[00:00:05] Matt Weiss: They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavor Man is better than good at making dreams into drinks. We are Flavor Man, and we partner with dreamers and entrepreneurs to not just get your flavors perfect, but help you develop your beverage product from start through finish. When you work with us, we're with you from startup to bottoms up. So let's get started at flavorman.com slash BevNET. Flavor Man, change what the world is drinking. And now, Taste Radio.
[00:00:45] Ray Latif: Hey folks, thanks for tuning into the top podcast of the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. I'm editor and producer Ray Latif, and you're listening to episode 193, which features an interview with Bryan Crowley, the CEO of complete food brand Soylent, spoke about his path to executive leadership, and how he steered Soylent through a rapid growth phase and evolution of its positioning. Tune in on Friday, December 20th for episode 65 of our Taste Radio Insider Podcast, when we're joined by Matt Weiss, the founder of pilon dried fruit brand RIND, who discussed his approach to incubating a brand while maintaining a full-time job. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we'd love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Bryan Crowley's path to the top spot at fast-growing brand Soylent was years in the making. A veteran CPG executive, Brian cut his teeth at beer conglomerate Anheuser-Busch and held leadership positions at Mars, Pabst, Viv and Covita before joining Soylent in 2017. In the following interview, I spoke with Brian about how his career experience shaped his leadership style and helped frame his vision for the future of Soylent. He also discussed the evolution of the brand's mission and growth strategy, its embrace of GMO ingredients, and what the notion of better for you means for modern consumers. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. I'm here at BevNET Live Winter 2019 in the Taste Radio studio. And with me right now is Bryan Crowley, the CEO of Soylent. Brian, thanks so much for being with me. Hey, thanks for having me, Ray. It's great to see you. I feel like it's been a little bit since we hung out.
[00:02:29] Bryan Crowley: I mean, I feel like- Maybe a year, probably a year ago.
[00:02:31] Ray Latif: Yeah, a year ago here. Yeah, at the last BevNET Live in San Francisco.
[00:02:34] Bryan Crowley: Yeah, because I missed the summer one, unfortunately, in New York. This is my first year not going in a while. But yeah, no, it's good to be here, and thanks for having me.
[00:02:41] Ray Latif: Absolutely. How did I not know this? You started out wanting to be a journalist? Yeah, actually broadcast.
[00:02:49] Bryan Crowley: Why are you not on this side of the table? Well, it's interesting because I, when I was in school, I went to university of Iowa and they had a great communications program. And, uh, I played tennis in college and I thought, Oh, sports. And so your usual jock, I'm like, Oh, I'll get into, uh, to, to sports and, and, uh, Broadcasting. Broadcasting. And so I started out in communications only, then really got intrigued by journalism. So I actually had a double. So I had communications and a journalism degree. And then my junior year, between my sophomore and junior year, I did a internship at the local NBC affiliate in St. Louis. I'm from St. Louis. And hated it. absolutely just didn't, just wasn't my thing. I like being on air, I like there, but there's quite a bit you, right, you move from city to city, you know, you start out in these really small markets and you try to work your way up. And at that time, the media industry, especially from an affiliate standpoint, was kind of up in arms. There were quite a few where, you know, you'd build up your viewership and then a company would come in and buy the station and then whack everyone. And so, yeah, I just really didn't feel it. And then I came, it was great. I did it then because I came back and I didn't quite get a business minor, but then I just really focused on business from there on for my college. And so that's what I knew I was going to go do. So you don't miss the idea of becoming a journalist or getting into broadcasting? No, I enjoy writing. You know, given what I do, I will be on air every now and then. I did a CNBC piece for a company that I'm a board advisor for and it's fun. Like I said, I think the on-air piece is actually fun. It's fun and it's some of the other aspects of it that weren't for me. And then once you jump two feet in and on the business side, when I joined Anheuser-Busch, then you're just, it's go, go, go.
[00:04:41] Ray Latif: Yeah. Well, I think you've done pretty well for yourself. I mean, your career has been dotted with some pretty high profile roles. I mean, of course, now the CEO of Soylent, you mentioned Anheuser-Busch when you started out. How'd you learn about this business? How'd you learn about CPG and what made you stay in this game?
[00:04:56] Bryan Crowley: Well, I'm from St. Louis, as I said. So at that time, it was still, Anheuser-Busch was still owned by the family and the American family. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is before the, the obviously the InBev and now AB InBev. So when you grow up in St. Louis, especially around sports, because I was big into sports, you meet a ton of people that work for Anheuser-Busch. They're so good about supporting the community. And so I had family, friends, others that all work for Anheuser-Busch. And so when I finished college, I actually traveled and played tennis a bit on the, I'd call it the minor league circuit of tennis. And then I came back and said, okay, it's time for me to get a real job. And so then you do what you do. You network with the people you know, and I got myself an interview at Anheuser-Busch, and then they shipped me out to Los Angeles, which I thought I would be here for maybe two to three years, and it's now been 22, and two kids later. Well, there are worse places than Los Angeles, for sure. Yes, it's a very fortunate, it was very fortuitous to be placed here, and I love it. I mean, it's a wonderful place to live. For sure. Did you ever get to meet, is it Adolphus Bush? No, but I met the third, who was running the company. He was the CEO, August the third. And then his son, I met, who was the fourth. And he used to actually, because I worked out here in Los Angeles, he used to come out to LA quite a bit. And so, yeah, I mean, I think they were really good about staying connected into the business. And obviously, now it's quite infamous at the ultimate purchase by InBev. But yeah, no, so I met him.
[00:06:41] Ray Latif: They're both impressive people. You know, I'm curious about that because, you know, your career, as I mentioned, you've had this sort of trajectory leading up to these C-level roles up to now the CEO of a fast-growing brand in Soylent. You know, did you see yourself on that track? Did you always kind of want to get into this position of CMO, COO, CEO?
[00:07:02] Bryan Crowley: Yeah, at first, when you start out early in your career, what I did know back then is I started actually in sales, actually up and down the street. I had a route and I was a sales rep for a company-owned distributor, Anheuser-Busch distributor here in Los Angeles. And so I was learning it from the streets, which I have to tell you, I didn't like it at all. Right, it was, I mean, I was in back rooms, recasing, I was building displays, I was doing all these things that I was wondering why I got a college degree. I did quite well in school. And, you know, I had aspirations to do all kinds of great things like we all do when we're in school. And so it was kind of a rude awakening. when I started my first like professional job with Anheuser-Busch. But you quickly looking back on it, it was one of the best experiences of my life. I mean, we were spinning cans in store because the one thing, there was a couple areas that Anheuser-Busch was just best in class when it came to CPG. One was selling. So, I got some great training around selling and then obviously branding, right? So, marketing and branding. And so, I knew early on that I wanted to move into more, even when I was in college, that I had interest in the marketing side because I have this, I always felt like I had this creative side, but also the financial and the general management side in me that wanted to grow businesses. It was a great way to do that. But Anheuser-Busch was a great first start for me because I learned so much there. And I think I was only there for two years, but it felt like I learned enough for five or 10. And some of those same principles have followed me throughout my career.
[00:08:45] Ray Latif: Is that what it takes to be a great salesperson? To really be out there in the trenches, selling the product, learning about what people think about it?
[00:08:51] Bryan Crowley: I think so. I think it's not the only way. I just think it's one of the best ways. You really do. I think for me, what's been kind of innate in me as a person, I have a personal passion for what I do. In fact, it's really difficult for me to do anything that I don't have passion for. So, you know, I get made fun of all the time because I wear my Soylent socks and I'm always sporting the Soylent shirt.
[00:09:14] Ray Latif: You got some solid socks on there.
[00:09:16] Bryan Crowley: And I love the brand. I live the brand. I consume the brand and I want to see it obviously do well for all kinds of reasons. The people that we have and how hard they work and all of those things. But that I picked up obviously at Anheuser-Busch because you back then If you work for Anheuser-Busch, you couldn't even get caught consuming a competitive product, right? And there were stories of people getting fired because they had a Corona and Anheuser-Busch owned 49% of Corona at the time. So it was like crazy, just very focused on loyalty and brand and living the brand.
[00:09:53] Ray Latif: Was that in the contract you couldn't be seen?
[00:09:56] Bryan Crowley: Yeah, back then they didn't need to have that in the contract.
[00:09:58] Ray Latif: They found a way to, you would be... You're not hitting your numbers.
[00:10:04] Bryan Crowley: What are you talking about? Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:05] Ray Latif: It's just not working.
[00:10:07] Bryan Crowley: Right. So there was a lot of those stories, but it was actually driven from a real positive place in terms of, hey, If you're going to join this community and this company, you need to believe in it. And that everybody out there, when you're in a public-facing, consumer-facing business, need to see the people that actually represent the brand actually representing the brand. And I think the Bush family had a very strong culture that way and they built that culture. And it's certainly, like I said, it's fundamental to kind of how I approach all these opportunities. And I think that's been really, you know, that's been helpful relative to how I make my choices as well. Because obviously as you move through, a lot of this is actually what choices, who are you choosing to join? Am I going to join a founder? Am I joining a business? I mean, you're joining all of those things and you really got to make sure you look inside that it's not just a job. And I think not that you can't, there are times in your life when sometimes you do need to just take a job, but to really lead at a certain level, I do think it's really important that you're living and breathing the business. And I credit my time in Anheuser-Busch helping to foster that.
[00:11:26] Ray Latif: Eventually, you did find yourself with a different brand of beer in your hand. Went on to Pabst. Then you were also at a low-alcohol vodka brand called Viv. Viv, yep, with Courtney and Carter Ream. Who have since done very well for themselves. Yeah, M13 is doing phenomenal. Their investment fund. Do you stay in touch with them on a regular basis?
[00:11:44] Bryan Crowley: Oh yeah, no, no, absolutely. I've been advisor with them 13 and I'll probably, I don't know if Courtney's gonna make his way here, but two incredibly talented professionals. And I was really lucky too. That was really my first kind of true president slash CEO type role. And it was a great experience in terms of- How old were you at the time? Ooh, that was, That was probably, I'm 46. So that was probably now seven years ago, eight years ago.
[00:12:20] Ray Latif: So 38, 39.
[00:12:21] Bryan Crowley: So yeah, late thirties.
[00:12:22] Ray Latif: Did you feel like you were prepared to take that kind of job? I mean, you're not, you know, a 22 year old, but it's still a relatively young age to be president CEO. Right.
[00:12:32] Bryan Crowley: Yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. I didn't really, I knew that's what I was preparing myself for because when I was at Mars, M&M Mars, I was definitely on GM track. Like I knew at that point I wanted to run multifunctional business units. And so I had other, I was really fortunate at the time. I had other offers when I was leaving Mars. I just took a, I believed in Courtney and Carter and I just took a jump because I knew Envy was a relatively small business, certainly compared to Soylent, but it was my opportunity to actually get in there and really cut my teeth in a president role, and it was a great experience. You learn a lot. And it's kind of how you do it in this world. You really do have to jump in and you got to be willing to take a risk. And that certainly is the case in most, you know, when you read these, I like to, you know, read some of these business books and, you know, there's always these inflection points where people kind of take a risk. And sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't, but it's actually in the process of taking those risks that you actually learn the most about yourself and what your abilities are and how do you, you know, I'm big into strength finders and, you know, Buckingham and it's really what I always coach people to do is, hey, how do you, your goal as you're moving up through your career is ask as many questions as you can so you can become really self-aware about what your strengths are. Don't worry about your weaknesses, but if you really, really understand what your strengths are, then you'll put yourself in a position where you're leveraging your strengths rather than focusing on, uh, what areas do I need to improve? And you make sure you take opportunities that leverage your strengths. Then lo and behold, you're more successful in those opportunities.
[00:14:21] Ray Latif: We'll be right back with more from Bryan Crowley after this quick break.
[00:14:25] Matt Weiss: They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavorman is better than good at beverage development. Let us guide you through the process of getting your drink brand created. Flavorman.com slash BevNET. Flavorman, change what the world is drinking.
[00:14:46] Ray Latif: There have been a couple instances in your career where you've stepped in in a traditionally founder's role. Oftentimes a founder is the CEO of a company or a co-founder is the CEO of a company. At Veve, you stepped in and Courtney and Carter stepped down.
[00:14:59] Bryan Crowley: Well, they were still involved in the business. They stayed involved in the business. But just not on a day-to-day level. Yeah, no, even from a day-to-day level, they were still involved in the business, and probably Courtney less than Carter. And then it really was about partnering on, you know, I think that's one of the things that was really smart about how they approached it. They knew they were coming not from an area of having operational experience running brands and businesses, and so they could actually come in, step aside on certain things. And so we worked really hard in terms of who was gonna do what, and where the responsibilities lied and they were great in terms of letting me run and leverage what I was really good at relative to building the team and running the business and that worked quite well for a good amount of time.
[00:15:46] Ray Latif: Let's flesh that out a little bit because there are founders at home who will be listening and saying, you know, is it time for me to hire a proven operator, a CEO to help run my company? I think a lot of them are scared because or worried about it because You don't want to lose control of your baby. I mean, you feel like you might know how to run your company better than anyone. Was that the case with Carter and Courtney? Did you have to convince them? What was the foundation of that relationship? How did you get comfortable working together in a way that you weren't stepping on each other's toes?
[00:16:15] Bryan Crowley: I think it's different for every founder and I've had the opportunity to work with some really good ones. And I think every situation is a little bit different, but there are some founding principles that you need to develop and that really is this. You really need to, if you're coming in as an operator with a founder and it is his or her baby, you really need to establish both the protocols relative to communication and ways of working and all of those things. And I was fortunate to be at Anheuser-Busch, ConAgra Foods, Mars. I got some amazing training around general management and people and HR and all of these different things that I was able to bring some of that to bear to help in these founder relationships because a lot of it is about conflict management and hey, who's going to make what decision? You're certainly going to make decisions as a CEO that people won't agree with. And there's going to be dissenting points of view. So if you establish those protocols up front, and then the real thing is like a real relationship. I love to do these things because I actually enjoy building the relationships. And that's important to get from the start. So it's got to be more than just operational work. You really do have to spend the time to get to know people on a fundamental level and on a personal level. And that's the same with founders. And that's what I find when I talk to people who are struggling in roles like mine or founders who are struggling with new leaders. A lot of it comes down to just poor communication, right? And not really establishing that rapport and that partnership. in a way that will engender the type of conflict that's gonna come, because it's always gonna come, and actually conflict is great. That's where great change can come, and that's where great progress can be made, but you definitely have to step up to that with founders, and that's a delicate thing to do. But if you establish the principles up front, I think your likelihood of success is much, much greater.
[00:18:21] Ray Latif: You know, I was talking to Mark Rampolla, who's the founder of Zico. Mark's friend. Mark's a tremendous entrepreneur, now a tremendous investor.
[00:18:30] Bryan Crowley: They're invested in Flying Embers, fermented science. There you go. And you are the co-founder of Flying Embers.
[00:18:34] Ray Latif: We'll get to that in a moment. It's interesting because we were talking about modern communication and how things are different even from 10 years ago. The way you interact and communicate with your co-workers. There's a million different ways, you know, text, Slack, email, phone call. In some cases, people are using social media to coordinate and communicate with their coworkers. I mean, what's the best way to do it? I mean, is there a secret? I mean, what do you guys do at Soylent?
[00:19:00] Bryan Crowley: Wow, is there a secret? If I had the secret, I'd definitely bottle it up and sell it. I think it is one of those big challenges relative to the technology out there. At Soylent, obviously, we're on the Gmail suite, so we have your traditional email system, if you will, and then we have Slack. So we're on the Slack platform, and that's been highly effective for us, but we've had to do a lot of work relative to, again, this idea of ways of working around, what do you use Slack for? What do you use email for? Because it is tough for employees to figure out, hey, where should this go? And how should I communicate? What's the best way? And so you really have to manage these technologies. I think that's what I see a lot is, great, you have Slack, but then someone has to help employees And associates understand what are the right channels, right? And why should these channels exist? And then how do we make sure slack doesn't turn into email where we're getting bombarded with so many things? I think the benefits of platforms like slack is. you opt in, right? And I think if people opt into conversations, they're far more engaged. You know, like we had, we didn't really have much luck with like Asana and these project management tools, because there, there's a whole culture that needs to be built. And then, you know, engineers are different than salespeople are different than marketing people that are different than finance people. And so you know, there's a ton out there. They're so exciting.
[00:20:36] Ray Latif: What advice I have is- Well, I mean, continually review it and to figure out what works. I mean, if you have to update the protocols, then update the protocols for how communication works. Oftentimes you have to evaluate not just the communication, but the mission of your company too. And I mean, it's interesting because that's one of the things when you came on board is Soylent. Soylent had a reputation in a cache and everyone sort of said, okay, I know what Soylent is. And then, you know, when you came on board, you might've had a different perspective on how to grow this company and grow it has. I mean, so it was one thing two or three years ago and it's something not completely different, but very different. When you stepped into those shoes, what was the first thing you did? You know, were you looking at changing the mission? Were you looking at trying to establish a new cache for the brand? Because it is again, different than what it was.
[00:21:25] Bryan Crowley: Yeah, absolutely. Well, your first question turns what did I first do? I literally met with every single employee, right? So, I provided a structure relative to make it a comfortable environment where you could meet the, you know, who is this guy coming into our Soylent and it was a very tight knit, tight knit group. You were the first outside CEO that came in.
[00:21:48] Ray Latif: It was just the founders of the company.
[00:21:50] Bryan Crowley: Absolutely. And it had gone from four founders down to two to one. And then I came in, obviously. So there was quite a bit of change that people were dealing with. And you got to start by having those conversations. And that was incredibly helpful because people were so open to be able to come in and talk about what's working, what's not. their dreams for the business, that's what I ask everybody as part of this, like, what's your dream for Soylent? And get them talking about, and there was so much passion for what we were doing, and that was really helpful for me to understand the business more, the people, and then start to formulate, because the second thing I did was actually develop the longer term vision, mission and strategy. And some of it was pulled right from previous work done. So some of it was very consistent, but I took my leadership team and we went and we did a hardcore process on strategy and what we needed to focus on. And then I worked with the board as well, because you got to get that aligned within your, I'm a big proponent of 30, 60, 90 days and your first 90 days, which is a great book. You know, so when I did my 30, 60, 90, one of the first all company meetings, I shared it with everyone. I actually shared it with them on the collaboration tool so people could make comments and say, why isn't this on there and try to do that. So it was a lot of listening and then a lot of strategy work and really kind of defining what we were going to do. And then we've revised it. right, because that work is very different than our strategy than now, because back then we were focused on exploring new channels, but we weren't all in on, you know, going after retail. It was all about test retail. But the vision in terms of making Complete sustainable nutrition accessible appealing and affordable to all has not changed from the beginning that is still the mission of this company, but obviously we need to actually continue to get wins and we always talk about a lot of what a leader like me does when you come in it's like okay. you're really kind of establishing accountabilities and to the financials as well. So we spent a lot of time, right? There's a lot of things that we had to change relative to our financials to make sure that we're hitting our targets and then constantly communicating to people and getting soliciting their help as well to say, hey, if we, the better we do financially, the more we can do. And I think, you know, when you come into a company like Soylent, who has some really good success, sometimes it's less about the financials and the numbers and there it's just like, okay, great. We just got to keep doing what we're doing. And that's always a hard transition because, you know, we have turned over most of the company and that's always a hard thing to do because these are great people. They're really passionate. But as you start to operationalize, like we only had a couple people that had retail experience at all when I started. And now we have a whole retail team.
[00:24:44] Ray Latif: Because most of what you're, most of what Solian was doing was, was direct to consumer.
[00:24:47] Bryan Crowley: Everything was direct to consumer. Back then we didn't, we, we hadn't really even figured out Amazon back then. So, you know, we, we definitely had support on Amazon and then we also had a full engineering team. So we, who had built the platform on Python and then, uh, and then through one of the strategy process work, then we decided to, to move off our own system, move on Shopify plus, which didn't exist when the founder started the company. That's the amazing thing is I always tell people it, technology moves so fast, you forget how long we've had phones. It's not that long. So those were some of the big kind of strategic things that we had to grapple with and decide how are we going to move forward. But again, we've transitioned now to more of a Omni is overused. We want to be, our goal is to be the best complete nutrition platform that's omni-channel in the world. That's a very different strategy than when we were just powder and RTD, that it was really more about the original founders was all about meal replacement, right? And really food replacement. Many of the hardcore early adopters were 70 to 100% of their caloric intake on Soylent.
[00:26:01] Ray Latif: And these are gamers and coders and people like that.
[00:26:03] Bryan Crowley: Coders, engineers, gamers, right? The Silicon Valley blogosphere community got onto it and that's what really helped the brand grow. But it's also a very difficult and niche thing to do. There's only so many people that will actually live off of a product like Soylent or consume it for a large percentage of their caloric needs. we actually built a pretty big business on a small number of people. And now our strategy has been, how do we actually, if we really want to make an impact on the world, right, if we really want to achieve our vision and make an impact, not just in the developed, but in the developing economies, we need to open this thing up. Right. And we this thing needs to be. And that's where we came up with the food void strategy. So from complete meal replacement to right. We're all about these food voids. And depending on what you do you have eight to 12 times during the week where you want to have something healthy or something more sustainable and you just don't have access.
[00:27:05] Ray Latif: Right.
[00:27:06] Bryan Crowley: that's where Soylent comes in. We're not trying to replace dinner with families. And that was a clear outcome of the initial strategy work of like, wow, if we're really gonna build this thing, it just can't be with this small group of core users. We're gonna support the hell out of them, right? And we're gonna make sure we provide products so that they can continue to meet their nutrition goals. But we need to now open this thing up so more people can access it. And we saw the plant movement going early on and I was really confident that it would continue to grow. And the technology around the products are actually now advancing quite a bit with the companies that we work with because everyone is chasing. I mean, I always tell my team, the goal is milk and sugar. It needs to taste as good as milk and sugar at or below the cost. And if we can get there, then we have something. And that should always be our North Star, similar to Impossible Foods Beyond Meat, which it's like a true burger experience. I think that's the insight there. They're not just trying to give you better plant or there. They're trying to actually give you the true burger experience.
[00:28:21] Ray Latif: We'll be right back with Bryan Crowley after this quick word from our sponsor.
[00:28:24] Matt Weiss: To get to something that tastes like milk and sugar, though, you need to use GMO ingredients, right?
[00:28:48] Bryan Crowley: But not necessarily. There's all kinds of ways to try to do it.
[00:28:51] Ray Latif: We use... Yeah, you made no bones about the fact that you do use. Absolutely. And it feels like it's sort of countertrend, especially within our world, this sort of bubble we live in when it comes to, you know, up-and-coming and innovative food and beverage brands. It seems like GMO is a four-letter word. But I mean, how do you convince new consumers to come to your business, to come to the brand, when you're, again, sort of countertrend in that way?
[00:29:14] Bryan Crowley: The trend is actually moving on GMO. When you look at, if you even go into the world of journalists and look at what's coming to pass relative to the conversation around GMO and its impact from a sustainability standpoint and all of the, and the science, those that are supporting the science, which is why I always say, we're not pro GMO to be pro GMO. We were pro GMO because we're pro science. and we want to find the most sustainable, the most affordable way to get complete nutrition to our customers. And that's an interesting thing because when you're starting to see the tide turn, when we launched in the UK, there was a study out there and openness to genetically modified ingredients was flipped depending on how old you were. So if you were over 45 plus, like which is me, I'm 46, you grew up and it started in Western Europe. So you grew up with GM, GM bad, GMO and all of this stuff. And it was government imposed as well. So there was a certain level of, oh, okay, well, this must be bad, but younger consumers, they have so much access to information. And they also, the other thing we're seeing in all the work and you see it as well in terms of all the work that you guys do, They don't just take what someone tells them at face value. They actually can go look it up. They can actually find out for themselves and form their own opinion and that's what I always say whenever I'm doing and I get the question on. Listen, my job is to stimulate a little thinking and a little thought and hopefully you'll go out. get your own information and form your own opinion. And I'm confident that if you actually go do the work and look it up and read and that you'll come and say, okay, that really makes me think differently about that. This happens to be about GMOs, but about any of the things that we believe. GMO, obviously we put it on long time ago, we put it on, the founders put it on billboards up in LA.
[00:31:26] Ray Latif: a t-shirt at a bed at night.
[00:31:28] Bryan Crowley: Yeah, which is a which is a fun thing and always gets a lot of attention. But so much so much investment has gone into natural organic non GMO. It's dominated both the headlines new product launches. You look at obviously all the agendas at Bev net for the last five years. It's been a big growth area. But the one thing about it, it's still is mostly serving the one percenters, right? Natural is great. There's some amazing products. I've worked for some of those companies and I've developed some of those and helped develop some of those products, but it's still only so many people can walk into a Whole Foods and afford that type of product set. That's what I love about Soylent is we're truly going after the masses. People ask me, who's Soylent for? Is it really for gamers? Sure, no, it's for everyone.
[00:32:22] Ray Latif: Everyone has a food void. How do you define better for you for not only for Soylent, but for Flying Embers? How do you market it? How do you promote it? How do you talk to consumers about it?
[00:32:31] Bryan Crowley: I think for Soylent, it's really about the need state. Like what's the consumer need that exists? And will it be better than that? versus just a generic, is it better for you? It depends on what you're consuming. One of the founding theses of the whole Soylent brand and business was this, was really fundamental that people just aren't getting the nutrients their body needs. Even super healthy eaters were not getting enough because we went from a generation where so many products were fortified We had a much smaller set of what we ate and a lot of them were fortified and they were all these. And so even today, crazy stat that in the US, 30% of people are at risk to have some nutrient deficiency.
[00:33:23] Ray Latif: And on the Flying Embers side, we hear about alcoholic beverage brands that are interested in a better for you option. A lot of them founded on this idea of, we wanna deliver a better for you option to consumers. The argument could be, well, why not just drink water? If you want to reduce your alcohol intake, if you want to live healthier, don't drink alcohol.
[00:33:44] Bryan Crowley: I think that's where we get in these debates that are so far on the extremes, right? We don't spend a lot of time thinking about eliminating drinking. And in the case of Soylent, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about people becoming full-fledged vegans. We just want to give them a better option for when they can consider Soylent or a product like that. We want to make the best product available and have it accessible for them. I think in the alcohol space, there's plenty of room for better for you because not everything is yes. Of course, if people were going to completely stop drinking, that's one extreme. But if they are going to drink. there is very compelling disruption out there that can happen to actually, not about absence of negatives, but actually about the introduction of positives with great ingredients that actually can, that are better for you, that are, there's no reason why that can't be a successful platform for a lot of people. And so I don't spend any time on the extremes because in the world of health and nutrition, it's the same thing about nutritionists for decades and decades. You gotta eat more fruits and vegetables. It just ain't happening. People aren't doing it. So if they're not doing it, how do we find products like Soylent that actually can give them the nutrients they need in a really convenient format and in sustainable ways because we're plant-based and plant-protein. and give it to them in multiple formats. We just launched mid-year, we launched Soylent Squared, our first 100 calorie nutritional bar with probiotics. So we're actually adding in more beneficial ingredients for the customer and giving them more ways that they can get the nutrition that they need throughout the day. And the evening with Flying Embers, you got probiotics in it. Then you can have, yeah, then you can have a Flying Embers, alcohol, kombucha to finish off your night and, and sleep well. But yeah, no, there's, there's a, the better for you. It's just such an exciting, I love it. I've been doing it for now a long time and I, and I really, I really enjoy it and it fits my, you know, I'm very much into health and nutrition, so it actually fits my passions as well.
[00:36:08] Ray Latif: Well, you've convinced me, Brian, I'm, I'm feeling it like a salient right now. And then, you know, maybe for the after party tonight, you know, sip on some Flying Embers.
[00:36:15] Bryan Crowley: Well, you saw I'm wearing my green is coming and mint chocolate when we launched it just a few months ago has now become our number two seller. I can imagine. So you got to try the mint chocolate.
[00:36:26] Ray Latif: I will. Absolutely. This has been a lot of fun. I really sincerely appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me. Good luck going forward with Soylent and Flying Embers and I hope to catch up again really soon.
[00:36:36] Bryan Crowley: I really appreciate the time and it's been great having a conversation and about things that we're both passionate about. So, I really appreciate it and look forward to the next one.
[00:36:45] Ray Latif: For sure. Talk soon. Okay, thanks. Right on. That brings us to the end of episode 193. Thank you so much for listening and thanks to our guest, Bryan Crowley. You can catch both Taste Radio and Taste Radio Insider on Taste Radio, the Apple Podcasts app, Citra, Google Play, SoundCloud or Spotify. 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 so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
