[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello, friends, and thanks for tuning in to Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. I'm Ray Latif, the editor and producer of Taste Radio, and with my co-host for this episode, John Craven, Jacqui Brugliera, and Mike Schneider. This episode features an interview with five entrepreneurs, including the founders Little Spoon, Four Sigmatic, and O2. We're drawing upon their extensive experience, networks, and resources to support emerging brands via a new venture called CPG Fast Track. Welcome back. Mike, John, who was out last week? John. Yes. Yeah. How are you doing? Oh, all right. Thanks for asking. Good to have you back. You know, I mean, I think this is the first time the four of us have been together in a room for at least three weeks, I want to say. Something like that.
[00:01:00] John Craven: Minus Jackie.
[00:01:03] Ray Latif: By room, I mean a virtual room in which we all exist. Yes. Jackie, I saw some really amazing photos on your Instagram page, account, whatever you want to call it. Where were you traveling?
[00:01:16] Jacqui Brugliera: I was in Yosemite and then I was in Mammoth campervanning, roaming around and just plopping wherever seemed right. Okay. But yeah, it was a lot of fun.
[00:01:27] Ray Latif: The Northern Lights or what would you call that?
[00:01:30] Jacqui Brugliera: The Milky Way.
[00:01:31] Ray Latif: The Milky Way. Okay. It was in the Northern Lights, but you saw, I saw a beautiful, beautiful picture of the Milky Way. Where was that at Yosemite?
[00:01:37] Jacqui Brugliera: That was actually at some hot springs outside of Mammoth. So you can disperse, there's dispersed camping and you can camp anywhere and there's just no light pollution. And you go out and you can see the full Milky Way and some shooting stars. It's pretty wild. It's very surreal.
[00:01:51] Ray Latif: It's spectacular. Yeah, I've never seen the Milky Way like that. It was amazing. Did you have any Nomad Snacks, beverages while you were camping?
[00:01:58] Jacqui Brugliera: Yes. Oh, my goodness. I was actually talking about this a little bit on Community Call, but the Yosemite Village rolled out the red carpet, not pulled it away. If you listen to the podcast, you'll understand why I said that.
[00:02:10] Ray Latif: That's the BevNET & Nosh Community Call podcast on your listening platform of choice. Yeah.
[00:02:15] Jacqui Brugliera: And when I walked into the store, there just happened to be every single CPG product that you can think of. So there was Fish Wife, Heyday, Mila, you name it, it was there.
[00:02:29] Ray Latif: Wait, what store was this? Was this like an air one? This was a special pop-up that they had. They knew Jackie was coming, so they rolled out the red carpet.
[00:02:39] Jacqui Brugliera: What are you talking about? One day only, you know? But no, it seemed like it's the village store. So it's the main, like, welcome center store that everyone goes to. I don't know if the influence of a lot of people from San Francisco coming to visit, you know, might have a say in what products they're carrying, but I was impressed. And my campsite was stocked. I will say that.
[00:03:02] Ray Latif: Okay.
[00:03:02] Jacqui Brugliera: Bethnet Jackie's coming?
[00:03:03] SPEAKER_??: What?
[00:03:04] Ray Latif: Pop up instantly. And once again, what's the name of the town or place you visited?
[00:03:08] Jacqui Brugliera: It was Yosemite. It was just Yosemite? It was the national park and it was the welcome center and the store right there.
[00:03:14] Ray Latif: Wow. Okay.
[00:03:15] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah. I know.
[00:03:16] Ray Latif: Good to know. I've never had a burning desire to go to Yosemite, but now I do just because of that village store that they have.
[00:03:22] Jacqui Brugliera: I'm glad this made you want to go.
[00:03:24] Ray Latif: Ray's like forget the Milky Way. I'm gonna go to the store Ray goes into the visitor centers like we're gonna get some nice tapas around here You guys make me seem like I'm such a hottie toddy box felt around here There's dirt in my campsite On the on the glamping front. I just camping in general doesn't really appeal to me And you were like why do you guys have this image of me? I'm sure I've been camping way more than you Yes, if you've been once you've been I do like camping because I personally like I mean if nothing else the fun of cooking with fire Mm-hmm, so you're around your own toilet paper. Anyway, Jackie could hate it canning right in the can. I
[00:04:20] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, that's pretty much what happened. That and then, yeah, camping over fire. I don't know something so primal about it. You know, I love it.
[00:04:28] Ray Latif: For sure. For sure. Actually, we're going to get to primal later in the show. I saw a video on Instagram of a guy making his own or warming up his own beans. And it was interesting. He had his little metal cup and then he put all the beans into the cup and then he turned the can into a little. It's amazing what you can do, isn't it? Kerosene or whatever. Can wait. All right.
[00:04:50] Mike Schneider: Everyone's making fun of the cooking.
[00:04:51] Ray Latif: All right, let's move on. Okay. Good news for people who love avocados. Today, the date of this recording, which is July 31st is national avocados day. I know John loves when we talk about holidays.
[00:05:07] John Craven: Yeah.
[00:05:07] Ray Latif: Very random things like marketing holidays. Yes, but avocados from Mexico, which is an actual name of a brand has partnered with poppy. Everyone knows poppy, the brand of Better Sour you sodas to create a pop guac. Is this a beverage? No, it's a recipe. And they sent me a little box here, avocados from Mexico and poppy. And in it are three cans of poppy. And specifically it is their ginger lime variety. And it has three avocados in here as well. Each one with a sticker that says avocados from Mexico. And apparently what you're supposed to do- Put a straw in the avocado? No, you're supposed to make guacamole and then put a dash of this ginger lime In your guacamole and I mean, apparently it tastes amazing. So we're gonna try this. I'm not, I didn't make guacamole. I bought some guacamole actually from Trader Joe's. That's a good call. Individual little cups that Mike, John and I will have. Yes.
[00:06:11] Jacqui Brugliera: I can see just a splash working because, you know, you put a little bit of lime juice, but it's just kind of a stretch.
[00:06:19] Ray Latif: I guess so. And good news, John brought tortilla chips. I did. We also need like a disclaimer before we do this.
[00:06:25] John Craven: Why is that?
[00:06:26] Ray Latif: Because this, no offense to Trader Joe's, because I know you'll probably throw a chair at me if I make fun of Trader Joe's, but this guacamole, it's a little, I mean, it's these Little Spoon of like, I mean, One of my kids buys these and yeah, they're Kelly lunch, but what are you talking about? They're kind of it's like a pre-made little like single-serve guac. This is Trader Joe's avocados number guacamole to go Mm-hmm. So what is the play on what Ray? I don't know. I have a God rose number. Oh, yeah. Well this also I mean, it's got it's got avocado distilled vinegar water jalapeno salt onion powder and garlic batter Yeah clean ingredients Mean, that's fine. I'm just saying it's like, you know, it doesn't it's not gonna taste like what they want you to make well No, I appreciate the fact that it's only it doesn't have any tomatoes or anything else like that in there because it's If we had used these avocados that they sent us we wouldn't have any of that other stuff So and I did bring just side shout out here some el nacho Tortilla chips. Yeah, this is a local Boston area company and we're gonna try it with their El Diablo Spicy Chips. Okay, anyone want a BevNET hand sanitizer? No.
[00:07:41] Jacqui Brugliera: How are you going to fit? Did you spill it? I mean, a little. The guacamole is packed to the brim in there. I know.
[00:07:47] Ray Latif: It's packed to the brim. I have not washed my hands since I was in JFK Airport yesterday. So, those are just... I don't want to think about that. Are you trying to be an Olympic triathlete? No, what I'm going to do is I'm going to create like a shark-like mechanism here where... You saw that, right, Jackie? Yeah. Okay. Here we go. The Olympic athlete's like, you know... So every once in a while I like to get a little e.coli anyway, you know the bathroom All right, so here's I don't know if we're gonna do any kind of close-up here. Here's the guacamole I made a Little Spoon With the tortilla chip so I can pour some of the ginger lime in here. Oh, that's too much Jesus you might need to open a new pack now Well, I'm going to try it as is. OK, you want to try some? Yeah, why not? Sure.
[00:08:32] Jacqui Brugliera: Maybe you should take a swig of the poppy and then take a bite of the guacamole.
[00:08:36] Ray Latif: Or maybe I'll just take a swig of the El Nacho. Jackie's onto something here. These El Nacho Tortilla Chips are... Or just take a shot of it. They're legit phenomenal. Oh, my God, are these good. But it might be because of the poppy and avocados. I'm eating them by themselves. This one's the heat. Yeah, chilly and lime. Jackie's just like, what the hell is going on over there?
[00:08:54] Jacqui Brugliera: Taking shots of poppy out of a guacamole bowl. All right. These are amazing. I mean... How's the combo? Good. Sure. Yeah? It works?
[00:09:03] Ray Latif: I mean, it's... non-offensive. I feel like I just wasted a little poppy that otherwise I'd drink. Well, non-offensive could also mean DNS. Is it DNS worthy? Take these away from me.
[00:09:18] Jacqui Brugliera: Would you go out of your way to do this? Make this recipe?
[00:09:22] Ray Latif: No, this was, it's very simple, Jackie. You pour a little bit of ginger, lime, and some guacamole. It's not much of a recipe. Anywho, no matter what you think of it, I think this is delicious. I think it's a combination of the poppy the avocados. I hope these avocados These are amazing chips yeah, they're really good, and if you like those mr. New and the mist mango Interesting name yes, and to clarify Mike these are L. Nacho L. Nacho ideas L. Diablo. Yeah, sorry Alpine Tortilla Company of Waltham, Massachusetts. The El Diablo variety of El Nacho is amazeballs. Try these. Yes, please. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Avocados from Mexico. Thank you so much, Poppy. And we'll agree with John in that the ginger lime variety of Poppy is pretty damn good.
[00:10:17] Mike Schneider: Yeah, that's also really good.
[00:10:18] Ray Latif: Yeah, that's on that front for sure. I mean, Poppy is just DNS in general. They're doing great on most of their flavors. Definitely are do we have any avocado people on the Nosh notables list. I don't think so The king pin of guacamole would be is the closest we have is mr. Potato head There's no mr. Potato head on the Nosh notables list no it's not No. Well, the Notch Notables list, the 2024 edition, is out. Oh, these are legit too. Yes. Oh, wow. Are we still on the El Nachos? Yeah. These are the Ms. Mango. Sorry, you guys. I just couldn't help it. All right. Well, once again, we have, or Nosh more specifically, has named its class of 2024 Nosh Notables, which in essence are some of the most influential movers and shakers in the food industry that at least the Nosh team has defined as such. Some of them, yeah. Some of them, 24 of them. 24 indeed. The list includes a bunch of folks that might be familiar to you, including one of my favorite people in this industry, Asha Abolasia, who is the founder and CEO of Mason Dixie Foods. John Foraker, kind of a no-brainer on this list for sure, co-founder and CEO of Once Upon a Farm. We've got folks like Steve Wangler, who is the senior vice president of sales for Better Sour, the upstart brand of Better Sour You sour candy. Our dear friend Ryan Luendin's on the list. Ryan Luendin, who is a partner with GNewsie Luendin. Of course. They're playful on there saying, you know, he's your one phone call. I think that is just because he knows so much about the industry. If you, if you need to make a phone call, you need something to know something, call Ryan. Yeah. What Mike is referring to is the fact that this list was made up such that it looked like a yearbook from the 1980s and everyone who was on the list.
[00:12:20] Mike Schneider: Everyone's got a playful title. Right.
[00:12:21] Ray Latif: Everyone who's on the list has kind of a playful title. So for example, hottest nerd in the freezer. Dionne Laszlo-Baker, who's the founder and CEO of DB's Organics. I think she'll love that.
[00:12:32] John Craven: Yeah.
[00:12:33] Ray Latif: Yeah. As Mike described, most likely to be your one phone call Ryan Luendin. Most likely to succeed again, Peter Rahal, who was the founder of RX Bar and coming out with a new protein bar called David. Excited to see that to come up to market. And most likely to ignore conventional thinking around a crowded category, Pete Maldonado and Rashida Ali, the co-CEOs of Chomps. This is a fantastic list. If you want to find out exactly who's on the list beyond the names that we just mentioned, head to Nosh.com. Most likely to not go camping, Ray Latif.
[00:13:07] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, we should do our own internal BevNET superlatives.
[00:13:11] Ray Latif: I think my most likely reference in high school was most likely to win the F1 championship at age 19. Interesting.
[00:13:21] Jacqui Brugliera: So specific.
[00:13:21] Ray Latif: Mine was most likely to not be on a most likely list. Oh, okay. Any honorable mentions? Uh, how do you mean? How about like most likely to throw a killer party and you give it to like Eliza Rizvi of Peepal People and Umayma Sharwani of Paro and honorable mention, honorable mention to Kartik Das for just bringing the whole community together. That was, that looked like a lot of fun. I'm sorry. I missed that party. What party was that? The Summer Fancy Foods Party, where they gathered the South Asian foods community together and started a movement, basically. Yeah. I would happily refer to those folks as honorable mentions. I mean, for sure. Yeah. I think, you know, there's a ton of people in the food industry who are doing amazing things, doing really special things, be it as a founder, as a retailer, as an investor. I sincerely doubt that not being on this list would make them any less special. But, you know, the 24 folks on this list really do, I think, represent the people that are making the biggest waves in food right now. And so our team at Nosh, I think, did an amazing job putting this together. And I highly encourage everyone to take a look.
[00:14:34] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah. And shout out to the community because we did take nominations for this. So a lot of the people on this list, they were nominated. There was a lot of nice things said about these people, which is also featured in the Nosh Notables, but great to like highlight those that are making a difference. And some that we didn't even know about that came through the nomination process.
[00:14:55] Ray Latif: Like who? I'm putting Jackie on the spot, I'm sorry. Jeez, guy. Yeah, but isn't it pronounced no tables? Like, you know, the way like a M2D at Eleven Madison would respond if you walked in without a reservation, no tables. I would never ever walk into such an establishment without a reservation. What am I, classless, uncultured swine? Jackie, come on.
[00:15:26] Jacqui Brugliera: Again, this is why you don't like camping.
[00:15:31] Ray Latif: A theme throughout this episode, no doubt. All right. One person I don't recall seeing on the list, but is an incredible person nonetheless, is Melissa Ficina, who is the co-founder and managing partner of City Capital. City Capital, S-I-D-D-H-I. Melissa is someone who has been on this show. She's also joined us as a co-host for our Elevator Talk series, a fantastic person. Thanks, Melissa. Big news for Citi. They just announced that they are deploying a new $135 million fund 2 for growth stage investments. This is great news for the industry. Citi is a current investor in well-known brands, including Magic Spoon. Momofuku, Mid-Day Squares, Ourobora, Liberation Labs, and Plantable. So this new fund continues upon, or as described by the story on Nosh, marks the firm's shift from startup to growth stage equity investments and a broadening beyond food and beverage. According to the article check sizes for first investments from fund to will range anywhere between three million and twelve point five million But on average total between five and ten million dollars love sizable love that this was announced love that City is continuing to invest in emerging well growth stage brands and ones that I'm excited to see continue to scale and Yeah, I mean, certainly says where they feel like the opportunity lies right now. And I think this is also pretty typical of, you know, companies or funds, whatever, that start out investing in early stage, eventually kind of like, I don't know, earn their cred a little bit and go for brands that are really at that kind of growth stage. So should be interesting to see who they get behind. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they're going to continue to reinvest or invest in the brands they're already a part of or they already own equity in. But yeah, excited to see which brands they are targeting on the market that are not part of their portfolio and hopefully will become at some point. It's good to see this news in a climate where, you know, people have been unsure about fundraising. 135 million, you know, average $5 million check. That's 27 checks. So that's, you know, 27 businesses that are potentially going to get some funding. I mean, obviously that's not going to be the exact check size for everybody, but it just represents a great opportunity for CPG because in the article, they do say they're going to expand beyond food and beverage as well. So. Yeah. And this news comes, I want to say about six months from the news that BFG Partners, which is based in Boulder in Los Angeles, or has offices in Boulder in Los Angeles, activated its third fund, which is a $125 million fund to back healthy consumer products. They're an investor in Olipop, Colipower and some other amazing brands. So I feel like this kind of indicates, hopefully, that The checkbooks are opening up once again from these private equity firms, from these venture capital firms, and just a continuation upon that. So yeah, excited to see where this all goes. Now, one person I don't expect to see or bump into at my local Walgreens is John Craven. That's not an indictment of you or Walgreens, John, but you got a big box with the Walgreens logo right by your side here. What is going on here? Well, Ray, I did not go to Walgreens to get this. They sent this to us. And I know you love private label stuff, so... What? I mean, you're always trying to save that money. He said pirate label. Those reservations at Eleven Madison are costly, so you've got to get the private label. But this is their, I guess... I don't know how they described it. Upgraded private label. They call it nice with an exclamation point. Okay. See, see, it already works. So we got some, uh, if you want to try any sesame sticks, banana chips, blueberry pie snack mix. That sounds right up your alley. Um, this giant, what's that powder? No, it's not powder. And also Ray always looking for fiber in his diet. So of course we got, we got the quick oats, veggie sticks. Oh, and yogurt covered pretzels. So, you know, we've talked a lot about Private Label and its impact on the landscape of emerging brands, and this seemed like one that was worth bringing for a variety of reasons. Yeah, it is a nice-looking package. It still looks like Private Label.
[00:20:20] John Craven: I mean, it does, and that's sort of, you know, the point, I think.
[00:20:24] Ray Latif: I mean, this looks sort of like, you know, low-key, safe, There's no like giant Walgreens logo on it screaming store brand, but it's a store brand. So it seems like one of those things where they've upgraded the store brand, but they're not really at the level of, you know, having the brand appeal of. Right. and independent CPG company that's really gone out and, you know, stylized it. I mean, obviously when you take a look at a new brand, it's not going to be iconic from the get-go. It's not, like for me, when I think of great private label, I'm like 365. That's the one I love. That's the Whole Foods one. The Whole Foods 365 label. I trust that one. I think it's high quality. And so you look at this and you go, oh, it could, maybe it could be that, but we just don't know yet. And that's a good point. I think, you know, Whole Foods, like the brand of Whole Foods itself sort of ties nicely to those products, whereas like the brand of Walgreens, you're not thinking, man, that's like a place that... has high quality snacks, right? So like, you know, they are sort of taking some of their food aisles under their own, you know, control, if you will, by having a brand that, I don't know, looks credible, looks value. But most of these products are also a sort of, I guess what I would call just, Staple maybe commodity type things too, you know They're not that's what you trust Walgreens for is like you trust Walgreens for medicine and you know vaccines and things like that and and staples and Products that you need grab-and-go convenience sort of thing, you know, so get yourself some non-gmo veggies. Yeah, why not?
[00:22:03] Jacqui Brugliera: I wouldn't think of going to Walgreens to like get my oats and I think maybe this shows that they're just investing more in CPG within their stores, too, which could open up an opportunity for brands just building upon the set. But yeah, I wouldn't go there for my oats, but I guess it's convenient.
[00:22:20] Ray Latif: OK, this label is really nice, though. It's like for a veggie stick. It's, you know, just potato starch, dehydrated potatoes, corn starch, salt, spinach powder, tomato powder, a little sugar, red beet powder. Turmeric, sunflower, safflower oil, sea salt. Not terrible for a veggie stick. No, and to be clear, this private label nice brand, N-I-C-E with an exclamation point, has been around. I mean, Walgreens has had this for some time. They just recently expanded their portfolio of private label products. They have over 150 of them. And all of them, according to an article I'm reading, are formulated without artificial flavors, sweeteners, synthetic dyes, or high fructose corn syrup. So clearly, they are following trends in that they have consumers who are avoiding all the junk that they perhaps had seen prior in some of these products. So, you know, things like yogurt-covered pretzels, okay, maybe they would have had these in the past. But yeah, for sure, oats, no, I think, you know, banana crisps, maybe. But, you know, just the expansion of this, I think also follows... Blueberry pie snack mix, don't forget. But it also follows what we've been seeing from some of their rivals like CVS. CVS introduced a new line of private label snacks under a brand called Whale Market that happened in May. And of course, we saw Walmart do this. in April when they launched their Better Goods private label brand, which we talked about in a previous episode. I love the look of that brand, have not tried any of their products yet, but Better Goods to me actually looks like a real brand. Whereas these just look like an extension, I think, of Walgreens. I think the name is kind of genius in that when I read a label, one of the first things that comes to mind when I like it is, Oh, nice. Okay, well, it's better than what they previously had like, I don't know 15 years ago. They didn't have a nice brand Everything was wall dash this so it's like instead of robot us in like the private label version was like Walt Hudson You know, and it was yum. Let me some wall tosses Walt Hudson was the good stuff right there a little of that on your ice cream. No Podcast was wall radio Jeez Okay. Well, thank you for bringing all these snacks. I think you can put them back in the box I think you're gonna keep a few of those right? Come on. I'll keep these veggies. Yeah Describing some really I was the ingredients. Yeah yogurt cover pretzels. Can I have some of your tips up? What do you got there? Yeah, how could I I mean this is like, you know, look at how he's As if I'm gonna grab run across the table. Yeah, so I mean we we got not one but two new tip-top flavors this week Can I can I hold on hold on let me talk about first? first tables have turned first is the naked and famous which is a Mezcal based cocktail that would make me I've got I've got Ray's favorite here the Cosmopolitan yes me and SJP I mean, that's right. I mean, here, it's for you. Thank you. Enjoy. All right. But yeah, they just keep cranking out skus. They made a Naked and Famous? That's awesome. What's in a Naked and Famous again? Mezcal, lime, alpine liqueur. I like that. That's good. I mean, we'll call that green chartreuse normally, but aperitivo bitter. So this is interesting because there is a chartreuse shortage. I'm glad I got that on the first time. So I wonder how they produced this alpine liqueur. Well, I'm sure that it's there. Well, who knows what's their take on green chartreuse? It's their take, obviously, because they're not calling it green chartreuse. Can I see that one? And I guess there's, you know, aperitivo bitters. I think there's normally Aperol in a naked and famous. I mean, everything Tip Top makes knocks it out of the park. I wouldn't be surprised if this is phenomenal, even if they are making or using their own version of chartreuse. And as they mention on the label, it's never too sweet and always balanced. Never too sweet is key. If you want a cocktail, got to be never too sweet. And I think that's why Tip Top keeps knocking it out of the park, because some of the stuff that we keep seeing come out continues to be these sugar bombs. And I don't think it's clear at this point that people don't want sugar bombs in their cocktails or as cocktails. Naked and famous typically the way that I've made it in the past and I bought yellow chartreuse just for this is this yellow chartreuse Mescal Aperol yellow chartreuse and a fresh lime squeeze someone who's sober curious you bought a bottle of yellow chartreuse Back in the day when I when I was really into naked So I bought a bottle of yellow chartreuse, which I also said I would give to Jackie except that she kind of pushed the alka way, too Oh, really? Yeah for the for the cannabis
[00:27:08] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, I drink more cannabis now. I still drink plenty of alcohol.
[00:27:12] Ray Latif: I'll still give you the chartreuse if you want it, Jackie.
[00:27:15] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, I'm down for some chartreuse.
[00:27:17] Ray Latif: Okay. All right. Yeah. As I was talking about sugar bombs and cocktails, Jackie, you were going to say something.
[00:27:22] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we don't like sugar bombs, but I think there's still a lot of people that drink, you know, buzz balls and other, maybe sweeter canned or packaged cocktails. I don't know.
[00:27:36] Ray Latif: Maybe I have a, what do they call those? Like a super pellet. So like anything that's overly sweet or salty is just overwhelming. In the mocktail space, a lot of them are, you know, have high sugar. A lot of the, you know, mocktails. That are branded specifically as mocktail seem to be more sugar for than the ones that are Quote non-alcoholic tales like the guillas and the despois of the world I would definitely say that people still like sugary cocktails so okay. It's just not just a cup of tea. That's fine We just live in a bubble Yeah, okay, well I'm gonna shout out a couple non-alcoholic Brands that are not sugar bombs like Lapo's Negroni. I had one of those the other day. I was fantastic. Oh Apostrophe s you know and of course I can never pronounce the name st. Agri stis you got it. Okay, st. Agri stis with their phony Negroni Those are those are two good examples of Non-alcoholic products that are not sugar bombs and do really well st. Agri stis is a little sugary but not Not to like a soda-like effect. No, but I think it has a hundred something calories in it, which is mostly as a result of the sugar in it. Okay. But I think that's also one of the unique things about the whole RTD-NA set, which is that they have nutrition facts panels, whereas, you know, this has nothing. The Tip Top you're holding. So you would look at that and say, wow, that has a hundred something calories, but this it's like, uh, Better Sour not know yeah, maybe sometimes when you're consuming alcohol at least I'm not saying that this is high-calorie, but it is true of like you know most people are not like man You know this type of wine as this much calories versus beer verse like I'm poisoning myself anyway might as well go all-in You know there are some wines out there that are starting to put calorie counts And I'm not sure about sugar counts, but calorie counts on their bottles because people are looking for lower calorie wine for sure Yeah, I want to talk about some products, but Jackie. I'm sure you know beyond the glamping a good ending fan San Diego products, okay
[00:29:54] Jacqui Brugliera: This one the pat like don't mind the packaging.
[00:29:57] Ray Latif: No, you have a Primal Jackie ripped into this bag so that she could put her whole face in it watch. Oh my god. Look at what?
[00:30:09] Jacqui Brugliera: She went full feedback on this It's that good. It's that good.
[00:30:14] Ray Latif: What is this? That is a giant bag. Oh
[00:30:16] Jacqui Brugliera: It's a giant bag and it's almost done. So I bought it last night and I haven't stopped eating it.
[00:30:22] Ray Latif: We have to say the name of the brand here.
[00:30:23] Jacqui Brugliera: I don't want to even say what it is yet. The Anticipation. This is Nomad Snacks and this is a local San Diego brand. They make popcorn and this is ramen. They're ramen popcorn and they also have chimichurri and this is just delicious. I think the only thing that would take it next level is if they collab with snoods and had like some ramen thrown in there. But this is so good. They really hit the nail on the head with the flavor. And I really like the packaging. The packaging is what stood out for me.
[00:30:54] Ray Latif: Are you listening? I want some chimichurri popcorn. We need to get some Nomad in the Newton office, please. You know what? I DMed him. I see the packaging and I see the flavor. I am expecting some big things for that brand. That looks great. Ramen flavor. Everyone knows what ramen is. I'm sure people would love to try ramen popcorn. I think that that has some serious, serious legs.
[00:31:20] Jacqui Brugliera: And it looks like they just recently launched based on their Instagram.
[00:31:23] Ray Latif: So okay.
[00:31:24] Jacqui Brugliera: Found them in lazy acres and hoping that they grow and they can get their way over to you.
[00:31:29] Ray Latif: Care package from Jackie coming soon.
[00:31:33] Jacqui Brugliera: Yes.
[00:31:33] Ray Latif: Okay, good. Thanks.
[00:31:35] Jacqui Brugliera: And then I also have another San Diego brand. This one is like hyper local with their messaging and their marketing. It's called the San Diego bar. And this is the Chula Vista Chile, which is an area of San Diego. So all of their different bars are named after like a neighborhood.
[00:31:52] John Craven: Are they flavored after the neighborhood?
[00:31:56] Jacqui Brugliera: Yes, they just captured the air of the neighborhood and just infused it.
[00:32:01] Ray Latif: Stereotypical things from each each part of the garage. Happy hour flavor. Yeah.
[00:32:05] Jacqui Brugliera: Yeah. Well, this one makes sense. Chula Vista.
[00:32:08] Ray Latif: Chula Vista is like garbage can of ceviche. Can we keep going, please?
[00:32:13] Jacqui Brugliera: but Chula Vista is like known to be predominantly like Latin and this is a Chile infused bar. It's really good. It has a little bit of kick. Their main thing is that they also only have six ingredients. So just really simple, clean, plant-based bars. And they're cold pressed. So everything is intact.
[00:32:37] Ray Latif: Nice. I imagine they will eventually evolve the branding just to call it SD bar or something else. So it's not to be so specific.
[00:32:44] Jacqui Brugliera: They already did on Instagram.
[00:32:46] Ray Latif: Oh, did, okay. Did you say that?
[00:32:47] Jacqui Brugliera: No, no, I just, I just invent that.
[00:32:52] Ray Latif: Oh, can you see this? I should get a check. All right. I want to talk about something I saw on the cooler. Now we have, I don't know, at least two dozen, maybe three dozen brands in our cooler out front. And so I mean, that's probably an under count there. Okay. Well, uh, there's a lot of brands in our cooler and this one really caught my eye. Taika. Taika is a maker of canned lattes. They typically, or do they all have adaptogens in them? I believe they do. I think so. And they're leaning in on the matcha, it seems right now.
[00:33:26] John Craven: Yes.
[00:33:27] Ray Latif: So this is their strawberry matcha latte variety. It's made with adaptogens and macadamia milk. It contains zero sugar. There's an asterisk after the zero sugar. I believe that's because it includes a different kind of sugar or sugar alternative, which is erythritol. In this case, I'm going to try this. Ray's going in, cracking it open. That is fantastic. Wow. No shock. That is really good. No shock. I honestly was expecting sort of a, I don't know, I don't want to say this in a negative way, sort of a fake kind of sugar taste. But no, this is really, really good. It's 80 calories per eight ounce can. Feel inspired, not wired is the tagline. And Taika, if you recall from four years ago, was that brand that had the number on the front of the can where you would text them and they would text you back. I thought you were supposed to call it. But now it's a very small part of their can. It's not as much part of their branding, but you can still text them. 415-212-7711. At least you didn't send a fax. Tell them Taste Radio sent you. Yeah, right. Fantastic. Good job, Taika. I should have faxed it. You should have what? I should have faxed the number. Right? Ray doesn't even know what a fax is. I'm trying to... Pretend that he doesn't. Yeah. It's okay. Exactly. All right, more Gorilla? More Gorilla. I mean, I don't know how I missed this because Gorilla did send us a very generous care package. So Gorilla, a maker of THC-infused products. Of hemp-derived THC. They make THC, HHC, and CBD products. I'm learning a lot, Ray. I've learned a lot since the last episode. And so the last episode, we had their gummies and their shots.
[00:35:12] Mike Schneider: We had their gummies.
[00:35:13] Ray Latif: Or I didn't, but you did. Their gummies, their spray. Okay, oh sorry, I was like to spray on yourself or other people like It's like banaca. Yeah, under the tongue spray. All right. 10 milligrams a spritz.
[00:35:30] John Craven: Okay.
[00:35:31] Ray Latif: So this is their, I guess you'd call this spirits. They call this Gorilla Elixir. And the thing about these bottles is that there isn't a lot of labeling on here, so I don't know how much there is per quote shot. It says zero out by volume. This is 750 milliliters. I'm assuming it's either five or 10 based on their other products per serving, but we've got lemonade, orange, berry blast and strawberry watermelon. And I am too scared to try it, but it looks really cool. Well, the colors are definitely less than natural looking. There's a very hot pink one. There's a light purple one. There's a peach-ish colored one. There's a yellow one. It looks very yellow. It looks more like mango. Yeah. It actually reminds me of, you know, that brand, Hypnotic. Oh, yes.
[00:36:24] Jacqui Brugliera: I was going to say that. Or like the ones that glitter, you know, like the glittery liquors.
[00:36:31] Ray Latif: Yeah, I mean do not hang out of places that have glittery booze. I'll say every everything call me upscale Whoever their designer is deserves a lot of props. I mean, their packages are beautifully designed. I'll say that. This one is scary, but... If you put that purple Once Upon against or up next to a bottle of hypnotic purple, they look quite similar, actually. We should put them together and see if anything happens. Yeah. Okay. So Mike's not going to drink these now, but he's going to drink some later. If you want to know exactly what happened with Mike, follow him on Instagram, BevNetMike. There you go. Alright, let's get to our featured interview for this episode. As I mentioned at the top of the show, CPG Fast Track is a new venture developed to support founders of emerging food and beverage businesses. launched by five industry executives, Dave Colina, the founder and CEO of O2 Hydration, Jason Feifer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, Lisa Barnett, the co-founder Little Spoon, Marcus Cariolanen, the co-founder of Four Sigmatic, and Matthew Gartland, the co-founder and CEO of SPI Media. The company works with entrepreneurs who are beyond the proof point phase of their businesses and beginning to scale retail presence and distribution. I spoke with the quintet behind Fast Track for a conversation about how they're utilizing their collective experience to provide mentoring and additional forms of training to carefully selected founder cohorts. Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with the founders of CPG Fast Track, Dave Colina, Jason Feifer, Marcus Carolinan, Lisa Barnett, and Matthew Gartland. How's everyone doing? Great. Perfect. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being with me today. Actually, I should make sure that everyone knows your voices. So let's start with you, Dave. We've known each other for some time. How are you?
[00:38:25] Little Spoon: We have. It's been a while, Ray. I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having us on the show.
[00:38:29] Ray Latif: Yeah, of course. Marcus, did I get your name pronounced correctly or close enough? Absolutely. Better than 99%, so thank you. I'm part of the 1%. I'm very happy about that. Lisa, how you doing?
[00:38:41] Mike Schneider: Well, I think I have the easier one to discern among us.
[00:38:44] Ray Latif: I would say so. Yes. Yes, Matt. Doing really well. Thanks for having us, Ray. Yeah. And Jason, do you have a typewriter by you? Is that the typewriter I see by your side?
[00:38:53] Four Sigmatic: Yes, that is a typewriter. Hello, everybody. I'm Jason. So this is a, if you're watching this, there's a nice typewriter, like an antique typewriter next to me. It is not a prop because it was my grandma's, but it is a prop because it doesn't work anymore. And it's just there to look nice. Okay. So it's a, it's a prop.
[00:39:09] Ray Latif: It is a prop. Okay. Well, you know what, it's a beautiful prop and I'm glad you have it by your side because there's probably going to be some people in the audience that are like, what is that thing by Jason's arm? And now we know for Gen Alpha, Gen Zers, that that's exactly what it is. Now they're going to have to Google what a typewriter is. Anyway, I've had experience. I've had the pleasure of sitting down with several of you and knowing your companies in the food and beverage industry in particular. Dave, we've known each other, I want to say for at least six, seven years now as the founder of O2. Marcus, you're the co-founder of Four Sigmatic and Little Spoon. And, you know, as entrepreneurs, I always hear that it's nearly impossible as entrepreneurs to avoid making mistakes. And in your respective experiences, though, I wonder how In hindsight, some of the mistakes you made could have been avoided, if at all. Dave, let's start with you.
[00:40:05] Little Spoon: How much time we got, Ray? There have been plenty, but you know, I often go through the mental exercise. If I were doing this all over again, knowing what I know now, what would it look like? And for us, getting the marketing positioning right was so important and it took a long time and it probably had to do with some stubbornness on my part, but we, we started out positioning ourselves as a oxygenated recovery drink. which meant nothing to anyone, really. And so there was a huge uphill battle in terms of education with respect to selling an oxygenated recovery drink. And so over time, several conversations, dozens at least, with our customers, we realized, hey, the reason people are drinking O2, it's because it's a clean sports drink. It's clean hydration, one gram of sugar, a bunch of electrolytes, and it tastes good. So it's like, okay, got it. Why don't we try to position ourselves that way? And we did. And so today, O2 is positioned as a clean, healthy sports drink. And it's been so much easier to get product off the shelf when people can quickly understand it. That was such a tough, tough lesson to learn.
[00:41:18] Ray Latif: You think that in hindsight, some of the challenges with the positioning of the brand could have been mitigated, could have been fixed with better coaching or mentoring?
[00:41:30] Little Spoon: I do, and that is the reason why we pulled this group together, is a conversation Marcus and I had several months ago. We're like, man, we've gone through so much of this entrepreneurial journey, we've learned so much, and we've made a tremendous amount of mistakes. And we've grown from each one of those mistakes, don't get me wrong. But wouldn't it have been nice if we had a group of people telling us, hey, you might not wanna position yourself as an oxygenated sports drink, or an oxygenated recovery drink. And these are simple things that would have benefited, at least me, tremendously. And so I've kind of grown to develop a love for teaching. I picked up an adjunct professor position at CU Boulder and realized I love teaching. I just hate grading papers. And the teaching component is really, really appealing to me. And I love the notion of helping people avoid making some of the same mistakes we've made and really Fast Track their growth in that sense. Hence the name CPG Fast Track.
[00:42:26] Ray Latif: Lisa, biggest mistakes you've made as the co-founder Little Spoon?
[00:42:30] Mike Schneider: Yeah, I think when I hear the word mistake, I'm like, maybe this is like the founder, entrepreneur in me. I'm like, it's a misnomer. I do really think, and I'm not just being overly optimistic, like most of the time, those mistakes can be good redirections, like Dave was just saying. And probably they won't kill your business or endeavor and can sometimes serve you well. But I think that's really only the case you know, if you have the right structures and like processes and people in place. And that's, you know, for me, part of why I think I'm really excited about what we're doing with Fast Track. I'll highlight like one mistake in particular. It's actually bringing me back to my first entrepreneurial endeavor. So before Little Spoon even, back when I was at Wharton for business school, I was working on a company called WeTrain. So the idea was to build a solution that gave people like what we felt they wanted in fitness, which is a more affordable option to receive like personalized yet social fitness services on demand. So this was like pre the explosion of fitness influencers on Instagram and some of those platforms like ladder and everything like that. It was a great idea. Like I was super pumped. I thought it had a lot of potential. I personally always wanted to build something in the fitness space because it's basically my only hobby outside of startups. So I was really passionate about it. And what happened was I felt at the time when we were getting ready to launch it, it was really important to get all these ideas for the feature, the experience, get everything done, get that set, make sure it's exactly how I wanted it with every bow and frill. And much of my time was spent thinking about and trying to execute that vision for the platform and the marketplace, all the details of the features. And that came a bit at the expense of focusing on, you know, just simplicity and a little bit of balancing, you know, perfectionism with like getting something to market and getting market feedback. All these ideas were totally possible at the time, but like generally you should try not to do all of that at launch. You need really like that North Star, that very simple problem statement that you design around and getting in the weeds too early at the expense of focusing on that can at best like just distract you and at worst make you a Little Spoon obsessed with the details and solution that like, you're actually like not responsive to like market feedback because you're like so obsessed with bringing this exact thing that you pictured to market. So, you know, I think it's a rule, not an exception that you're going to have to like pivot and change and adjust. you know, when I think back, if someone were there during that time, kind of asking me the right questions, telling me, like, how do you want to prioritize? How do you want to balance all these things? It would have been a lot easier. I would have learned that lesson a lot faster. And I've always said to, like, my teams, entrepreneurs, like, startups are not dying from starvation. They're dying from indigestion, meaning, like, too many ideas. They're not balancing, like, prioritization and focus. So, I would have died to have had a trusted advisor at that time and, you know, over the years have developed those networks and everything. But I think that's like one of the reasons CBD Fast Track can be really powerful.
[00:45:47] Ray Latif: Yeah, I love the term, keep it simple. Sometimes it's not as easy as it sounds, especially if you're a marketing brand like Four Sigmatic. But Marcus, I imagine, you know, simplicity in marketing and messaging wasn't your only problem. And again, not to call Four Sigmatic, which is a very successful company, one that has a lot of problems, but you must have gone through it at some point. I mean, what would you consider to be some of your biggest pitfalls building the company? I mean, I can echo a lot of what Dave said about the positioning. I think that one thing I want to highlight here is that our background is a little bit different. We came from Europe, from Finland. We started the business there. Now I've been in the US almost 10 years. And I think that we joined early on these private groups and communities, especially in D2C. There were not many on CBG. I don't know actually any of CBG ones, but D2C ones especially. I gave a lot of credit for these groups, because I didn't have any network. We didn't have any network. And all the tactical and strategy pieces were inside those groups. There was no podcast, YouTubers telling you what to do. And they drove like a significant amount of revenue. And I'm not the most focused guy in Four Sigmatic. I like to do maybe a little bit too fast, too many things. So these groups helped me to focus quite a bit and make sure that we're doing the right things. As you can see, I speak highly on the groups and what I got. I think one thing that they were missing were the fact that a lot of these groups were about revenue generation. So how do we get ROI? Which makes sense. They want to make money out of this. the issues are always also non-revenue related. Like for my example, for me, if I would have engaged early on with like executive coach or like a group that is focusing on more on my development, I feel like I would become a better leader and there would be less damage done for like leadership standpoint of view. And then building more confidence as a European, like humble Finnish guy, I think coach would have been able to say like, hey, you're doing well, things are going pretty well, there's momentum, keep going, keep going, do bigger bat swings, but we didn't have that. So we relied a lot on us and doing that. So this is actually something for us and our group. And I truly hope that we can build some of these elements to Fast Track that we can like treat these founders more holistically and help them out and not just only revenue generation. And I think you can help despite the fact that many of us in the industry, and I don't think I'm speaking out of line here, are not humble Finnish entrepreneurs. They're more like bullheaded Americans who are determined to make their vision or turn their vision into reality. Again, we're talking about, you know, how to step-by-step develop a company that has a sustainable business strategy and one that can actually be profitable. I mean, and profitability, as we all know, is the buzzword and has been for the past 18 months in our industry. Jason, you know, Dave, Marcus, and Lisa all touched on various aspects of Fast Track. And as I understand it, the group is there to support founders at a very specific stage of their development, their brand's development via mentoring and other business training. I'd love to hear a little bit about the origins of the organization and how the founding team came together.
[00:49:15] Four Sigmatic: I'll do that, but first, because I wanted to jump in when you were talking to Dave about his pivot away from the phrase oxygenated recovery drink and how valuable a lesson that is and something that I see with so many founders in so many categories, but I think particularly in CPG, which is that you have an idea of what differentiates you in a marketplace. But when you take that idea out into the marketplace, you might discover that it's too confusing or that it requires so much consumer education that people don't even pay attention to it. And that sometimes the thing that you think makes you the most special is actually just the most confusing. And it's the reason why it's so important to be constantly testing and listening to consumers and being open, as you heard with Dave Marcus, and at least be open to the possibility that the way that you're doing it is just wrong. Even if you have something that's great, just the way that you're explaining it is wrong. And Dave, I remember, Dave and I have known each other a number of years now. And I remember Dave gave me a. Oh, two t-shirt that I gave to my dad because my dad's really the athlete, not me. I can, I can barely run down the street, but my dad's doing marathons. And so I gave him this t-shirt and it said something like it said, it used the word recovery on the shirt. And my dad said, you know, I, I love Dave's product, but I can't wear this shirt because I feel like, uh, it says that I'm like in some kind of drug or alcohol recovery. So I relayed that to David, and you know, that he wasn't the only time that he heard something like that, like that language, it may mean something to you, you may understand what that language means. But if it doesn't instantly mean something to the consumer that you're talking to, then you have to put it aside and find some other language. So my dad, my dad loves O2, but he didn't wear the shirt, but he'll wear a new shirt. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that up. All right, right to your question. I've been in content, quote unquote, a long time, years and years, my whole career. And now I run this business, National Business Magazine. And yet I have come to this conclusion and it was a creeping one at first. And then it just became a raging shouting one, which is that even though I'm in the business of content, people don't want content. People are listening to this podcast right now. They're producing, they're consuming content. They didn't want to, they don't want that, right? What they want is the knowledge that the people who they're hearing from have, they want to be able to build their businesses to, to find that help. What they really want is connection. People want connection, not content. Why do they listen to content? Why do they read content? Because it's the second best, more available option. Not everyone gets to talk to people like Dave, Marcus, Lisa, Matt, who are building companies who are very successful. And so you can read the content or listen to the content. And I became obsessed with this question of what would it mean to really lean into connection, to really build up opportunities, to connect entrepreneurs to the people who are going to most matter to them. And I had a lot of conversations about that. I'd been starting to have some conversations with Matt, who's the CEO of Smart Passive Income, which is a great community for entrepreneurs. And then Dave, Dave one day reaches out to me. I was in Boulder, Colorado, where Dave lives for the time being. And we have coffee and he says, Hey, so I've been talking to my friend Marcus at 4sig about building something for CBG founders. And he tells me more about it and about how much they have learned. on this journey and how they would love to be able to share what they've learned with people who are at earlier stages. And I said, oh my God, this is exactly what I've been talking about. This is the way to start thinking about creating that connection and not just that content that's going to really impact people. And so Dave said, do you want to be a part of it in some way? And I said, yeah, I'd love to, but actually you should talk to Matt because Matt has been spending years and years and years understanding how to build community and how community works. And you know, SPI, Smart Passive Income, His playbook there is just changing lives. And, you know, Matt, you have the numbers. I don't, but I know that it, it significantly outperforms other communities in terms of engagement and retention. It's just, he knows how to build these things. So I said, Matt, Dave, you guys should talk to each other. It turns out they're both from Columbus. And so they met each other back in Ohio and had a great time. And then suddenly it became a conversation with me, Matt, Marcus, and, um, and Dave. And so we're talking to, we're starting to build this out and we say, you know, somebody, there's something missing here. Somebody is missing. First of all, we got four dudes in a room, that's never good. So we need to fix that. But also, we need someone who has deep expertise in fundraising, in operations at various levels, and just a lot of experiences, a deep marketing experience. And then I said, wait a second, I just walked around a lake in Prospect Park for an hour and a half with my friend Lisa, who had just left Little Spoon. And this is exactly the background that she has. And I think that she would be perfect for this. And so we got on a call with Lisa. She was intrigued. Also had been thinking a lot about how to best support entrepreneurs. And suddenly it became the five of us. And we started to build out this vision of what it would mean to offer something really useful to people at the moment in which they start to really need it. Like, you know, that 250,000 to a million dollar revenue or 1.5 million revenue is when you've gotten something off the ground, you've proven it. You've gotten validation to the marketplace and you're starting to hit these first big, giant, crazy existential questions that you didn't even know you were going to slam into. I remember talking to a founder of an indie soda brand in San Antonio who came from marketing and he started this soda brand and he told me, he's like, I thought all I had to do was read a great brand and create a product that people liked, and then it would just take off by itself. And now like I, I'm struggling to afford to make the product, to fill the shelves and fill the orders. Like, I don't even, I didn't even know this would be a problem. I don't understand why it's a problem. And I said, this is, this is why we're doing this. This is the reason is because no article can help that guy. No podcast can help that guy talking to real experts who have been there, who have done that. That's what helps that guy. And that's why I'm so excited about this.
[00:55:11] Ray Latif: Yeah, I mean, certainly it's difficult to get all the information you need from a lot of different sources and compile that information into something that's going to give you a successful business strategy. You know, it takes a team, it takes a village to borrow that term, but not everyone is the right fit for an organization like yours. And as you mentioned, yes, there is a specific revenue that is associated with Fast Track in that, you know, you work with brands or companies that are at that $250 to $1 million range or level. And you've already launched or you already started working with your first cohort of founders. I'm wondering, you know, who might be the right fit? What is the right sort of brand, product, company, person that would benefit from working with Fast Track? Matt, can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, I'd love to. It includes really important aspects that have already been mentioned around, you know, revenue stage and around certainly even, you know, market sector. We're kind of skewing food and bev right now as one sort of data point. But this third one, I think, is arguably the most important, which is attitude. We're here to engage with, you know, founders and operators that want to do the work, right, that want to come into a safe and controlled space to connect to learn from us, but very much to participate in action and take action. I love when Lisa mentioned just a little bit ago, the indigestion versus starvation sort of conundrum, right? And I have always found across my career, an interesting sort of relationship between, you know, some founders' ability to take action in correlation to how much they're consuming, whether it's ideas, advice, information, content, even to Jason's point, right? So we're building Fast Track to be a place to connect with the right sort of people with a common enough reality, right? Sort of a stage of company, but want to do the work. And they have that attitude of rolling up their sleeves with us, being pushed a little bit to be receptive to both the giving and the receiving of feedback. because that's what connection is. If it's really authentic, valuable connection, and if you're building really deep, meaningful relationships, which is the name of the game for us, then you're going to hear what you need to hear, right? And that helps you maybe not avoid the mistakes because also I echo and agree with Dave and Lisa on that point, but you want to minimize those mistakes. You want to have them be more shallow or have them be less potentially impactful then they may otherwise be if you don't have the right people around you that you've surrounded yourself with, that have those battle scars already, that can help you navigate those faster so that they don't potentially cause greater levels of disruption to your operation for a longer period of time. So, that's why we're building what we're building and why it's community-powered. You know, it is entirely a safe space to share, to engage, and to grow. We will have programmatic, if you will, you know, experiences, you know, different forms of events and learning opportunities, first and foremost, based on the five of us, but also our relationships and people we can bring in. But then also, again, roll-up-your-sleeve activities, like, let's do this work together. will, a challenge sometimes is a word that gets used. Like in the month of October, let's engage on this topic together. Everyone do the work, share it, get feedback on it, improve upon it, and be rapid with the action-taking and the feedback loops. So that's, I think, the differentiating factor in so many regards with, again, right to your great question, like the sort of founder, you know, that we're really hungry to serve is someone that doesn't just want to
[00:58:56] Four Sigmatic: join a social club or a Facebook group or a super large and noisy free sort of quote unquote community offering. Now we're here to work with people and to help them achieve goals.
[00:59:07] Little Spoon: Yeah and Ray Latif I could just add to that as you know my brand O2 is very mission driven and that's another thing we're looking for is mission driven brands and almost always there's a Better Sour you element within food and beverage whether it's alcohol, non-alcohol, name the food, there's generally a Better Sour you element to the founders and our cohorts. And we like that. We want to feel really good about helping the right people succeed with the right products, the products that we want to succeed in the market.
[00:59:38] Ray Latif: Yeah, I think, you know, rolling up your sleeves or being willing to do the work and having a positive attitude, being mission-driven, you know, these are all things that I think any founder would want to be associated with. They would want to be associated with any of those terms. But I got to think that there's probably even some more specific qualities to the founders in your first cohort. I mean, Marcus, are there any other commonalities that you see among that group? Well, the way I'm looking at this, we've been, by the way, screening every single applicant. So we have had a conversation with them. So we know who's joining. We want to be as helpful as we can. So we want to upfront know what are the challenges that they have and the situations they're in. Hence, certain revenue range is important for us because we feel like we can be very helpful for companies in certain sites. Because when you get bigger, more resources you have, more connections you have, more network. So that's why the size is certain way. I had a really good call a few weeks ago with someone, and I think he was like showing me what like really trade candidate is like, because he turned the conversation midway and say like, hey, I'm an ex-buyer at Target. I can help all these brands inside the community as well. And for me, that felt like, oh, you are the right person because you can bring something in and you have the attitude and willingness to do that. So at the end, we want that because once we get bigger and bigger, obviously, we rely more and more also the itself and not just us coaching one by one individually. So I would highlight some of those things.
[01:01:13] Little Spoon: And I think that speaks to Matt's point, too. I mean, so much of the value from this first cohort is going to be from the community. You know, sure, we're going to be able to help folks avoid the mistakes that we've made and give them advice and help them Fast Track their way along success. But I think at a certain point, we're looking forward to kind of stepping out of the way. as the group more and more helps itself and helps each other. Because when you're at that stage, it's really tough to relate to people who are not founders in the muck, in a place where you're at within that 250 to a million and a half revenue range. And so we're really looking forward to bringing the right types of people together. So they've got a group that they trust and they know they can speak openly with and they can help each other.
[01:02:00] Four Sigmatic: Yeah, I just wanted to share something that I've learned as I've started to engage in online community building, which has been fascinating. It really goes to what Dave and Marcus were just saying. You know, look, the funny thing is that you can reach out to anybody at any time online. You can find anybody on LinkedIn. You got a question, you see an expert or somebody who's been doing this for years, you can go DM them. That's fine. So why would you join a community if part of the reason to do that is because there are people in there, a lot of people everywhere? Well, the answer is because if you think about it, it's about permission. When you are on LinkedIn and you've got a question and you want to DM someone who you just know has the answer, you don't necessarily feel like you have permission to reach out to them because they're a stranger. Are they going to want to hear from me? Are they going to have the time? Everybody's getting these DMs all day. They're like, hey, do you have 30 minutes of your time? Nobody has 30 minutes of their time. And if you do reach out, well, the person might receive it and think, well, this person didn't have permission to reach out to me. There's a permission barrier that we all have. We're afraid to reach out to people. And when people reach out to us, we feel like, well, I'm not exactly invested in their success. So maybe I'm not going to spend the time to help them. But when you create a community structure, when you create a shared purpose, a social contract, if you will, that suddenly there is permission. There's permission to reach out to the people who are a part of the thing that you have joined. And everybody feels like the other people in this community have permission to reach out to me. And that is what binds people together. And that's what helps rally everyone together. It is true. The world is connected and you can reach out to anybody at any time, but it really takes community in order to feel like you're part of something together and willing to really support each other. And that's what I found is so special about these kinds of organizations.
[01:03:56] Ray Latif: Matt, did you want to follow up on that? Yeah, I'd love to, and it maps to the other qualifier that I think is really important, not as a requirement per se, but I think has, or I know from our internal conversations has come up any number of times, which is the lack of a preexisting network in this space that we can provide that, you know, we're grooming for that, we're filtering for that through our application process to Marcus's earlier point. But if we can, again, build the right network of peers, like-minded peers that share you know, calm struggles and pain points and problems that are in a similar enough stage of their company, right? Again, share some of those attitudinal qualities in common, then they have each other. And over time, mapping now to Dave's point, it becomes less about us being, you know, the criticality around people staying in the community, right? They stay for each other, because those relationships intensify, they learn from each other, we create something truly much larger than just the five of us. So the ability to build and rather for our members have immediate access to a professional network of the right sorts of people, especially if they don't have that already is an immense value that any number of us have learned in our own careers, not having that and doing the hard work of building those ourselves. Lisa, you know, in addition to being an entrepreneur, you've been an advisor and angel investor to early stage brands. Do you see Fast Track as an extension of your work with those brands?
[01:05:29] Mike Schneider: Yeah, I mean, I've been doing a lot more angel investing recently, and a lot more evaluating companies, you get a lot more companies than you can invest in. And I've been advising and consulting, as you said, for startups for a handful of years now. And also prior to starting Little Spoon worked in venture capital. So I've kind of been on like, a lot of different sides of the same coin there. And, you know, one of the best pieces of advice that I got early on was, like, find your little group of people, whether those are, like, trusted friends or advisors that kind of, like, help you see the things you don't have time to see when you're, like, in the thick of it and, like, kind of. identify those blind spots because we all have them. And it's kind of like the better founders are the ones that are like self-aware enough to know like there is going to be a blind spot and I'm not enough to cover everything. And so when I look at the work that I've been doing, and actually it speaks to kind of Jason's point around like strangers DMing, like to be perfectly honest, like I only advise and work with companies that are like warm introductions because there's just so much volume. It doesn't mean that there aren't great people out there. In fact, Part of what gets me so excited about marrying those one-on-one efforts into CPG Fast Track is I think about one of my greatest professional connections and decisions arose from a random time I just picked one out of a thousand LinkedIn DMs responded to it and it turned out really great. So I think about that a lot. We're missing a lot too. And so when, you know, my fellow co-founders kind of came to me with the idea for CPG Fast Track, I was immediately inspired and excited to basically take, you know, the frameworks, the playbooks and networks that I've developed and kind of help programatize that to a group of people where I can scale my one-on-one efforts better. The reality is every company is unique. We're all like a snowflake in many different ways, but there are a really common set of problems. Everyone's facing questions around fundraising and cash management. How do you develop and execute a marketing campaign, particularly with limited resources or capital? How do you balance long-term brand equity and growing with short-term ROI so that you develop that cash to then reinvest or raise the round and stuff like that. And those are exactly the topics that I've engaged on and worked deeply with founders. And it's also the topics that we're hearing from a lot of our applicants for CPG Fast Track. I think back to like when I was maybe in like the first year of Little Spoon. And one of the most valuable things I did outside of like operating the business was find fellow founders, actually, frankly, mostly consumer founders, mostly fellow female founders in that particular situation, and connected with them. But you know what, a lot of people don't have time to do that or don't have access to do that. Not because they're not capable, but because they don't live in a city where there's a ton of meetups. Or like Marcus, they're coming from a different country where the ecosystem isn't as developed. And connecting with fellow emerging category leaders, imagine if all the CEOs of the greatest brands that we know all went to college together, right? And all knew each other. That's kind of what we can try to replicate in many ways. And then you grow together, you succeed together, right? You said it, it takes a village. And so we're kind of like curating those villages together.
[01:08:54] Ray Latif: There's no question that the talent and the experience of the five people I'm talking to isn't pretty amazing. And if I were an entrepreneur, I definitely want to speak with all five of you, perhaps all at the same time, if I could. I think also based on our conversations, it seems to fit a really interesting and potentially sizable hole in this particular market. which I've learned and appreciated, you know, from Dave and Marcus and Lisa here in the world of CBG, where almost in any kind of, you know, business or entrepreneurial category, like you can invest thousands of dollars a month, right in the executive coach.
[01:09:29] Four Sigmatic: And sometimes those are really valuable experiences, but that is a bigger commitment in dollars.
[01:09:34] Ray Latif: It's also, at least I would argue with some spice to it, a bigger risk depending on who that person is and that person's domain experience, right? It can potentially be quite narrow and quite limited. Dave, Marcus, Lisa, Matt, Jason, thank you once again for taking the time. Really appreciate it and look forward to staying in touch. Thank you. Thank you, Ray. Thank you. 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.
[01:10:48] John Craven: you
