[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello, and thanks for tuning into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry. I'm Ray Latif, the editor and producer of Taste Radio, and I'm with my co-host for this episode, John Craven, Jacqui Brugliera, and Mike Schneider. Jackie, how's it going?
[00:00:29] John Craven: It's good, it's cold over here, it's weird. I don't know what to do.
[00:00:32] Ray Latif: Cold in San Diego?
[00:00:33] John Craven: Yeah, I know, you're gonna think I'm weak, but it's like a weird like raw cold.
[00:00:37] Jacqui Brugliera: 60 degrees.
[00:00:38] John Craven: You know when you're in the desert, it's just like extra cold for some reason.
[00:00:42] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, it just goes right to your bones. You soften up pretty fast when you get out there too.
[00:00:46] John Craven: I know, I know. There's no snow though. I gotta drive to go find snow.
[00:00:49] Jacqui Brugliera: You're not in the desert.
[00:00:50] Ray Latif: What are you talking about? You're in the desert.
[00:00:52] Jacqui Brugliera: San Diego's in the desert, bro.
[00:00:54] John Craven: Yeah.
[00:00:54] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah it is.
[00:00:55] John Craven: It's like the desert by the ocean.
[00:00:57] Ray Latif: The Desert by the Ocean. Isn't there a song like that? That's Cake by the Ocean.
[00:01:02] John Craven: Oh yeah, Cake by the Ocean.
[00:01:04] Ray Latif: Oh, okay. All right. Goes to show you what I know about pop culture and music.
[00:01:08] Mike Schneider: We're just eroding any drop of credibility we had on pop culture.
[00:01:14] Ray Latif: No, that's just me. I don't go deep enough into pop culture these days. I could talk about pop culture all day from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I just feel like the aughts and 10s and 20s just aren't really interesting.
[00:01:30] Jacqui Brugliera: I think what you mean is no longer pop culture. Yeah, I guess that's true.
[00:01:34] Ray Latif: It's not pop culture anymore. It's vintage. Yeah, the vintage culture. No, I asked, Jackie, because, yeah, I saw you looked a little bundled up. You got the hoodie on, the Nike hoodie, no more Tiger Woods hoodie. That was kind of surprising to find that out, by the way. Tiger Woods split with Nike. I don't know why he did that. It's kind of strange. Is he relevant anymore? Yeah, I guess that's a good question too. Is he pop culture anymore? Not really. He doesn't know. Nah. But in any case.
[00:02:00] Mike Schneider: Or he's like, Jack Nicklaus.
[00:02:01] Ray Latif: Now there's a golfer. Yeah. Yeah, I still got my Greg Norman sweatshirt. Or maybe golf isn't relevant anymore. Maybe it's this new, what is it? Garbage ball that you were talking about? Wrestle ball? Wrestle ball. Wrestle ball.
[00:02:12] Jacqui Brugliera: Wrestle ball. Is it new? Is wrestle ball new?
[00:02:15] Ray Latif: I don't know. You guys were chatting about this before we hopped on the mics and Jackie said that this is going to be her new sport. What is it? Wrestle ball.
[00:02:21] John Craven: WrestleBall, they called it like Russian basketball, but WrestleBall, I feel like I love niche sports and this could be my next thing. I've played basketball in the past. I like roughing people up, you know, I could just spear tackle people, throw the ball at the net.
[00:02:35] Mike Schneider: This video that I found is basically like it starts off a sort of innocuous looking video of guys playing basketball, but they're playing on like a wrestling mat. And out of nowhere, this dude who looks like he's kind of like at a UFC or WWE just comes in like tackles and starts beating up one of the players and then more melee
[00:02:59] Jacqui Brugliera: but it is like wrestling techniques that they're using too there's like a like a double leg takedown happens from you know and did anyone actually score a basket no they were all just chucking it at no and then and then jackie was saying like like during timeouts they've got to send two guys to the middle to to like wrestle
[00:03:17] John Craven: It's like they're worse players than the bench. They send them out, you know, to battle it out for entertainment purposes.
[00:03:22] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, like you'll be watching the ball and someone will take a shot and then like right next to that, a guy's like single leg, like fireman's carrying somebody and you're just like, what the hell's going on here? You don't even know where to look.
[00:03:33] Mike Schneider: Well, this all happened because Ray wanted us to look at CPG brands on TikTok. And I don't know, my TikTok feed is just like right now, ski crash videos. Apparently, Wrestle Ball.
[00:03:45] Ray Latif: Well, it was Instagram and TikTok, not just TikTok. And I put this in the Slack yesterday. We had a good meeting yesterday about content that we're gonna be talking about on the podcast. We did? Oh, because I wasn't there. You weren't there, yeah. Okay, thanks, Ray. And I said, I wanted to talk about brands whose social channels we admire and explain why we find their content compelling, exciting, or et cetera. And so Jackie understood the assignment, and she's got notes, and she's been working on this for the last 24 hours. Jon's got ski crash videos and Wrestle Paul. Mike has some ideas too. What is more important? A sales meeting or the banter episode for Taste Radio?
[00:04:27] Mike Schneider: Can we talk about who's doing branding really well on X? Let's just call it X. Gosh, no, are people still like, you know every time I every time I don't know I regret it every ad I see is basically for some scammy like crypto thing.
[00:04:43] Ray Latif: Yeah, it's all crypto Yeah that they're targeting the right people though. That's it clearly.
[00:04:47] Mike Schneider: I mean you're like and that I just block all the accounts a lot of them are like I think almost I mean just people trolling Elon Musk because they're like I advertising fake like X coin drops that have Elon Musk's face on it on the ad and this stupid platform like isn't smart enough to reject that.
[00:05:07] Jacqui Brugliera: I mean we're like OG Twitter that just tells you something but so it's hard for us to just leave because we've gotten a lot of value out of Twitter over The Year but it's it's now it's just a dumpster fire.
[00:05:18] Ray Latif: I just I can't take any more of the the toxic conversations that's just the
[00:05:23] Jacqui Brugliera: There are still some good CPG conversations happening on Twitter, don't I mean you but but there's like these little niches that and around these little niches There's all kinds of just crap going on horrible things
[00:05:35] John Craven: And have you seen these conversations like transition to threads yet? I know people are still testing into that platform.
[00:05:42] Jacqui Brugliera: I mean the the people who were positive about football have left to go to threads and so there's there are some conversations springing up there but there's still like a huge toxic football Twitter happening.
[00:05:54] Ray Latif: Just as a reminder, Threads is the Facebook slash Instagram meta version of Twitter that they launched a few months ago. And clearly, it really hasn't caught fire. They include these little thread conversations in your Instagram feed. You used to be able to click on them and actually see the message or see the thread or whatever you want to call it. And now if you click on it, you actually have to sign up for Threads. And I just have not done that yet. So I just feel like I just feel like so many of these people are on this social channel on threads or x or twitter whatever you want to call it to show how clever they are and how smart they think they are
[00:06:43] Mike Schneider: There's a lot of that on LinkedIn too. I mean, I don't know. For me, I think it still is an easy place to get a lot of news. I mean, there's a couple of CPG people still on there. I think... A couple isn't a lot though. I don't know. I mean, and there's Andrea from Snack Hot Pot all her stuff on there. So I like to check out what she's posting. Yeah, it's a little weird on there, but anyway, I'm gonna stick to TikTok and alternative sports and crash videos or whatever.
[00:07:13] Ray Latif: Yeah, I spend most of my social media time on Instagram, probably a little bit too much, but I do like seeing when brands actually differentiate themselves via their content and not just put up the same memes that everyone else puts up. Like, okay, the Golden Globe memes, please, for the love of God, stop.
[00:07:34] John Craven: Like Kylie and Timothee Charlamagne. Stop it already.
[00:07:42] Mike Schneider: It's like if you're a brand that's so on the ball that you're posting that like five minutes after it happens. But like they'll be the brand that post that on like Wednesday. Like it just shouldn't do that.
[00:07:53] Jacqui Brugliera: I've already seen it three times today.
[00:07:55] Ray Latif: And the other thing is, if everyone is doing it, it's not differentiated. Just because you put different captions on the same meme, it's not entertaining content. Well, it's not for us, Jackie.
[00:08:10] Jacqui Brugliera: It's not for us, it's not for anyone. Does Viviana like it, our Gen Z intern?
[00:08:15] John Craven: Yeah, I mean, I think they're trying to do it more so to try and go viral and capitalize on a viral trend rather than creating something new that's just going to pop into someone's feed. I don't know. I think Gen Zers like some of this stuff. But when, like you said, it's overplayed, then they can see through that.
[00:08:35] Jacqui Brugliera: A piece of content that I like on TikTok and I think is well differentiated and well done. I mean, the authentic things are just like product usage and if you can do it in a creative way. So for instance, I don't know, FlyByJing. We talk about FlyByJing a lot because they do a lot of things right. They're doing, will it chili crisp right now? So they're just going into, you know, into odd spots and asking people, what do you put chili crisp on? So one of them is like a 10 year old kid in, I think, Washington DC called Bao. He puts chili crisp on his soggy cereal. So they try it. They don't love it, but they like it on regular cereal. So I thought that was pretty interesting content there, because it's something nobody else is doing. And I think the internet agreed, because it got a few likes. And then they also did it with mochi. I asked them to do it with waffles next. Okay.
[00:09:25] Ray Latif: I mean, I like that content where you are getting engagement. Like, there's a lot of brands that say, you know, what would you use this for? What would you use that for? And the question of whether or not it was effective, The Spot that is, is in terms of engagement, shareability of The Spot, comments, et cetera, and saves. You know, if saving posts on Instagram, I forgot who I was talking to. I think it was the founder of Spritz Society, who is himself an Instagram wizard. or an Instagram guru, and he had talked about how saving posts on Instagram really determines how effective The Spot is. Is this how you save a post? Yes, saving and sharing. Yeah, I'm clapping my hands together while doing it. I want to talk about a brand whose founder I sat down with about a month ago, and that's Doe, D-E-U-X. Sabina Ladha is the founder and CEO of the company, and they do an amazing job on social media. Their Instagram following is at 91.1 thousand followers. Doe has done an amazing job engaging their consumers with content that is never the same post. So, for example, you might see a brand post, here's this recipe, or here's 25% off, or here's this collab we did, and they all end up looking like the same thing. Doe, every single post looks different. If you scroll down their feed, there's nothing that resembles a post that you've seen in the past. Moreover, when they do have a sale, something like a 25% off, The Spot they have is, it's not just, hey, we have a big sale. They'll have a three slide post and the first slide says, we're giving 25% off to everyone who texted their hometown hookup last night. The second slide says, we're giving 25% off to everyone who saw their high school bullies at The Year last night. Jeez. And then the one who's, we're giving 25% off to everyone who is online shopping from their childhood bedroom right now. This was six weeks ago during Thanksgiving. And so they're- Did it work? Well, they got 617- Sorry, I wanted to know if you got the discount. I did not buy.
[00:11:36] John Craven: None of those things applied to you?
[00:11:39] Ray Latif: None of those things applied to me. I haven't texted my hometown hookup in... I was a childhood bully.
[00:11:50] John Craven: It's smart because there's like humor, but they also know their audience. So like who's going home for Thanksgiving? It's probably, you know, millennials or whoever that's traveling back home. But I don't know. It seems like they're smart with who they're talking to and the people creating the content is probably their audience too.
[00:12:07] Ray Latif: Yeah. One other post I want to point out, and we talked about this or I talked about this with Sabina in our interview, is one from about six months to 35 weeks ago. where they were trying to get into Whole Foods nationally. And to do so, they had to sell out in the regions they were in. And so this is a multi-slide post. And basically, it just led off by saying, urgent, clear out the shelves in Whole Foods. And they talked. It's very upfront. We're trying to get national. We need to clear out our shelves in SoCal, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii. And they said, well, number one, if you live in those regions, go ahead and buy our products. And they were at a discount at the time. And two, call Whole Foods. They said, please, please, please call Whole Foods at 1-844-WFM-TALK. T-A-L-K. And they said, we swear this works. I talked with Sabina. I was like, did it actually work? She smiled and she said, stay tuned because we'll have some announcements to make later The Year. So The Spot got 3,500 likes. It got a ton of comments. And I think it was effective. And I don't know if I'm spilling the beans here, but it seems like dough is going to be national whole foods not too long from now. But this is, again, an effective use of social media to drive engagement, to achieve a purpose, and to be fun with it at the same time.
[00:13:32] Jacqui Brugliera: The different people who are building the AumSum brand are characters on the Instagram now. And so they're trying to promote personal brands along with the brand because the people are part of the brand. you know, when you build a brand, it's your product, it's your people, and it's your audience. And so I think that's a really good way to build brand and tell a story that goes beyond, you know, just somebody holding a, flashing it with their Instagram hands, you know, holding your product.
[00:13:55] Ray Latif: Yeah, Jackie, you mentioned AumSum when we chatted yesterday.
[00:13:59] John Craven: Yeah, no, AumSum does a great job of, like Mike was saying, telling their story, like the founder's story, and Also, like their content managers are hilarious and they're just like, it seems like they're just running around the office doing crazy things.
[00:14:15] Jacqui Brugliera: Making food, obviously.
[00:14:16] John Craven: Yeah, making food, doing recipes, really being authentic about their experience and why they founded the company and sharing, you know, stories about their family. So there's just like an authenticity to it that people can connect to and then some beautiful like product photography and videography too.
[00:14:38] Ray Latif: I'm actually looking at one of their posts also from Thanksgiving. The caption is, if we hear any of these things at the Thanksgiving table, we're throwing hands. And this shows a video of them saying, aren't you lactose intolerant? When are you getting married? Aren't you going to become a lawyer or a doctor? Do you really need to go back for seconds?
[00:14:56] John Craven: Yeah, another thing that they've been doing is posting roundups of what The Spot in their company Slack. So it's TikToks that they're throwing into our random channel. And it's kind of fun to see the behind the scenes of just what they find funny personally. So they've been doing that a lot more too.
[00:15:13] Jacqui Brugliera: The one about how you go into the house with your shoes still on?
[00:15:16] John Craven: Yeah, they're like TikToking as a ballerina in all different ways.
[00:15:20] Ray Latif: I've seen it on I'm Sam. I've seen it on the dough Account as well of Instagram accounts where they got into a particular retailer and then they sit in the shopping cart of the retailer I see that too much actually I think I'm not on social media. Please don't do that. It's my you'll be you'll be better Is it like you actually it's like the founder actually get hit by the shopping cart like a target shopping cart instead of like being inside then go Target, you know, they actually get run over by the shopping.
[00:15:43] Jacqui Brugliera: That's like Instagram versus reality Lobby just did that recently and I was thinking like it's it's you know co-founder Nicole Elliott is in the shopping cart and I was like Michelle has her running around so much. That's probably the only chance she got to sit in weeks, you know, so she's just enjoying her time Yeah
[00:16:01] Ray Latif: Jackie also mentioned a brand that we featured as part of our Brewbound Pitch Slam. This brand got a ton of attention at the show. The brand is...
[00:16:11] John Craven: Gaywater.
[00:16:12] Ray Latif: Gaywater, yeah.
[00:16:13] John Craven: Gaywater does a great job on both Instagram and TikTok of being super authentic. Like, you go to their website and then you go to their social media.
[00:16:20] Ray Latif: And let's be clear, what Gay Water?
[00:16:22] John Craven: Gay Water a hard seltzer, but the branding is hilarious and they really just dive into gay culture. So, you know, you go to their TikTok and they're talking about, you know, acronyms and things that the gay community know about. They're just no filter. The founder also is He has a great presence on social media. And he does a lot of the TikToks. And they're really funny. So they know their audience. They're being unapologetic and authentic. And I just love watching their content because it's hilarious. And it's like, did they just say that? Is that OK? Can they say that? But it's like, yeah, they can.
[00:17:02] Ray Latif: That's the thing. You got to push the envelope. Otherwise, everything seems like it's the exact same thing. A lot of the content just appears to be the same content you saw three seconds ago or an hour ago or whenever the last time you were on TikTok or Instagram was. And I think it is used interchangeably. I think some people call it a hard seltzer. I think they describe it as a vodka soda. But actually, it was funny when he was on stage, the founder was on stage during the Brewbound Pitch Slam at Brewbound Live hosted by Ray Latif. Winter 2023, he had said that, I didn't realize this, Gay Water is basically used for vodka soda. Like when people in the gay community talk about vodka sodas, they call it Gay Water.
[00:17:42] John Craven: Yeah. And it was funny because I was watching one of the TikToks and some of the comments, it's like these sassy gay men being like, oh my God, only 90 calories. I'm going to be so skinny for the summer. Like, it's amazing. It's just, I love it.
[00:17:56] Ray Latif: Yeah. All right. I want to switch gears to a very big and well-known brand. Let's have a CPG brand than just a restaurant brand, that is. It's Wendy's. Wendy's does some pretty amazing content on Instagram. Where's the beef, Ray? Obviously. Where's the beef? Now we're talking like pop culture from 1960s. Hades, bro. Come on. Hades, okay. Obviously, Wendy's has a big budget. Obviously, they probably have a huge social media team. But what they don't do is the boring content that you might expect. We were talking about threads and Twitter earlier, and they have this post right here. It says, from Wendy's, this was on Twitter, and they said, we really hope our Twitter account doesn't sue our threads account. And Wendy said, bad news. And then the Threads account said, I'm suing our Threads account. It was just going back and forth between their own accounts. It's pretty funny.
[00:18:49] Jacqui Brugliera: It's probably the same person.
[00:18:51] Mike Schneider: Your knowledge of the Wendy's Instagram is both impressive and frightening, by the way. How'd you find that? I'm just looking at it right now. Do you actually follow them? No, no. He's just like, man, I want a deal on some Wendy's. He goes to the Wendy's Instagram. There's no deals there.
[00:19:06] Ray Latif: And he gets sucked in by the content. I think I ordered a $5 biggie box once, and then this popped up on my feed. What even is that? What is a biggie box?
[00:19:12] Jacqui Brugliera: Oh my god.
[00:19:12] Ray Latif: You guys, Ray is moonlighting as the Wendy's social media admin. Did you just crush a couple Frosties in a... No family bucket of chili. This is after a night out with Ken Sadowski And I needed some drunk food sustenance went to Wendy's and I ended up at Wendy's And I don't know capital girl nearby. We came from the Because everyone's interested now is you get like a junior bacon cheeseburger, you get fries, you get like some chicken nuggets, and you get a soda for five bucks.
[00:19:48] Jacqui Brugliera: Is that after like a 24-inch porterhouse?
[00:19:50] Ray Latif: It wasn't pleasant. No, it wasn't after a steak. It was after a couple of drinks. But here's the last one I'll say about Wendy's. The Spot this here. Honey butter chicken biscuit is one of those things where all the words are delicious. Yes, that's true. Honey butter chicken biscuit. I would like that. I'm going to like that right now.
[00:20:11] John Craven: I have something that's maybe a little bit cooler than Wendy's. I hope so.
[00:20:15] Jacqui Brugliera: Not to throw shade, but. Oh, come on. Throw shade on Wendy's?
[00:20:19] John Craven: Emmie Eats also does a great job on TikTok. Emmie Eats is a better for you ramen brand.
[00:20:26] Jacqui Brugliera: Emmie Eats is the name of the social media account. Emmie's the brand, right?
[00:20:31] John Craven: Yeah. It means the brand, they have Emmy eats and then they also have ramen on the street. So that's their other Tik TOK accounts. They have multiple Tik TOK accounts and it's genius because. When you watch their ramen on the street, a lot of these Tik TOKs have gone viral and the interviewer is actually wearing a package of their ramen and going around like central parks, interviewing people and interviews on the street has been something that's been trending on social media, but they're doing it in a different way. The whole thing about Imi is that they talk about being a ramen that makes you feel good and they're going around asking these like deep questions for random people in Central Park being like what's something that you wish you told your parents or what's something that's like a deep thought about life and these things are going viral which is so cool to see. And in every video is their branding and their packaging because it's on the interviewer. It's just really smart.
[00:21:24] Jacqui Brugliera: I love this.
[00:21:25] Ray Latif: It's good stuff. Ramen on the street. I'm on it. Good stuff. I'm glad we had this conversation. And I want to be clear to folks that not everything is going to work. Not everything is going to resonate with your audience. But hopefully these were some ideas and anecdotes that can, I don't know, sort of stir The Spot for you and your team.
[00:21:45] Jacqui Brugliera: Please, won't you be my neighbor? You sounded like Mr. Rogers. I watched Mr. Rogers a lot when I was growing up.
[00:21:52] Mike Schneider: Great show. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure someone's going to stop on their way home for a $5, what was it called? Biggie box. Biggie box, yeah.
[00:22:00] Ray Latif: If only. It's going to be Ray. You know what? I would actually go back and get a biggie box 100% of the time. I'd probably do it probably three or four times a week if Incorporated into the biggie box was Cognizant. Cognizant needs to be in the chicken nuggets. It needs to be in the burger. It needs to be in the fries. It needs to be in the Coke. Why not the water, Ray? If you're going to get a biggie box, why would you get water? You definitely need a Coke.
[00:22:26] Mike Schneider: Fair enough.
[00:22:27] Ray Latif: Fountain Coke, fountain soda. That's like hand in hand with junk food. Not to call Wendy's junk food. Anyway, I want to thank our presenting sponsor for this episode, Cognizant. Cognizant is a clinically tested nootropic ingredient. It delivers a patented form of citricoline to supply your brain and those of your consumers with the energy it needs to stay sharp. Learn more at cognizant.com. That's C-O-G-N-I-Z-I-N.com.
[00:22:54] Jacqui Brugliera: And if it's not clear, we didn't have any before the show.
[00:22:56] Ray Latif: Yeah, I mean, what's the opposite of Cognizant? You guys had some Whistlepig. We did. That's what we had before the show.
[00:23:02] Mike Schneider: That's kind of the opposite of Cognizant.
[00:23:03] Ray Latif: Yeah. John and Mike were sipping on some Whistlepig. Now, Whistlepig is a farm distillery that makes some award-winning spirits, in particular rye whiskey. But the bottle I'm holding in my hand... Because why was Mike drinking Whistlepig? because the bottle i'm holding in my hand is a non-alcoholic cocktail unbelievable the folks at whistle pig made specifically for dry january this is their dank and dry old-fashioned cocktail it is made with whistle pig piggyback 100% rye non-whiskey barrel-aged maple syrup and old-fashioned cannabis terpenes. It contains 0% THC and less than 0.5% alcohol by volume. It comes in a frosted 750ml bottle, not too dissimilar from whistlepig bottles that actually have booze in them. They actually sent this to me with some wood chips that you're supposed to smoke this cocktail with, but I think because we're in the studio, we should probably not do that right now. Yeah, let's not do that. I did bring some fire just in case. I'm gonna have one more sip of this. I already tried it. John Craven, give us your thoughts as a cocktail and spirits expert here. Okay, you want more. Clearly you like it. Hey Mikey, he likes it. 70s reference.
[00:24:19] Mike Schneider: Just need a second to look here.
[00:24:22] Jacqui Brugliera: I never heard that one before, by the way, Ray.
[00:24:24] Ray Latif: That's a life cereal commercial. I mean, this tastes pretty good. The amount of cannabis aroma is kind of overwhelming.
[00:24:33] Mike Schneider: Yeah, it's definitely got the cannabis flavor and aroma to it. I think my biggest issue with these still is just that, you know, there's like that lack of burn and sort of maybe depth to these.
[00:24:49] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, the flavors there. It tastes like whiskey. Well, I don't know if it tastes like whiskey. There's definitely like a remnant at least or an essence of Whistlepig there. I mean, this isn't the first time we've seen a company lean into terpenes to try to get to cocktail flavor. We've seen that, you know, we've seen some brands come and go who have tried to do that and with some interesting ideas that I think tasted better than this. But these guys have, I guess, the marketing might and also this is an experiment for them too. They don't have to worry about whether this succeeds or not.
[00:25:22] Mike Schneider: Well, this is the second year that they're doing this, I think, right? So I guess it must have worked a little bit.
[00:25:28] Ray Latif: On some level, sure. I would love to see them do this with whistlepig rye, like actual whistlepig rye. Want to just pour some in? Yeah, I could do that, actually, and see how it is.
[00:25:40] Mike Schneider: 50-50 mix.
[00:25:41] John Craven: Yeah, do they usually produce like mixed cocktails, packaged mixed cocktails with their alcohol?
[00:25:47] Mike Schneider: No.
[00:25:47] John Craven: So this is like completely new.
[00:25:49] Mike Schneider: They did an RTD line. They may have done, I don't recall. They did a canned RTD line, I'm pretty sure.
[00:25:54] Ray Latif: Okay. Well, I haven't seen it in a while, so maybe they killed that off. But maybe I'll squeeze some of this Blazin' Honey in there to get some more spice involved.
[00:26:03] Mike Schneider: I'd rather just get a nice fresh bottle of Boss Hog from Whistle Bake. Okay. Yeah, if they're listening.
[00:26:09] Ray Latif: They may be listening, but they might be pissed off at us at this point. Pissed off at you. Do not associate the comments of Cray with me, please. We're fans. I'm holding in my hand a bottle of this Blazin' Honey. It sounds, or it's spelled exactly like I said it, from a company called Old Stiles. Oh, Old Stiles. O-L-S-T-I-L-E-S.
[00:26:30] Jacqui Brugliera: They've got a line Hot Honey and also a line Hot Honey rubs. Nice.
[00:26:34] Ray Latif: This is their chili and garlic variety, which looks amazing. Hot Honey will always be relevant. I feel like... Sure, it's good. Sweet heat rules. When Mike's came out, Mike's Hot Honey came out, I feel like people were like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can always use this. It never really was it, whoops. It was never really like a fatty, trendy kind of thing. It's just, it's here to stay. I love it.
[00:26:55] John Craven: I had sauce, which is like marinara sauce for my pasta last night, and it was a hot arrabbiata. So it's like The Hot Honey infused with the marinara, and it was actually really good. That stuff is so good.
[00:27:10] Ray Latif: Yeah.
[00:27:10] Jacqui Brugliera: What's, how do you spell it? S-A-U-S? S-A-U-Z.
[00:27:13] Mike Schneider: S-A-U-Z.
[00:27:13] Jacqui Brugliera: They have also- We have a bunch of them here. They have a white sauce as well. That stuff is really good.
[00:27:20] John Craven: Yeah, it's quality.
[00:27:21] Mike Schneider: This stuff basically tastes like a chili crisp meets a Hot Honey. It's pretty interesting. Highly recommend you try this.
[00:27:29] Ray Latif: Old styles.
[00:27:29] Mike Schneider: I got a spoon over here.
[00:27:31] Ray Latif: So I got a spoon. All right. Well, while Mike is pouring this out into his spoon, Jackie, anything you want to highlight over there in the office? We know what we call the West Coast branch.
[00:27:40] John Craven: We got a line of crunch-baked snack mixes called Marimix, M-A-R-I-M-I-X. We've definitely seen some more savory snack mixes in the mix coming into the office. This one's sweet chili sesame, and then this one's cinnamon churro. There's some sweet, there's some savory, got all the crunch. Definitely better for you than, say, a Chex mix, which is good to see. And some interesting flavors that you might not get in a traditional, you know, trail mix.
[00:28:12] Jacqui Brugliera: That stuff's tasty. I reached out to, they're not super active on the Gram yet. I made a reel of some of their stuff and also tried to reach them there, but would definitely love to talk to that brand a bit and see what the story is behind it, because it's got some intrigue.
[00:28:29] John Craven: Yeah, like this one has like ginger, gochujang, it has some quinoa for like added benefits. It's just trying to hit a lot of different notes as far as function and health as well.
[00:28:42] Ray Latif: Definitely feels like we're seeing people look at that old traditional ChexMix space and improve upon it. Seems like people are seeing that white space and perhaps this will be The Year of Better-For-You. Oh man, Hot Honey. Oh man. It's hot. It's good. Don't belch on the podcast. I'm not gonna belch, don't worry. Okay. Wait, heat makes you belch? Sometimes.
[00:29:07] Jacqui Brugliera: Not me.
[00:29:07] Mike Schneider: Or hiccup. It's all that Wendy's way, right?
[00:29:10] Jacqui Brugliera: I can't even say it, trolling right? Speaking of heat, In my hand, I hold, and the thing I've been doing my influencer hands with, I'll show here, is the latest from Hot Pot Queen, which is extra spicy prickly pepper chili crisp. Now, if you know Hot Pot Queen, you know that their chili crisp is already extra spicy. I mean, it hits. So I'm gonna, I wanna try this. You're just gonna eat raw sauce? Yeah, I'm gonna go for it. You want some too?
[00:29:39] Mike Schneider: I think I'm good for now.
[00:29:41] John Craven: Okay. Is it super spicy?
[00:29:42] Jacqui Brugliera: Don't belch. It is an ever-incrementing burn and it is really nice. Well done, your highness. This is phenomenal. These are Mike's dying words here. It's super spicy.
[00:29:55] John Craven: So it's a nice burn, not like you're dying.
[00:29:56] Jacqui Brugliera: It's a great burn. It's still burning though. I mean, I had the smallest taste of it. It's awesome.
[00:30:02] Ray Latif: Did you just do a clean jerk where it's like, oh, the burn, the burn feels so good. I got some gains Speak for yourself, bro.
[00:30:16] Mike Schneider: We just get the game.
[00:30:16] Ray Latif: That's what happens at Wendy's No gains there come on. I'm never gonna live this down That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNET.com, Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cracci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is BevNetTasteRadio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
[00:31:15] The Spot: you
