[00:00:03] Ray Latif: Hey, we're back for another edition of the BevNET podcast. I'm Ray Latif, the managing editor of BevNET. I'm here with John Craven, the founder and CEO, and Jon Landis, New Beverage specialist, brand specialist here at the office. In this edition of the BevNET podcast, we're going to be talking about the New Beverage Showdown. The 11th edition is coming up pretty soon at BevNET Live Summer 2016. And it's our signature beverage brand competition. We bring together some of the most promising early stage beverage brands to present in front of a panel of expert judges and the audience at BevNET. So we wanted to talk a little bit about the actual attributes of some of these successful brands and get into the process a little bit about, you know, what makes for a good presentation, what makes for a good pitch. And I'm going to throw it to Jon Landis because you've been working with a lot of these brands that want to join the competition. And why don't you tell us a little bit about how they are selected.
[00:00:54] John Craven: Yeah, well, you know, not to go too deep into the selection process, you know, we have over 60 people, you know, throwing their hat in the ring for this edition of the Showdown. We have to select 15 here in office and, you know, to talk more broadly about, you know, what makes a good presentation, what makes a good effort come forth with this type of thing. One of the things that starts with the selection process is communication. And I've found that the people who are really proactive in communicating with me, returning phone calls and emails and setting up stuff and, you know, aren't like evasive or whatever, tend to have better presentations. And I think it also speaks to, you know, just in a general business sense that, you know, if you're dealing with a retailer or an investor or a distributor or any one of these people. you might be competing with other similar brands in the same category. So just being, you know, on the ball with the communication tends to be a leading factor as to, you know, the success of your company in a way.
[00:01:53] Jon Landis: Well, I think it also just speaks to part of why we're talking about this, which is just that our competition, while it's, you know, one little thing that happens at our event, you know, it is something that I think somehow or in some ways kind of parallels, you know, the real world where it's having your pitch down, being able to confidently talk about your brand, being able to be prepared, get up in front of an audience, face some criticism, whether, you know, you agree with it or not. So, you know, that's really part of why we're talking about that on the podcast here too. It's not just, you know, because we want to talk about the New Beverage Showdown over and over. I guess, you know, with that, I totally agree with, you know, what you've said. I mean, it isn't something that necessarily makes you always have a good presentation by being, you know, a good communicator. But on the other hand, it seems like the ones that aren't communicating almost without fail, like kind of aren't prepared on the day of. So.
[00:02:45] John Craven: I think that it speaks to the fact that if you're running New Beverage brand, you're doing a lot more than just selling beverages. Like you're actually running a whole company. And especially in New Beverage industry, people start a business and it's just them and it might be like a partner. And it could be for years, just like one or two of you running an entire business. So a lot of people focus on all the specifics of selling beverages and working with retailers and getting all of the technical things about that. But at the end of the day, you're still running a business. And business is people. And being able to communicate with people and that type of thing is, I think, the most important part of running your business.
[00:03:27] Ray Latif: Yeah, certainly communication with whomever your business partners or your customers are at this point. It's always going to be practice for the future. You're going to clearly refine what you're doing now to be a better communicator in the future. And starting with your communication with BevNET, we hope that you can really share what's important and kind of be on top of the things that we ask of our participants. But let's talk a little bit, you know, some of the good semi-finalists in the past and some of the finalists and eventually some of the winners and, you know, what made them stand out in terms of their presentation or their brand or their product or all three, actually. I mean, because they're all three are, you know, really important to the actual win.
[00:04:08] John Craven: Do you want to start singling people out or do you want to talk in a general sense?
[00:04:11] Ray Latif: I want to talk in a general sense that if some of these brands happen to pass our collective tongues, then I think that's fine. So it goes. So it goes. Practice makes perfect. I want to do this in a sort of top 10 way, but let's just see if we can get- Doing your damn list. Let's see if we can do this in a top whatever. But number one for me is practice. You know, one of the most powerful and well-remembered presentations, and memorable presentations that is, in all of our showdown history has, came from HealthAid. HealthAid, the kombucha brand based in Southern California, run by a trio of entrepreneurs, a husband and wife team, Dinah and Justin Trout, and Vanessa Du, a lifelong friend. When they got up on stage, they were just so on point. you could tell that they had practiced, practiced, practiced. It was energetic. It was exciting. It was to the point. And that all came from a long time of practicing in front of other people. I talked to Justin Trout about that. And he said, yeah, we practiced for a month before the showdown. And usually, you can tell when people are ready, because they know what they're going to say, because they've said it 100 times already.
[00:05:19] John Craven: Yeah. And it speaks to the format of this competition in particular, you know, a two minute presentation. It should at that point, if it's just 120 seconds, be almost fully scripted. You know, do it in front of a mirror with a stopwatch, like have that thing like down. So you barely have a second left and you can get your entire thing in and everything is set.
[00:05:40] Ray Latif: Right, I mean, that's where you start. That's the starting point. Because even if you have the greatest brand of all time, the most innovative product, if you have a lousy presentation, if you're stumbling all over the place, and unfortunately some people do stumble, no one's going to care. Because no one's going to know what you're talking about.
[00:05:56] Jon Landis: Yeah, I mean, I think it certainly goes to the confidence of it all, too, which, you know, is always hard to gauge when sitting down there in the judging panel is the the nerves are the nerves like related to the audience or what they're actually saying or just because they're, you know, an early stage entrepreneur and. You know, I think that's something that if you look at take any handful of brands in a category and compare them and you know, sure. I mean, the founder and their confidence in it and just sort of how they communicate, not to get into that again, but all of those things. I mean, I think that is a big part of how these companies are judged again in the real world by the gatekeepers, not the consumer. The consumer has no idea generally like who the person is behind it. So that's definitely something that's big for me.
[00:06:43] John Craven: And I think a lot of the people look to this competition and this pitch as practice for future pitches as well. Some people listening, you know, may not have seen a showdown before, but the idea is you're in front of 500 people on this stage with these lights in front of you and you have two minutes to tell everyone about this thing that you've poured like your life into for the last year or whatever. It's similar to if you're going to raise some money, you know, if your back is against the wall, you need to raise some cash and you got to give a presentation in your lifetime to these people to convince them why they need to work with you.
[00:07:17] Ray Latif: Sure. This is practice for the future as well. Absolutely.
[00:07:20] Jon Landis: Well, if we're climbing up the list here, I don't know where that leaves us. Number nine or number eight or something.
[00:07:27] Ray Latif: Are we going backwards? Yeah. Well, we're going backwards.
[00:07:30] Jon Landis: Don't you unveil the biggest one at the end? I don't know. I think the next thing for me would just be that sort of cliche part of authenticity. And, you know, I think there's this part of these presentations where people are sort of speaking to what they think they have to talk about as opposed to like what they really want to talk about, what makes their brand unique or why they're doing it, whatever it is. And, you know, I think sometimes that turns into, you know, sort of throwing out big numbers about whatever category they're in or, you know, the trend and, you know, that stuff's all well and good. But I think just, again, really sort of having something that speaks to like, again, that authenticity part of the product, which I think at this point, like every brand kind of has that. I think that's another attribute that when we have those judging panels behind closed doors, it comes up again and again. I think that's kind of what we're always looking for.
[00:08:22] Ray Latif: Absolutely. Another one that I would pick is being able to connect with a broad range of consumers, even from the get-go. That familiarity aspect of what you sell is really going to be important. It has to be something that people can easily connect with at some sort of level. It has to have some sort of connection to something that they've consumed before. And you have to make that connection. And that's really the critical aspect of it. You know, last year's winner, or at least for the winter of 2015, Malk is a dairy alternative beverage. But right there from the get-go with the name, you know, Malk is sort of a familiar name. I mean, it's milk. It's a play on milk. And that's a really good starting point. I think that's one of the reasons they had a lot of people interested, because they were like, oh, this is a, I think I know right from the get go what they're going with. So that's, you know, familiarity, something familiar, but presented in a different way, presented in an innovative, unique way, is always something that's going to attract attention and excitement.
[00:09:20] John Craven: I think as we work our way up or down this list, whichever way we're going, It's going to seem to me like there's things that are your controllables and things that are somewhat uncontrollable, right? Because as I'm sitting here and you're talking and I'm trying to think of other things that matter to me, things like stage presence and public speaking experience and things like that. You know, some people just have it and some people don't. And it's something that is really important in the perception of how this speech or this presentation is received.
[00:09:50] Jon Landis: Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, if someone is a really strong public speaker, then, you know, you could hand them a piece of paper before they go on stage and say, hey, go pitch this, right? I think, you know, a lot of times what we see, I mean, there are people who after the fact are like, man, I was just so nervous. But like, you know, once they get in sort of that zone of talking about this thing that they feel like super strong about, it just doesn't matter. And I think, you know, again, some of that is just the unfortunate reality that I think through this whole process, some people are having, you know, kind of their idea turned upside down because they're being asked or things are kind of going differently than they thought. So, you know, that's kind of a tough one. Like, you never kind of know, again, how good of a public speaker someone is or isn't.
[00:10:33] Ray Latif: You don't. But what you do know is that you have 120 seconds, at least in the semifinals, to present.
[00:10:38] Jon Landis: Which is not easy, of course.
[00:10:39] Ray Latif: It's definitely not easy. And it's something that is probably very terrifying. I've never, I mean, I host these things, I'm the emcee, but I've never actually pitched to the judges or to the audience. And, you know, I can't imagine you're trying to give it your all, you're trying to say that this is my life, this is what I've been working on for the past year, two years, whatever. I've invested a lot of money, invested my life for these two minutes. And it's really tough, you know, no matter who, how prepared you are. But at the same time, you know, we talked about this the other day, There are some folks who have those few minutes and don't utilize them to the best of their ability. That's another key, I think, in all of this is you have to figure out what is most important, what you really want to get across, and what you think is going to resonate with the judges so that you can actually get into the finals. Or once you're in the finals, you need to win. I mean, when you're in the finals, you have five minutes, but still. You know, it's a very short amount of time to present your case. So make sure that the points you want to make are very well identified and spoken and communicated. Because if they're not, you may not get another chance.
[00:11:43] John Craven: It's a good point. You know, there have definitely been some people in the past who their presentations in their semifinals, a two minute one, they omitted a lot of things because they were planning to give it in their finals and then they didn't get that chance. So, you know, there can be some repetitiveness between the two of them because you really want to try to give as complete a picture of your business as possible in a two minute frame. But you can't just like hold back and just talk about like your flavors and, you know, your branding without really going into like a little bit of detail, at least about the company itself, because then you might not get that chance to do the five minute
[00:12:19] Jon Landis: I mean, some of them too. I mean, we've had ones where they spend, you know, the entire time talking about science or something like that, which the point you were making before, which I don't exactly remember how you phrased it. But anyway, like, I guess my point is that I think familiarity is familiarity. Yeah. Thank you. Um, it, I was kind of thinking about this before, but, You know, another one of the things related to this that we that we always talk about in the judging is sort of like, OK, what if we saw this product without, you know, the founder or CEO giving us the pitch or pouring it for us? Would we would we understand it? And I think that's something that with a lot of, you know, newer, more bleeding edge products, especially functional ones, the answer, unfortunately, is no. And I think that really makes it pretty hard to pick some of these brands where Geez, it sounds really neat and it's a real thing, but again, how does this translate to the bottle that's on the shelf? And I think that's something that in terms of an attribute, simplicity is just one that always kind of comes up again and again. I think that sort of sounds like we don't want products that are, you know, super unique or require education, but I think we're kind of looking for that blend of it's simple, but it's not super complicated. It's like in that happy sort of middle ground, whatever that might be.
[00:13:38] John Craven: I mean, do you have any examples of things that you can think of that you feel fit in that category? But I think the point is, and we'll
[00:13:45] Ray Latif: We'll get to that in a second.
[00:13:45] Jon Landis: Maybe we'll have some examples. I'm over here hiding now.
[00:13:48] Ray Latif: Well, see, I'm trying to give you some time to think of these examples, so I'm filling in right now. One of the things that always comes up in the judging is, how much consumer education is this going to require? How much time do you have to spend? How much money do you have to spend to get people to understand what you're selling? And if they can't figure it out, I mean, if you have to spend years and millions of dollars to get people to just understand what the product is in the first place, you're not in a good spot. You've got to be simple. You've got to be familiar in one way or the other. It doesn't mean that you can't use innovative ingredients or innovative formulations, but that always has to be in the back of your mind, which is how much am I going to invest resource-wise, time and money and otherwise, to get people to understand what I'm selling.
[00:14:31] Jon Landis: Well, I think, you know, without getting into specific companies, the stuff that stands out for me that would fit in this bucket are ones that have medical professionals that have gotten up on our stage to present their product, which is sort of almost to the like an extreme version of what you know, I'm described or was describing before, which is that, you know, if you have a medical professional who's explained their credentials, talking on our stage about how something is a real medical concern, while that is, you know, certainly somewhat credible, at least to distill that down into like, you know, a demo person in a store talking about that, that's kind of not that credible, right? You know, you're not a doctor, you're demo person or eliminating that. And we have products that are, you know, doctor created, formulated, whatever. I think those things are always just like a challenge. And frankly, with some of them after the fact, I've, there was one, geez, I guess in December that was a skin oriented one and talking to them after, I was kind of like, well, why, why New Beverage? I mean, it just seemed like, again, one of those things where, you know, this is just not a place that is a good fit for, you know, really requiring that education, limited real estate on a product like impulse buy. So I think that's something that again, without getting into names, like that's kind of the.
[00:15:40] John Craven: I have one that came to mind, and they won, and so I'm happy. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so I think Motto did a really good job with kind of what you're talking about. It was three years ago. They have a matcha-based product. It does take a reasonable amount of consumer education as to what matcha really is, but their branding was really clean. It was attractive. People are still struggling with consumer education on matcha a little bit, but it does kind of fall on that, like, to raise,
[00:16:07] Jon Landis: See, but I would probably disagree with you on that, in that I feel like when we were talking about that, the education is more convincing me to drink carbonated tea than matcha. I mean, at this point, I think matcha is far enough along, and plus, you basically say matcha, green tea, and people know what green tea is, right? So I think in that sense, the functionality of it for matcha, for me at least, is like a total... Well, bring yourself back to 2013.
[00:16:31] John Craven: They also have apple cider vinegar in there that creates a little bit of a funky flavor profile.
[00:16:36] Jon Landis: I think an apple cider vinegar drink would be a better example for something like that. Again, I mean, I feel like matcha, like what it has going for it is that it's higher end green tea. Like the functional aspect of it is great, but you know, it tastes pretty awesome too.
[00:16:50] John Craven: Again, three years ago, we didn't have the proliferation of products.
[00:16:53] Jon Landis: I don't know, I've been drinking matcha since probably before you were born over there, buddy.
[00:16:56] Ray Latif: Well, you know, it was interesting. I definitely remember, you know, when the audience was told who won, I think there was a lot of respect for Matto, but I think there was some question about why did this brand win? But I think that the judges often look for, and having been at the MC for this, the judges definitely lean towards something that can scale. And the New Beverage Showdown is sponsored by VEB, which is Coke's incubation unit. VEB stands for Venturing and Emerging Brands. And so the stated mission of VEB is to find and incubate the next billion dollar brand for Coke. So for Motto, you know, Motto is a carbonated beverage, right up Coke's alley. It's in a glass bottle, also, you know, a well-known package for Coke. And it's on trend in terms of health and wellness. It's a better for you, sparkling beverage.
[00:17:41] Jon Landis: It is. And just to clarify, Coke doesn't, you know, or VUB doesn't pick the winner, but I think, you know, your point is true to how these things are judged, which is, you know, scalability, right? I think in the case of Motto, from what I remember, it was sort of, you know, geez, we haven't really seen a carbonated beverage that fits into this space that is healthy, right? I mean, healthy and carbonated were for a long time like was an oxymoron almost. I think that's also why like, you know, health aid one, honestly, same sort of thing. I mean, I think, you know, that's almost white space that has been, or it is white space because it's been in a lot of ways kind of abandoned, right? I mean, startup brands, there's, you know, their craft sodas and stuff like that. But outside of that, like again, sparkling juices, I don't know. I mean, Sure, seltzer, but that's water, you know?
[00:18:30] John Craven: And it's not marketed as healthy.
[00:18:32] Jon Landis: But I think, you know, scalability is for sure something that, you know, is a big part of it, as is, you know, I think market readiness. And that kind of goes to the other point of education and stuff like that. We always look at these companies as if they have the right team in place, which to some extent we're kind of judging based on, like, you know, the person who's up there pitching and how together they are. And then, you know, which one, like if, you know, they sort of put the foot on the gas today would go the further. And that's always a tough thing for the New Beverage showdown, just in that there are plenty of brands up there that with some adjustment, I think the outcome of the showdown would have been different.
[00:19:07] Ray Latif: Yeah, I mean, market readiness is certainly the equation for, or at least the, what am I trying to say here? Well, it's the outcome of the equation. The outcome of the equation is what I'm trying to say over here. I should note that I'm, uh, that I'm drinking a dogfish head 60 minute ale. This might be clouding my words here. Anyway. Yeah. I mean, you know, everything that we've talked about in terms of a scalable brand, you know, what is that? The familiarity of a brand, the simplicity of a brand, you know, all that speaks to the market readiness. But the one thing we haven't really talked about is taste.
[00:19:38] Live Summer: Yeah.
[00:19:38] Ray Latif: Great taste is always going to get a lot of heads turned and get a lot of people to want to go back to your product and learn more about it. They take that first sip and they say, wow, this is really good. What the heck am I drinking? I'm going to turn it around and see what's in here. I'm going to read a little bit more about from the copy on the label. Maybe I want to hear a little bit more from the owner, et cetera. So you cannot discount great taste and you need to let a lot of people taste your brand. If they're like, hey, I might do something different. Well, maybe you should be doing something
[00:20:08] Jon Landis: Well, two things I'll say on that. I mean, taste 100% is a component of every beverage product and certainly it's something that weighs heavily on the showdown. You know, no matter what your beverage is supposedly doing, like, you know, look, these are food products generally speaking I mean some exception of like supplements but you know if it's a bad experience to your palate you know odds are like either you're not going to come back to it or you have a product that's highly replaceable again outside of functional products where taste is sort of, you know, inversely proportional to perceived functionality, as I've said before. And then I think, I don't know, I mean, it's something that in terms of like what we're trying, you know, look, we're sort of, you know, one step further than, you know, when someone makes samples and gives it to their friends. I think people oftentimes like base a lot of their feedback on like, or a lot of what they do with flavor on, you know, feedback from people who are getting it for free. And I think, you know, every company that has ever gone down the path of, you know, needing to change their formula after they're in the marketplace always says that there's a big difference between a person who pays something for the product, even if it's like a buck or whatever, something greater than zero and the person who gets a free sample. And I think in the case of the showdown, like for some of these brands, unfortunately, we're the first people that are like, you know, not their friends that aren't just going to kind of say nice things because we got free stuff. So yeah, I mean, it's something that, you know, the earlier a company can get out there and test it, whatever it is, small tests somewhere, get some people to pay for it, get some real feedback, it's huge. And, you know, I guess on that note, packaging is another thing, of course, that's a huge part of what we do. And I think, you know, look, I mean, anyone who pays attention to what, you know, we do here at BevNET, there are plenty of good package designers out there that have experience in food New Beverage, but we still see so many brands that are like, oh, well, I hired a, I don't know, a guy that made signs for my old, you know, it's something that just doesn't make a lot of sense. And, you know, as a result, you get basically something that could be better. It might even be aesthetically pleasing, but it's not like a functional package design.
[00:22:14] Ray Latif: Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing, too. Especially if you're selling something that's not a familiar thing on the market, it's got to be a really eye-catching package. And how do you know it's an eye-catching package? You know, it's hard to say. Again, I think it's one of those things where you have to go to as many people as you can, and you want to test it out, especially with people that are not your friends, people of New Beverage industry, some of whom might have been and seen a lot of different packages and a lot of different beverages and seen what works and what doesn't. You know, every time when we've been talking about this, you know, the great taste and the great package, the first beverage company that comes to mind is Tio Gazpacho. You know, when Tio Gazpacho won the New Beverage Showdown about a year and a half ago, it was a head turn. I mean, people just went wild over it. You know, the taste was just outstanding. People, you know, it was a cold-pressed HPP, and it still is a cold-pressed HPP. Actually, it's not cold-pressed. I take that back. It's an HPP Gazpacho. And people were just like, this flavor is just out of this world. I don't even particularly like gazpacho, but this is really, really good. Now on top of it, the label itself was really eye-catching and beautiful and it really didn't need to do a lot more than that. I mean, Austin Allen, who's the CEO and founder, he had a great presentation, but on its own, you know, you had a lot of people picking that product up and looking at it and saying, wow, this is a really good product. The other thing that they had, that TOA had, was a little bit of proof of concept. And this is something that I think a lot of the judges take into consideration is, have you been able to get this into a few different retailers? Have you been able to get this into stores and sell your product? And what's been the response? And that always makes a difference. You know, even if you say you've been in 10 stores and we're selling in 10 stores, maybe they're like, you know, podunk stores in Mississippi. And, you know, like it doesn't really necessarily matter, but at least somebody bought your product and put it on their shelf.
[00:24:02] Jon Landis: Well, and I think that also goes a long way in terms of, you know, when we have. Brands that pitch that are pre-revenue and are talking about how they're doing a raise. You know, it is that, you know, cliche expression that Josh, who edits all our video and sound, will love this because I'm talking about it, having the, you know, skin in the game. And, you know, I think that is true. It's like if you're out there like selling the product and you're already getting up on our stage talking about like how you've been out in the trenches, you know, there's a lot to that. I think it also says that you're a little more educated and, you know, have a sense of like reality than a brand that's totally in development, money raised, then go and dip your toe in the water somewhere.
[00:24:44] John Craven: But I would say, though, that a lot of these things are very important. But I would not preclude someone from still coming to market, being able to actually win this competition. I think that there are definitely, if you could add a lot of the other things together.
[00:25:00] Jon Landis: I mean, it is kind of like, you know, we were talking about it. It is kind of this equation, right? I mean, I guess maybe the output is binary and that it's success or fail, right? But, you know, I think for any of these there, it's a combination of things. Like you can't just have killer packaging and terrible taste, right? You know, and there are certainly brands that have done better than others that have been, or brands that have not done well that are, you know, out in the market doing this and that.
[00:25:26] John Craven: I think with taste, it's pretty simple though. In order to be successful or to win this competition, you have to taste good. You do, but the only- But if you taste good, it doesn't mean you're going to be successful.
[00:25:37] Jon Landis: The only thing I would just add to that is that there are products out there, kombucha being the prime example, where the first time you taste it, you're like, oh my God, these people are completely delusional or something. And then you get to the point where, I mean, again, kombucha, great example. It's like, man, I can't stop drinking it, you know? And I think that's something that when we taste these things, you really do, especially when it's something new, it's like, it's hard to really get that sense of, is this something that you're gonna.
[00:26:05] John Craven: But those are the exceptions, not the rule. I would, I would also say like Red Bull and like energy drinks are like the exception to the rule. Yeah. And most people who drink them wouldn't be like, oh my god, I'm just craving the flavor of an energy drink right now. I mean, maybe if you've been drinking them for years, you can feel that way. But no one picks it up from the first time and drinks it and is like, oh, that is refreshing, right?
[00:26:27] Ray Latif: But that's one thing I want to bring up. And I think we're pretty close to a dozen product attributes, brand attributes, presentation attributes. A dirty dozen? Is that what we call it? A dirty dozen, yes. is function. You know, a lot of people hang their hat on function. And yeah, you should have some sort of function attached to your product. I mean, refreshment just doesn't seem to cut it anymore if you want to be a new product on the market. But you can't just say, this is what we do, and this is why you should drink our product. It doesn't seem to work as much anymore. I'm not sure.
[00:26:55] John Craven: I mean, even tea doesn't have much of a function. I mean, it's like a meal replacement kind of, but it's not.
[00:27:00] Ray Latif: It's a meal replacement beverage.
[00:27:01] Jon Landis: Well, but it's not, I mean, in terms of its nutrition. Yeah, it's probably not. I mean, I think it's something that, you know, sure, you can be a refreshment product, but I think it's when we say something that's a pure refreshment product, like what often goes hand in hand with that is indulgence or probably like diet soda type things. You know, those are really tough categories to play in. On the other hand, if you're saying, Hey, we're the world's, I don't know, most refreshing pick any product outside of maybe water, that would be weird. But you know, I think there, there probably is a niche for that to the point of scalability though. I think that's kind of where like, all right, do we need the world's tastiest ginger beer? I don't know. I mean,
[00:27:41] John Craven: I'm not completely on board with like every beverage needs a function too, you know. I mean, we see this with water. We were talking about it in one of the last ones. All the new waters coming out seem to have some kind of function attached to them. What happened to just wanting to drink a good water? I think that when we were talking about this ounce water, you know, they're not touting any function, but we're pretty attracted to the brand overall. Refreshment itself, I guess, could be considered a function.
[00:28:06] Jon Landis: Well, I think, In the terms of the competition, in the field of brands that we often have, definitely would agree with you, Ray. It's really hard, again, to come in and just say, refreshment.
[00:28:17] John Craven: My bad. I was going outside of the showdown.
[00:28:19] Jon Landis: Yeah, you're a little too... Right.
[00:28:21] Ray Latif: And I guess what I would want, bringing it back to my original point about function, is we've had a lot of semifinalists come up on stage. Some of them who are doctors and highly educated people, researchers, scientists, or whatever. And they've been talking about function, function. Even some who have been talking about very, very specific function. This is good for whatever, my skin or beauty health or something like that. But in terms of scalability. You know, that's not necessarily a scalable idea. And if that's all you're offering, if that's what you're leading with is function, you might have a harder time. Absolutely, you need that refreshment component. You need people to want to drink this because it's refreshing. But the functional attribute of it is also a very key part of it. You just can't start and end there.
[00:29:06] Jon Landis: No, it's very true. I think, you know, one last sort of attribute I'd offer. 13? Thirsty 13.
[00:29:13] Ray Latif: Baker's dozen?
[00:29:14] Jon Landis: Baker's dozen, there you go. Dirty baker's dozen. One sort of last thing that stands out for me is just kind of having, I guess, some level of, I don't know if humility is the right word, but just for the competition purposes, and maybe it's true for pitching distributors and retailers too, is also sort of staying pretty focused on what you're actually doing. And I feel like we've had brand pitches over the years where, you know, the first minute and 30 seconds are great. And then there's that slide of the plan for world domination that includes, you know, 50 other product lines and how you're going to go here and there and global and this and that. And, you know, there's great. I mean, you shouldn't be doing this if you don't think of world domination, I guess. Right. Although that probably means selling to Coke or Pepsi in this industry. You know, I think there's a time and a place for that, like a board meeting or something like that, probably not our audience. So I think it's just something that, again, I guess it's more of a suggestion going forward and it is an attribute of past brands.
[00:30:09] Ray Latif: No chest thumping. Well, it's not chest thumping.
[00:30:11] Jon Landis: It's just that, you know, look, everyone has sort of their roadmap and some people are more developed and they have their desires of where they're going to go. You know, I think it's something that to bring it to a real example of a brand where I remember they presented a roadmap of all this stuff they were doing, Harmless Harvest, you know, first time I met those guys, it was, we're not a coconut water company. It was all this other stuff. And it's like, no, you're just going to sell a lot of coconut water. There's totally nothing wrong with that. I mean, sometimes it's better to just focus on what you have, especially when what you have is something that is just trying to get its head above water, you know? And for the judging, I think it is a place where the wheels kind of come off the bus sometimes.
[00:30:50] John Craven: I would quickly, quickly add to that too is this is kind of a piece of advice I give just about all New Beverage entrepreneurs who come to our conferences or don't that I talk to is when you're talking to other people in this industry, they're really knowledgeable. And if you go into a conversation with some of them and hear their advice, but just say, I didn't know what he was talking about, that's a stupid idea. You have to be open-minded and you have to be a little malleable almost to work with some people and I think you'll work with better people and you'll work with more people and you have a better shot for success if you kind of have that mindset.
[00:31:24] Ray Latif: It sounds like you've had some first-hand experience with this, John. You know, people you've been like, hey, maybe you should do this, maybe you should do that. Get the hell out of here, Landis. I don't want to see your face for the rest of the conference.
[00:31:35] John Craven: I always try to find something positive, find some kind of foundation on a brand. I've seen a lot of brands, and a lot of them I'm like, I really don't see any kind of possibility for this being successful. But I do try to find some kind of positive, something that they can use as a foundation and say, why don't you just focus on this and build upon it? And when you have like, all these different vitamins and antioxidants and all this stuff you're putting in it. Like you have New Beverage that just tastes good. Why don't you just sell it as New Beverage that tastes good and like focus on just getting people to pick it up because they want to drink it. Don't like add all this stuff. I'm just riffing off the top of my head. I don't know anybody that in particular that matches this description, but it's, it's just in general, you know, when you're talking to whether it be a supplier company, other beverage brands, experts,
[00:32:22] Jon Landis: I mean, it's true. I think it's something that, to your point, I mean, there are very few companies that I feel like I ever speak to where it's like 100% of, you know, what they're saying is just everything should just cease to exist. And a lot of times it is just something where it might be because they've kind of lost, you know, focus on what they're doing or whatever, but there is some opportunity there and it's just a piece as opposed to like, you know, whatever that kind of
[00:32:46] John Craven: whole broad thing is that person is like super into the entire thing that they built and you know, and they're not being open minded about trying to find, you know, something that could work, then they won't take anyone's advice and they're just going to continue sticking to what it is. And you know, they're going to throw a lot of money at something and they'll get meetings, but that'll be it. All right, I have lots of notes here.
[00:33:09] Ray Latif: Lots and lots of notes of all the things we took. Did we insert that or did I just do that? You just did that. Think about that. You just did that. I just did that. OK.
[00:33:16] Jon Landis: Good thing no one at home can see that.
[00:33:19] Ray Latif: All right. I wrote down top 10 attributes to cross that out. and make it top 13. Let's just go over this very quickly. I crossed out everything I just wrote accidentally. All right. We have familiarity. Very important. Practice, practice, practice. I said that three times, and it's only one. One of the things is stage presence. You want to be able to report the key attributes of your brand in a short amount of time. In the semifinals, that's two minutes. Simplicity. You have to be able to express some sort of simplicity of what you're doing, both in presentation and in branding. Scalability, you need to show off that your product can sell and appeal to a broad range of people. Market readiness, the outcome of a lot of the things we just talked about. Great taste, very, very important. Packaging, very, very important. Proof of concept. Show that your brand has some functionality. And of course, humility. You want to be human, you want to be humal on stage. Humal or human or something. Yeah, something like that. Humble. I know I forgot one of these things and it's probably because I crossed it out.
[00:34:24] Jon Landis: That's all right. Hopefully no one at home will add those up. They've probably turned this off.
[00:34:32] Ray Latif: Let's get to the end of our little podcast here and talk about what we're drinking this week, our favorite beverages of the week, what we've consumed that we like and will continue to drink in the future. I'll start. I have in my hand a bottle of Revive Kombucha Upbeat. It's a coffee kombucha. This is a kombucha that's brewed using coffee, not tea, correct? Yes, that's right.
[00:34:52] Jon Landis: No tea.
[00:34:52] Ray Latif: Delicious. Delicious stuff. Organic and raw. Fun little packaging design. But, you know, I really like it. It just tastes really fantastic.
[00:35:01] Jon Landis: Well, I guess I'll go next. I've got this Golden Brew apple cider vinegar tonic, which is, says it's from Portland, Oregon here.
[00:35:10] Ray Latif: It's Macy V.
[00:35:11] Jon Landis: It's got some ACV, you know, it's interesting. I feel like we haven't seen a massive amount of apple cider vinegar drinks this year. Definitely as an ingredient, but you know, it's something, this one, it's 70 calories per bottle. It's a company that makes organic teas and it's pretty neat. I think this is something that I feel like would be a good replacement for like a juice cocktail type thing. Not a lot of vinegar flavor. They're using real honey labels. Pretty, pretty nice looking. So props to them. Outstanding.
[00:35:40] John Craven: Mine was that Happy Tree Cold Brew maple water stuff. Those guys completely nailed it. Way to not share with us. Yeah, I didn't have a single sip of that. Yeah, what the hell? Well, they sent us six bottles. Okay, just carry on. And they were gone in about 30 seconds. There you go. Send more, please. Yeah, well the review team got one because we did post a review on it recently, but they're actually cold brewing the coffee in the maple water that they pull from the trees. It's not a very strong coffee flavor and there is a subtle hint of maple and it's just really, really tasty. It has a little bit of sugar from the maple water. I also want to quickly mention another product that we got in.
[00:36:19] Ray Latif: You can't do that.
[00:36:20] John Craven: You can only have one for the week. you put it in liquid and drink it. So I have not tried it. It's a really kind of hard thing to stomach, but now that I've mentioned it on this podcast, I will try it. And the next time we record, I will report back on the experience of drinking a bird's nest.
[00:36:52] Jon Landis: I mean, or you could drink it. Well, I guess there's no live on this thing, but I think you should drink it next time.
[00:36:57] John Craven: I'm going to, I'll drink it and report back and kind of give a little bit of feedback.
[00:37:01] Jon Landis: Or maybe you won't be here for the next episode. Who knows? Who knows?
[00:37:03] Ray Latif: Who knows indeed, but you should be here for the next episode. Stay tuned for our next podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Once again, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about what we've been talking about here on the podcast, please send us an email to news at BevNET.com and we'll respond as soon as we can. Hope to see you next time. Go BevNET!
