen, to, holy cow, I've never seen that many products. You know, we have a lot of people who are exclusively plant-based, you know, writing us or posting us, like, who come from other cities, and they just are like, we've never seen anything like this before. And that was what Whole Foods really originally tried to, they still do in the localized basis, but the original feeling that you had. You know what I mean? We believe Nike is the ultimate in terms of, it's not a business model, but just in terms of how they try to articulate what they're doing and segment it. You know, we are very inspired by that. And Ben & Jerry's, let me try. Marcus has a lot of creativity and is creating a lot of really interesting names for the juices and, you know, having a lot of fun with it. And Marcus encourages us to try. He wants to put both of us on, like, bottles and stuff. I'm like, I'm not that interested. He is. I'm not. I'm, like, very yuppified. Scared of that. Scared of it.
[00:17:52] Jon Landis: I just don't think anyone's interested. I want to say something on a more abstract level. look at beverage companies, and I kind of divide it into three categories. I say there is a category of beverage company that's actually producing something that's completely toxic to human chemistry and could be directly linked to making people sick. I'm not going to name names. I'm just going to say that that's one type of company. There's a company like Juice Press, which is delivering maximum number of nutrients for the minimal price, when you really think about it. And then there's a third category, which I think we are beginning to explore, is a company that's delivering less nutrients for lesser of a price. So the probiotic is not necessarily a nutrient. It's something directly linked to your chemistry and your digestive health. and it's linked to how you actually absorb nutrients. We could create products that are $4 or $5 products that deliver a probiotic into the chemistry. We could create drinks like Dirty Detox for $6, which I wouldn't say has as many nutrients as an $11 green juice, but it's priced accordingly. So what we're doing actually is very scientific. It's not just a fun juice company at all. It's accidentally, this is a giant volcano science experiment that's actually really innovative because there's a lot of thought that's going into what we're putting on the shelves next. We're saying, okay, we're covered. in the maximum delivery of nutrients and phytochemical department. We got that covered. We want to deliver more minerals, more vitamins here, more probiotic over here. Some of the drinks are just delivering hydration or functional waters. Hydration plus something that actually is proven to have a scientific benefit. The larger companies want to do that, but they're so big It's very difficult for them to consider how to put something so small onto the shelf. So I think that's another thing that differentiates with Juice Press is that we're still, we're a big, small company.
[00:19:53] John Craven: Well, I think to speak to that point and what Michael Karsh saying, I mean, it is kind of like figuring out a balance, right? I mean, if you're trying to deliver, you know, real functionality, I think, Marcus, you said it too, you're delivering also nutrition at, like, I'm going to butcher your words a little, but it was like the lowest price point per ounce or something to that effect. You know, how does that kind of work for you guys? Like, you have an idea. that maybe is something different and innovative. How do you figure out how to commercialize that?
[00:20:22] Jon Landis: Well, even though I've been mostly quiet through the interview, I would say that the way that Michael came into the company, he didn't come into the company as a money guy. I said, yeah, you have a great idea, kid. Here you go. Here's a check. Michael very quickly had a passion for the product, for himself, for his family, had a passion for the business model to try to make it into something that was scalable. And I think the way he studies Juice Press from a perspective that and I'm very good at this. He studies it from a perspective that's also very, very good from another angle. First of all, we look at data. That's a very important thing. We have product meetings on a monthly basis, and we look at the performance of every item that's on our menu, and we talk about it. Let's say something's performing number 65. We'll say, well, something's always going to perform at number 65 if we have 65 SKUs, but we might talk about why we think it's important to keep it on the menu, or we might look at number 65 after a long, time of having it on the menu and say, wait a minute, this is the hardest item for us to produce. It's got the worst profit margin. And there's only three guys that are drinking this. Why Is it actually on the menu? So we might kill it and make room for something to give something else a chance. So I think it's a process of Eureka discoveries. You know, Michael could be in a store and go, wow, that's an amazing product. Why don't we have it? Or it could be a lot of going back to like popular demand where we were reading emails from people saying you need something like this. It could be a trend that takes place or it could be something that we developed just from a flavor profile. So it is actually really scientific. We're doing it very, very close to numbers and to what's actually happening in the retail stores. We're not throwing darts at a dartboard anymore. We're really being very cautious about things that we introduce.
[00:22:04] John Craven: Darts at a dartboard aren't always bad, but I guess at a certain point, having data and science behind it certainly helps for sure. I guess as far as just innovation in this kind of category that you guys are in, What kind of drives all of this? I mean, is it the trend of just plant-based, organic? What do you guys kind of attribute that to? For the category for us? Well, I guess the category that you guys are in, you know, a little bit of the, I guess, juice end, but also on the food end.
[00:22:35] Mike Schneider: I think it goes back to Marcus's original vision, which was that when he was really trying to optimize his workouts, as a professional Thai boxer that he couldn't find products that it was clean enough to meet his standards. And I think in some way that's what the whole industry, the entrepreneurship behind the industry, is probably largely driven by that. I'd like to believe on an altruistic basis, on a less optimistic basis, there's a lot of people who look just at what Darius Bykov did with Vitamin Smart Water, and what Bi-5 just did with Dr. Pepper, and think there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and want to try to emulate it. For us, We feel, I think, differently, not than all the vendors, because we've had some great small vendors along the way, but... Overall, we feel very dissatisfied that most companies are still focusing more on the packaging and on the way to nuance their words and what they can get away with on the ingredients in terms of the working around the FDA rules and focusing on the opposite way, which is what is the highest quality, most transparent, shortest shelf life product I can deliver and still make a reasonable profit.
[00:23:58] SPEAKER_??: Gotcha.
[00:23:58] Jon Landis: And I would just say one thing is that where I'm more open about this is I have no doubt in my mind that Michael and I are both extremely altruistic individuals because there's a lot of easier ways to make money than toiling with this, you know, beast. And I'd say that we both are also very entrepreneurial. So the idea that we can actually put a lot of effort towards something that we know is helping people is the frosting on the vegan cake, so to speak. The vegan frosting. The vegan frosting. By the way, I'm not sure we answered your question. I was listening to what you said very carefully about innovation. I would say, I believe that a lot of the Common innovation is complete. There's only so many ways you can squeeze an orange and put it into a bottle and change the shape of a bottle and make a prettier label and hold it in someone's famous hand. What's happening for us right now is because we personally consume this product on a constant basis and we're seeing it from an angle that nobody sees it from. The new types of innovation that are coming in, we're reinventing the wheel on a constant basis and sometimes it's very subtle. Inventions and other times is very profound and one example. I would say I personally did not invent cold-brewed coffee I know that for a fact But I would say back when I started putting cold-brewed coffee on the shelf and I was calling it bad names Seven years ago. I had cold-brewed coffee as Because I didn't want to buy coffee machines and I was pushing a product that nobody wanted No one could even understand what a cold brew. What does that mean? No one understood what it was and We just got lucky that very big companies came in years later. Those companies would come into our stores all the time and look at what was on the shelf. And it was just a matter of time before they have the vehicle to make it really famous and popular. No less than a dozen things like that that are sleeping, dormant giants of innovation that come from accidental things. Another example is our probe attic. We could do an entire segment on that, how we stumbled upon it as laymen, but it was actually an unbelievable innovation and a breakthrough to even put it in our juice because of what it does to...
[00:26:09] Mike Schneider: I want to expand on that. That's a great example between what we think we're doing versus what the industry is doing. I'll give you an example. If you HPP your juice, which our juices as a review are not using HPP in our stores, we're not convinced that that probiotic lives past the HPP process. That doesn't stop a number of our competitors saying that they have probiotic in their juice. So the industry is letting people get away with just saying, how many colony CFUs, how many colony informing units do you have in your juice? They're not asking the origin of the probiotic. They're not talking about the integrity of it, has been researched other than the FDA. And that's a shame. And it's something that does keep us fighting and does keep us hungry with a chip on our shoulder. Because whether we're getting paid for it or not, We know that we're using the right probiotic. Harvard Medical School knows that we're using the right one. Wall Street Journal knows we're using the right one. But can we scream as loud as whatever multi-billion dollar conglomerate? No, but we're lucky we have forums like this where we can at least start to get the word out and at least our thousands of customers do know that. But hopefully one day we'll be strong enough to articulate that at the millions of level.
[00:27:30] John Craven: So that I think is a good segue to my last question for you guys, which is, you know, just looking kind of outside of what you guys are doing specifically, are there other things in the food and beverage space right now that kind of get you excited or I guess on the reverse, maybe make you cringe a little?
[00:27:49] Jon Landis: Although I'm not a user of the product, I think that there's going to be a tremendous trend in the next five years with CBD oils as they become legal for beverage in particular. And I'm afraid of that product because obviously, I'm not obviously, but I'm sober 31 years. take any type of drug. But I know that CBD without THC and CBD with THC, I've watched them help very sick people get off painkillers. And I think like anything, it could be used incorrectly because it's a plant medicine. It's not meant to just be like, you know, take a bunch of it and listen to Led Zeppelin and sit and look at Black Light posters. But I think that there's going to be some real functional, incredible, incredible things that could be done with a smoothie or a juice or in food products. And We have a pot lab I'll take you to after. I'm just kidding, we don't have that.
[00:28:40] Mike Schneider: Anything for you, Michael? No, overall, I think it's going to be interesting to watch Whole Foods do 365. I've toured a number of their stores, and I do think that you can see a nice progression of what they're doing. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see if they take the learnings from 365 and then push it back into Whole Foods. And just in general, I'm very interested in the Kombucha category. You know, I feel like while it's been a product that has been around for a long time, it still feels very hippie. Partially that's because you have to be in the glass bottle. And obviously, GT has done an amazing job commercially. But I think there's a lot of room there for innovation. On the one hand, there's a glut coming of Kombucha. But at the same time, I think there's room there to think about the category differently. It's amazing how low the awareness rate is of kombucha in New York, considering it's been generally around for so Long Island we ourselves are going to look to see if we can find a unique angle to it to participate.
[00:29:49] John Craven: Awesome. Well, hey guys, really appreciate your time. This has been great. And thanks for having me here.
[00:29:56] Ray Latif: You know, I think the, one of the things I took from this interview that was really most interesting to me is when Mark had said that common innovation is pretty much done at this point. You know, you can only juice an orange so many ways and they're looking at ways to sort of reinvent the wheel or in some cases, reinvent innovation, which is kind of crazy to me. you know, take what is already emerging and evolving and make it better. And how do you do that when stuff is already so good? I mean, you know, the processing methods for things like cold pressing and, you know, some of the ways they're preparing their foods are already at a very high elite kind of level, exceptional kind of level. How do you make it better? I mean, that's a pretty cool thing that they're doing.
[00:30:38] John Craven: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, how you make it better and this is some of the stuff they're working on is also just more kind of automation and scalability. You know, I think that's sort of the place where they're trying to evolve and grow. And, you know, there's certainly an infinite number of combinations of fruits, vegetables, and all the other ingredients that they use. But I think, you know, that is Is innovation on that end done? I don't know. But it seems like they're cranking out like a never ending stream of new products that, you know, I think they understand, like, you've got to have new stuff. And there's probably some older stuff that gets cut. But they're definitely a company that's trying to innovate, you know, like at all cost, which is neat.
[00:31:19] Ray Latif: They're trying to innovate and trying to scale, as you mentioned. And, you know, scaling is going to be the key if they really want to live up to their vision of servicing millions and millions of people and providing very nutritious beverages and food for the entire country, you got to bring that price point down. The only way to do that is to really scale. And I mean, in some cases, I think they talked about coming out with new products that are maybe not as nutritious or it's not as nutrient dense.
[00:31:47] John Craven: Yeah, well, I think some of it, like they have probiotic waters and things like that. So I think, you know, saying it's not as nutrient dense doesn't kind of accurately describe it, but, you know, some of it is packaging sizes and stuff like that. But the other piece of it is just, you know, if you are getting nutrient dense, like high quality, like food that tastes good, the price point at a certain level isn't, I don't think is the issue for it.
[00:32:14] Ray Latif: That's true, and this is actually a good point I want to bring up, and I know we have to move on, but John, you go to a Juice Press relatively frequently on a relatively consistent basis. What would you say your average check is at a Juice Press store?
[00:32:27] John Craven: You know, that's a good question. I think I'm patronizing one that's like in the suburbs of Boston, which is probably pretty different than how most people consume them at their New York City locations where it's like a, you know, buy what you need for the day type of thing. I mean, and for me, and I think what's really neat about this place that is called Juice Press and you'd think of as a cold press juice shop, like usually I'm going there for the food. I mean, their soups are incredible, like salads are great. So I end up going in there and probably coming out with like three meals worth of food. And sure, I mean, you could easily spend a hundred bucks in there. You know, it's definitely not like, you know, going to McDonald's or something, you know, cheap like that. On the other hand, it's located right next to a Shake Shack, which If you patronize a Shake Shack and, you know, get food for, you know, four people or whatever, you're in the same ballpark as you are at a Juice Press. So I think it's kind of interesting that you've got one chain where people are so like, oh, it's so high priced. And then, you know, there's nobody like saying that about, Well, not nobody, but I mean, there are way fewer people who say, geez, Shake Shack is crazy. You know what I mean? It's like a tasty burger and tasty fries, right? So, like, people get that. I think it's neat. What about the mindset of the people who go to Juice Press? I mean, they're intense.
[00:33:44] Jon Landis: You know, they're like Marcus. It starts with Marcus. He's an intense guy.
[00:33:48] John Craven: And their branding is intense, like some of the names that they have, like Mother Bleep, you know, Genius and things like that.
[00:33:54] Ray Latif: That's the thing. It's, you know, is how do you go from that consumer base of, people who are very focused on highly nutritious foods at a very premium price to everyday consumers and like I said we have to move on but it was really interesting this week in the news there was this Australian millionaire who advocated to millennials to stop buying avocado toast. And the reason is because he said, avocado toast is so expensive. This is why you can't afford a mortgage. This is why you can't afford to buy a home. Stop buying avocado toast. And the truth is, if avocado toast was cheaper, was less expensive, then, you know, it might be better off.
[00:34:30] Brad Avery: It is if you just do it yourself.
[00:34:33] Ray Latif: DIY for sure. DIY or die. Speaking of nutrient-dense foods, Jon Landis, Soylent.
[00:34:38] Brad Avery: Why Is this a thing? That's a really good question. And personally, when I first learned about Soylent, I was asking myself that like every time I saw it. I think it's very, you know, the idea of replacing food with this essentially like flavorless nutrient paste is like soulless. And I really, you know, the very first time I saw Soylent, I was like adamantly like, no, this cannot be a thing. But it's been about a couple of years now since they've come to market. And I did a deep dive into this with Brad Avery, our reporter for BevNET here. who has been reporting on them extensively the last few months. And I got to say, you know, I learned quite a bit and I have a bit of a different stance as I originally took towards it.
[00:35:21] John Craven: And hopefully... Is it still Solis?
[00:35:24] Brad Avery: No, no, I don't really think it is because I think the idea of like replacing all food in your life with like, you know, a beverage, no matter what it is, is like, that's horrible. That's a horrible thing concept.
[00:35:36] John Craven: I'm also just as a tangent sort of picturing you with your, you know, styrofoam box of steak and cheese and fries. that you like to consume for lunch every once in a while, but definitely not soulless, so.
[00:35:48] Brad Avery: Well, it's, you know, you don't get that opportunity to stress eat, as I call it.
[00:35:52] John Craven: There you go. I kind of pictured you putting on some Barry White after, you know, to try to get your soul back.
[00:35:58] Ray Latif: Definitely. Well, Landis, you're also not really the target consumer for Soylent, and that's something you and Brad talk about, you know, not only who the consumers are, but how the company is scaling up, how they're running their business strategy, and what their marketing plays are at this point. And they have some pretty interesting marketing behind that brand.
[00:36:15] Brad Avery: Yeah, they do. And you know, again, I think as we were talking about how it starts top down with Marcus Antebi his intensity with Juice Press, I think it starts top down with Rob at Soylent. We'll talk about him a little bit. You know, I don't feel that they're advocating that you should completely replace food with this product. You know, I think there is a place in the marketplace for it, and they're doing a really good job fitting that need. And as we look into, you know, the company and the product itself with Brad in a moment here, maybe you guys can see that too. We've reached that moment. Let's do it. Alright everybody, I have our reporter Brad Avery here and we're gonna try to unpack this. There's a lot of components to Why Is Soylent a thing. So, I think just to start it off for some very basic context for those of people who don't understand what Soylent actually is. Brad, can you tell me what is the product Soylent? What's it all about?
[00:37:11] John Craven: Well, Soylent is a meal replacement. It comes in a powder form, it comes in a ready-to-drink form, and if we're talking about, if you were handed a bottle of Soylent, it's kind of got the consistency of, I would say, cake batter. It's very much just this liquid mush. But what it has is that it has, one bottle has 20% of everything you would need in a day. It's got 400 calories, so if it's right into a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, It's got 20% of your carbs, your protein, your vitamins, your fats. And what makes this so interesting is that if you wanted to, and many people have, you could replace food entirely and you could subsist on soylent.
[00:37:56] Brad Avery: So it's essentially like all of the minerals and nutrients that your body needs to function without all of the filler that we'll call it, the flavor and the sweetness and everything that, you know, people tend to enjoy from food.
[00:38:09] John Craven: Yeah, it's very much, it fits a number of needs. One of them is obviously being on the go and needing to eat quickly. And like any meal replacement drink, this is a, it's not new, it's not a new concept, the meal replacement. But I think what Soylent does differently is that first of all, they deliberately go to say, You don't need food is sort of the mindset behind this company and behind this product is that you can completely subsist on just these elements. So Soylent is sort of a now a catch-all term for a certain type of drink slash food product, but it also refers to the company itself that is now out there and most recently picked up 50 million dollars in venture capital funding. led by Google Ventures. This came out, I believe, a week or two ago.
[00:39:03] Brad Avery: Right. So let's get into that a little bit. So Rob Reinhart started this. He started this company with that idea that we just covered, tinkering in his kitchen.
[00:39:13] John Craven: I think we got to talk a little bit about who Rob Reinhart is. So Rob Reinhart, he's a millennial. He's in his 20s. I have right here a New Yorker article by Lizzie Widdicombe from May 2014. And in December of 2012, Reinhart was working with a couple partners in Silicon Valley on a tech company that was trying to find a way to make inexpensive cell phone towers. It collapsed, it did not work out, and they were down to their last dollars. And one thing that was happening is that you look at this Silicon Valley culture and it sort of, it fetishizes work. You read books by Peter Thiel, you listen to the great tech successes and they say we were working 80-90 hour work weeks. You know, people sleep under their desks. These are common stories. As if that's the only way to be successful in tech. Is to completely work all around the clock. Right. And I don't know exactly what, you know, Rob Reinhart's personal story is with this, but I think there is that cultural element to there. And so he and his partners, they were subsisting on McDonald's and TV dinners and just all sorts of crap. Right. And made him feel awful. It makes you sluggish. You know, I think we all saw super seismic. We know what that does to you. And he thought with this, his engineer mind is that you don't really need food. You just need those components of food that, you know, the carbohydrates, the nutrients that fuel you. And he started making this mixture at home. He thought, well, what if I just broke down the components of food and made a smoothie, basically, out of it?
[00:40:58] Brad Avery: Sure, true engineer thought.
[00:40:59] John Craven: So he used to run a blog called Mostly Harmless on his website robreinhart.com. It's now down, but back in 2013, he wrote a blog post called How I Stopped Eating Food. And I'm just gonna quote him briefly, because he sort of sums up what the idea of Soylent is. He says, food is the fossil fuel of human energy. It is an enormous market full of waste, regulation, and biased allocation with serious geopolitical implications, and we're deeply dependent on it. In some countries, people are dying of obesity, others starvation. In my own life, I resented the time, money, and effort to purchase, preparation, consumption, and cleanup of food was consuming. I am pretty young, generally in good health, and I remain physically and mentally active. I don't want to lose weight. I want to maintain and spend less energy getting energy. I hypothesize that the body doesn't need food itself, merely the chemicals and elements it contains.
[00:41:51] Brad Avery: Okay. Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I see where he's coming from for sure. I mean, I would, you know, there's an argument to be made that a lot of the commerce and entrepreneurship that surrounds the food industry is kind of what keeps us going day to day. But at the same respect, yes, it's wasteful. Certainly we, we do eat in excess, so I can see where he's coming from entirely. So, so Rob started to put together this,
[00:42:14] John Craven: He put together the company, he did some crowdsourcing for funding, and started building it up. And what's become sort of the soylent phenomenon now is that, you know, first of all, he did the talk show circuit, he went on Stephen Colbert, he's been interviewed by many publications, you know, Vice, New Yorker, and Rob himself is such a character in a way because he would say, like, I don't really like food, and that people would be like, you don't like food? You know, what are you talking about? And it's sort of, but it intrigues people. And so what happened with Soylent is that when it launched on the market, as you could buy it online, is that it definitely attracted that consumer base that was looking for exactly this type of thing, a meal replacement, so that they didn't have to eat. And many people were drawn in by the idea that you could subsist entirely on this. You could cut out all food from your diet and only drink Soylent. And you would get by and you'd be fine. Rob did this himself for 30 days. Journalists have done the same to see if it really works. And now if you go online to reddit.com, there's a subreddit, rsoylent. And there's a whole community of people who talk about Soylent. They're big fans of the brand. They talk about everything from their bodily functions, since they've gone on Soylent diets, the best ways to mix it, or there's also a DIY, do-it-yourself community for Soylent, of people who want to make their own Soylent. There's another website called completefoods.co that's a consumer community of people who submit their Soylent recipes, there's now a whole culture about it. And I think what Soylent has done that's so interesting is that how many times have you heard a person with a pitch say, you know, our brand is a lifestyle. It's not just a product, it's a culture. Well, Soylent did it. Soylent created a culture. And so how did they do it, I think is a big question, is that they have incredibly strong branding.
[00:44:16] Brad Avery: Well, maybe the branding, but I think that the interaction that they've done with the community, for sure. I mean, they certainly seem to encourage the DIY. They are very engaged with interacting with all their customers, you know, through the subreddit and other places.
[00:44:31] John Craven: They have people who monitor the subreddit, they'll answer questions.
[00:44:35] Brad Avery: I think the brand, as you were saying, it's strong, it's minimalist, it's sci-fi-ish. It is sci-fi. It does encompass a lot of the things that the original intention of the product seemed to put out there. So, I would agree with you that it certainly has a strong brand. I don't know that that's exactly the reason that they created this lifestyle. I mean, I think that the basis of this product revolves around a certain lifestyle and they were able to sell it successfully. Well, I think it does.
[00:45:04] John Craven: I think it does, you know, but I think that their consumers right now sort of are a subset of people who are very internet focused. You can only buy it online. So, I mean, you know, the name Soylent, it comes originally from the novel Make Room, Make Room by Harry Harrison, where it's dystopian sci-fi about overpopulation and the populace eats this soy and lentil combination called Soylent. Of course, more popularly, the novel was adapted into the film Soylent Green in 1973, starring Charlton Heston, where they then took the concept of Soylent and added a twist ending where Soylent Green is actually ground-up bodies of human beings that have been reprocessed from this overpopulation and they're recycling humans.
[00:45:50] Brad Avery: And to my estimation, Phil Hartman playing Charlton Heston on Saturday Night Live when they did Soylent Blue and Soylent Purple and he came out screaming, Soylent! It filled up.
[00:45:59] John Craven: You ever see that Futurama joke? There's already a soda made of people. It's called Soylent Cola. Oh, how's it taste? Well, it varies from person to person. But that's the thing is, you know, someone might think you're going to name your product after a word that is associated with cannibalism. And yet that clicks with people.
[00:46:21] Brad Avery: Well, it doesn't click with people, but I do think that it is, uh, I think it draws you in.
[00:46:26] John Craven: You start thinking, well, what the hell? This is about like, well, you know, they're not actually selling ground up bodies. So you start thinking, well, what is Soylent then?
[00:46:35] Brad Avery: I think it at least makes people draw an opinion on the product because they have a basis to come from. They have an area where they can found an opinion on the brand Soylent because they recognize the pop culture reference at the very least. So, you know, you have that kind of hook. It draws people in.
[00:46:55] John Craven: Yeah, and going back to subreddit, it's an amazing resource for an entrepreneur, for a company, because you have your community and they are laying their souls bare about what they think of your product, how their product makes you feel. Some people get their blood drawn, tested, and then tested again after they've gone on a week-long or a 30-day soylent diet. They're literally doing research on their own bodily functions for you. And you can watch that and you can see, is it making people sick? Is it making people feel good? Is it doing what it's supposed to do? And I don't know of any other product right now that has that type of dedicated community.
[00:47:37] Brad Avery: Yeah, that certainly is an interesting aspect. Now, notably, Rob does not, he's not a person to completely throw food out the window. No, he doesn't. He says that he drinks socially and he eats socially. But there are some hardcore people out there who are kind of skewing all the way out. This is just what they want. Which leaves me to, is this something that this world really needs? Do we really need this soulless, generic identity of food that's basic sustenance for life and that's all that it is? I mean, to me, it removes a lot of the joy out of living. A lot of my joy is derived from eating and drinking.
[00:48:19] John Craven: And it's funny too, you know, I think Soylent might disagree, but they do in their packaging, it's minimalist. It's a white and single color bottle. It breaks it down. Their original flavor is very, you know, just straightforward, but they've kind of tried to spice it up. They get innovative with their flavoring. But what you're talking about sort of, you know, most people who eat food, love food, think of food constantly and different exciting foods. They get excited about different cuisines. And this erases that. And so what is it? I think Soylent is filling a need in the market because what we have is we have this business culture that it is dangerous for certain people where you look at places like New York and L.A. where workers are expected to be working around the clock to be productive and lunch breaks are frowned on. And that, you know, it's capitalism. It's the current stage of capitalism. But that's not really for Soylent to be deciding. That's a societal issue that needs to be addressed. But for a company like Soylent that's selling a drink food product, that's filling a need in the market. That's finding people don't have time for food.
[00:49:32] Brad Avery: So don't blame Soylent for removing the fun out of eating because they wouldn't be here if, you know, society didn't push us in that direction already.
[00:49:43] John Craven: Exactly. Obviously, there's an issue, but Soylent is not the cause of the issue. Soylent is instead, you know, I think Soylent is having fun with the issue.
[00:49:54] Brad Avery: Sure. To your point earlier about, you know, why would you name your product Soylent when it has this negative connotation of cannibalism? They've never been ones to really shrug off, you know, controversy, right? So, I would assume that they try to take those insights as an opportunity. take people feeling that way as an opportunity to engage them in conversation, which I think if there's any real takeaway here about Soylent, the company and their, you know, relative success in the last few years is never underestimate community engagement because it seems to be what is driving this company forward.
[00:50:29] John Craven: And we saw that with their recent advertising campaign too. They partnered with Whedon and Kennedy and they came up with something so unique. They put a marketplace on the dark web. You can only access it with the Tor browser. The dark web, you know, is mostly known for where people anonymize themselves to sell drugs through encrypted connections and other illegal services. And yet they set up a marketplace, you could buy Soylent products and Soylent paraphernalia for Bitcoin. You could only use Bitcoin, but it was targeting that community. Totally. And I want to mention this is that Soylent itself, they love their community, but they're not content with just keeping that little subsection that's going to keep buying them. They're playing to grow. Rob sent me a quote for a story the other day where he said his goal is that he wants Soylent everywhere where there's coffee sold. So that's ambitious. Obviously it's that Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel level of ambition that comes out of Silicon Valley, but I don't know. If you can sell that many people on it.
[00:51:36] Brad Avery: I mean, I see certain opportunities, you know, disaster relief. I didn't even think of that. I think it would be great for developing countries. You know, I think that there are certain opportunities there. I don't know how profitable they are, but. Could definitely be humanitarian, yeah. Yeah, I think that there are certain opportunities that we'll continue to see Soylent making us question what's good marketing judgment and what's bad and with these innovative new ideas. And I think that, you know, so far they've done a fantastic job and with this infusion of capital they should be on the right path. Get people talking. Well, hopefully now our listeners have a better idea of what Soylent's all about and Why Is's a thing.
[00:52:17] Ray Latif: You know, Soylent is one of these things which just proves to me how I live in a bubble sometimes. Not necessarily a Juice Press bubble. I'm just being a hater right now. But like we talk about, you know, some really great beverages that we have in our cooler all the time and I don't drink Soylent and I probably will not drink Soylent and that has nothing to do with how amazing of a business it seems to be at this point. I mean, they just raised $50 million. So clearly, there are people more intelligent than me. And they're e-commerce exclusive.
[00:52:46] John Craven: Yeah. Well, I think this is sort of like a classic example of something where you have the whole industry that's kind of going in one direction, and no one was even thinking about kind of the space that they're playing in. Obviously, if you've managed to find an opportunity and a niche where you can inject yourself, you know, it's basically yours for the taking. So, I think in that sense, like, it seems super smart now that it's there and now that you see it evolve from that sort of, like, original, I think, what was it, like, version 1.0 or something they called it? And really, no one's kind of gone after them. So, I think that's just another one of those things where, you know, it's kind of a good, like, entrepreneurial lesson.
[00:53:31] Brad Avery: One thing that Brad said is how brands talk about trying to be a lifestyle. Well, this guy actually created a lifestyle. He found the right messaging. He found the right branding. He did all the things right to really tie this entire thing together, because it really does require a lifestyle to consume this product. And you need that buy-in from people. You need people to truly believe in what you're doing to give you a lifestyle brand, which is what they're starting to see.
[00:54:00] John Craven: Now, there's one thing I'm still not clear on.
[00:54:02] Brad Avery: Is it made of people? I don't know. Let's ask the FDA.
[00:54:08] Ray Latif: The last thing I want to say about this, aside from the people thing, we'll look into it.
[00:54:15] Brad Avery: We're all stardust, if you consider it that way.
[00:54:18] Ray Latif: Well, the other interesting thing about Soylent is the amount of tech funding they're getting that's coming into the company. And that's actually something that Brad's following up on for a story on BevNET, which is this notion that You know, what are the companies, what are the food and beverage companies that tech firms are looking at and tech investors are looking at versus, say, traditional funding vehicles? And yeah, stay tuned for that. That's coming out in the coming week or so. All right, hey, Mike Schneider, the master of Elevator Talk. What do we got on the docket? And what is Elevator Talk?
[00:54:49] John Craven: Elevator Talk is you just about to get into the elevator with your dream investor, and you got probably 45 seconds to tell them what you're all about. So we ask you three questions, you know, who are you and what's your company? What's going on with your company? And what else are you geeking out on?
[00:55:02] Ray Latif: Just kind of, you know, flex your muscles a little bit. So Mike, who do we have in the elevator this week? Well, Ray, we've got Caroline from Nutty Life, which is a Boston-based nut milk company.
[00:55:12] John Craven: And their take on nut milk is that it needs a lot more nuts, hence the name Nutty Life.
[00:55:18] Ray Latif: Sure. Well, it's a great brand. We had some samples here in the office. And let's hear what Caroline has to say about her company.
[00:55:29] John Craven: Check out these ingredients. Entrepreneurs, Instagram, a podcast, and an elevator. Imagine you just hopped on an elevator with your dream business partner, and the ride's going to be short, they don't know you, so you're going to have to get right to the point. Because once you get to the top floor, that person's vapor. Once you get to that destination, they're gone. So we have created this idea, Elevator Talk, that allows you, as an entrepreneur, to answer three questions that you can use in that elevator ride. What's your name, and what does your company do? 15 seconds, go.
[00:56:04] Juice Press: All right, my name is Caroline Huffstetler, and I'm Nutty Life Cashew Milks, sweetened with dates.
[00:56:10] John Craven: Is there anything coming up that you're excited about?
[00:56:12] Juice Press: So I'm excited about, A, we just got barcodes on our first flavor, Happy Sappy Cashew Milks, made with Drink Maple Maple Water. And we're building out a new kitchen in Stoneham, Mass.
[00:56:22] Ray Latif: What have you been geeking out on besides your brand? Quick, 15 seconds, you're getting to that floor.
[00:56:26] Juice Press: I am geeking out on purity of ingredients, whether it's healthcare products or Cashew Milks. So we tell you the percentage of nuts in our Cashew Milks. This one has 20%. These two have 35%. Typical store-bought nut milks only have 2% nuts.
[00:56:42] Ray Latif: Well, that was nuts. You went there.
[00:56:47] Jon Landis: I had to go there. I don't know.
[00:56:48] Ray Latif: That was Nutty Life only we could see Landis' T-shirt and how he feels right now about that comment. Anyway, great stuff, Mike. That was really fun. And I think we've said this before. If you're a brand out there that has some interest in participating in Elevator Talk, it's a great segment. It's a great way to really kind of promote what you're doing and we want to hear about it, please let us know. Podcasts at BevNET.com. I'll repeat that at the end of the show as well.
[00:57:11] Brad Avery: And if you guys end up coming to BevNET Live, we probably have plenty of opportunity to do an Elevator Talk with you. We're going to be recording all sorts of podcast interviews, live stream lounge interviews, Elevator Talk, introducing you to experts in the industry and doing everything we can to help you guys out. If you're interested in coming to Nosh Live, BevNET Live, Brewbound Session, I'm the guy. Give me a ring.
[00:57:36] Ray Latif: I think the goal is to, with the thousand or so guests that we're going to have at all three events, is to do at least a podcast, a livestream lounge interview, or an Elevator Talk with every single attendee, yes?
[00:57:46] Brad Avery: Well, I think maybe not every single one, but I mean, we're going to definitely try. We're going to try to get as many as we can. I mean, we're really interested in everything that's going on. And personally, I feel like, you know, our conferences are an apex of innovation and entrepreneurism. So. You know, we have some really interesting stories in that room and we want to use our platform to get them out there.
[00:58:08] John Craven: We've got people to interview you. Yeah, we do. We're excited about doing a lot of Elevator Talk at the shows and also, you know, live stream lounge interviews and getting some podcasting in too. And we've got some changes to announce about the podcast coming.
[00:58:24] Ray Latif: Stay tuned, literally. Yeah, I've gotten a ton of really great emails from folks I know in the industry this week, and they're really pumped up about BevNET Live. We have presentations from folks from Whole Foods, a bunch of e-commerce platforms. We've got Spindrift up on there. I mean, it's going to be a really great agenda, and I think a lot of folks are going to really benefit. from attending the event and the networking that goes on there. And then folks who are, you know, you can't attend the event for one reason or another watching on the live stream. It's going to be a pretty fantastic show. It's going to be lit. It's going to be lit. As is Nosh live and around session.
[00:58:56] Brad Avery: Lit AF.
[00:58:57] Ray Latif: Yeah. Lit AF. Great. Amazing. You went there. I'm sure that's going to be cut. Well, that brings us to the end of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for next week. We've got a fantastic tastemaker interview with Mark Mahoney, who's the CEO and co-founder of Kraft Mixer brand, Powell Mahoney. They are on fire and you don't want to miss it. So stay tuned for that. Once again, if you have any questions, comments, ideas for future BevNET podcast episodes, please email us at podcast at BevNET.com. We'll read them and we'll respond as soon as we can. So thanks so much again, and we'll see you next time.
