The Ledger, every show

“Most of the bottle tea in the U.S. At the time, and still today, Is not brewed with, you know, it's not brewed tea. It's a powder or a concentrate.”

“Most of the bottle tea in the U.S. At the time, and still today, Is not brewed with, you know, it's not brewed tea. It's a powder or a concentrate.”

“That's right, yeah. 26 times their early investment.”

“The marketing director at Whole Foods, or at that time it was called Freshfields Whole Foods, it was a mid-Atlantic. He was a graduate of the Yale School of Management as well. So he helped me get an appointment with the buyer.”

“When I met with the buyer and I, we, Poured out samples from the thermos, showed him my empty Snapple bottle. With the Honesty Label, of course. And he had said well, look, this sounds interesting. We'll give it a try. We'll take 15,000 bottles”

“So we ended up at a plant in Buffalo, New York that was making apple juice. Maybe it was a little down on its luck. It had some line time available, and they said, well, how are you going to brew the tea leaves? And so we brought in these mesh bags, these larg…”

“But by the end of that summer, we were the best-selling tea in the 17 Freshfields Whole Foods stores in the Mid-Atlantic.”

“So we voluntarily withdrew all product from the market. Every store. Yes. Everywhere. Not just Whole Foods. Everywhere.”

“Well, we were doing about 3,000,004 million dollars in sales, and it totally stopped our sales. So we lost several months of sales. So several 100,000 dollars.”

“Weren't profitable until the eighth year or so.”

“We were in 15,000 stores when Coke invested. Now we're in over a 100,000 stores.”

“That's right, yeah. 26 times their early investment.”

“When I met with the buyer and I, we poured out samples from the thermos, showed him my empty Snapple bottle. [498] Guy Raz: With the Honesty Label on it? [499] Seth Goldman: With the Honesty Label on it, of course. [501] Seth Goldman: And he had said well, lo…”

“We ended up at a plant in Buffalo, New York that was making apple juice. Maybe it was a little down on its luck. It had some line time available, and they said, well, how are you gonna brew the tea leaves? And so we, Brought in these mesh bags, these large mes…”

“Our marketing effort was me and two interns giving out samples in Whole Foods stores, and we gave out more samples than we sold. But by the end of that summer, we were the best-selling tea in the 17 Freshfields Whole Foods stores in the Mid-Atlantic.”

“Really, from the first year, we were, every year or so, we'd be approached by a major food or beverage company that wanted to buy us.”

“Well, they approached us in 2007, and they had just created this group of venturing and emerging brands, And their goal was to invest in and build the next billion dollar brand for Coca-Cola.”

“We were in 15,000 stores when Coke invested. Now we're in over a 100,000 stores.”

“Some of our employees were made millionaires as well, and that, to me, was, you know, that was all sweat equity that they earned”

“It was all a hundred calories per eight ounces, and so the difference was fizz or no fizz, color, you know, different names, different bottles, they were almost uniform in their taste profile, their sweetness profile, which was, you know, six or seven teaspoon…”

“There was a moment in 2008. President Obama had become an honest tea drinker, I guess, at the campaign for 2008. And the McCain campaign had criticized him for being, you know, out of touch with the American people.”