[00:00:05] Jon Landis: Hey, Mike, can I get a quick status update on BevNET Live and Nosh Live, please?
[00:00:09] Mike Schneider: Landis, there's over 550 people registered for BevNET Live, and Nosh Live's gonna be our biggest show ever, twice the size of the last one by conservative estimate.
[00:00:18] Jon Landis: And I heard that the room block at the Lowe's Santa Monica Beach Hotel is completely booked. Is that true?
[00:00:24] Mike Schneider: It is true, but we have you covered. We procured a limited number of rooms at the nearby La Meridienne Santa Monica Beach.
[00:00:30] Jon Landis: Well, folks, that's been your status update for BevNET Winter Events. And it's like I've been telling you, get your tickets soon and join us in Santa Monica, November 29th and 30th for Nosh and December 3rd and 4th for BevNET Live.
[00:00:42] Mike Schneider: And December 1st for the Cannabis Forum for Food and Beverage. Visit BevNetLive.com and NOSHlive.com for details.
[00:00:50] Jon Landis: And now, Taste Radio.
[00:00:58] Ray Latif: Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Taste Radio Insider. I'm Ray Latif, and with me are my BevNET colleagues, John Craven, Mike Schneider, and Jon Landis. This is episode eight of Taste Radio Insider, and we're recording from our Taste Radio studio here in Watertown, Mass. In this episode, we feature an interview with Hugh Thomas and Joe Benn, the co-founders of Ugly Drinks, a UK-based sparkling water brand that's making waves stateside. Just a reminder to our listeners, 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 would rate us on iTunes.
[00:01:33] Hugh Thomas: There it is.
[00:01:34] Ray Latif: You. Dear listeners, if you heard my voice twice, that was Mike. That's awesome. Playing my tune, so to speak. Just trying to interact with the community. On Instagram Live or Instagramming Live right now. Is it Instagram Living or is it Instagramming Live? I think it's Instagram Living. I think it's Instagram Living. I think that's weird, but that is...
[00:01:55] John Craven: I think if you have to ask that question, you're just too damn old.
[00:01:59] Ray Latif: I'm like, what am I? 31. It's all good. No laughing. No laughing. All right. Some big news. The agenda for the upcoming BevNET Live Winter 2018 conference is available. It is available at bevnetlive.com. We've got some great announcements. to speak of. You can read all about it. I'm going to give you a sample of what we've got. The president of Fiji Water, Elizabeth Stevenson, is going to be there discussing methods about how to keep brands lively and relevant as they mature and grow. Important information for a lot of the brands that listen to us here on Tay's Radio. Also, Anheuser-Busch InBev, they're making some moves into the non-alcoholic arena. They're going to be there. Randy Ornstein, the VP of sales for their Beyond Beer portfolio, will be attending. Our very own Martín Caballero, assistant editor of BevNET, will be moderating that presentation. We also have a panel on the state of women in beverage. With three important executives and innovators of the industry, we've got Sheryl O'Loughlin, the CEO of Rebel, Sheryl Klaus, the founder of Dry Soda and marketer extraordinaire, Vanessa Walker, the founder of Millennial Brands. Love all those folks. All good, good people. Good peeps. Yes, indeed. Once again, full details at bevnetlive.com. You don't want to miss these people. You don't want FOMO, right, Jon Landis? No FOMO. No FOMO. You want to attend the conference. I want you listeners to have FOMO. No, seriously, I mean, like, you know, we've got some fantastic stage presentations, but so much of BevNET Live is about getting value beyond what's on stage. I mean, the networking, the meeting of investors, the distributors you might meet. I mean, it's all really great stuff. And if you're not attending, Jon Landis.
[00:03:44] Jon Landis: You're missing out. I mean, even meeting with us, you know, we're, we're going to be making content with tons of attendees the entire time. And, you know, we're, if you're new to BevNetLive and have never been before, it can be a little overwhelming. So, you know, we're the easiest people to talk to. We got these bright red staff badges that almost glow. So, you know, come find us. We all want to meet everyone who's at the event and that'll get, you know, kind of get the juices flowing, you know, get your networking going on, you know.
[00:04:14] Mike Schneider: And you don't want to miss that opportunity to put the secret vial in the hands of John Craven either, right? I mean... He'll just turn around.
[00:04:19] Ray Latif: Thanks. Yeah. Well, I did mention, you know, we will have investors and so many folks come up to us at trade shows and they say, Hey, I'm looking for raise money. I'm looking to raise money. What do we say? Come to Bevanite Live. You'll meet investors there. John Craven. We've got a bunch of folks attending. Do you have any sense of how many investors will be there?
[00:04:37] John Craven: Well, our marketing team said there are over 20 different firms, I think. Was that for NoshLab alone? I mean, definitely more and more. I think every event that we do, it's certainly a critical part of just this ecosystem. And, you know, I think what's always interesting about it is, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, you know, maybe they just closed their round or, aren't quite looking. And, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, the worst, I feel like the worst phone call I ever get is like, I Need For raise money now. You know, I think this is just an opportunity where hopefully you're someone who maybe has already closed that round or isn't looking, but you can start to, you know, network and get to know these people. And, you know, I think we've said that before on this podcast, but, you know, it's amazing how important that is just in that, you know, these people are ultimately, you know, investing in you, the founder, just as much as the product and the market you're in, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's, you know, something that not to pat ourselves on the back, but, you know, I think we've we've got these folks coming to our event who are, you know, there to meet people, to network, you know, they're receptive to it at these events.
[00:05:44] Ray Latif: And it's funny, I mean, it may sound simple to say it, but these investors are looking to spend. They want to get to know you. Maybe the timing is not right right now for them, but at some point they will want to invest in interesting, innovative ideas, and you might have that with your brand. Come to BevNET Live, come to Nosh Live, build your community, get to know folks, get to know the other gatekeepers of the industry, the distributors that I talked about. We will have retailers attending the event. Full attendee details, we're keeping a full track of this at bevnetlive.com and noshlive.com. The companies have registered attendees, a full list, a full running list on both websites. Check it out. If you want to meet folks that you may not know from different companies, talk to Jon Landis, talk to me, talk to John Craven, talk to Mike Schneider. Anyone from the BevNET or Nosh staff will try to help you as best as we can, but you got to be there.
[00:06:33] Mike Schneider: This event will sell out. And don't forget that there are opportunities for exposure. you know, outside of the events as well. So we've got opportunities to, you know, great content on the live stream, Elevator Talk, new beverage showdown, pitch slam, you know, on our social media channels, there's going to be all kinds of opportunities to elevate your brand at these events.
[00:06:52] Ray Latif: But you can only take advantage of those opportunities, Jon Landis, if you do what? Attend. Attend, indeed. Can I say something?
[00:06:59] Jon Landis: Because this is kind of like my arena. This is what I talk about all day. It's your 10 seconds to shine, Landis. First of all, this event is built just to attend. Everything is included. It's an immersive experience, you know. Breakfast is included? Breakfast, lunch, parties, networking, content. It's all curated. The content is all geared towards the CPG business model. So, you know, we're not talking about food tech. We're not talking about, you know, some of these more larger entities in the industry as much as we're focusing on entrepreneurship and innovation.
[00:07:29] Mike Schneider: Taking your company next level. I mean, that's what the show is all about. you know, we curate these events for brands to come with their hardest questions and to find their next partners. I mean, that happens all the time at these events. You know, you'll have somebody who presents on stage and wins or doesn't win. They walk off the stage, have a great conversation. Brands that don't present have these same kinds of conversations with, you know, designers, suppliers. If you have a question about, you know, it's keeping you up about scale, about raising capital, about when to raise capital, bring your hardest questions to our event.
[00:08:01] Ray Latif: Once again, you got to come to the event. Mike Schneider, the event is very close to being sold out from what you told me.
[00:08:08] Mike Schneider: Yeah, we're about 80% of the way there for BevNET Live and Nosh Live is going to be our biggest event ever.
[00:08:14] Ray Latif: So what you're saying is that we're going to sell out before Thanksgiving? I'm hoping. Yeah, well, all I know is that there are a lot of folks John Lennis You and I talked about this yesterday who try to make plans at the last minute It's extremely difficult because you got to get your ticket.
[00:08:29] Jon Landis: You got to get your plane ticket You got to get your hotel room And if you don't have one of those things, it's gonna be very difficult for you to have a good experience Yeah, this is in our first rodeo, you know, we've done definite live too many times This will be my 12th. So we've gone dozen and Yeah, it's my dozen. So we've gone through this whole process a number of times, we see it, people buy their tickets in the week or two leading up to it. So if you're sitting at home, kind of like, you know, thinking I'm gonna come, you should just get your ticket this week. And don't worry about it. Because once the room is full, what are we going to do?
[00:09:05] Ray Latif: In other news, Forbes released its annual 30 under 30 list. This is the 2019 edition. A couple of months ahead of 2019, we're still in 2018 for those who are paying attention. How do they know? It's an educated guess. Included in the list, well, included in the food and drink category, that is, a couple of Taste Radio alums, the DeCicco brothers, the founders of Key to Life, formerly Cineva Super Coffee. They still call it super coffee because it is super coffee. And Eugene Kang, the co-founder of Country Archer, who was featured in the very first episode of Taste Radio Insider. Mike Schneider, you were all over that one.
[00:09:44] Mike Schneider: I was. Good to see you on the list, Eugene. Outstanding.
[00:09:47] Jon Landis: also the co-founders of morning brew newsletter. I gotta give a shout out to that fricking newsletter. Cause it's so good. And they made that list too. It's just general business news that hits your inbox. I get that. I love it.
[00:10:01] Mike Schneider: Mania bro.
[00:10:02] Jon Landis: They're, they're, they're really doing some good work.
[00:10:04] Ray Latif: So those guys, all right, Instagram. Instagram Live? Yes, Instagram Live viewers, thank you so much for watching. We're gonna continue to try to do this. If you have any suggestions on how we can make it better or worse, please just let us know. Alright, let's get to our interview with Hugh Thomas and Joe Benn, the co-founders of sparkling water brand Ugly Drinks, who we featured way back in episode 31 of the Flagship Taste Radio podcast. That was two years ago, and since then, Ugly has undergone a major brand revamp and significantly expanded its retail presence in the UK. Earlier this year, the brand made its U.S. debut via a direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform and at independent retailers in New York. In an interview with John Craven recorded in London, Hugh and Joe discussed growth planning for both the U.S. and U.K. markets. how their perspective of Ugly as a, quote, digital brand has shaped their overall business strategy, and how its loyal consumers, aka the Ugly Mob, have enabled the company to rapidly iterate and innovate.
[00:11:16] John Craven: All right, so I'm here in London again with Joe Benn and Hugh Thomas of Ugly Drinks. Thanks again for getting back on the podcast.
[00:11:25] Hugh Thomas: No worries, John. It's good to have you in London again. I always enjoy your visits, so welcome.
[00:11:29] John Craven: Thank you. So it's literally been two years since we had you on the podcast. You guys were just getting started. A lot has evolved for Ugly, including US expansion that we've covered. Can you just give us kind of a high level update on what's going on?
[00:11:47] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, so I mean, look, thinking about two years feels like yesterday, but a lot's happened, as you say. Since then, brands kind of moved on from strength to strength, Really No stocked in two of the UK's largest retailers, Tesco's and Sainsbury's, probably in close to, what, three and a half thousand stores now in the UK. truly omni-channel as well, selling direct-to-consumer on Amazon, kind of multi-channel approach. And then May this year, 2018, launched in the U.S. with our direct-to-consumer business and supported with New York up and down the street. And yeah, it's been exciting in the U.S. to kind of expand the ugly footprint and take the ugly truth message to that market. And in the U.K., sparkling water and that whole category has Really No of started to explode this year. We had a hot summer in the UK and a lot of people tried it for the first time, which is really exciting.
[00:12:36] John Craven: And since we last saw you, you guys have also redesigned the brand. Curious how you guys did that with knowing that you had not only the UK market, but also, you know, the US market on the horizon.
[00:12:48] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, so when Joe and I started the brand, we had, I guess, a lean startup philosophy to building the business. And our initial branding was done with the mentality and the philosophy of knowing that we would adjust and change it as we go. And we listened to consumers here using the UK to kind of learn about the packaging, the can, the design. And as part of our partnership with Green Park and the team there, redesigned the business going into 2017. worked on it during the year, really refined the positioning, refined the packaging to make sure it looked and stands out as well as it does now with the bold colours, kind of very much taking from what we had and evolving it to something that really stands out now and is capturing the imagination of consumers and people who follow us, which is really exciting. We're adjusting it all the time so we don't want to rest on our laurels and we're constantly making tweaks to this which not all visible to the naked eye but we're always learning and taking feedback into what we're doing.
[00:13:49] Joe Benn: Yeah, I mean, I just add in terms of that process, we obviously had ambitions for the US market. And so we knew we needed a brand that kind of worked in both markets. We have this emerging category in the UK, and we wanted to take a Really No of strong positioning in. And then we have this very established category in the US, which we wanted to be able to disrupt with something that was different and innovative and exciting. So the brand kind of as it looks today has been in market in the UK for just over 12 months. And it's kind of really just like a a continuation of the ugly truth platform that we've had since the beginning. But I think from a consumer's point of view, hopefully much more clear now. So we kind of talk about the ugly truths within the product itself. So no nonsense. We talk about kind of packaging and waste. So we produce the product in the UK and our US product is produced in North America. Obviously we cut plastic from our supply chain as much as possible. And then we also have this third pillar of the ugly truth, which we're really excited about, where we want to challenge ugly truths in the wider world. So the kind of first manifestation of that is we've partnered with a charity called Girl Up. So a charity that supports gender equality. We donate a penny from every can in the UK and a cent from every can in the US. And just really exciting, like we're very much at the beginning of that relationship, but the brand kind of allows us to do that kind of partnership now.
[00:15:04] John Craven: And do you feel like you have the brand at a place where, you know, despite maybe there being future changes, is this a brand that, you know, you could take, I don't know, into other countries or other product categories? Like, how do you see it right now?
[00:15:19] Hugh Thomas: Yes, so Ugly has been developed, as Joe just mentioned, around the Ugly Truth as our positioning. We really see this and there's a lot of growth to be had in flavoured sparkling water and the brand is designed to kind of communicate clearly to the markets we're initially in, but there's no reason this brand has been designed with a global mindset. We can't roll it out. We're beginning to look at opportunities in Europe. North America is obviously the next kind of big market for us and we've got a long way to go there, but there's no reason we can't continue to expand that and then the ugly truth as a kind of philosophy and purpose for us allows us to kind of apply this thinking of taking the bad stuff out and Really No of being transparent to other categories or other kind of subcategories of sparkling water that we might start to investigate over time.
[00:16:04] John Craven: And as far as the UK market is concerned, and we'll talk about the US market in a second, What's kind of been going on here? I think when we had you guys on the podcast two years ago, it was like, you know, it's really just a nascent category with, you know, not a lot happening. Has much changed in two years?
[00:16:22] Joe Benn: Yeah, 100%. I think two years ago, we were pretty much the only brand in this space in the UK. I think now there's probably about five or six brands, all with quite kind of different positioning, and hopefully all kind of complementing each other and kind of growing this category out. So I think you now see at least one brand, sometimes two or three and pretty much every major retailer in the UK, which is certainly changed since since two years ago, even since 12 months ago, I would say.
[00:16:48] John Craven: So on the US front, you guys made the decision to launch direct to consumer, I guess, you know, before you you're, you know, moving over there soon. Yeah. What was that like? You know, how and how's that going?
[00:17:00] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, I mean we always wanted to know and we always have known that this is a digital brand and we think digital first and our consumer does as well. So we in the UK have developed a strong social media following with millennials and Gen Z consumers and we knew that when we launched in the US that was going to be something that occurred as well. That's how the brand is developed, that's how we speak, that's who we are ultimately as a team as well. And we know that millennial consumers, Gen Z consumers, want to be able to buy new things when they discover them at the kind of touch of a button. And if we were only stocked in retail from the outset, it'd have been hard to build that community and those relationships quickly. So when we were looking at our launch in the market, we felt that a direct-to-consumer offering that was available nationwide from day one was a really exciting way for us to kind of get the product in the hands of people who wanted to try Ugly, engage with the brand for the first time. And it's been amazing, I mean, the learning process by going direct and getting the live feedback, the one-to-one relationships has allowed us to kind of really learn fast. The speed of iteration from our business in the USA, because of that, is so much faster. We're adjusting the flavors, the recipe, the packaging, the way we communicate, the website, the whole experience is adjusting on a week-by-week, day-by-day basis. And we started to build a Really No of strong community of users across the whole country. We've got subscribers in every state now and users in certainly all of the major cities in North America, which for a brand, which is less than 150 days old in market is pretty exciting and means we're getting a varied range of feedback that we can then apply to the brand when we put it into more conventional channels.
[00:18:42] John Craven: And have you brought the direct consumer to market over here as well?
[00:18:46] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, we've had the direct-to-consumer philosophy from day one. It's an amazing kind of way of talking one-to-one with your consumer and building an amazing experience. And if anybody hasn't seen, I'm sure you can see on our social media, we deliver the product in these amazing blue boxes. When you unbox it, there's all sorts in the box, like a very kind of direct relationship with the consumer. And we're gathering useful kind of information from consumers too. And as the UK business has developed and the categories developed here, we're having more and more consumers buy product direct from Ugly. Some people discovering it because they're searching for alternatives to traditional soda. Some people wanting to kind of discover what Ugly is for the first time and they can get it to their door. and kind of give it a go. And we're just really excited about the potential for kind of continued growth in that channel, building this loyal group of consumers that we call the Ugly Mob. Just excited to see what we can learn and how we can adjust because of that information and learning.
[00:19:44] John Craven: So your strategy is basically to, you know, launch in the US and grow that business, but also to maintain and grow your UK business, which seems pretty different than some of the other brands that I'm talking to over here that are just focused on the UK. You know, what sort of, I guess, advice might you have for someone who is a UK brand thinking about launching in the US?
[00:20:08] Joe Benn: I think from our perspective, we've always loved the US market. Hugh and I, because of our backgrounds working previously at Vitacoco, we were kind of exposed to it in a way that maybe some UK entrepreneurs aren't. And so maybe felt a little bit more accessible and a little bit less scary to us. And fundamentally just way more, or incredibly exciting. So yeah, we've been following BevNET for like, well, I don't know, eight years or so. And yeah, we always had the ambition. And I think one of the things that Rebrand kind of really gave us confidence to do was get into that market. And what we hope to do is kind of show that UK brands can compete in that space. There's no reason why not. Obviously, there's a lot going on politically over here with Brexit and things like that. And so, whereas kind of European markets might have been an obvious extension for UK brands two, three years ago, now the US is an obvious opportunity.
[00:20:58] Hugh Thomas: I guess to add from an advice point of view, Because I think by doing it, we've kind of going into uncharted territories for UK beverage business, especially one of our age and the nascency of the business. And we pretty much did it all from the UK with a team average age less than 27 at the time. So young group of people joined kind of working it out. And the advice is Really No to make it seem as daunting as the geography suggests it could be. The US is obviously a massive place, but the approach we took and we just referenced it was go one consumer at a time or one store at a time and build the momentum the same way we did when we launched in the UK. So I think sometimes entrepreneurs in the UK could maybe get overwhelmed by, oh, it's 4,000 miles away, there's 350 million people, there's this many cities, the distance between New York and LA is the same as London to the Congo in Africa. But actually just kind of breaking it down, going, we're going to start with one manufacturing facility. We're going to launch in these channels. We're going to launch with these flavors. Working back from there with a set time zone just allowed us to break it up and slowly kind of build it. And it's amazing what you can achieve over a year, even though the progress over one to two weeks initially felt slow.
[00:22:09] John Craven: But I guess your advice would also be to send a founder over there, hire a team.
[00:22:15] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm moving there in the next 10 days, so I'm moving to New York. You'll probably be listening to this from New York. Yeah, I'll listen to this from the office there. But the amazing thing is that we've been able to achieve a lot of this remotely. down to the cost of travel, visas, things like that have meant that we've been forced to do a lot of work using video, Skype, etc. And it is amazing how much you can achieve doing that. A few late evenings have happened. But yeah, we've come a long way. Now it's the time to really allocate our resource. So Joe and I as co-founders, splitting that responsibility, I'm moving there, Joe's going to look after the business here. One of the advantages of having two of us is that we are able to do that and our job is to instill the same cultural DNA that we both set out with in both teams. and continue to make sure everyone's aligned as well. So our teams are actually, both UK and US teams, talk on a daily basis. And having worked for a big company, Vitacoco, that did the kind of reverse move, I think we have a good understanding of what it takes to have global consistency of the brand and the culture as well, which is so easy. You can already feel so easy that you could let it go. So we're very conscious of that.
[00:23:29] John Craven: So I guess the advice is to somewhat think about actually building the company as opposed to just getting the product in the market?
[00:23:35] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, we've spent a lot of time planning. We spent a lot of time thinking it through. We built a lot of systems and processes. When we are hiring people, we try to hire people who are problem solvers, who think creatively and also think internationally as well. And we've done a great job of doing that. Yeah, really excited to see how it goes. We've got all of the kind of the foundations in place that we wanted to have now and next 12 months, 18 months is about building the business over there.
[00:23:59] Joe Benn: Yeah, and I just add it's also kind of taking the learnings from US brands doing it the other way. Some of the brands that have massively succeeded in the UK are brands that have built out teams via Cocoa Pop Chips, Kind Bars, and then you see others which kind of plug into a distributor and they often kind of don't hang around too long. And so we really wanted to make sure we were building it properly with the right foundations. So can you tell us what else is on the horizon for Ugly?
[00:24:23] Hugh Thomas: Yeah, so in the UK, we'll continue to grow the business and we've got some really exciting conversations with big retailers happening here and the team's doing an amazing job of scaling it. In the US, I'm going to move there and we've kind of got really exciting plans. We have new flavor on the horizon, watermelon, which we actually developed based on kind of the crowd thinking using our the data from our direct consumer to understand what consumers were looking for. We believe the ugly truth is that there is no seasonality and so we didn't want a pumpkin spice latte flavor seltzer at this point so we've gone for watermelon which everybody seemed to want and yeah that launches on October 31st touch wood and then yeah moving into next year we'll be adding plenty more flavors to the lineup and yeah just really excited about developing those with the crowd with our fans and making sure that we're developing a product that is really well thought through and takes into account what our consumers are looking for. So yeah, we're really excited. We're building our team, building the distribution we have and building the direct-to-consumer business, which has been a big learning curve for us. But yeah, it's really exciting kind of to see how that helps us learn as an organization, but also expand our footprint quickly across the whole country.
[00:25:34] John Craven: Excellent. Well, Hugh and Joe, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down with me again.
[00:25:39] Hugh Thomas: Pleasure. Anytime.
[00:25:41] John Craven: Thanks.
[00:25:43] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of episode eight of Taste Radio Insider. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to our guests, Hugh Thomas and Joe Benn. Tune in next week for episode 138 of the flagship Taste Radio podcast, when we're joined by Ken Uptain, the founder and CEO of Alkaline Water Powerhouse Ascensia, a brand whose annual sales are approaching $180 million. Please subscribe to Taste Radio Insider on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and Google Play. And as always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to askatasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
