Spindrift

“We made, I think, 500 cases of each flavor. We had four flavors, so 2000 cases.”

“Maybe I'll just add to that that it was also more of a soda profile at the time, so it had a little bit of sugar in it natural flavors and color, you know, just sort of whatever. There were things added early on as we were just trying to dial in the flavor and…”

“By the way, back around 2015, Bill almost had to give up the name Spindrift. There was a legal problem with the trademarks that had to be resolved, and Bill was just days away from changing the name. And if Spindrift hadn't worked out, the company's more than …”

“We made the hard decision to get out of natural flavors entirely. That's really the, you know, kind of our position in the market.”

“I don't think I would have gotten into this business had I known how complicated it was.”

“At the time, we really didn't have any customers for the sparkling water. The soda was doing well in those food service accounts, but the sparkling water, the unsweetened version was really not anywhere, and they Yeah, they just were incredibly brave and took …”

“So there wasn't a single carbonated beverage plant in the US that had ever handled a product like this.”

“There really is no standard for a natural flavor. There may very well be all of the things you described, but there's no assurance of that.”

“Yeah, there was no other way to maintain that incredible fresh flavor that we were talking about at the time without keeping it cold. I mean, it just was too volatile a product.”

“So we made the hard decision to shut down. It was about a five million dollar business super profitable, and just focus our resources on, on the sparkling water.”

“That food service focus with me and now my small team was really all we did for the first four or five years in our business.”

“So, what we ended up doing is basically putting mortgages on our house, and but again, now you're talking about buying inventory, and starting to hire a team.”

“You know, we are 32% diverse at Spindrift, so we, you know, I felt an obligation to our team.”

“I think that's true of a lot of food and beverage brands that are pioneering a category, that are doing something really different. You need people to hit pause and spend a minute or two longer considering the purchase”

“We, so we started our development for Spindrift in the middle of the economic downturn in 2000, you know, sort of seven, eight, and nine. When we launched the first batch in 2010, there hadn't been innovation in, in the food and beverage market in, in sort of …”

“When the initial push came, we saw anywhere from, you know, sort of two to 400% lift.”

“Sugar is a very one-dimensional flavor, so if you can introduce other flavors alongside a little sweet, a little tart, We think you won't miss that big hit of sugar.”

“It's hard enough to make one brand successful, but to have two brands, you know, early stage brands succeed, mean something for the consumer, go on to really gain scale and traction is, is really almost unheard of.”

“Yeah, about half our revenue.”

“What is hard right now for you is going to be your point of difference later, you know, so trying to figure out, you know, how to make this brine, you know, using all of the ingredients that are called out on the label will only bear fruit down the road. Someo…”

“You know, I think it's so easy to get caught in, I need to solve all 10 problems equally, when the reality is it's probably one or two that are holding the business back.”