[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello friends, I'm Ray Latif and you're tuned into Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. The best founders know that great products don't win on their own. Investor, entrepreneur, and longtime business journalist Darren Rovell joins Taste Radio to share the lessons he's learned backing breakout brands like Athletic Brewing, Pop-Up Bagels, and Vienna Snacks, building his own company, Kickstand Cocktails, and evaluating hundreds of startups every year. He explains what separates investable founders from the rest, why adaptability beats stubbornness, and how emerging brands can carve out an advantage even in the most competitive categories. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am supremely honored to be sitting down with Darren Rovell. Darren, it's great to see you. I'm honored to see you as well, Ray. I don't know how you do it. Your schedule is just absolutely bonkers. You're coming from Nantucket, your quote unquote vacation in Nantucket, to meet me here in, of all places, West Hartford, Connecticut.
[00:01:25] Darren Rovell: I just wanted to do it in person. Everything's so much better in person.
[00:01:27] Ray Latif: It really is.
[00:01:28] Darren Rovell: It really is. I do like to tell people that the reason I do so many things is I was blessed or hurt by the fact that I just have a brain that keeps spinning. And if I don't fill it, I'll be in a mental asylum. So. Okay. Well, you look good. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm here. What are you doing for, uh, for health? I run, I get on the scale every morning and I got to be under 200 pounds. Okay. You know, as we hit 48, it gets harder and harder. Got to get the 10,000 steps. Okay. Want to do one more marathon. No stem cells or anything else? No, no, no, no PRP. I don't cheat. No GLP-1s, no PRPs, no peptides. GLP-1s is cheating? This is a very interesting conversation. This could go hours. It depends on if you need it or not, and obviously that's very subjective.
[00:02:17] Speaker 1: Okay.
[00:02:18] Darren Rovell: I like to kill people the most about the testosterone. When they show me they're up at 5 a.m. and they're doing, you know, the gym at 48, 50, you know, I'm on testosterone. You're cheating. You're cheating.
[00:02:29] Ray Latif: Okay. I won't comment on testosterone, but it's interesting about GLP-1s because of your investment in food and beverage and how prevalent those drugs are in innovation strategies and new product development. everyone's looking to incorporate protein and fiber into their products.
[00:02:49] Darren Rovell: That was honestly like my first investment, Vienna in 2017. The brand of chickpea snacks, chickpea-based snacks. Yeah, the premise was there was going to be a lot of synthetic protein and wouldn't it be great if you could have something that's naturally occurring that you can put spices on and there it is and Vienna protein and fiber and I actually think having seen the sales of their edamame product at Costco, I do think that as more and more things say protein in it in a not quite so natural way, Vienna makes more sense. Chickpeas make more sense as people will seek and go to natural.
[00:03:29] Ray Latif: Yeah, I would agree. I think in the long term, people are going to figure out that what is naturally occurring is probably best for you. You know, we talk about better for you all the time, but what's really best for you? I agree. And we're talking about Tastemaker Capital is the name of your investment company, and you've been... funding companies for some time, 2017, I believe is when you launched.
[00:03:49] Darren Rovell: So the idea behind that, Ray, was simply I invested with Kobe in body armor. And before that, we said we wanted to be in something and his business manager said no. And I said, I will never let someone else determine whether I want to be in a company or not. So in Tastemaker Capital, it's me, my brother, a high school friend who's a CFO of another company and is our CFO. And the premise was, we're looking at all these VCs and most of them are saying, oh, we need to spend 10 to 20 million dollars. We got to wait until B. And they're coming up with all these rules. And I was saying, why don't we just invest with our gut? Does it have a good founder? Does it have a good premise? Is it proving at least something? There are 2 to 4 million in sales. There were 10 to 15 million. And it's not a fund. It's SPV. So I call the product. I send it around to the people who are prospective investors. They say whether they like it or not. We figure out the room we have and what do you want? And that's it. And it allows us to hit a much better percentage because I am not making sure that I'm allocating funds and going into companies that I don't want to go into.
[00:05:05] Ray Latif: The companies that you've gone into are some pretty awesome companies, and they include Athletic Brewing. No one believed in Athletic Brewing.
[00:05:11] Speaker 2: No one. Not a single person.
[00:05:13] Ray Latif: No one. And now look where the brand is today. I would assume it's probably approaching billion-dollar valuation. Yeah. And at the time, non-alcoholic beer was St. Polly Girl, and that was pretty much it.
[00:05:25] Darren Rovell: Yeah. And Sharps had failed, and a bunch of these things had failed, and O'Doul's really wasn't anything. The crazy thing about my athletic investment was I looked at literally like three data points. I looked over the pond at Europe and was shocked that 0.2% of all beer sales in our country was non-alcoholic at that point. and that it was like six or seven or 8% in Germany and Ireland and places where you'd be like, what? I thought it would be less. Then I just went a step deeper and said, okay, why? And it was like, well, they have craft non-alcoholic beer. We don't. And holding the bottle is not necessarily a placebo for the feeling of drinking a beer. It's does the beer taste the same? So that was kind of the real insight. And I did see at that point there was very little data, but there was a little bit of data that did show that non-alcoholic beer drinkers, the majority of them, more than 50 percent at that time, drank alcohol. And that is one of the major insights that lights athletic on fire. It's Sunday night. You're 48 years old. You got a 12 year old. You got a 14 year old. You got another 12 year old. You got to get up at six in the morning. It's halftime. Are you going to drink four more beers and get home? Or are you just going to have a simulation beer that tastes just as good? That's really where it is. I did not predict that we'd have younger people going after it, but I thought that there was enough to make it happen. And I also thought that no matter how hard Budweiser or Corona tried, it would always have that, well, it's just, they're not naturally non-alcoholic. And so if I could get into a brand and Bill's done a great job and John, and you know, it's, they've really been tremendous at leading this product.
[00:07:18] Ray Latif: True story. Last night I had two beers, a Guinness and a Guinness Zero.
[00:07:23] Darren Rovell: There you go.
[00:07:24] Ray Latif: Yeah. There you go. I was like, I can't do another Guinness regular. And even though, I mean, it's a very easy beer to drink, but I was like, Oh, I got to meet Darren tomorrow. I can't, can't even be a little bit off. I got to be on my game for this. You always are, Ray. I appreciate you saying that. Before you hopped on the mic, you said something interesting. I asked if you were the first investor. I thought you were the first investor in athletic, but you weren't. No.
[00:07:44] Darren Rovell: So what happened, what Bill offered me. Bill the founder, co-founder and CEO. Yeah. He said, do you want to invest before we have a single sale? And I was like, ah, I'm like, I don't know. I'd like to really try it. And it was against all my being like, again, I like you have proof of concept really. And so I waited and that wait is going to cost me a lot of money one day. Uh, not a lot, but yes, I would say you're still a lucky man, Darren. There's been things over time as there always are that, uh, where things go. LeBron. Yeah. Shiloh from Fisher Island lemonade. I followed her around. Like you would not believe I was in Connecticut. I was like, gosh, She's the first person to charge $4 for a canned cocktail, four for 16. It's crazy, but wow, how can you get whiskey and vodka together in a can and actually make it taste good? So never got to her. I don't think she took any investors, but there's always a, when something hits big and you know, you have an email, you'll back and you're like, ugh.
[00:08:47] Ray Latif: Well, Bronnie did really well for herself. Fisher's Island Lemonade sold to Spirit of Gallo, which is the spirit arm of Gallo wine. One of the nicest people out there. So nice. And she was way ahead of the trend. You're right in the middle of the trend right now with Kickstand Cocktails as the founder and... Founder. Well, founder.
[00:09:06] Speaker 2: You were the CEO. I was, but now I'm not.
[00:09:08] Ray Latif: Yeah. Of Kickstand Cocktails, which is just a tremendous brand that really fits the trend. but is differentiated in a way that I think very few other brands in the space are. Talk about the origins of Kickstand and where you are today.
[00:09:24] Darren Rovell: So, didn't have any dream of doing a canned cocktail, but right out of COVID, it was, I think, December 2021, I was at Beauty and Essex. Great restaurant, good bar. In New York City. Yep. Jalapeno cucumber cocktail, the first one was good. The second one didn't taste spicy, had two jalapeno slivers in it. Went to the bartender, it was the same bartender, and I said, not spicy. He goes, I can't control it. And for a second, I was like, okay, this is a little bit of a catastrophe. It's like a pretty good place and bar. And he said, I don't know, one out of every seven or eight jalapenos are just not gonna flavor the drink with spice. They're naturally occurring. And to me, I just thought, wouldn't it be great to build something where, as spice is going to take over the country, that you could perfectly titrate the spice? I felt like I had a mission to do this. Now, I knew right away that there were not that many people who want to drink spicy things. And so when I sat down and dialed everything in, in our first production was actually July, 2022, I wanted Spice to be a device. I did not want it to be the main act. I wanted you to taste it. I wanted it to go away.
[00:10:48] Ray Latif: This is a very crowded and competitive space that you're in right now. And it almost seems like a little bit of a gold rush. I'm not saying that's why you got into the space. You got into the space for sort of light bulb moment and the opportunity that came with that moment. But it's a cutthroat business with some players that have already been in the space, think about it, cut water for a very long time. And you've got to prove yourself, not just to that consumer, but you've got to prove yourself to the retailers, to distributors. Alcohol is a very difficult business. But what's been the biggest learning for you just in general? As an entrepreneur, as a beverage entrepreneur for the first time, you've been a beverage investor for some time, but as an entrepreneur in this space, what have you had to catch up on quickly? And it's strange to even ask you that question because you've been involved in food and beverage for so long.
[00:11:35] Darren Rovell: It's not a meritocracy. I believe, and I'm a founder, so I believe that my drink is the best. I think our Peach Chipotle is the most complex cocktail in a can. You have to work so hard in this industry. The hardest part is that you're not going to win because of taste. You're not going to win because of branding. You have to do smart things. We've been pretty smart. There are different rules for different states as to what you can do. In one state, you can hand a can to people at the end of the liquor store once they go through the line. There's certain rules on sweepstakes and what you can do. And then I think you just have to find the perfect situation. So I'll tell you one insight for me. The best thing we did is we went into states that were in supermarkets. So Ohio, I think 10th in the country in population, maybe third or fourth in Kickstand Cocktails. Kroger, Florida, blows it out. And the reason is, although they're shopping for the same thing, liquor, liquor, right, in a liquor store, people make a beeline. to what they want. In fact, they don't want you to bother them. This is anecdotal, but I would say if I'm standing in the front of a liquor store for a tasting, I can stop maybe 25% of people. If I'm in a supermarket, especially like a happy supermarket like Stu Leonard's, I could get 80% of people to stop. And by the way, the try to buy ratio is double in a supermarket. It's the science of shopping. It's the fascinating, if anyone's read Paco Underhill, it's, this is what it is. So our goal was to be in supermarket States as much as we could. And to only go into 10 States, we're in nine. Now we might go into 11, but we're just going deeper and deeper and deeper. We are not going around the country.
[00:13:30] Ray Latif: When you say that it's not a meritocracy, when you say that it's not about the taste, or you're not going to win on taste, you're not going to win on branding, is that specific to alcohol or are you just talking about CPG in general?
[00:13:41] Darren Rovell: I think it's inventions and product in general, but I think there are catches within alcohol that make it harder. It's the three-tier system. It's the distributor has to come through for you. There's so much less that you could do personally to affect it, and that's why it makes it harder to do. I can't deliver my product or go to anywhere I want. I can't just go to some sort of supermarket or fair and just plop my thing down on there. There's all these rules and it makes it harder.
[00:14:14] Ray Latif: But can't you point to progress elsewhere? Let's say you are doing really well in Florida and you say, Hey, Ohio grocery store chain, this is how well we're doing in Florida. You should carry our product.
[00:14:26] Darren Rovell: For sure. Again, I can win on taste as long as I get a fair shot. So I think my name helps a little bit, but you never know who's running various parts. There's supermarkets, there's supermarkets that won't taste your product. They'll say, Oh, we don't do that. We just look at Nielsen. We don't taste the product. I'll lose there. Right. I'm doing well. They look at December. I'm one of the fastest growing Kickstand Cocktails in Florida, but again, those are the challenges, you know, and yes, you do have to say, look at us elsewhere, but in order for me to win and win fast, I need you to try me. If I can get you to try me. we're off to the races. And that's worked a lot. We have a lean and mean staff, and it's slow to get there. The idea of only being in a couple states, I think, is one that, you know, we haven't wasted time in states that were going to go too slow for us.
[00:15:20] Ray Latif: I get the sense that this is really fun for you. I also get the sense that this is really frustrating for you.
[00:15:25] Darren Rovell: Not frustrating. It's the greatest challenge of my business life. It is very fun. I am a pig-inch when I am sampling. I love it. I'm so proud that we really did this. I'm so proud of my entire team. It's like a family because my CEO, Elisa Baker, her husband, Richie, is in sales with us. former NYPD, Tyler Rhodes is our head of sales. His wife, Stephanie is going around doing the samplings, doing everything else. So it really is kind of like a family affair. It's been very fun and I'm confident we're going to win.
[00:16:05] Ray Latif: I've tasted your cocktails. They're great.
[00:16:06] Darren Rovell: Thank you.
[00:16:07] Ray Latif: I've tasted them in 2022. I've tasted them in 2026. There are great. I mean, there've been small changes in the taste for sure. Your branding though has been different, pretty significantly different since you launched. And when I look at the original can, it looks really sophisticated. It looks like it's for an elevated type of consumer and experience. Your current can is also a sophisticated premium look or has one. It almost feels, however, like you've made it easier for a more mainstream consumer to approach the product and the brand.
[00:16:40] Darren Rovell: Was that the case? I think over time, the truth is that I have always done well with niches. And in the beginning, I came out like, we're going to be completely different. And I think the answer is not completely different because then when you get in, they say, we need you to match the price of High Noon. And it's like, okay, they're doing like 800 gazillion times more than us. How am I going to match the price? And then you say, okay, well, we'll have the price be $5 more, but we'll do some sort of $5 rebate or a BOGO or something like that. So I think we wanted to make people comfortable. We didn't want it to be that different. So we added on the top, we wanted to have some sort of rim so that they could see what color it was so they could pull it out of ice. People expect certain things, right? They expect it in an eight pack of variety. That's how people are buying it. Make sure it's 110 calories. It's no added sugar. It's gluten-free. And yet you have to tell those stories. Originally, we had the spice level on it, and it just seemed that that was one thing that was intimidating to people.
[00:17:48] Ray Latif: Yeah, even some of the words that you used on the original can, torched, peach, chipotle, roasted jalapeno.
[00:17:55] Darren Rovell: And I love, and I love those adjectives were free. Yeah, right adjectives are free me and my staff we talked about it and we said it's two lines now people see two lines and Doing three might be you know, hey, listen, it's even going down to the labeling system at Total Wine, right? Like oh, they only have they only have two lines, right? So what are you gonna do and we're gonna and so that was also another thing that we did and I love the can now and I look at the first can and I think with each run that we did, we changed something a little bit from our insights. And that's really good business. It's not what you start with, it's how you evolve. And I think right now we're, we're in an outstanding position.
[00:18:37] Ray Latif: I think the biggest evolution, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the term soda, craft vodka soda. is how you describe the products today. I don't recall seeing that in the past.
[00:18:49] Darren Rovell: That was not on the original. Again, you do not want there to be any impediment when someone goes up there without you, when you're not sampling, when you can't affect them, and they say, what is this? You have to say what the leaders say, with the exception of Long Drink, who they don't want to tell you that they're a gin. They just want you to know that it's in Nordic history. Although when you taste it, you'll taste the gin.
[00:19:13] Ray Latif: Of course, of course.
[00:19:14] Darren Rovell: Yes.
[00:19:15] Ray Latif: Do you feel like the evolution of kickstand has come with You having to compromise it all. You've already talked about having to make these changes to fit the consumer, to fit the retailer, but do you ever feel like you're compromising on the brand or vision itself? No, not at all. I think founders sometimes feel like they do have to compromise because it's not going to work otherwise.
[00:19:35] Darren Rovell: That's just not how I think about it. I think because I've been a part of so many founders' journeys, I think there's a negativity with compromise. There are learnings, and we still are the only canned cocktail whose chief differentiator is spice. You can't find anything close to us. Yes, if you want to go to On the Rocks at 20%, you know, you can do that. That's a totally different product. We're in our own lane, and we're still in our own lane, and that has been my dream. But yes, we have conformed to things because we think that if there's a way for people to get it faster, again, like the supermarket adage, you got five seconds, that it has to look like other products.
[00:20:22] Ray Latif: Has the target consumer remained the same? Have you seen a change in who's buying your products since you launched?
[00:20:27] Darren Rovell: So I think it's probably 60-40 women to men. We had a conversation at one point, it's a black can. Woman wouldn't mind the black can. A man would not like a pink can. So black is kind of right for us. It's elevated. It is the premium product. People see it as a premium product. It's not use this to get as drunk as you can. Surely you can, because you can't taste the vodka. But I don't think that's our consumers. Young consumers really like us. I think the people who are slam dunks in all the tastings that I do, you know, the 30 to 45s, they are the people in the restaurants who are throwing the jalapeno in. And it has been fantastic for us because we're so far ahead of this trend. you know, a little heat, a little sweet, the chip aisle. It is amazing how much spicier we are as a nation than we were when we started. Yeah. Spice and candy.
[00:21:26] Ray Latif: I mean, you think about a rotten candy and that is there. The chamoy, the tajin and all those snack packs.
[00:21:33] Darren Rovell: People become very comfortable with spice. And we see that. There are people who come up to us and say, is it spicy? And I say, no. And someone would say, I hate spice. And I go, okay. And they walk away with an eight pack because again, it's spice as a device. When you have our peach Chipotle, you sip it, you get a dry peach, not a sugary peach. It hits you on the tongue first. And then like 10 seconds later, I don't know how it really happens. I wish I could say that I figured this out. It's almost like a time release. As soon as it goes down, about five seconds later, you feel it a little bit on the back of the throat, and it's like a comfortable kind of burn. It's not a bourbon burn. It's a comfortable burn, and then it goes away. I had a conversation with a restaurant chain, and they said, you know, it's a crisis because people can't drink these drinks and eat at the same time. because of the sugary mouthfeel, they have to commit to one or the other. And it's a crisis for them because the food eating is slowing down. The couple things that I really said I needed was I needed just enough carbonation that you know it's carbonated. That's it. I can't have a burp. You can't open it and burp. So that was one. And then the second was I want, as soon as it goes down, You can get a burn or a tingle, but then five seconds later, you're back to zero. A neutral mouthfeel. And we accomplished that. But when people say this is actually good, I'm like, why are you saying actually? Like, why do you say actually? I'm really proud of our product and our team.
[00:23:09] Ray Latif: Can I play devil's advocate for a second? Founders often talk about moats, creating a moat around their brand such that their competitors, current or future, won't be able to walk into their space and say, hey, I'm going to take a piece of your business. What's the moat for Kickstand Cocktails? Because I imagine a High Noon, or at least some of the executives over there at Gallo are thinking, hey, well, why don't we create some spicy flavors too?
[00:23:32] Darren Rovell: I won't tell you, but there is one. It has to do with how it's made. Okay. Now, this is the moat you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, listen, we have a job as the first mover to get credit for being the first mover. That's really the job of any entrepreneur. And I'd like to grow faster. But the great thing is, we raised six, six and a half million bucks were past year four. There are influencer businesses who had a six and a half million dollar party on on day one and we have better sales in all of our nine states. So yes, it is my job to grow faster so I get credit. Oh, this is the original and this is the fake. And at the end of the day, you still have to be better. You look at obviously the most intriguing one now is spike date. And you know, how about them? I mean, 17 weeks in, you have surf side, putting out super light and then hot gate. And that's a crazy situation because sports drinks still blows my mind. Yeah, well, the first hard sports drink was Hoppin' Gator in 1971. It was the Gatorade founder, Robert Cade, actually went to the Pittsburgh Brewing Company and did a Gatorade type. And Stokely Van Camp, who owned Gatorade, said, what the hell are you doing? You can't say it's Gatorade. And that was short-lived, but it came back, obviously, 45 years later. The Moat is a little bit harder, but in some cases, there's just, There's not a moat, you just have to move and you have to mark it well. And I mean, did body armor have a moat? Well, the idea was a little bit of coconut water in, you know, and then all of a sudden it's like, wow, this is key to generating milk for breastfeeding. What?
[00:25:15] Ray Latif: Well, Body Armor was already in somebody else's mode. They were in Gatorade's mode. They were in Powerade's mode. Sure. I think with Athletic Brewing, there are some lessons there, right? Because they created a mode one way or the other. I don't exactly know how they did it. I think perhaps it's in the name itself. athletic means better for you. And all these other beer companies that are launching non-alcs or new non-alc companies, they don't really have a better for you name.
[00:25:41] Darren Rovell: But that's also because Bill spent time saying, Oh, we're going to give money to picking up things in parks. We're going to show ourselves on bike outfits. And we're going to have, when someone finishes a 5k, we're going to be the sponsor. And I think they had such a lead that they did make the kind of better for you.
[00:26:02] Ray Latif: This is not your only job, Darren. It feels like it's your only job. It feels like maybe it should be your only job, but it's not. Tom Furst once famously said on a DevNet Live stage that entrepreneurship is not a hobby. How are you juggling everything that you're doing? Because just for context, why don't you just tell our audience. what one of your primary jobs is, I guess, as a collector, observer of collectibles, as well as an investor, as well as an entrepreneur. I mean, just talk about your collectibles business.
[00:26:32] Darren Rovell: I have Tastemaker Capital, so that's that. We invest in businesses whenever. I have Kickstand Cocktails. I'm the founder of Collect, C-L-L-C-T. We advise teams, leagues, and brands on how to look at their memorabilia. That's been amazing. We have more than 25 clients. And I just I have great people there. I have great people in every place. And I delegate, whether it's Elisa at kickstand, whether it's Steve Ziff at collect, who was the CMO of three NFL teams. And then I have my own collection, which is kind of like an arbitrage of you know, how do you take advantage when an auction house messes up, when it's in the wrong auction house, when it's the wrong time of day, when they have a bad description, and I actively am investing in that. So, and then I'm, you know, I'm on Twitter every day trying to stick myself in the mix and be relevant.
[00:27:21] Speaker 1: They call it X nowadays.
[00:27:22] Darren Rovell: Yeah, I know, I can't call it X. I don't call it X anymore. I'm X-ing. I mean, it just doesn't seem right, but where that's getting in a fight with Keith Olbermann over his Franken-honus or whatever it is, I'm not scared to mix it up. And then always trying to do other things. I sold my book rights of Gatorade to Mandalay and Jason Michael Berman of Advantage Films. I think that will probably be out hopefully next fall. Wow. Very cool. And it's going to be amazing.
[00:27:53] Ray Latif: Darren, you've done a lot, and some things have worked out really well, some things maybe not as well as you had hoped. Pop-Up Bagels worked incredibly well. You can Google about Darren and how Pop-Up Bagels was founded, and it's a pretty amazing story. Basically, this guy came to Darren's house, fed him some bagels.
[00:28:11] Darren Rovell: No, I drove to his house. Oh, you drove to his house. It was COVID. I was like, how good of a bagel?
[00:28:15] Ray Latif: Okay, and they turned out to be pretty darn amazing. You ate five, right? Yes, yes. I remember when Foxtrot
[00:28:22] Darren Rovell: came out. That's our only investment loss. And it's insane about what happened.
[00:28:28] Ray Latif: So Foxtrot upscale convenience store retailer based in Chicago. I thought one of the great retail concepts of our time and I know I know you thought this It's more practical than Erewhon, you know, making things.
[00:28:42] Darren Rovell: It basically said, OK, well, through delivery, you'll get 50 percent of the 12 block radius and then people will come in. It's really your cool neighborhood store. Yeah. felt really good about it. And it's one of those things that sometimes as an investor, you don't know what is exactly going on economically. And it was going to be that they were going to do a merger with Dominics, another retailer in Chicago. And then the next day it was like, gone, Foxtrot's done. It didn't happen and Foxtrot's done. And then all of a sudden we get a call from one of our tastemaker investors, I'm going to be part of Foxtrot 2. And we're going to take what Foxtrot had and go back into the same stores that I like. I mean, wait a sec, that's crazy. And now they're existing, but I just don't, it's very strange. What's interesting, the one thing that's interesting that I will say is we got into the first round and then we were told we weren't getting into the second round because D1 Capital, Dan Sondheim, was taking like 80 or 90%. And they raised, what was it like? Yeah, a lot of money. Hundreds of- $300 million.
[00:29:54] Ray Latif: $300 million.
[00:29:55] Darren Rovell: And that was the first time as an investor I wasn't given my pro rata rights. I give everyone pro rata rights. If you're with me, you're with me. And that really pissed me off. So the lack of communication to the end and all of a sudden the, it's done, didn't really surprise me.
[00:30:13] Ray Latif: Was there something in the deal that you could look back and say, Hey, I should have done a little bit more research. I should have been more cautious.
[00:30:21] Darren Rovell: of this investment, not the way it undid. Honestly, I just think there's only so much that you can share with the masses of your investors. I have never had an investor of tastemaker or kickstander collect say, tell me how it's going, because I'll hit them with a note. They'll know how it's going. I'll tell them how it's really going. But a lot of things that I've invested in, sometimes they don't give you the updates you think you deserve. How do you mean?
[00:30:48] Ray Latif: Because it sounds like you're talking about personal investments versus Tastemaker Capital investments.
[00:30:52] Darren Rovell: Yeah, we as tastemaker, we tell everyone how they're doing, or we give a chance for some of these investors to speak to the CEO once a year and get the access.
[00:31:02] Ray Latif: Someone's listening to this right now and they're saying, hey, Darren has a ton of experience in this business. He seems like a good guy. He's a good guy. He's obviously a savvy investor. I would love for him to be part of our next round. How often are you looking at opportunities?
[00:31:17] Darren Rovell: Often, but most of the time I'm going into businesses where they haven't thought of their next round yet. And I'm going to lead it. There's a company now where I'm saying where they're not like, Hey, you're not necessarily looking for money yet, but tastemaker is going to try to lead it. We'll try to put 2 million bucks in. So you're still investing at that series a level.
[00:31:36] Ray Latif: Yes.
[00:31:37] Darren Rovell: Yeah. And I'm, and I'm investing personally. You could always shoot me on Instagram. You could shoot me a DM on Instagram. I know you can do that. I mean, the rules of saying, you know, I'm raising is always difficult, but yeah, I'm, I'm actively looking for, for great companies to invest in.
[00:31:54] Ray Latif: Companies, not categories. Does the category matter, I guess is what I'm asking.
[00:31:58] Darren Rovell: No. No. No. No. Anything can be open. Anything. But I am CPG. I am food and Bev. If you ask me to invest in your tech business, no chance. Okay. I feel what's great about food and Bev is you can look in a supermarket and you can pretty much see everything before your eyes. If you read BevNET, you're better. If you listen to Taste Radio, you're even better. You know, so you get farther and farther back. But I don't know what someone's doing in their basement. With the tech, I don't think I can win.
[00:32:30] Ray Latif: What's a red flag in CPG that you've seen and that you've said, hey, this is not investable, at least for your money?
[00:32:37] Darren Rovell: There's a real fine line between the page where it says, this is who's done it great, and this is their... I would say putting too much information into decks sometimes is a bad thing, because right now the worst thing going is AI. because people can build a deck in two seconds. And I can tell whether someone has asked seven questions and then said, no, not this. Or if it's the first run, I got a deck, I saw this, I'm like, this person just did a eight line query and go and didn't challenge it. I mean, like, I'm arguing with AI. I'm like, I'm a journalist. You got that fact wrong. If I had said that, I would have, you know, so I think that's going to be the craziest thing coming, that decks are getting better because Claude could put one together in two seconds. But you really have to look at what is being said, because at least right now, The nitty-gritty is not known. And so I think people can build decks, but AI is going to be a bad one for people who really pay attention.
[00:33:46] Ray Latif: What moves the needle most? Deck, products, or branding? For me... Also, I guess I should throw founder in there too.
[00:33:53] Darren Rovell: For me, it's the product. Although I famously... I'm not going to go into it with them again, because I still want to get into the brand.
[00:34:01] Ray Latif: What's that? I missed that?
[00:34:02] Darren Rovell: Go ahead. In 2024, the best thing at the fancy food show, it was incredible. And I told them, I'll give you 2 million right now. You got to change the name. Still haven't changed the name. They are doing fairly well. I still believe I'm going to get them to change the name, but the problem is now I'm going to be later in the round. But that's an interesting one, right?
[00:34:28] Ray Latif: That's a big ask to change the name two years after they launched. If you do invest, there'll be three plus years. I got to change the name.
[00:34:35] Darren Rovell: Okay. People can search. I'm not going to bring them in again. They do have a great product, but I'm, I'm just looking for, you know, the virality you can't, I mean, pop-up bagels, virality, you can't hit all the time. I'm looking for a good founder. I love a good founder. It's probably product first. then founder, then brand. Because brand, you can always, like, we get in there. We are definitely, you hear it too much, but we're added value investors. We get in there. I'm confident I can change branding. Can't change a founder. You really can't. The hardest part about being a founder is, and I always talk about founder syndrome and this and that, is you have to be able to, when something is not your way or as you've seen it, and it clearly is not manifesting itself the way you've seen it, you have to lay on the sword and you have to listen to people. Otherwise, it's not going to go great. And for me, for kickstand, that was get rid of the adjective. It's the same thing. I had always said, Oh, adjectives for free. Torch, peach, chipotle. Don't you feel it in your body? And then it was also to make it a little bit sweeter. Because it was like, I had negative energy about how sweet these things were. And if the delta between their sweetness and our sweetness was too big, then to them it had no sweetness. So that's definitely a thing. But I am so excited about this space. I love the innovation. I love what's happening in the protein and fiber. I do think that, again, natural will ultimately win here. The real natural protein and fiber.
[00:36:11] Ray Latif: Just one more question on founders. I mean, are you looking for founders that have your kind of personality, that get you as much as they get the industry? Are you looking for intelligence? Are you looking for experience? It depends on what the product is.
[00:36:23] Darren Rovell: It's a hand in hand thing. Yes. It's all together. It's the whole package. A year, I probably look at 500 products and then I get it down to 50 that I'm going to think about that I'll definitely try. And I'll get to 20 conversations. and I'll go deep with three and I might invest in one. Right now I know we have one guy, he passes the test of founder, great product, might not be a moat, but we think he can move fast, get credit for being the first mover and be smart. Sometimes the moat is a little overrated. Like does Power Bagels have a moat? Well, I guess out of like, No bagels for you. Like you can only get three, six or 12 and you can only, and you can only, you have to rip and dip them sandwiches, you know? But it's like, you can always create, I think, create something that gives you a little bit of a shield. Obviously things like licensing doesn't really do anything for you unless you have 20 year deals. We don't throw out things cause it doesn't have like a clear motive as a great founder and a great way. I think we can, we would invest in them.
[00:37:31] Ray Latif: Well, listeners, if you're into cocktails, I would recommend you try some of Darren Rovell's Kickstand Cocktails. They are delicious. And if you can find them in one of the nine states that kickstand is distributed in. Let's see if I can do that. I got to do this.
[00:37:43] Darren Rovell: Okay. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Ohio, Tennessee, and Alabama.
[00:37:56] Ray Latif: Okay, Alabama. I like it. Darren, you've invested in a lot of companies. How does one invest in your company, Kickstand Cocktails?
[00:38:05] Darren Rovell: Well, there's only so much you can say, but I will tell you that people always say, oh, I'm sorry I didn't get in after something hits. That definitely the pop-up bagels thing is like, oh, I would have invested. I'm like, would you really? But Instagram DM, I don't know if there's space for you in any of my companies, but be bold, ask, and maybe you'll get in and I'd be honored.
[00:38:30] Ray Latif: Darren, you know, it's probably once or twice a year that I see you and it's always great to see you and we have a quick conversation and we're like, when can we get you back on the mics? When can we get you back on the mics? Because it's been 10 years, 10 years since we featured you last on Taste Radio. Obviously, a lot has changed. And in fact, the title of that episode was This is back when it was the BevNET podcast. BevNET podcast episode 28. With sports guy Darren Rovell. It was called Gatorade and the Gatekeepers of Sports Drinks with ESPN's Darren Rovell.
[00:39:03] Darren Rovell: Amazing, amazing. I think I'm more Tastemaker Capital now.
[00:39:07] Ray Latif: Yeah, yeah. Well, we did do this, and I'm really happy we did, and I'm really glad we did it in person. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for coming out to West Hartford, Connecticut, of all places, once again.
[00:39:19] Darren Rovell: I love Case Radio. You do such a great job. I respect reporters who go deep, ask real questions, listen, and you're definitely one of those guys. I really appreciate that, especially coming from you, Darren.
[00:39:30] Ray Latif: Thanks so much again, and let's do this again soon. Not 10 years. Let's call it 2, 5, not 10. 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 Kratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is bevnettasteradio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
[00:40:29] Speaker 2: you
