Episode 105: Challenger brands, changing rules - The race to real scale in beverage with Danny Stepper

Speaker A: Foreign. You're listening to retail sound bites.

Speaker B: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Kantar Retail Sound Bites podcast for the week of June 22nd. I'm Barry Thomas, our senior global thought leader, serving clients on global commerce, marketing and future tense topics. Thank you so much for turning in. And joining us on every show is my pod partner, Rachel Dalton.

Speaker A: Hi, everyone. I'm, um, Rachel Dalton, head of Retail Insights for the Americas here at Kantar. Our podcast is intended to share knowledge and insights on both North America and international retail and restaurant verticals. We kick off each podcast with a news and notes section to share innovative and impactful stories from the past two weeks. And then we introduce our Kantar experts or guest speakers to share insights on critical topics in commerce today. Today we are super, uh, hyped to welcome back Danny Stepper, uh, for some really rich conversation. Uh, but before do that, turning it back over to you, Barry, to officially kick, uh, us off with our news and notes.

Speaker B: Appreciate it, Rachel. Believe it or not, I can remember meeting Danny Stepper circa 1990s, uh, eight maybe. And man, I mean, at Coca Cola, we work together. And he is such a legend now. I mean, this guy is like a legend when it comes to all things challenger brands, especially beverages. So he's going to rock it today. A, uh, quick update on the weekend, Rachel. So two things. Logan and I, so much fun played in the member guest tournament out at our golf club. It was so much fun. Right?

Speaker C: So nice. Yeah, I thought so, too.

Speaker B: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, just a lot of golf. We struggled, we battled, we hung in there together. There was a lot of, uh, events around that, and so that was just fantastic. We did place last, just to be straight up.

Speaker A: That's okay. As long as you had fun, Barry. That's the important part, right?

Speaker B: That's what we thought because we were out there with like, real golfers, like people who, like, scratch, like, have a, like a two handicap. What? So anyway, that was a blast. And then I did want to give a shout out that took, uh, the whole family. We went to see, uh, the Braves Country Fest, and Ella Wilson, you know, who sings the Texas song, uh, was one of the headliners. And I just want to say she is way better than I thought. I think she's only like 27ish, unbelievable talent. And, um, you know, they call them Ellen Fellas, so I guess we're Ellen Fellas. And she's just amazing. The last thing Rachel met about halfway through the show. You know, she's beautiful. She's singing. She just stopped and, and Just told everybody, if you think my life's perfect and I'm beautiful and everything is just, you know, working like it should, she goes, it's not.

Speaker C: And.

Speaker B: Which is like a really cool moment, like I'm just human like everybody else. And then she sung this song about it. So anyway, Atlanta's kind of popping this. Summer is really fun down here.

Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, with the World cup too. Exciting. Really, really exciting. Uh, yeah. So I had a great weekend. We had the holiday Friday and took, uh, the kids to our local amusement park. A really sweet little park. Not overwhelming, not too crowded. We did, uh, rides. I did the roller coasters with the kids. I did the water slides with the kids. Just had a great time and barbecue with some friends. And, uh, and Saturday, my youngest turned 10, which is crazy. So did a birthday party for him at our local trampoline park and had a nice group of boys and he had a blast. Um, and then Sunday, just spent the day at our lake with some friends and took Mark, uh, out for Father's Day for dinner and the kids made him some cards. And so that was really kind of a nice ending to the day. So it was really fun. Like just a fun summer weekend.

Speaker B: Well, that's awesome. And your summer is funny. Summer's kind of been going on down here because the kids, they get out of school so early. But you just had them, you just let the kids out of school, right?

Speaker A: Actually, yeah. Ah, Today is my 10 year old's last day of 4th grade. So we feel like the summer is kind of short up here. We just sort of started it and we go back end of August. Um, but yeah. Ah, so, yeah, we're just trying to maximize every day. Definitely, uh, my favorite season. So excited for summer.

Speaker B: Love it, Rachel. But Amazon is ready for you to buy back to school right now.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. So I had a Prime Day delivery this. Not Prime Day, but an Amazon delivery this morning. And I said happy Prime Day to my delivery person. And I'm very excited. I already have some stuff in the queue and we've been tracking it here. We'll have a report out next week for, uh, all of our clients to kind of get our take on Prime Day as well.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Uh, they're everywhere. All right, six pack of news and notes. I'm going to start off Wall Street Journal. Really cool story about Procter and Gam and, you know, about really around disruption and like, disrupting yourself. You gotta give Procter and Gamble credit here. Uh, they're, you know, they Already dominate with detergent and they're pushing a new version. And so, you know, dominant brands do not stay dominant by just kind of sticking to the old playbook. They have to, you know, uh, really have what's called, many are calling an internal insurgency culture where you're just willing to disrupt yourself. And I think we're seeing more of that with the leading CPGs. And that's what makes this new product Evo, uh, so interesting. They've launched, you know, this new form factor, uh, for detergent and it's uh, certainly premium. Uh, it's designed to drive incremental category growth. It has all these, I won't go through it, but just all these additional features, uh, for your clothes and you can wash it hot, cold water, et cetera, takes up less space than the previous Tide products. And then we um, as called out in the article, Kantar is testing, helping Procter and Gamble test the product results. And it looks uh, really like we're pretty favorable. Um, basically and this could be another product superiority growth platform for P and G. And um, doesn't look like just a product tweak. This is far bigger. So here's Procter and Gamble internal insurgency culture. That's what you want and that's what they're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's interesting. And I go back to Amazon being Prime Day, so that's kind of our mind this week. And they have this day one mentality culture. So just it's a similar thing. You're constantly looking to come in with a fresh new perspective and just because you have something great that you built now you need to build something even greater. And so that is the mark of a winner. So uh, I thought, I loved your article uh, Barry, that you brought forth really cool, cool new products.

Speaker B: Let's go.

Speaker A: So for me also Wall Street Journal, I found this article on Back to school shopping starting earlier, just according to our conversation, um, before, um, really interesting. We do already, you know, we've been tracking seasonal for many, many years at Kantar, we have been seeing a trend in seasonal shopping starting sooner and just basically spreading out over more weeks. And as we said, my son's just finishing school today. But back to school is definitely a prominent piece of Prime Day and already starting at other retailers. I, uh, think the article talked to it being a post pandemic trend which um, we've seen as well. Just this idea of seasonal shopping starting earlier. Uh, and for a number of reasons, you know, consumers being concerned, will product run out. You know, retailers obviously being very Precise around inventory and making sure they're selling through as much as possible and that's helpful when you have more weeks to sell. But also affordability concerns that have spiked, you know so consumers are much more cautious about planning their spending. So all of these different reasons are kind of attributed to seasonal shopping starting earlier. But um, but you're going to still see, and the article points to this as well, you're going to still see retailers you know pushing back to school promotions later in the summer do um, it's just going to be over a longer period. So that's, that's my kind of first piece of news for today and I

Speaker B: think just to build on that I just saw from Reuters and a couple of other sites, Amazon is one of the biggest spenders right now on AI uh search advertising like chat GPT because you know it's hidden their catalog. They are blocked the you know these agents and bots from surfacing it. So if you want to win back to school, you're going to have to win back to school AI search. So it's really interesting, isn't it? I think it is.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: Very much.

Speaker B: All right, so my second story over to restaurants. This is coming out of Tech Nomic. The story's been published in multiple uh, publications including uh, Wall Street Restaurant Business Online, et cetera. I think it's just, it's a real outlier story. I like so regional burger chains, you know not McDonald's but like in N out Burger, Whataburger, Culver's, they're driving much if not the majority, really the majority of growth in the US hamburger category. You know that's a large category, almost 120 billion dol every year. But that you know over 20, 25 last year only saw about one and a half percent revenue growth, uh the slowest among really most restaurant categories. But it's these regional chains that are prioritizing quality customer experience, really a superior product kind of Procter Gamble there product superiority. That is a you know world class burger in many cases with these regional chains and are building loyalty and traffic without relying on all these discounts that the um, big QSRs are just down the path on which they have to have obviously to drive traffic. But I have the chart and I've been using it with some different clients. It's just fascinating to see these regional chains with basically just a better product. I mean that In n out burger is amazing uh versus kind of the standard Big three burger and I just think speaks to value way at the top of course with our consumers, but so is the experience in food quality, Rachel. You just don't want like a cheap burger. You're willing to invest 13, $14 in a, in a really high quality meal experience that you then share with your friends socially. There's just so much to this story and I love kind of that insight.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you, Barry. I think the experience is really trumping uh, in many cases across retail and restaurants for sure. If you go somewhere and you feel welcome, you feel like you're part of a, they know who you are. Um, you of course are drawn back to that kind of experience and feeling good, um, about where you are and kind of where you're investing money, et cetera. So, um, yeah, that's a super interesting article. I didn't know that actually about regional chains. And um, it is about quality and experience and that combined really sometimes even trumps price, depending on the category. So very, um, interesting.

Speaker B: And I'm getting hungry.

Speaker A: Um, well, of course, it's Prime Day. We have to talk a lot about Amazon this week. Day one of Prime Day or the week of Prime Day, I should say. And, um, this article out of Retail Dive just is reporting out on the expectations of what Prime Day will deliver from a financial standpoint. Data coming from Adobe, uh, and Prime Day this year is expected to deliver somewhere around US$26.3 billion, which is up 9% from last year, so continuing to grow. And of course we're to see all of the competitor responses. Lots of great deals coming from Walmart and Target and Best Buy and really others, uh, that are offering, uh, competing deals in store and online. So you're going to see consumer shopping in multiple locations. But despite that, you're still seeing a lot of traction. Amazon's going to have a very good Prime Day. And the other thing kind of linking back to the first, uh, news is around consumers, um, expecting to leverage Prime Day for a ton of things, but definitely back to school and summer seasonal, um, which is really wrapped up, really, really tied in very closely to Prime Day, uh, as well as all of the key categories that you expect from Prime Day, like electronics and home and appliances and things like that. So I think we're going to see a lot of momentum this week and uh, again we'll be tracking it and um, producing some kind of our take, uh, next week. So definitely stay tuned, no doubts required.

Speaker B: All right, Rachel, here's what I'm buying, like probably today. Always buy golf balls. Just like, wow.

Speaker A: Your essentials, your essentials for better, better Value is always a good thing.

Speaker B: Golf balls and a microwave. This, uh, probably today. What about you?

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. I'm, um, eyeing that Oura ring very, um, into the fitness wearable. So I'm looking at wearing a Fitbit now. Um, we have, you know, of course, my Apple Watch product. I have a lot of different options and just trying to figure out which ones work best for what. Definitely focused on tracking sleep and making sure my sleep is good. And I heard the Oura ring is at the top there, so maybe they have a really great deal on prime day. We'll see. Um, but there's lots of stuff out there, tons of tons, uh, of good products. So I'll definitely be shopping.

Speaker B: Love it. We all will. All right, last story coming up is, uh, something I wrote up about the new battle for the meal basket. Starts with the prompt. And shoppers are just bringing AI uh into food decisions. And you know, our AI commerce study just showed that essentially everyone, 90, 92% of AI uh shoppers are using AI uh during food trips. So, I mean, and it could be before the store in the store. They're definitely ar wired. And basically the implication is meal decisions then move upstream, you know, from the aisle and app, ah, upstream to the prompt. And the shopper, you know, doesn't necessarily start anymore with pasta sauce. It's more like, give me five healthy meal dinners, excuse me, for, you know, under $150. And then, you know, there's your answer and off you go. So I think, you know, what we're moving to partly the meal journey looks something like, you know, prompt recipe recommendations, there's some substitutions, basket creation and delivery. And we're, uh, seeing an impact, you know, across all the food and beverage players and some we're working directly with a couple very large retailers on this. And so, uh, many retailers, you, uh, know, especially in the prepared meals area, their merchandising meals by categories, recipes or weekly promotions, which is nice. But Hy Vee just sticks out as a player that's, you know, vastly superior to that old legacy model. They're already merchandising meals, which then shows up in the AI conversation. Uh, in terms of the way households are using A.I. uh, such as fresh and light meal, uh, answers or feel good recipes. Build your own bowl meal ideas for less, quick lunch grabs, breakfast on the go. I mean, this is the need stay, this is the use case. This is the, the way that, you know, prompts are being sort of, you know, instructed and Hy Vee's really built for that. They're just so advanced when it comes to prepared meals and they organize everything around the brand with meals around occasions and constraints that shoppers are interested in. And there's, there's plenty of retailers that look at Hy Vee as best in class. And what's lastly kind of funny, Rachel is on the one hand, you know, we're working with, you know, restaurant chains that are losing meal occasions by the hour to retailers. We're trying to help them with that. At the same time we're working with some of the very largest retailers in the world on helping them capture more restaurant occasions with their prepared meals. So it's just so funny and really unique and, and just, you know, insightful to work with both entities trying to capture more meal occasions as the battle between grocers and restaurants has just never been more fierce.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I was just sharing uh, earlier too on Amazon Prime Day they're really featuring this Little Caesars partnership. $5 for a large pizza just for prime members. Which is certainly like a surprise and delight kind of thing. But it's also playing into this whole conversation. Exactly that berry of you know, retailers really looking for opportunities to serve prepared meals and make sort of the mealtime, uh, prep and just overall meal easy. So yeah, we're seeing that everywhere. And AI is, I mean when you think about it, you know, when you think about it, it's the perfect way to delegate. Uh, if you're delegating meals it's, it's not as of a high interest category. You might decide you want to experiment with something. So you tell your AI assistant to just plan a meal with a few parameters in it. There's a very low risk based on what you get as long as you set the price to kind of your maximum price. So I think we're going to see that become sort of the way of the future definitely rise when you know, when you talk about delegating and agentic commerce.

Speaker B: No doubt.

Speaker A: So uh, last article for me is out of chain store age of course, about Amazon Prime Day. Um, that's our week. Uh, and this really just points to the expectations for Amazon to win with the Gen Z consumer. And the reason why I picked this article is because, you know, we've been tracking Amazon's um, strategies around how to win the Gen Z consumer. And we know this is really key to Prime. The prime program uh, is attracting and retaining Gen Z into Prime. So over the years we've seen different tactics that Amazon's put into play to attract the Gen Z consumer in this particular article out of chainstoreage talks about a new survey from a company called Smarty, which is an online coupon platform. And some of the survey stats were interesting. Uh, it showed that 69% of Gen Z consumers plan to participate in one of the two Prime Day events. This is the core one. And there's also one, uh, in Q4, which is more of a Prime Big Deals day, not the official Prime Day. But 69% is a pretty big number compared to 51% of all Americans participating in one of the two Prime Day events. Another data point out of the article is 31% plan to shop both prime days versus 22% of all consumers. So that's Gen Z is the 31%. And then Gen Z spending expectations also thought this was interesting. Mirror the national average, meaning that they're not spending less, they're spending in line with everyone else. Uh, so you have a much heavier presence of Gen Z expected for this Prime Day. And then we also saw, well, Adobe also published numbers, uh, that pointed to 49% of Americans saying they don't plan to shop Prime Day this year. But with Gen z, it's only 20% that won't plan to shop. So basically it's indicating that Prime Day is rising in importance for younger consumers. They're particularly interested in back to school and appliance shopping and beauty products which we're seeing a lot of holiday pre purchases, all higher than the national average. So I think that's a really big win for Amazon.

Speaker B: It is. And it just, you know, uh, as I look at my window, Rachel, I see all the, you know, the traffic coming in my neighborhood. I'm sure this week I'm going to see that white van and the branded dark, you know, Amazon van just going up and down. It'd be fascinating to kind of look at the metrics like logistically do does is like Prime Day responsible for, I don't know, 20%, 10, uh, percent of miles driven.

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker B: But those logistics kind of metrics would be really cool to understand.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, exactly. Danny, we'd love to kick off this first. Thanks so much for being back and we're really happy to have you on, uh, our podcast today. And um, you were just recently, you know, you lead the most important beverage gathering in the industry and we would love to just maybe kick off the podcast to hear a little bit more about the event and uh, some of the biggest signals, uh, about where the beverage innovation, uh, in the industry is heading overall.

Speaker C: Sure, yeah, no, thanks for Bringing it up, it's my favorite topic. Everybody wants to be a part of it, everybody wants to be on stage, everybody wants to sponsor it and everybody wants to come. So it is uh, it's amazing. You know, we bought it three years ago and, and, and Barry, as you know, it's this 30 year old iconic industry event that had just gotten really sleepy. Um, it was in a terrible location in Chicago. The keynotes have always been exceptional. Uh, but the audience was really waning and little things like there was no beverages at Beverage Forum, like, huh, like what are we, what are we doing? Um, and so when Michael Bellis, who was 84 called me and said, hey, like I just don't have any more gas in the tank. This is my legacy, I want it to live on. But you know, nobody really wants it. Like what do you think? And I just instantly thought man, like the industry needs this. And uh, and I knew that it would do wonders for, you know, the flywheel of LA libations. Um, so I knew kind of strategically made sense and then I had no idea it would become such a great business though. Like it is, it is like a booming thing and you know, we've expanded it to Europe now. We're doing our second year in London for Beverage Forum Europe and then we're doing our inaugural Beverage Forum Latin America in Miami on November 12th and 13th. Because Miami is the capital of Latin America, of course. And that's, that's going to be incredible because you know, it was, you know, there's zero crossover from Manhattan beach to London. Like it's totally different audience, different retailers, different everything Latin America because it's in Miami and because Manhattan beach was so successful and everybody had such a great time. All the retailers are coming to Miami, the U.S. retailers. Now we're going to have Oxo and Walmart Mexico and a bunch of Latin American important retailers there as well. But it's, it's really crazy. Like Walmart's going to send I think seven merchants to Miami. You know, Target's coming. Walmart sent 15 people to Manhattan Beach. We had three SVP's, we had Melody, uh, who, you know, Barry, um, who's the SVP of Pantry. We had Tasha who does non alk and Chilled. And then we had Ryland who has health and Wellness. They all came and they each bring five merchants. So there's 15 people from Walmart at beverage. For me, Miami is incredible. But Target came in force, everybody came in force and it was, it was really incredible. I mean everybody likes to talk about the celebrities. But to be honest with you, you know, the celebrities all want to come because they have drinks that they want to promote. And that's. That's kind of been a hack to the formula. Um, because the retailers love meeting with the slide. Everybody loves the celebrities. But it really kind of doesn't give it credit to say that it's like the star studded thing, because it's not. I mean, it is, but it is a place where so many deals get done, you know, and, you know, Rohan just did a podcast and someone just sent it to me, and he talked about how Beverage Forum was the key to the. To Poppy's exit. Uh, because of what happened at Beverage Forum. It was incredible. Like, but. But so many people come to me and say, like, this is a place where deals get done. And I've been to so many events leave. I go, why do I keep coming to these things? You know, they're expensive. And. And so it is, it is. It's not. It doesn't serve us at. Well to say, oh, there's a bunch of celebrities there, which there are. I mean, we had Chris Pratt, we've had Robert Danny Jr. We've had Tom Holland, we've had Steph Curry, we've had, I mean, Patrick Mahomes. We've had. Had a ton of celebrities, and we'll continue to have a ton of celebrities, but that's not really it. It's really about, um, the opportunity that we've created to get deals done and a place to, you know, like, we, like, we espouse to call it like the davos of the beverage industry. And that's kind of what you were. We're manifesting it, but it seems like it's happening a little faster than we. We'd hope. So, yeah, it's. It's really incredible and there's a lot of insights. You know, Circana is a big partner of ours, uh, for the Beverage Forum, and their state of the industry was really, um, interesting and valuable. Um, you know, talking about some of the trends that are happening and, and yeah, overall, it's just really amazing. I hope you guys come. I hope your audience comes to Miami and then back to Manhattan beach next year.

Speaker B: And now Danny, I see, um, you know, just coming off Father's Day just to give a nod to your daughters that you have them involved in the business, which is super cool as a dad. Dad. Right.

Speaker C: I mean, what's. What's better, honestly? Um, you know, LA Libations is not named after Los Angeles. It's named After Lauren and Annika, Dino's daughter and my daughter. And. And it's very personal to us. And. And my daughter, you know, she's here at La Libations, working right now. She's. She's. She's always here, and she loves it. She's very passionate about it. And, um, you know, we launched the. The world's first ever resealable, recyclable can, which I'd love to show you all at the Beverage Forum. And. And I. I didn't want to do it because I'm like, it's my event, and me getting on stage, launching my thing, you know, like, it just seemed like too much. And so, uh, Ryan from the CEO of Gelson's is actually his idea. He's like, why don't Annika and I do it? And, uh. So she got on stage. I'll send you the. It was awesome. She was so nervous, but she totally delivered it. And, uh. And holy cow. Like, the whole industry's talking about it. Like, we just got back from Atlanta. We're talking to Coke, and then, you know, all the can makers ball. Everyone's like, holy cow. Because, no, there's been no innovation in aluminum in a long, long time. And we. We've got it. We got. You just want to see it?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we'd love to see it.

Speaker C: So. So this is LA Libations Water, which La Libations is a B2B company. Right. So this is kind of our first foray into B2C. Um, but when we launched this at Beverage Forum, Walmart, Target, Albertsons, Kroger was like, I need that right now. I want to be first. And I'm like, really? It's like, it's only libations. Like, who cares? And they're like, it's not about that. It's about that. So, um, so this is the world's first resealable can. Um, so cool. Uh, this is called slider with lid emphasize. And slider is slider technology. So I'll try to. Try to do it for you here.

Speaker A: I can see it.

Speaker C: I can see it. So you. You flip it up like a regular can, and then you slide it.

Speaker B: Ah, okay.

Speaker C: And so then you pour it. Okay, Right?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: Okay, so there it is. Let me get the water off the lid. Excuse me. Okay. And then you resealable. You reseal it, right?

Speaker A: That is so cool.

Speaker C: Fully resealable. Like, incredibly innovative. And the beauty of this is, is the technology is the end. Right? So you don't. If you're. If you're a Coke bottler or, you know, an Anheuser Busch, you know, or whoever, Molson Coors. Like all you do is replace the current lid with this lid or this end, right? So, uh, you don't need new change parts. You don't need. It just goes right into the current supply chain. And at scale, this resealable lid is the same price as this old school one.

Speaker B: That's what I was wondering. Like what.

Speaker C: That's insane when we get to scale. And so why, I mean, which would you rather have if it's the same price?

Speaker A: The new one for sure.

Speaker B: Obviously.

Speaker C: And you know, and the really interesting thing is obviously with pet, everyone's talking about sustainability, but honestly, I live in Southern California and I don't think sustainability argument is going to move people away from pet. It matters, but it doesn't matter enough. But what does matter is the microplastic backlash. And I think that's what's getting people to move. And like at LAX and sfo, you can't have PET bottles. So this is, this is going to be rad. So it's exclusively on LA Libations for a minute. But that's not the big idea. The big idea is this is on monster cans and you know, Miller Light cans and, and Coke cans and all that. So, so yeah, so she launched it at Beverage Forum. It was, it was incredible. I was like, I can die now. And it was awesome.

Speaker A: That's amazing. Congratulations.

Speaker B: I mean, I can see so many new use cases, whether it's travel, et cetera, I guess, you know, one anybody listening to this would be like, well, there's these other like big players that do beverages. Yet you're, you know, leading this first. And just why is that?

Speaker C: Well, it's funny. So, so I didn't create the technology, obviously I'm not an aluminum guy. But the team that had done this has been working on this for years. And you know, there's other ones like XO that have plastic resealable lid, but it's not recyclable. So it's kind of like, what's the point? It's got a ton of plastic in it. This is all aluminum, so it's fully recyclable. But these guys, they're not sales and marketing guys. And so they were going around and showing it to Ball and Coke and all these people and everyone's like, wow, that's really interesting. But prove it. Prove that it works. You know, and so when I met, you know, Bill, you know, who's been working on this For a long time, he used to run Rexam. He's like, in that supply chain world. Um, he's like, what do you think? And I go, dude, let's go prove the concept. I've got my own brand. I can put it in any retailer. I have the relationships. I have my own distributor here in LA to get it to the stores. And, you know, I go, let's just do it really small. So I called up Ryan, the CEO of Gelson's, and I said, I want to do this with you. This is your. Your chance to be first and exclusive with, like, a global innovation. Let's just do it in, like, 20 stores. And so we did it. And so it's real now, right? And so now everybody's like, like, wait a second. Like, holy cow. Like this, this. They produced it. Like, they. They ran it through production and, you know, and there are some hiccups. You know, to be totally transparent with you, it's not perfect. It's too hard to open. But, you know, the pioneers get all the arrows in their back, but you kind of have to do that. Like, our next production run, we think it's going to be just flawless and ready for the big leagues. So we got everyone's attention and. And the fact that we were able to use, you know, our microphone at beverage forum to do it. My daughter got to do it. It was pretty am.

Speaker B: Wow. Love that, man. I mean, that's just. That's just. I mean, like, best in class.

Speaker A: What?

Speaker C: What?

Speaker B: Just before we get you in here, Rachel, I just.

Speaker A: What?

Speaker B: It just seems like Challenger brands, emerging brands, Danny, they've never been hotter. They've. They've never had more momentum.

Speaker C: I mean, why is that so, look, Barry, you and I were classically trained at the Coca Cola Company, right? It's all about the consumer, right? But, you know, the consumer is incredibly promiscuous. You know, all the growth is coming from new. From new, right? So they want to try new things. And the retailers are now hot to trot on it. It took a long time for them to figure it out. But now, I mean, like, I heard you guys earlier talking about Costco, but, like, you know, all the new stuff used to start at erewhon, you know, 11 stores where all the cool kids in LA shop. But, you know, it evolved to sprouts. But now, like Walmart, Albertsons, Kroger, they're all fighting to be first. They're all on the. On the. The exclusive train. Like, they all want exclusives first and exclusive. I mean, Walmart Is is their assortment is incredible like it for. It's funny, I come across people all the time and they're like, you know, Walmart's, we're not ready for Walmart. Walmart's the last place. And I'm like, that is such a mistake. To confuse The Walma of 2016 with the Walmart of 2026 is a completely different place, completely different approach. It's digital first. It is, it is totally, you know, they're playing a completely different game and they're training the consumer and they're going earlier and earlier. I mean we saw it with the modern soda set which changed the industry. Walmart was first. That was the thing that Rohan did it at Beverage forum is he talked Walmart into the modern soda set and that changed everything. And now there's modern tea set, right? Um, there's whispers about a modern mood set, right? Like, you know, being back like brands like Tripp and Recess and these are not small retailers talking about this are big, big retailers that are really grasping that the consumer wants what's new and wants what's innovative. And so there's implications, right, to grow the space for those sorts of things. You know, it's coming out of, out of multi serve tea, multi serve juice, carbonated soft drinks. You know, that space is, is shifting and being reallocated and making room for, for new, you know, for modern soda, for, you know, mood adaptogens, nootropics. You know, that space has to come from somewhere. There's only so much space. And so it's having major effect on, you know, kind of the legacy sets, which is really, really fascinating. And then on the other hand, you know, the barriers to entry for creating a beverage are so low. I mean I have literally this year, I mean we meet with every founder. It doesn't take them long to figure out they should meet with us. We take every meeting. I have a team of five people. All they do is take meetings with new brands and they're busy. Like it's crazy, but I have never seen so many brands enter the market in the last six months ever, ever. They are just coming on, huh, Hot. You know, and it's guys and gals in their garages. It's not Pepsi, it's not Coke, it's not kdp. It is entrepreneurs and founders that get a little bit of friends and family money. They have an idea, they think it's the best in the world. It's usually not by the way. Um, they do a run and then the clock's ticking. They say, what do I do with this? And by the time they figure out how to get distribution and retail, most of the stuff's out of code and they go out of business and go get a day job. So. But there's a churn. There's a whole nother group coming right behind them. And it's, it's, it's been going like this for a long time, but it is, it is now like spiked to something like we've never seen. There are so many brands that are launching every single day. It's crazy.

Speaker B: And I think it's on the radar in the biggest way ever with big CPGs, which, you know, but just, you know, Kansas is, you know, is kind of ending right now. And Mark Pritchard at P and gave, man, he really gave like an eye opening, wake up call to the industry. And what you're talking about right now is the burning platform. For sure.

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, look, you know, it's so funny, like, you know, my relationship with Coke, like you could talk to my therapist about my relationship with Coke. It's deep, right? A lot of, a lot of, lots of downs, you know, but it's so funny because you think about veb, right? Which started when you and I were there, Barry. Right. And, and they closed it like it was a big failure, right? Yeah. And because they launched a bunch of brands that didn't work. But the, the, the corporate amnesia of what VB actually did blows my mind because I don't know anyone there anymore. You probably don't either, Barry. It's like it's all changed. But, uh, what people forget is half of Coke's last earnings calls, half the earnings were from corepower fairlife, which happened under veb. There would be no fair life. When they started that, it was called Athlete's Honeymilk. Right. And it's evolved into like one of the biggest successes of the Coca Cola company. Topo Chico. Same thing, right? Happened under the VEB umbrella, yet they, they say failed. Right. You know, so it's crazy. And then they said, let's just focus on the big things, like body armor. Not, you know, thank God I was part of body armor. And so it was great, but they overpaid for it and now they're writing it down and, and so now they're like, it's a pendulum. Like, let's go small. This small stuff doesn't make any sense. Let's go big. Oh, this big stuff's too hard. But they're all these, all these, you know, big CPGs are trying to figure out that sweet spot of if I go too early, a lot of stuff's going to fail. Right. And I don't have the patience. Right. I'm living quarter to quarter. Right. Billy Issimo didn't work. So can be didn't work. Kvass didn't work. Like there's a lot of brands that VEB didn't work, but you only need one, right? You only need a fair life to, you know, make a decade for the company and for shareholders. So it's just really, really interesting just to watch the pendulum swing back and forth from big to small. And, and I think it'll keep happening because, you know, it takes time. Like body Armor was a 10 year overnight success story. People forget that the first four or five years of body armor, we did nothing with it.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: The last five years it went to the moon. So. But you got to have somebody like Mike Rapoli that's willing to lose $100 million and for five years, you know, and, and you know, to make it successful. Celsius was around for 18 years. It was discontinued from every retailer 10 times. Oh my gosh. And their, their superpower was the ability to keep raising money and stay in the game until they got it right and then they got it right and it went huge. So it's just, it's a conundrum for these big companies and it's opened the doors for, for people like us and, and for a lot of these, these founders. It's still hard. It's a bloodbath. You know, everyone. Like, it's funny, uh, Rachel, you know, I committed to LinkedIn like a year ago to the, to the point where I'm like, sick of myself posting. Like, it's, it's a, it's obnoxious, but it's really, but it's really, really good for our business. Um, but people say two things to me that follow me on LinkedIn. First of all, they say, hey, can I get a picture where you're doing like that? Because I do that. And then, but they always say, they always say, like, dude, like you're everywhere. You're with a different retailer, different strategic, like every day. And to me, it's really funny. I've been doing this for three decades. I'm just posting it now, right? But everybody thinks like this just started. But the other thing that's fascinating is they say, man, you guys are killing it. Like, holy cow. And I grab them and I say, you realize I'm only posting the good stuff. Every morning is a Shit show. We fail so often. This beverage game is so humbling. It's so hard. Every time we launch something, we think it's great or we wouldn't launch it. And we look back six months later and go, what were we thinking? How did we miss this? How did we miss that? You know, and a lot of them go bankrupt. A lot of them fail. And you know, but you don't. That's, that's, that's the industry, right? Some of them are gonna go. And I think honestly, that's the beauty of the Beverage Forum. Like, there's nothing like the beverage Forum. And, and you know, there's Bevnet, which I love Bevnet. It's awesome. We built the company around Bevnet, but it's for the really early stage founders. There's a big churn. Most of them that are there this year won't be there next year. And then there's Beverage Digest, which I love as well. But it's, it's like all the old fat white guys in suits, you know, and the reality is those two things are not the industry. The industry is both of those. And it needs like the founders need the strategics, the strategics need the founders. And so that's what we've tried to do as Beverage Forum is make it like the industry, right? And bring it in. And then you bring the whole supply chain and all the other pieces into it. And it's just really struck a chord with folks. So I'm very grateful. It's awesome. Super fun. I love talking about it, if you didn't notice.

Speaker A: Dani, uh, I wanted to ask you, you talked about there's those big successes, but among those are also many failures. So I was thinking like a two part question. One is what makes a successful challenger brand? What is it about that particular brand that has staying power? And then once they get big enough and they may start to look in store, like, what are they doing in store? To get in store first, uh, of all to get shelf space and then to drive trial and just to be, uh, successful overall from an omnichannel lens.

Speaker C: So to get in store and get shelf space, they hire us. That's what they do. Uh, but I get this question so often, like, what makes the good ones, you know, versus the ones that succeed and the ones that don't. And the answer has come so into focus over the years. For me, it's really the founder. At the end of the day, it's about the founder. And there's, when you double click on that there's so many things. Right. Are they able to raise capital? Right. Is a big thing. Right. A lot of founders are super innovative, but they don't have the bandwidth, uh, the temperament to go raise capital. It sucks raising capital. It's really hard raising capital. Ah. And I always say the founders that I think that I invest in, for example, are founders that have done it before. So I'm an investor now. When we did, you know, Zico and Core Water and Body Armor, we didn't invest in those brands. We got a. We earned equity and we went along for the ride, and it was life changing for us, and it was amazing. But we didn't invest a dime. Body armor. If we would have invested a million bucks in body armor, we would have made $150 million. We did not make $150 million. Um, so your head quickly goes like, I need to get capital so I can invest that. So we raised a fund, and it's called Taste Tomorrow ventures. It's a $30 million fund. Our. Our LPs, Strategics. We have two retailers that are LPs in our fund. I can't mention them, but, um, you know, Ball Corp, um, Molson Cores, Altria. Like, we have incredible partners, um, and a couple retailers. We're the most strategic investor in beverage. And so, like, you asked me, what do I invest in? Just look at what our investments we invested in. Justice Tea was our first investment, which is Seth Goldman, who did it already with Honesty. You know, we invested in Happy Coffee, um, two co founders, Robert Downey Jr. And Craig Dubitsky. I love Downey, but we didn't invest because of Downey. We invested because of Craig Dubisky, who's had three exits. He did. Hello, Toothpaste. Sold to Colgate. He did eos, the lip balm that's an egg. And he did Method. And he did Method. So, yeah. And then we invested in Juni, which is, you know, Jay Shetty and Kim Perel. I love Jay Shetty, but we invested because of Kim Perell. She's had. She's had exits. She's. They've been through it. Uh, they've done it before. And I always say, like, you know, the goat of our industry is Mike Rapoli. He is unequivocally the greatest of all time. And he's. He's. He's a become a bit mysterious, you know, um, he's getting out there a little bit right now. But what I always tell people about Mike is he is the most coachable guy I've ever Met, which is shocking because he did vitamin water, he did body armor, right? So you have to be really innovative, incredibly driven and all these things. But I think what's missed about him is he's super coachable, right? And when he called me and got me involved in body armor, he's like, I need your help. And I'm like, you need my help? Like, you are. I. In a million years, I'll never do a tenth of what you've done, you know? And he's like, no, you know, things that I don't know, you understand certain things. You have relationships with retailers that I don't have. Like. And to me it was like, wow, that's different, right? Because you can find a lot of, uh, founders that are innovative, right, that aren't coachable and they're not going to make it. You can find a lot of founders that are coachable and not innovative. They ain't going to make it. But it's very unique to be a leader, to be a founder, to be an innovator and be coachable. That because this industry is so hard, like, there's. There's bodies buried around every corner. If you've never done it before, it's just so, so hard. It's a blood sport. I always say that. It's a blood sport. And, you know, as. As good as we think we are, when we read our own linkedins, like, it's just a second till we were about to get humbled because we fail so much. We fail so often. It's just impossible. It's so hard.

Speaker B: Danny, let me, uh, build on that for a moment. Most days, uh, the clients we work with, which are a bit more obviously large legacy, cpg, they just want to talk about the big three. The big three, you know, Walmart, let's throw Sam's Club in there. Amazon and Costco. I was just in Costco Sunday. I still continue to believe they're just crushing it with Challenger brands. You just see them in ways you just don't in other retail formats. But, I mean, what's your sort of latest sort of view take on those three and especially as it relates to beverages?

Speaker C: The three being Walmart, Costco and who else?

Speaker B: Amazon.

Speaker C: Amazon. So let's talk about Costco first. Um, Costco is a very special place in my heart. I was the first fully dedicated Coke employee that they put on the Coke business. They moved me to Issaquah.

Speaker B: Yeah, we felt sorry for you. We feel sorry for you back then because, Dan, everybody was telling you no,

Speaker C: the whole Time, well, it got me chased out of the company. It was the best thing ever happened to me. But you remember I was living in the pouring rain. I was like £300 very lonely up there. Like trying to bang my head against the wall with Costco was a disaster. Like it was really not healthy anything about it. But. But all the things that I wanted to do when I was trying to get the company to move on, ironically, they've done over the past couple decades, right? Like the 36 pack. We started all that and everybody said I was crazy and basically chased me out of the company. But. But you're right.

Speaker A: Like I just bought the 36 pack at Costco. Diet Coke.

Speaker C: There you go. Started in my garage, actually. Um, I showed it to Costco before I show joke. That didn't go well. Uh, yeah. So, um, but you know, Costco is across every department, department 13, department 14. Even like in their protein assortment. Like they, they know where the, their member, the consumer is. They know where their head is at. And that's why they are getting in so much earlier on, on brands. Brands. Like, it's unbelievable. Like Trip, which is a brand that we invested in, it's killing it in Costco. A lot of America hasn't heard of it yet, right? It's doing 80 million in the UK and it's coming to the US in a big, big way right now. But Costco's first early, right? And you know that. So it is. They are open for business. You know, Costco came to Beverage Forum, right? They never used to go to events, right. They were very inward. It was really hard to even get an appointment, right. They're at wafc, they're at the Beverage Forum. Like they are playing offense. They are out there looking for new stuff and it's working for them, right? So it's really fascinating what Costco is doing. You know, Walmart is. It's a case study. You know, Melody at Walmart, she's very famous for every. She ends every meeting I'm with with, with her and I'm in a lot of meetings with her. She ends every meeting by saying, we're the, we're the world's largest startup. And I believe it. I. I've watched doing it. Like we got on. I got on stage with Melody at Beverage Forum and she said, you know, we launched this line of. It's right behind me. It's Ari. It's a line of, uh, um, we did it with bts, like the biggest music phenomenon in America and with this Korean company called Hy incredible company. And we took it to Walmart first exclusively. We launched 42 SKUs with Walmart and we launched it digital first, right? Pre orders. So their mindset, Walmart's mindset is completely different than it was 10 years ago. It's completely different than it was five years ago. And you know, I was just at shareholder, shareholder meeting. I came home and I invested like because I, I, you can see their mentality of how they're thinking differently about things, you know, things that, you know, like you had to be DSD in the past at Walmart. Now they don't like dsd. If you're not on Coke trucks or Pepsi trucks or KDP trucks, they won't let you be in there on beer trucks. They want to go direct, right? Because half the beer distributors are really great and half of them aren't. And Walmart's like, we have no patience. We can get it to our back rooms better and faster and more efficient. Go hire relentless advantage to get it from the back room to the shelf. And so that's what's happening right now. So there's no barriers to entry. Distribution is not a barrier to entry at Walmart at all. Uh, and that is so fundamentally different than how we grew up. Totally.

Speaker B: Like, that's um, And Amazon, what's the role with Amazon with Challenger brands a little harder E Commerce yet they still matter. So much of TikTok is converting on Amazon. What do you think, Danny?

Speaker C: Yeah, so Amazon with, with heavy liquids, Amazon's tough, right? And um, you know, I still think it's, it's the one place where you can do better on your website, your own website than you can do on Amazon is heavy liquids. Now if you're doing powdered beverages or other stuff like that, then it's a different story. But with heavy liquids, the uh, shipping is so expensive. It's, it's really become hard and it's really opened up, you know, an advantage for Walmart because key to Walmart's digital first strategy is their stores, right? So when thinking Walmart can get stuff to your house in 15 minutes from when you order it online, right? Amazon's quick, right? Every time I get home I got, my wife has 10 boxes of Amazon boxes. It drives me crazy. But they're quick. But Walmart can be like, I think their fastest order at the shareholder meeting they said was seven minutes. Minutes, right? Somebody ordered online and seven minutes later it was at their door. And so they're, and they're using the stores, which is a huge Competitive advantage for them. When you're thinking like Omnichannel, that it's, it's changing the game. And you know, Walmart's very, uh, you know, Amazon, when you're a founder, it's, it's, it's a little bit harder to work with Amazon. It feels a little bit like a faceless company and you have to do everything, you know, online. Walmart's very excess. Walmart's very accessible. Right. And as hard as it is to get in the stores at, uh, Walmart, it's the opposite of that getting on walmart.com. there's no shelf boundaries though. Uh, it's infinite. So you can get anything in there and they want everything. They want everything in there and they want it, they prefer it to be first. And these buyers are so young at Walmart. That's the other thing about Walmart that's fascinating to me. Like if you go and call on Kroger or Albertsons and then you go to Walmart, it's like I'm selling to my parents at those other places and I'm selling to my kids at, uh, Walmart. It's wild. And they're all on their phones, they're watching trends, they're. And I honestly think it's a big competitive advantage, you know, because, you know, a lot of the creator stuff is launching at Walmart. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: You don't, you don't have a barrier on distribution, you know, and if you have a microphone to draw, drive people to the stores, you know, you can go to Walmart first. Now that, that never used to happen. Yeah, the, Walmart was the last stop. It's not.

Speaker B: That's a great frame up. Last question on that is, do you still see the natural channel as sort of on the edge and where we should be watching for a lot of innovation. Whole Foods, Sprouts, the fresh market, et cetera.

Speaker C: So Sprouts has taken the crown, um, as far as being early, first exclusive. You know, the foraging program which we created with sprouts in 2019, um, has now evolved into the most aspirational place if you're a guy or gal making something in your garage. It used to be Whole Foods. Um, after the Amazon acquisition, a lot of that was lost. I will tell you though, it's coming back. Whole Whole Foods is challenging and they're kind of getting back to their roots, um, and doing stuff that's a lot more innovative and early. For a while they were just like not open for business. And I think they realize now they Are. So they're definitely coming back and challenging Sprouts. And Sprouts is watching it. Targets really become a pivotal place, um, for brands. It's a good kind of crossover account to the big conventionals, you know? Um, so, yeah, so the whole world is just shifting. I think that's the headline is. Is you cannot do things like you used to do them. You cannot look at the world like the way that we used to look at the world.

Speaker A: You.

Speaker C: You. You better start thinking differently, because the retailers are thinking differently, no question.

Speaker B: And we're seeing it at restaurants. Right, Danny, all these refreshers. I mean, where do you want to start? Yum. McDonald's, Starbucks? I mean, there's a big business over in off premise that's kind of looking more.

Speaker C: So it's super interesting. So we have a brand called Sky Pop, which is a protein soda, and it's. It's doing really well at Target. It's the number one protein soda at Target. It's doing really well at Walmart. At Kroger. We're launching it in Chipotle right now.

Speaker B: Wow. Whoa, whoa. Okay.

Speaker C: Kava Kava is. Is relooking at the way they look at beverages. So, yeah, usually, you know, food service was 10 years behind, you know, retail, and they're speeding up now. Right. Tractors is making inroads. You know, Coke's been able to block them out of a lot of the big, you know, big one, the big, you know, QSRs. But a lot of the little ones, no, like the tractor is just picking up, you know, that bubbler business everywhere. And KDP invested in that, which is really interesting, right? Because they. They saw it coming. And I think we all forget that, you know, neither Coke nor Pepsi are the number one brand in food service. Dr. Pepper is because they get on both valves, right? They're the only one that get. Gets on both valves. And so KDP is like, huh, huh. You know, we're. We're, you know, we're. We're talking. We're in business with all these customers. You know, what if we, like, show them these bubblers with tractor, which we have nothing. We're not involved with it at all. But I'm just watching from the sidelines going, huh, huh. This is an interesting play. Really interesting.

Speaker B: No doubt. And, uh, Rachel, are you getting thirsty now?

Speaker A: Yes. I love all this talk about beverages and I love trying new ones. So it's really fun conversation. Danny, I wanted to just before we finish up our conversation, thought this would be like a nice, ah, question to Ask, uh, to kind of sum up everything and wanted to know your view on the kind of one big lesson that large FMCG and beverage companies should take from today's best challenger brands.

Speaker C: So Lance Collins, who's another one of the goats of our industry, he always says, it's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow. And I think nimbleness and speed is probably the biggest asset for these founders, and it's the biggest liability for these big CPG companies. Right. Because they're not set up to go fast. They're not set up. I mean, it. You know, we were with a big strategic yesterday and we were laughing because we're trying to do some innovation with them. And, you know, we're like, we should put this in cans. And they're like, oh, that would take us probably a year and a half to qualify the co Packers. And I'm like, I'm like, that would take us 30 seconds, right? We already know them all, right? And it's the easiest thing ever. And by the way, if they pass cost, they're doing Kirkland signature. No one's harder on food safety and child safety than Costco. Like, if they're okay for Costco, they should be like, you know, but that mindset is, is, you know, that's where the fast is going to eat the slow.

Speaker B: No question about it. And that's kind of what P and G CMO was telling all the audiences at cans beyond cpg. Danny, just like brand building in general, speed is your biggest barrier, which is what you're telling us. Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, it really is critical. So the ability to act fast and act nimble. And we're seeing big CPGs kind of put little frameworks in place to allow them. I mean, that's what VEB basically was, right? It was supposed to be like the skunk works of Coke, where they could. Could go autonomously. Like, we launched Ily Coffee outside the Coke system, right? It wasn't with Coke Bar. They hired us. It was our first big deal at La Libations is Coke hired us to launch Illy Isimo Coffee, the joint venture between Andre Illy and Coke. And what they said back then, which is hilarious, they said, they said, danny, if you can get this to 10 million in revenue, we can then put it in our Coke system and it will go, right? And so we did our job. We got it to 10 million of revenue outside the coast. So we put it in.

Speaker B: They.

Speaker C: That number is now like 150 million. Right? Anything smaller than that just clogs up the system. It doesn't make sense. The bottlers don't want it, you know, and it, there's no patience for it to grow. So. So now that's also an opportunity. Like you, you know, you've got to get to 150 million before the strategics really want. I mean every strategic has a different number. Uh, but, but, but that if you're, if you're at 50 million in revenue, it honestly doesn't get coke out of bed. M crazy. And by the way, if you're doing 50 million in revenue, you 4x that, you know, you got, you know, a 200 million dollar company that you could sell. Right. But doesn't want it yet. So you got to keep. It's. It's wild. It's wild.

Speaker B: Wow, man. Well, um, my brother, I'm just so proud of you. You're crushing it. I got to get to your event. It's an experience. Everybody was talking about it that I know that you know. And so I'm just so glad that you were able to make the podcast and you. Or just on fireband.

Speaker C: So, so yeah, so definitely you guys should come to Beverage Forum. And then we're doing Food Forum for the first time in Austin.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: So we're announcing it this week. But um, it's, it's the same formula and you know, we're get, we're diversifying beyond beverage for sure with the fund. We've made a few snack investments. So food form, it's going to be the same form, you know, lots of celebrities because there's lots of retailers and they both want to meet each other and sell their drinks and now their food. And uh, it's going to be awesome. So you guys should come to that too.

Speaker B: I definitely would. When? Do you have any timing on that yet? Is it too early?

Speaker C: It's August. I think it's 31st. Don't uh, quote me. We're going to launch it. You'll see it on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: All right, Barry. Well, I loved having Danny back to the podcast. Uh, we had such an awesome conversation with him last time and this time was just as awesome. Um, so super hyped. And we, uh, do have our top five, uh, recap for the audience. I'd say the first number one is that the next billion dollar brands won't be invented by legacy cpg. They'll be acquired from founders. A couple quotes, uh, from Danny. Uh, he said the consumer is incredibly promiscuous. All the growth is coming from new and he also argues consumers increasingly seek novelty while retailers have shifted from protecting incumbents to actively hunting emerging brands. So the innovation pipeline has fundamentally moved outside large organizations. I think that's pretty important. Number two, retailers, um, have become venture capitalists for brands. Walmart, Costco, Target, Kroger, Albertsons, etc. They are no longer waiting for brands to prove themselves nationally. They are increasingly competing for first to market launches, exclusives and emerging concepts because innovation itself has become a traffic driver. So um, from Danny, you know, they're all fighting to be first. Number three, speed that has become the ultimate competitive advantage. Danny referenced Lance Collins observation that perfectly captures today's marketplace quote. It's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow. Founders iterate in weeks while large CPGs often require 12 to 18 months to commercialize comparable innovation in categories. Changing this quickly, organizational speed becomes a competitive moat.

Speaker B: And this Danny, oh my goodness, number four here, uh, is I just loved his narrative around CPGs have to think like poor portfolio investors, not product managers. You know, he talked about, you know, when we were at Coca Cola, obviously VEB Venture and Emerging brands was kind of the startup, but then, you know, we kind of deleted it because we felt, we felt like it wasn't successful enough. And he's just saying, look, don't, don't look at that. By averages, if you will look at it in the terms of you only need one. He's so right. I've heard him, I've heard him say that before. You only need one, right? So you know, just, you want more shots on goal, not fewer. And so having, you know, an internal incubation engine for, for obviously product innovation that's connected to an open partnership ecosystem, that's kind of the play. More CPGs are doing it. And that's why Danny, gosh, he's connected to so many big CPGs, uh, obviously because of what he's doing with Challenger brands, which leads to 0.5. You know, the beverage form that he's taken over and has taken it to the next level is just astounding. You know, it proves that, you know, ecosystems, that's really what he's heading up. An ecosystem within CPG is outperforming sort of the tired old conference. And uh, yes, he's bringing in big name celebrities of course, but it's more about the environment just listening to him. It's about founders and retailers and investors and suppliers and you know, these strategic thought leaders all being in person together physically. You know, I love what he said. You know, this is a place where deals get done. Just kind of drop the mic. You want to get a deal done, this is where you go. And. And by the way, arguably some of the very best learning around Challenger Brands is happening here. So. I'm just so proud of him. You know, I'm. I worked with him a bit, you know, in the 90s, and he was sort of, you know, ostracized because he had such big ideas for Costco. But at the time, the Coca Cola company just wasn't ready like most CPGs were. And look at him now, Rachel, this guy is on fire. And look what he's doing with his family. It's just amazing.

Speaker A: It is amazing. It is. Well, um, Barry, that does bring us to the end of this fabulous episode. Thank you so much again to Danny Stepper for joining us today, and we hope you enjoyed our show. And as always, thanks for listening to the Kantar Retail Sound Bites podcast.

Speaker B: And please give us a, uh, review and rate us. We just love that. We need that to kind of help the podcast continue to thrive and grow wherever you're listening at. And especially want to thank Victoria. Victoria makes it all happen. Tori makes this happen. Just want to thank her for producing and marketing the podcast. And with that, we'll see you in a couple weeks. Thank you.