[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello, friends. I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Charles Coristine, the CEO of high-flying, better for you snack brand, Lesser Evil. It's one of the fastest-growing natural food brands in recent years, but Lesser Evil still has plenty of room to scale. Literally. The vertically-integrated company just opened its second production facility in its home state of Connecticut, one that Lesser Evil views as the next step in the brand's growth and expansion into mainstream retailers. Best known for its organic popcorn and identified by the cherubic Buddha-like icon on the front of every bag, Lesser Evil debuted in 2005. Its current trajectory, however, began in 2011, when former bond trader Charles Coristine acquired the company, which at the time was financially troubled and nearly bankrupt. In the two decades since, Lesser Evil has become a nationally distributed brand that is available at Whole Foods, Target, Publix, Walmart, Costco and Sprouts. In addition to popcorn, the brand markets a broad range of snacks, including corn-based Space Balls Moonions, as well as those made for kids and toddlers. The products are made without seed or vegetable oils and are USDA certified organic and or non-GMO Project Verified. In the following interview, I spoke with Charles about the company's self-manufacturing model and how it relates to retail strategy, innovation, and gross margin, why making organic foods affordable is both moral and fiscally wise, and what he's learned about staffing, leadership, and branding. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with Charles Coristine, who is the CEO of Lesser Evil Snacks. Charles, great to see you.
[00:02:16] Charles Coristine: Nice to see you. Thanks so much for coming by.
[00:02:18] Ray Latif: Thanks so much for having me. I got a tour of two manufacturing facilities, and now we're here in your office in Danbury, Connecticut. Your facilities are remarkable. They are amazing. And one is currently in the process of being built out. Yep. The other one is completely functional and just pumping out. And completely full. And completely full. Yeah. When did you decide to open or build a second manufacturing facility?
[00:02:40] Charles Coristine: I want to say probably about a year and a half ago, we kind of figured that probably around the next year, we would need that facility. And given our growth, we needed a little sooner than we anticipated.
[00:02:51] Ray Latif: Just for context, what kind of growth are you experiencing as a company?
[00:02:55] Charles Coristine: I want to say over the course of the last three years, we've probably been in between 50 and 60% growth each year. So we're growing pretty quick.
[00:03:02] Ray Latif: Yeah, I would say so. And some of that growth is coming from club, which is really great to see. And I was, I'm kind of surprised. I didn't realize that lesser evil didn't have as big a presence as I would have thought in club. Why has that become a channel of interest for you guys?
[00:03:18] Charles Coristine: I think we've just gotten a little bit more well-known. I think last year was, probably the last two years, we've made a splash in mass. And as the brand has kind of proliferated, I think that it's just at that stage where it's ready for club. I don't think it was ready up until now.
[00:03:35] Ray Latif: That's the amazing thing to me because I have been following Lesser Evil for some time. I've been buying your popcorn for a long time. And I guess I just assumed, OK, it's in Wegmans, it's in Whole Foods, it's everywhere. I would expect it to be because it's such a great product, such a great brand. I thought there was a ton of awareness for it already. But you're just scratching the surface in terms of where the brand can go right now.
[00:03:55] Charles Coristine: No, that's nice of you to say. I think because the brand had been around a couple of times that We were reluctant to grow too fast. We've seen failure before and we kind of wanted to be successful in the channels that we were in and we had some great partnerships and kind of the natural channel. So our evolution has been a lot slower than a lot of other brands. You know, a lot of a lot of other brands you've seen explode on the scene in three, four or five years, whereas we've been very slow and methodical. And another thing is we just haven't had the money to grow really quickly because we've been pretty much internally financed until really the last three, four, five years. So we could only grow as fast as our money would let us. So we were pretty slow. I think now as we're getting our feet underneath us and we're innovating and stuff and we're finding our groove, now it's time maybe to step on the accelerator a little bit.
[00:04:44] Ray Latif: Yeah, I do want to talk about your growth strategy and how you're thinking about the future. I do want to go back to our last conversation on Taste Radio from 2021, three years ago. Good Lord. Feels like it was just yesterday. The company's history and the origins are pretty well documented. You came on board as CEO, you bought the company. When was that again? The end of 2011. I didn't really start until the beginning of 2012. Okay. And I asked you at the time why you're not using the title of founder. Do you feel more comfortable now three years later?
[00:05:14] Charles Coristine: I do. You know, that's, that's a really deep question. I think at the beginning, I mean, the previous founders did a lot of great work. I mean, the name is, I thought it was really good and that's what enticed me to get into the brand. There were still some existing products. The premise was to make things better, to make things less evil. So there was, there was a lot of good that the founders did. But we've been through so many ups and downs and so many different near-death experiences that the company has really transformed and become kind of its own entity. And so many of the employees have added so much to what the company has become that it really isn't the same company that existed way back when.
[00:05:50] Ray Latif: So it's a new company with a founder that is you.
[00:05:55] Charles Coristine: I don't want to take too much credit. I think a bunch of founders.
[00:06:00] Ray Latif: But, you know, I was pretty amazed at how in touch you are with the actual production of your snacks. Someone told me you're in the facilities every single day. Multiple times a day. Multiple times a day. You told me you know pretty much everyone's name who works on the floor. And I think that's great. I think that's really indicative of great leadership. What is it about having that sort of tangible feel that that personal connection, that human interaction that is so important to you?
[00:06:30] Charles Coristine: To be honest, it's it's probably my favorite part of the day. You know, when you when you get to work, you know, and it's not every single day, but most days. When you go in and you see people and you see them every day and you know, you're testing the popcorn, tasting it, talking about what lines are working really well and what we're running each day and stuff. It adds a humanness to the business and it allows you to just slow down and not get caught up in this, you know, how fast are we growing or how big, there's a real human component to the business. And I, and I think that's what I really enjoy. And I've also found that I enjoy operations a lot. When I was CEO or whatever, I was really more of a sales guy. I was a little bit more into innovation. Now, as we get a little bit bigger, there's a lot of different hurdles that we have to cross. And a lot of them are operational hurdles. We have to figure out how to make an incredibly tasty product and make more and more of it. And typically, as you add more production lines and figure that, you typically become further and further away from the product. And I want to make sure that I'm, I'm really on top of making sure that the product's good every single day. I mean, I know that when I focus on product quality, the company does well. If I don't, you know, we've, we've had blips before and I've felt them. So that's my main focus.
[00:07:41] Ray Latif: Have you had to learn on the job about operations? Are you learning from others? Is it sort of trial by fire?
[00:07:47] Charles Coristine: Yeah, I mean, I went to business school. I obviously understand some of this stuff, but it's really about making a lot of mistakes and figuring out what to do next time. And then I take what I've learned over the last four or five years and I keep applying, you know, and I just, I think I get a little bit better every day. You have to be in the trenches.
[00:08:06] Ray Latif: You can't do this job, you know, kind of from an office. When you're hiring for operations, are you hiring people who have worked for entrepreneurial companies or those who have worked for big stack firms?
[00:08:16] Charles Coristine: We don't have any of those. We did for a while and he was extremely, you know, important to the company. But right now, you know, it's all internal and it's all people that have learned this stuff within the company that haven't come from other companies. I mean, in some departments we have some, but not necessarily in operations.
[00:08:33] Ray Latif: Do you think that's been a good thing? I mean, or has it been just sort of a roller coaster of work?
[00:08:39] Charles Coristine: I think it's been a roller coaster of learning. We have this belief within the company that Everything can be learned and it's all just about attitude. And if you have the attitude that you can figure it out and you can get with a bunch of people that have the same attitude, it's amazing what you can actually accomplish.
[00:08:55] Ray Latif: Is that just something that's built into your personality? If I have a great attitude?
[00:08:59] Charles Coristine: I think everybody likes figuring stuff out. I mean, you just got to give people the rope to, you know, kind of try to figure it out and not make people nervous when they come up with harebrained ideas. If people are really relaxed and everybody's on the same page and we're all just working for good, there's nothing typically that we can't figure out.
[00:09:17] Ray Latif: How do you hire for attitude? I think sometimes people put on a good face in an interview and then next thing you know, you're like, who is this person?
[00:09:23] Charles Coristine: I ask him a lot of crazy questions.
[00:09:25] Ray Latif: What's an example?
[00:09:26] Charles Coristine: I ask him about all their morning habits, you know, how they overcome obstacles. I talk about things that they've faced, the biggest challenges they've faced in their lives, all sorts of harebrained questions, very little to do with work experience. And I try to figure out if they're the kind of person I want to be friends with, they're the kind of person I want to, you know, work with.
[00:09:44] Ray Latif: I'm going to ask Caitlin what her question she was asked. Nick?
[00:09:47] Charles Coristine: Kaylin was back in the, how many years ago was it?
[00:09:53] Ray Latif: Almost seven years. Seven years. Oh my gosh. Okay.
[00:09:54] Charles Coristine: Kaylin was one of my best hours.
[00:09:56] Ray Latif: Okay. Clearly. You know, I go back to creating a great brand and I mentioned this to you before we hopped on the mics. I feel like everything starts with the brand and goes from there.
[00:10:11] Charles Coristine: It's all about authenticity. It's about finding your voice, you know, and being authentic to it. There's nothing we put on our package or there's nothing that we talk about in marketing or whatever that we don't really, really believe in. It's not about saying the right thing. It's actually, sometimes we're a little folky on that, but this literally comes from the soul of the company.
[00:10:31] Ray Latif: And do your consumers feel that? I mean, how do you best understand how they are interacting with the brand?
[00:10:37] Charles Coristine: I think they believe it. I mean, we don't, sitting here in Denver, I don't know if we have a ton of consumer interaction on a regular basis, but I think it resonates. I think people always come up to us and say, I love your brand. I love what it stands for. I love that it's organic. I love that you have this kind of, you know, spiritual side and you're trying to figure yourself out. And, you know, I think we're a little bit like a human.
[00:11:00] Ray Latif: We're just trying to evolve. My sister, I mentioned to her that I was doing this interview and she said, Oh yeah, that's the, that's the brand with the Himalayan sea salt and the guy, the guru guy and so on and so forth. And do you feel like people are, know your brand as much about the imagery as the logo and the brand name itself?
[00:11:19] Charles Coristine: Yeah, I think when we did a little rebrand, I think back, what, in 2018, 2019. And we kind of did some work around what is our most recognizable asset. And at the time, it was the pink smiley guy on the front of the package. So we decided we had a bunch of different products, you know, Gia Crisp and Super, like a lot of different things. And Lesser Evil wasn't really front and center. So we put Lesser Evil front and center, but we made a bigger image and put it smack in the middle of the back. And since then, you know, it's kind of really exploded.
[00:11:51] Ray Latif: Yeah. I think organic is also a big and important element of the brand as well. I'm looking at one of your packages there and the USDA organic seal is front and center right next to the brand logo. How much does the organic aspect move the needle for consumers?
[00:12:08] Charles Coristine: I think it moves it huge, but I also think that if organic is priced too expensively, that it doesn't move it as much. I think given price parity between organic and non-organic, or very close to price parity, people will always choose organic. But if organic is more than 25 or 30 percent more expensive than conventional, then it ceases to become as important of a factor, if that makes any sense.
[00:12:32] Ray Latif: It does, it does. It's helpful when you can buy at the scale that you buy at. I was speaking with you on the floor and I think the number you could was 20 million pounds of organic popcorn that you buy every year, which is just kind of blew my mind. You're the biggest, probably the biggest purchaser of popcorn. Organic popcorn?
[00:12:49] Charles Coristine: Yeah. I would think so.
[00:12:51] Ray Latif: Yeah. Yeah. When you're thinking about, and this is getting into the growth strategy, when you're thinking about locking in contracts with suppliers, how far down the line are you looking?
[00:13:01] Charles Coristine: That's a great question. We're talking about next year already, or even the year after next year, because we're forecasting now on what we think it could be. And I was worried that potentially there wasn't going to be enough supply. But because organic crops are somewhat fungible, there's millions of acres of this stuff, and they can rotate between soybeans, conventional, or just regular organic corn, or popping corn, or whatever. And they can basically vary season by season, which I thought you would have to be three years to get organic, and then if you wanted to grow something else, you'd have to do it. But no, once it's certified organic, the farming area, it can be used to grow anything. Hmm. So I think the market's pretty big in organic popcorn. And to answer your question, we're, we're probably purchasing now a year and a half out or looking at 2026 right now.
[00:13:51] Ray Latif: It makes sense given the, you know, the rate of growth that you're at right now. And, you know, forecasting demand can be one of the most challenging aspects of a business, especially one that is growing quite quickly. Just as a baseline, you know, where do you start?
[00:14:05] Charles Coristine: Yeah. So I know I'm going to be wrong at some point, because I keep thinking that the growth is going to slow. And I know it's going to slow, because it's easy to grow from a really low base. But each year over the last two years, I've been slowing down my growth forecasts, and I've been a little bit wrong. I would imagine next year, hopefully, it will start to slow. I'd probably purchase extra just to be on the safe side. I won't go right to the limit. Like, let's say we were going to forecast for 30 million pounds. I probably won't lock in 30 million pounds, but I'll probably get to 25, thinking that I can lock in another 5 or 10. But it's definitely a guess. But I try to be as conservative as I can.
[00:14:45] Ray Latif: How does it work with your sales team? Because it's sort of a yin yang you have. On the one hand, they want to sell as much popcorn as possible. And on the other, you're like, OK, well, we can't make as much and we probably can't even buy as much. So how do you talk to your sales team about demand planning?
[00:15:00] Charles Coristine: Well, I let my VP of sales talk about demand planning, but I think he has a pretty good understanding of how much we, you know, we know what's in our budget. First of all, we know what we can produce or we have a pretty good idea, but sometimes there's elements of getting overzealous and sometimes we bite off more than we can chew. And it's happened a couple of times this year. I haven't felt the pressure that I've felt this year, any year before that.
[00:15:24] Ray Latif: And you're feeling a lot of pressure.
[00:15:25] Charles Coristine: Yeah, I think this year is definitely because there's bigger customers that have more aggressive plans and they don't like trucks being delayed and stuff like that. So there's a whole different stress dynamic to it. I don't know if I'm answering your question.
[00:15:39] Ray Latif: No, you are. I think when you are talking to your team about what's possible versus what you'd want to do, I think that's kind of a hard conversation to have because I think every company that's growing wants to grow faster. Yeah.
[00:15:55] Charles Coristine: And the real dilemma is you build up amazing customer relationships over the first five or 10 years, right? And you've got to make sure that you continue to treat those customers as well as you continue to treat these bright, new, shiny customers, right? And the propensity is because these bright, new, shiny customers have really high expectations that you actually start moving away from the customers that were a little more with you in the beginning and then understood your growing pains and they were there. The key is, and I think we've been good on this up into this year, is not to take customers that you can't service. But with some of these bigger customers, they expect you to do bigger CPG type things and have more capacity and stuff like that. So we're learning on the fly right now, to be honest.
[00:16:38] Ray Latif: I think some customers are also really interested in Lesser Evil because of your innovation strategy. When we spoke on our last podcast, it was really interesting to me that you controlled your own manufacturing, which enabled you to control the flow of innovation a lot faster than other companies would be able to. And it seems like Lesser Evil is always coming out with new stuff.
[00:16:59] Charles Coristine: Yeah, our whole growth strategy at the beginning, you're asking really good questions, was to launch one or two new products every single year. And what ended up happening is we ended up with, you know, probably five or, right now, currently five or six different product lines, maybe more, seven or eight. How many product lines do we have? seven. But we also have different sizes and different flavors and stuff. So we have probably 50 different iterations of things now. And as line time gets more precious because we want to run it more efficiently, all these harebrained schemes of mine or products of mine all of a sudden are causing the company a lot of heart palpitations. So some of the innovation has to slow down or we have to get rid of some of the existing innovation just to keep up with what we got going on now. So it's a totally different stage of the kind of the company lifeline, if that makes any sense.
[00:17:52] Ray Latif: Yeah, it does. I mean, but do you feel the pressure to sort of pull back on innovation like your Munions, right? Am I pronouncing that correctly?
[00:17:59] Charles Coristine: Yeah, Munions. No, no, we're excited about Munions.
[00:18:01] Ray Latif: I love them. They're really good. They're so good.
[00:18:03] Charles Coristine: But now I'm going to meetings where the team's sitting around and telling me, well, we got to discontinue this and discontinue that. And I'm like, I really liked that. That was one of my favorite things that I created. But that's just the cycle that we're in now. Now I've got to start giving up all these things that I love.
[00:18:18] Ray Latif: Sometimes, though, when you're with retailers, they're expecting it. I think, you know, I was just sitting down with the CEO of Somos Foods and he was talking about how Whole Foods someone who's working with Whole Foods on a new line of products. And I think their expectation is that they want that stuff because it's what defines them. Whole Foods is defined by innovation. Yeah. So does that make it a more difficult relationship? Or do you just, you know, have a good relationship and can have that honest conversation?
[00:18:40] Charles Coristine: We have a good relationship with them, but it's a different relationship. I love the relationship with Whole Foods where I would go in and see the buyer and we were like, check out this new innovation. I've got this, this, this, and this. And he would be like, I like that. Why don't we try this flavor? And I would come out of that so supercharged that I was creating something incredibly magical. And the Whole Foods consumer would do that. Do I do that as much now? Probably not. So I've gone from that kind of different side of the brain to the other side of the brain. As I used to be a little bit more creative, now I'm a little more operational, if that makes any
[00:19:10] Ray Latif: It does, absolutely. Although I think there are probably trend reports out there that are saying, well, if you went into this category, if you innovated in this particular snack segment, it'd probably be a good idea. I think, you know, kids in general, for me, seems like an underserved opportunity. It's an undervalued opportunity, I think, for a lot of brands, because there's so much crap out there. And it drives me crazy every time I go to a soccer game and see, like, the amount of just garbage that people are feeding their kids. Yeah. And I love it when people bring big bags of Lesser Evil, the multi bags.
[00:19:41] Charles Coristine: I'm like, OK, finally, you know, that was our whole idea was to come up with a different product for every age group. You know, we have we have products that focus on toddlers and we have products that we focus on kind of like three to eight. And then we did Space Balls and the Moonions and stuff like really for that eight to 13 year old. So like every age group could get exposed to Lesser Evil snacks because we we felt like although our snacks aren't perfect, we made kind of better for you stuff that If we can price it as affordably as conventional stuff that's fried in different kinds of oils and all this different thing, we had a home run. Like, here, this is easier. You can feed this to your family. It's quick. It's on the go. We would provide value, and we'd win a lot of fans that way, and that would help our popcorn.
[00:20:24] Ray Latif: I love that you're talking about affordability and accessibility because it's not talked about enough. And people talk about, you know, how to get better food into more mouths. And a lot of it has to do with price, but a lot of it also has to do with gross margin and costs. you know, keeping your expenses in line.
[00:20:43] Charles Coristine: And the whole thing, the whole beautiful thing about having your own manufacturing facility and really being zoned in on operational efficiency is like, I think that we can produce amazing snacks at a value that a lot of other people can't because we don't have a co-packer in the middle, right? So we basically take all the savings that we have. Obviously, we make margin because we, you know, we need to stay in the business, but we pass on all those savings to our consumers. And I think doing that proves that we can sell organic, better-for-you oil, packaging that's basically enhanced, better salts. We think our products are better in a lot of different ways than our competitors. And we sell it, in most cases, cheaper now than most of our competitors, especially since COVID.
[00:21:27] Ray Latif: You know, I spoke with Matt Weiss from Rind Snacks at Expo West. He's a big fan of yours. And I mean, he and Rind Snacks just bought a manufacturing facility.
[00:21:38] Charles Coristine: Yeah, I think they're doing the right thing. I talked to him before he did it. You know, I said, owning your own destiny is an amazing thing. And, you know, you're going to be able to basically innovate really quickly, come up with what we call rolling thunder, which is different products for different customers. You get your customers supercharged. You have all your own employees. You start figuring stuff out together. And all of a sudden, you're adding a lot of value to your supply chain. And you can be a lot more efficient. So I think that that is a, it's a really good move for them.
[00:22:07] Ray Latif: So for entrepreneurs listening right now and saying, okay, I'm at year one or two, and I'm thinking about opening up a manufacturing facility. I mean, do you, would you recommend they do it or is it more, you need to be like where Matt is?
[00:22:18] Charles Coristine: You've got to be super scrappy and you've got to be able to go out and try to figure out where you can buy used equipment and you got to find like some garage or, you know, we, I think our first, our first production facility was like a, a mechanical operation or something. It was like, you know, there was two sides. It was like, we took 5,000 or 4,500 and there was 5,000 on the other side that was some other facility. And we put our first line in and it wasn't all that efficient. We had a shitty hasten bagger, sorry for the language. That's fine. It wasn't all that efficient, but we figured it out. And as we made, you know, we priced things fairly. We didn't have a ton of overhead. We didn't hire, people overhire consistently in this business for whatever reason. We had low overhead and whatever money we made, we'd go and buy another piece of equipment. And we just kept buying junky equipment and figuring out how to do it. And it worked, you know, I don't think it's all that complicated because I'm definitely not super intelligent.
[00:23:10] Ray Latif: So the answer is yes, but be super scrappy about it.
[00:23:13] Charles Coristine: Be super scrappy about it, yeah.
[00:23:14] Ray Latif: Gopin, going back to people who were higher in this industry, can you elaborate on that?
[00:23:18] Charles Coristine: Yeah. I've gotten kind of granular on this. Like I basically looked at our company in terms of, okay, what is our gross revenue per employee? And I looked at like, what do most large CPG companies look? And the best CPG companies are like four or $500,000 per employee that they generate in revenue. So if you're a company that's got three, four or $5 million in revenue, you should not have a staff of 20 or 30 people. That means your fixed costs are way too high. You know, if you're at 4 million in sales, you should probably be 8, 10 people most.
[00:23:54] Ray Latif: Yeah, no, I mean, I think the math sounds right, but again, you're going back to this expectation of growth and hiring before the growth happens.
[00:24:01] Charles Coristine: Yeah, no, I don't, we didn't, we always hired afterwards.
[00:24:04] Ray Latif: Yeah. Don't hire before. Don't hire before. Raising money, again, you, most of the financing has been internally derived.
[00:24:12] Charles Coristine: Through friends and family basically at the beginning until basically 2018.
[00:24:19] Ray Latif: So do you feel any, especially as you're building out a new manufacturing facility, I mean, how much does financing come into play? How much does outside financing come into play into your mind?
[00:24:31] Charles Coristine: Now that we're generating free cash flow less, I mean, we're sitting on some money so we can just internally finance that stuff. But just to try to be helpful to your users, I would basically look at an asset and I would say, okay, what is the payback on this asset? And when I first got into the business, we would calculate and say, OK, is this piece of equipment going to pay back itself in six months? Meaning that if we spent $100,000 on a piece of equipment, are we going to get that $100,000 back within six months? If not, it's too expensive. You know, and as we got, you know, obviously that was the low-hanging fruit. And then as we got, you know, a little more proficient, I extended that to nine months and then I extended it to 12 months. Now it's like probably we're more like 18 months. So I always operate under that kind of lens.
[00:25:17] Ray Latif: I mean, that's such great advice for listeners. I think the timeline is just what you have to figure out, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, the timeline for Lester Evil, since you bought the company in 2011, you're in your 13th. Well, guys, this is your 14th year now. Yeah. What's been the most rewarding part of this journey so far?
[00:25:35] Charles Coristine: I would say, and I've talked about this before, the fact that we've got, you know, eight or nine factory employees that started in the factory, you know, packing boxes that are now working in the front office. And it's been amazing. Some of these people didn't speak English and now they're, you know, they're running the books and doing some really cool things and they're happy. And just watching that growth has been amazing for me. Any regrets? Any regrets doing Lesser Evil? Yeah. Um, I don't think so. That's a really good question. Let me think on that. But off the top of my head, I, I couldn't have imagined a better 14 years. I've really, really enjoyed it. I, I love coming to work. I love this town. I love my commute. I just, I love being under the radar and it's a super dynamic job and we're, and we're doing, it feels like we're doing some good.
[00:26:22] Ray Latif: You're under the radar, but you're on Taste Radio. So I don't know how much longer you're going to be under the radar. No, what do you mean by that though? I mean, do you feel like you're kind of the small guy who no one was really paying attention to until recently?
[00:26:34] Charles Coristine: Yeah, kind of. And I think the fact that we're not in San Diego or Boulder, Colorado or LA or whatever has allowed us to just kind of operate at our own speed and kind of stay at everyone's way. And that's allowed us to just have fun and be, and for the most part, stay out of kind of a pressure pack situation.
[00:26:52] Ray Latif: Yeah, it's, uh, I probably shouldn't be saying this as a member of the media, but it's weird how many brands pitch us and talk to us and say, I'd just love to be on this or have you write a story about that or whatnot. And I feel like the best stories are the ones where we're chasing you guys down, because if you're doing something great, we'll notice. And. Maybe this is, I don't know, a little bit of me standing on a soapbox here, but once you have a great business and once you have a great brand, you'll know it because we'll come knocking on your door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Charles, you know, while you're mulling over any regrets and maybe you don't have any regrets. I gotta ask about your personal goals here. You took a company that was in, I think, what did you call it? I'm going to quote you from our last episode here. You said retail buyers regarded Lesser Evil as a dog with fleas. It's no longer that, for sure. But do you have a personal outlook in terms of where you want to be and how you want to build this company for the future? I guess what I'm asking is, is there an endgame? that you see, that you have in mind?
[00:28:01] Charles Coristine: Yeah, I want Lesser Evil to exist for the long term, for sure. I want and it's not just about my legacy, because I think that's somewhat ego driven. But I when I kind of sit back at the end of the day and hopefully I'm on a beach somewhere, I want it to be like this healthy brand that's gone mainstream. And that is kind of like a Lay's or, you know, Doritos or something like that, that, you know, there's some attachment to those products that I created. But other than that, I just, no, no, I don't have any huge plans.
[00:28:30] Ray Latif: Because it feels like the business is you, like you in the business. No, it's not.
[00:28:33] Charles Coristine: No? No, it's not.
[00:28:34] Ray Latif: Well, no, I mean, the business is you in that you live the business every day of your life. Yeah. Almost every minute of your life. Not that the business... is Charles Coristine.
[00:28:43] Charles Coristine: Being an entrepreneur is like, you know, setting off on a hero's journey. It's like, you know, the movie Star Wars? Sure. You know, it's an internal struggle and it's an amazing opportunity to recreate yourself. So this whole journey with Lesser Evil has been like this personal journey that I've gotten to kind of go through all these ups and downs and these turmoils and, you know, redemption. And, you know, it's been an incredible thing. And the best part is I've gotten to do it with so many amazing people that I love. I'd like to write a book on this kind of stuff, because you can't make it up.
[00:29:15] Ray Latif: Well, maybe we'll title this podcast, The Redemption of Charles Coristine. Basically, yeah. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for your generosity in taking me around, for sitting down with me. I know how busy you guys are, so I really appreciate it.
[00:29:30] Charles Coristine: Always a pleasure. Thanks for coming to visit.
[00:29:35] Ray Latif: 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. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
[00:30:25] Charles Coristine: you
