[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Next on the Brewbound podcast, C4 pops in for a beer occasion. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.
[00:00:19] Jessica Infante: I'm Jessica Infante, and I'm Zoe Licata.
[00:00:23] Justin Kendall: And this week, we have a featured interview with Nutrabolt SVP of marketing, Emily Hoyle. If you don't know, Nutrabolt is C4, and they have All Hopped Up, which is a beer flavored energy drink, and it tastes a little bit like Blue Moon.
[00:00:42] Jessica Infante: Fascinating. Really interesting. When you say a beer flavored thing, what I think of is like an American light lager, but that's not the route they went. You'll hear Emily talk all about it. It was a really great conversation.
[00:00:55] Justin Kendall: Yeah. And Emily is a beer person, came from Pabst.
[00:01:00] Jessica Infante: Yeah, yeah, I thought this would be like a Pabst flavored energy drink, but it's not. What a world. What a world. Beer flavored energy drinks and Gatorade flavored alcohol and everything else in between. Cats and dogs are living together.
[00:01:17] Justin Kendall: Everything is alcohol at this point.
[00:01:19] Jessica Infante: Guys, I went to a tarot card reading party this weekend and drank my first pumpkin beer with a cinnamon sugar rim, and it was extremely autumnal. How very Salem of you, right? That
[00:01:31] Justin Kendall: sounds delicious.
[00:01:32] Jessica Infante: And just like Salem, it actually happened in Danvers. Perfect. Was it a positive reading? No, I'll tell you more. It felt very work oriented, which was disappointing. Oh, why am I not shocked at all? Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:50] Justin Kendall: Was it, there are more hard sports drinks in your future? Yes,
[00:01:55] Jessica Infante: yes, that's exactly, that's exactly what the card said.
[00:01:58] Justin Kendall: Did the card say that the founders of Stone Brewing Will return to the beer industry and save Escondido.
[00:02:09] Jessica Infante: Yes, they drew the 9 of pentacles, and that is kind of what I thought was happening here. Steve and Greg were rebuilding the church. Yeah, and it's almost opened.
[00:02:20] Justin Kendall: The beer Jesus will return.
[00:02:24] Jessica Infante: Quite an old school crafty news alert coming out of California, which if you didn't see the news, although it seems like a lot of folks did based on the views of our coverage of it. The founders of Stone, Greg and Steve, are taking back, uh, taking back, or that's a bit of a gray area, but will be opening their own independent restaurant in the, what will soon be former space of Stone in Escondido, in a to be determined. Business, not taking over the production space, at least as of right now, but the restaurant business, the hospitality business, and that kind of garden hosting area will all be a part of their new venture. Did they say anything about wanting to produce beer as part of this? I have memory hold a little bit of this story. I'm sorry. No, no, but I mean, naturally, Greg kind of left it a little bit open and saying they don't have plans for it at the moment, but who knows what will happen in the future. But no, right now it is just this restaurant space. They're trying to change it up a little bit, and I don't know, update the space and its hospitalityness a little bit more. There's a massive production brewery as a part of this location, and that is not a part of this move at all.
[00:03:43] Justin Kendall: I just hope it's not called the sanctuary for reasons of our friend at the Lost Abbey and his sanctuary.
[00:03:52] Jessica Infante: I think Father Tommy would be willing to perform the sacrament of reconciliation for Greg. Yeah,
[00:03:58] Justin Kendall: I think more than willing.
[00:04:00] Jessica Infante: Greg put out a poll over the weekend asking what the potential names for this place, and the sanctuary was one of them.
[00:04:07] Justin Kendall: Might have been the leader,
[00:04:08] Jessica Infante: yeah. But that's already taken. Yeah, they're back. They're back, back in the fold, I guess. They've resurrected. No, I'm sorry. There's 14 years of Catholic school here. I can't keep it down. Well, I think we should talk about AIDS, right? Yeah,
[00:04:32] Justin Kendall: we definitely should talk about it. ADES big topic at the National Beer Wholesalers Association's meeting all over the place. I drank a ton of hard sports drinks, mostly spiked aid, but when we hit the floor, we tried big sips Light Aid. We tried Arctic Cherry from Super Light, which was really good. So good, yeah, I'm excited about that. We tried. Basically all of them. Deschutes Firelight, we tried that. There was one more, vodka. We hit vodka. Definitely a fan of the zero sugar stuff.
[00:05:07] Jessica Infante: Yeah, so good, so much better. Yeah, we drank a lot of them. And how big can this segment get? Well, Circana's Scott Scanlon put out a report over the weekend that he expects the vodka plus aid segment to be between $150 million to $500 million in 2027. Which she admitted is a really big spread. I would take the higher end of that just based on what we've been able to see happen this year. Maybe that's a little too Pollyanna-ish of me, but that is where I am going after what I have seen.
[00:05:43] Justin Kendall: Super light hasn't even been able to meet demand so far, and one of the retailers that I spoke to basically said that, you know, you got to take a big drop to get in on this. Essentially, it's allocated.
[00:05:54] Jessica Infante: Mhm. Yeah, we had a reader reach out after Matt Quigley came on the podcast to ask what cases they were measuring in when they said they're projecting to hit 4 million cases. Wanted to know if it was like the spirits measurements of, you know, 9 L. And we found Clem Pappas, the CEO of Stateside on the floor in Orlando, and I was like, Hey, Clem, like what is this? And he was like, Oh, those are beer cases, you know, 24, 12 ounce packages. So a huge amount of volume. And That so far is the biggest brand in the segment, but there have been a ton of entrants. And I sat in on a seminar hosted by the NIQ team while we were in Orlando, and they did a deep dive onto where Super Light is sourcing its dollars from, and not surprising, it's a mixture. About 60% seems to be coming from other places across beverage, alcohol. The two biggest share donors were Domestic premium and import beers, but the list was long of segments that are contributing share to this brand in particular. I don't think they have quite enough gotten to the point in the data where they can treat all of these brands as one segment yet. So they were using Super light as a proxy, but they were sourcing from cordials, red wine, domestic super premiums and RTDs. But the biggest again, were domestic premiums and imports. But about 20% of dollars are coming from People who had not purchased beverage alcohol in the past 26 weeks. So that It's not saying that those are necessarily brand new drinkers, but those are super infrequent drinkers who have bought this, and about 10% of its dollars are in addition to other beverage alcohol purchases. So. Seems to be good. Scott Scanlon and his report said to caution that they probably will start sourcing more from other RTDs as that kind of tends to be what happens with new RTD innovation, but Definitely the segment to watch.
[00:07:50] Justin Kendall: Which generations did Scott say are drinking this? I think he said Gen X and was it millennials too?
[00:07:55] Jessica Infante: Primarily millennials who skew mostly white with household incomes over $100,000. OK. Which is funny because you would think it's the Gen Zers, but
[00:08:06] Justin Kendall: Gen X tracks though, because that's the Gatorade generation.
[00:08:11] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it's also the people who have money. That too. That's the other thing is like. I'm sure there's a part of the younger demographic that sees this and goes, but I can just make that however I want at home for probably a lot cheaper than buying this variety pack. I mean, I feel you could probably draw a pretty straight line from Borgs to this. Yeah, for sure. Gen Z was definitely connected. Yeah.
[00:08:36] Justin Kendall: You've been talking about hydrating while you drank for a long time, Zoey.
[00:08:41] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it's important. I was talking to somebody about this over the weekend, and he was like, I don't want to drink those cause I'm scared it's gonna ruin my my go to hangover cure, which is a Gatorade. It's like, if I am drinking these all day, I'm not gonna want to then have one the next morning. You can't officially say this, but the argument to that is like, oh, maybe you don't need a hangover cure the next day, but that was something that I hadn't thought about too much yet. The one thing that I've noticed about this segment compared to some other big trendy Beyond Beer things we've seen, is there's not a huge differentiator between all of the brands. We've seen, you know, Firelight has a different base, so that's a little bit different. They'll be able to get into places where you can't sell spirits. We've seen recently like a packaging difference with Paco brands, new iteration, but flavor wise, they all taste pretty similar. And so that makes me feel like we're going to continue to see a pretty top-heavy result from this. I'm curious to see how some of these newcomers are going to find ways to connect with consumers.
[00:09:52] Justin Kendall: Well, and I think that's the key too is like, are the retailers going to jump into this in the way that they jumped into hard seltzer, or are they going to be like, I've got spiked Aid, I've got Super light, I've got Rally Dog I got vodka. Do I need a 5th? Do I need a 6th? Do I need a 7th on the shelf? That opportunity is open as long as, you know, some of these brands are on allocation and they can't meet the demand that's out there. But I wonder how much of a lesson we've learned from Hard Seltzer is like you don't need all these, and then don't need, I mean, the other lesson is like, you all don't need to jump in here too. There may not be an opportunity for everybody that wants in this space, but I mean. Can you compete with Constellation Brands and Mark Anthony, and Boston Beer, and Stateside, and Deschutes. I'm already like losing fingers here. I can't keep track of everybody already, and So, do we need more? Where does it stop? And, you know, the retailer is ultimately the one that's gonna control who succeeds here, I think, because, you know, are they gonna open the cooler door for everybody? There's not enough room for singles for everybody.
[00:11:05] Jessica Infante: Right. And we talked about this last week. I think you're already seeing some of the lessons from Hard Seltzer playing out. Nobody's really extending an existing brand. I think all of these brands are unfortunately pulling from the same word bank, but there is, you know, some products that are meaningfully differentiated, like you mentioned, Deschutes Firelight, that's malt-based, gives it different market access. We saw Patco Brands' Big sips light entrant. I guess that's one that's using an existing brand, but I think it's probably OK to do that. They're in Tetrapaxs, which is cool. That's different. So I think we've got the initial gold rush right now, and it's going to get to a point where how can you stand out in this sea of You know, because it's not really going to be flavor. I don't think you can play too much outside. No, especially when it's already relying on the flavor not necessarily being a flavor. It's a color most of the time and trying to target flavors that already exist in a different form. So trying to find the most popular ones. Do you guys think we'll see the big sports drinks get in on this too? Or do you think the crossover days are over?
[00:12:15] Justin Kendall: I bet somebody tries. I'll bet somebody's trying to have that conversation right now,
[00:12:19] Jessica Infante: right? Yeah, I'm gonna be shocked if like a power raid or someone got in there of being like, hey, we're kind of different. I don't know. I'm not going to make too many predictions because especially this space, it seems like we never really can get it totally right. But it seems like those drinks in general have been the non-alk, the just traditional sports drinks, have been leaning so much more into health and wellness and like being way less sugar, and that has been their main territory right now. I'm not sure if their focus would then be, OK, now let's add alcohol and our consumers are gonna want that. It seems like they have shifted their focus to the consumers who want Way more healthy, focused on the ingredients, focused on like, OK, what am I actually consuming with these quote unquote recovery beverages or whatnot. Yeah, I'm curious to just see also like how long, and our colleagues at Taste Radio recently touched on this in their recent episode too, but just like how long consumers are gonna want to keep drinking these. I mean, we still see hard seltzers become such a thing. It's very much a part of beverage alcohol now. It is not something that just came in and went away. The demand went way down, but it is, I think, pretty permanently a part of the industry. I am fascinated to see what happens with these 8s. Yeah, and it's not a small part of the industry either. It's White Claw is one of the top 10 largest beer brand families. Yeah,
[00:13:44] Justin Kendall: we were talking with somebody the other day about truly and how big it is, and it's bigger than some of the biggest craft beer brands that we can name. Most of the craft beer brands that we can name. Mhm, yeah. The other thing I'm curious about is just maintaining momentum going into the winter season, and it's not like you stop drinking sports drinks because it's winter season, but, you know, is there some seasonality to this that maybe we're not expecting? Yeah,
[00:14:11] Jessica Infante: I mean, I think hard seltzer probably follows that pattern.
[00:14:14] Justin Kendall: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely something we'll be reporting on, watching, and probably everybody's going to be sick of talking about these things very soon. Or not. Who knows? Hey listeners, October 20th brings lots of new beer jobs on CPGjobs.com, including from Deschutes Brewery, Sierra Nevada Brewing, and ABC Distro. Stone Holme Brewing and Fremont Brewing bring more hot opportunities for beer people ready to move. Chase yours at CPGjobs. Dot com. Every listing runs on Brewbound, the beer industry's daily read. If you're hiring, put your role before brewers, beer sales leaders, and distributor people through Brewbound with wider drinks industry reach across Bevnet and Nosh. Post a role at CPGjobs.com today. Use code brewbound 26 and save money when you list.
[00:15:01] Speaker 3: Most brewers have done off flavor sensory workshops, but have you ever done an on flavor sensory workshop? Yes, an on flavor sensory workshop. The 2026 California Craft Beer Summit has a sensory workshop focused on compounds involved in biotransformation to help you understand how to combine ingredients to achieve specific sensory profiles. The 2026 program is built around actionable education designed to help breweries identify what's working and put those insights to work. Check out the full schedule and register your team today at CA craft beer Summit.com. That's CA craft beer summit.com.
[00:15:38] Speaker 4: The Bevnet CPG Media 2026 Awards honor top brands and people in beverage, food, beer, and spirits. Most categories close October 30th. Submit at win.Bevnet.com/awards.
[00:15:54] Justin Kendall: Anything else that we want to cover coming out of the National Beer Wholesaler Association's annual convention? I mean, we've got stories up on the uh distributor conversation that took place there. We talked a little bit about it last week. I thought it was one of the more candid conversations that we've probably ever seen at MBWA as far as portfolio mix and just. Looking at cannibalization of portfolios and things you should be aware of, but anything else that you all wanna talk about coming out of there?
[00:16:24] Jessica Infante: No, I mean the making moves portion, which is the two day seminar hosted by Brew, which is building relationships, empowering women, I thought was good. And
[00:16:35] Justin Kendall: workforce now.
[00:16:36] Jessica Infante: Oh, is that the other W? Great. I apologize to the workforce. It was good. I think we had a lot of actionable talk. Friend of the pod, Lucinda. Aquat had a lot to say about triage and prioritizing your time that I thought was helpful to me as a working mom at Trademark. We also heard from quite a few brand leaders. We'll have stories up about that. Leaders from Good Boy and Owls Brew. And Caroline Folk from Beer Girl just gave like a. A really good pep talk to close it out about finding your voice and your confidence and how that enabled her to build this brand that's now about to be nationwide, which is incredible. No mention of her brief stop on the Brewbound Live Pitch slam stage, but that's OK.
[00:17:28] Justin Kendall: I also thought Ellie Pressler from Sierra Nevada gave a great talk as far as leadership and treating people the way you want to be treated. And lessons learned from that.
[00:17:40] Jessica Infante: Yeah, she was very candid about some of her experiences and work and what she's learned and mistakes she's made. And I think our conversation on Brewbound live stage with her is a nice follow up from that. She's on a panel talking about, you know, lessons from previous work outside of beverage alcohol and what they're taking into these brands now. That was a nice little a little warm up of how she has adapted as she's gone through her career. Yeah, I'm excited about that panel at Rebound Live. I think it's gonna be great.
[00:18:10] Justin Kendall: Yep. Tickets available now on December 9th and 10th, so very natural way of working in that plug, Zoey.
[00:18:18] Jessica Infante: Thank you.
[00:18:19] Justin Kendall: And uh before we get out of here, let's talk a little bit about Coors Distributing because that advanced last week, at least in the courtroom with attorneys for both sides making arguments. Coors Distributing essentially said that they have an agreement, they want to go to the arbitration process and that these brands should not be able to terminate before they get there. And they discussed the substantial risk that they see of a, I think they called it a um Cascading terminations, I believe. They have about 40 suppliers that they work with, and there's concern that this thing could snowball essentially from here, and we've seen it go from Constellation Brands to Mark Anthony Brands to Sierra Nevada. So, I don't know if I would say that their fears are warranted, but clearly, it's playing out already. And the other argument on the side of Constellation Brands was. This is a money damages situation. They have a contract. They argue that Cos Distributing is trying to rewrite that contract. But they argue that essentially this is something that will be cured by money.
[00:19:29] Jessica Infante: Yeah, it's interesting. It's brought up a lot of conversations about how Colorado's law is written, and the kind of weird gray area that it, it leaves. Is it redundant in some areas? Does it contradict itself in some areas? And so people have, are now looking to this case to see, OK, what comes next after this of what Colorado does moving forward.
[00:19:53] Justin Kendall: I mean, if it is how some folks interpret the way that that it's written, you've got to send a lot of letters to a lot of wholesalers informing them that you are terminating Coors distributing, but That's just one interpretation. I think it was Drew Jagholm, he's an attorney that works these type of cases, mentioned in one of the educational sessions that it's essentially a law that does not make a lot of sense, the way it is written, and oftentimes these laws are written by folks who don't essentially understand the industries that they're writing about, and his example was You know, a lawmaker that when they saw a bill that mentioned malt beverages, they didn't understand that that referred to beer. Right?
[00:20:41] Jessica Infante: They said, I thought we were talking about beer. I mean, this is a whole other can of worms, but I feel like it is interesting that wine and spirits don't have franchise protection. So I feel as though you could probably argue that beer is the only beverage alcohol category to have, it is slightly unfair. So. I should stop talking though, because I can hear a large chunk of our audience thinking, Shut up. What did Craig Purser say? It's an F word, franchise law. It is the F word. It's not my favorite F word. No, not even close.
[00:21:18] Justin Kendall: Yeah, you definitely have a different F word that you're very fond of, fettuccine. Well, with that, let's get to our featured interview with NutriBullet's Emily Hoyle, talking all hopped up. All right, let's bring on our featured guest this week, and we're gonna be joined by Emily Hoyle, SVP of marketing at C4 parent company NutriBullet. Thanks for being here, Emily. Awesome.
[00:21:44] Speaker 5: Thanks y'all for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:21:46] Justin Kendall: So we're stoked to have you here because when we put this story up, I don't, I don't know that we were really expecting the reaction to it, but it really blew up, and the story I'm talking about is C4 has a beer flavored energy drink out now. It's called All Hopped Up. There's zero alcohol. There's 200 mg of caffeine, and I honestly wasn't expecting the flavor, but it's, it's like a whit beer. Yeah,
[00:22:10] Speaker 5: I'm curious, how do y'all, I'm assuming y'all obviously have tried it. What do you think?
[00:22:14] Justin Kendall: I like it, you know, it, when I think of beer flavor, like when people put that out there, the push has been really strong from someone like garage beer, and they're pushing that lager flavor. So I was like, is this going to taste like a lager? But then, you know, when, when I saw that it was citrus, I was like, Oh yeah, this is very palatable.
[00:22:33] Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think for us, because if you think about it, you can go so many different directions when you just say tastes like a beer, and everyone has personal preferences. And so for us we really chose a flavor we thought that would be really accessible to a lot of different people if they wanted to try it. So it is kind of that that crisp, light lager inspired, but with a citrus note of orange. So it comes across a little bit more flavor forward with fruit notes that are more common in the energy space, more kind of like a summer shandy, so it's just something that's like highly drinkable, highly sessionable. We felt like that was the right note to to hit as a beer inspired energy drink.
[00:23:06] Jessica Infante: Was there a beer you had in mind when you were developing the flavor?
[00:23:09] Speaker 5: You know, I think there's a couple, um, as I look back at my little display here, I think there are a couple of different places and spaces we could go. We didn't specifically target one specific beer brand or beer type because again, we wanted it to be achievable or or palatable. To a bunch of different audiences. Obviously, when you add an orange, it naturally goes towards Blue moon. I think in the mind, whenever you have that citrus note, that wasn't the only space that we explored, but that's probably a good comparison when you start to have the, the citrus note or just a general kind of summer shandy.
[00:23:41] Justin Kendall: Sometimes when you do citrus, it can come off like overly zesty, and I do not get that from this at all.
[00:23:47] Speaker 5: Yeah, we definitely want it to be more of like a citrus twist, right? Like, so you just squeeze an orange into your beer versus it be specifically an orange flavored beer. We thought that might be a little too overpowering, and again, we want it to be sessionable. It isn't a, you know, a tall boy as you could call it, with 16 ounces, so we want to make sure from first sip to last sip, it was a really positive experience.
[00:24:08] Justin Kendall: And you bring a beer background to this too. I, I guess we were talking before we started recording and you used to be at Pabst.
[00:24:15] Speaker 5: Mhm. So I've been here at NutriBullet now for about 2.5 years, you know, really loving it. It's been a great experience so far. And right before that, I was at Pabst Brewing Company for about 5 years. And I was working on our local legends portfolio, so I had a lot of fun with local beers. So that's like Lone Star, Old Style, Old Milwaukee, Natty Bowe. So really, if you have that local favorite beer of yours from your neighborhood, It's probably something that I've worked on in the past. So I just have a general passion point and interest in this space in general, just happened to translate into, to my next job, but I'm, I'm just a big beer fan in general.
[00:24:50] Jessica Infante: So how did the idea for this product come to be? Because it's, I think, you know, like Justin mentioned, like we got a huge response on, on the story when it posted to the point where it's been in our top. 5 most read stories every week since it launched. So clearly people are really interested in it. So walk us, walk us through how we got here.
[00:25:08] Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's a great question. I shouldn't be surprised by that because it really is, but I think I continue to be, you know, pleasantly surprised. You know, we, we thought this was going to be, if nothing else, intriguing, but the, the level of success and excitement and chat around it has been really exciting. I think like any good innovation or concept, it was really just born of consumer insights. So, I think y'all are very familiar with the changing landscape within beer when it comes to Gen Z. They're just drinking less and less, if at all, and they're looking to alternatives, one of them being energy for that alternative consumption moment. And we also know, I think it was back in 2024, beer consumption dipped below 60% for the first time in decades, right? So there's just this general consumer shift. Away from beer, but there's also this rise of that sober, curious space in that movement. So that was a signal to us that people still really want to engage with the flavor portfolio and flavor profile of beer, but perhaps not all the active ingredients and the spaces that come with the beer, um, space. So we felt that there was a bit of an unmet need, especially with our target audience, you know, that adult Gen Z drinker that, that really, you know, hits into the energy drink space. So we felt that There was an unmet need we could potentially tap into. And then, you know, as, as any type of opportunity presents itself, timing is really key as well. At the time that we were concepting all hopped up, we were in the midst of launching another disruptive flavor profile against another category, which was our fruity cereal, milk flavored energy drink, serial killer, which you're like, what do you mean you made an energy drink that tastes like fruity cereal milk? Like that, that ended up Itself as a concept, kind of melts your brain. And so, we're already starting to be in that disruptive innovation space, and we had just launched it and was doing really, really well for us. So we're like, OK, there's something here in terms of consumer unmet need for that sober, curious flavor environment with Gen Z, as well as novelty flavors are not only interesting, but they actually can drive trial and repeat. And doing something disruptive is really exciting what consumers might be. Tapping into. And so we felt, what's another space that we could maybe disrupt where energy maybe hasn't historically been, but maybe has a right to play. You know, first we, we hijacked breakfast, and now we're kind of going into the, the, the beer space, I think in an homage to the, the flavor. So, it really was about being the right mind space in terms of a strategy and innovation, wanting to be disruptive, as well as just knowing there was some strong consumer insights to, to feel like this was the right call.
[00:27:36] Justin Kendall: On the target demographic, so you mentioned adult Gen Z, but is there an opportunity here to reach a broader audience that maybe isn't in the C4 set yet?
[00:27:49] Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I, I definitely kind of back to, we were really talking about like the flavor profile. We wanted to make sure that this was an approachable flavor for, for everyone. I think it's important to always have a target in mind because if you're for everyone, then you're kind of for no one. So for us, I think our, our target. is that 18 to 34 year old, more male-leaning, but, you know, gender neutral opportunity just as a broad strokes brand, that continues to be our target. But for something like beer that is so universal and ubiquitous, it really is for everyone. That just continues to be kind of the target focus, and I'd say inspired probably our, our go to market strategy and launching through digital, through TikTok shop first and then into Amazon as much as it was about the flavor profile or the positioning.
[00:28:33] Justin Kendall: Is there a challenge when your target demo includes the 18 demo and the not yet LDA for a product like this? I, I mean, I know it's non-alcoholic, but we deal with the regulation side all the time and You know, Jess and I were just talking about on an episode of the podcast about Mars collaboration with Buzzballs and sort of the blowback that Mars was getting over their Pop-Tarts collab. So,
[00:28:59] Speaker 5: I mean, for us, you know, we have a strict policy to not target anyone under the age of 18 just as an energy drink in general. So we're, we're used to self-regulating as well. And I think when it comes to this, like the biggest obvious differentiation is we are literally not a beer, and we're not even a non-alcoholic beer. We're an energy drink. That tastes like beer, even the way we're made, we're essentially carbonated water, natural flavors, and ingredients. So we don't have any of the core components of a beer, right within that space. We're also not an alcohol company. All we sell are energy drinks. So for us, this is more of an homage and, and flavor inspiration than it is any other overlap within that space. So, we feel really confident that we're in a responsible lane versus it being anything that's coming from like a Bev Out company. In that space, we're, we're Strictly an energy drink company.
[00:29:46] Jessica Infante: So Emily, you mentioned TikTok Shop and Amazon. Did the product go to brick and mortar retailers too?
[00:29:53] Speaker 5: No. And this is, this was a fun learning curve for me, right? So coming from the three-tiered system, like very clear that, you know, as a supplier, you cannot be directly talking to your consumer. And so D2C, so direct to consumer, was a really exciting space for me to jump into when I transitioned to the energy drink space. So for us, this is strictly a digital-only product. So, social commerce, social exclusive, digital exclusive. So, we launched it on TikTok Shop first. It's available on Amazon and it's also now available as of last week on C4Energy.com. So, we're very intentional on going through essentially owned or third-party channels that we could control to, to test and learn, right? Like, to see, you know, what's the response to this, but also to, to see if it's successful, but also to not put that undue burden or ask out to the retailers yet to see. Hey, if we believe in this, then we'll put, you know, our weight behind this, and we'll take whatever level of risk that there is to see if it's successful. And so far it's been really, really successful. And then we're able to take those learnings to our distributor and our retailer partners and say, hey, actually, not only do we think this is a great idea, it is a great idea. This is the consumer feedback that we're getting. These are the consumption moments that it's, it's filling for them. We feel we have a right to put our product on your shelf, and that ideally is those, those next steps if we, we. To that. So it was very intentional for us to be social forward, Discovery forward on TikTok shop into Amazon and DTC, and then what that leads down the road, you know, we'll see, but we haven't quite crossed that that bridge.
[00:31:24] Jessica Infante: It's interesting to me that you went with your own website, Third. What are the benefits of going on TikTok shop first? Because that's something that's like that's so beyond what our, our purview. That's really like, it's totally new to me and fascinating. What, what's, what's the deal there?
[00:31:38] Speaker 5: Yeah, it's such a good question. It is kind of off limits, right, when it comes to the beer space in terms of directly from the brand itself. But, you know, we, we chose it because TikTok Shop is intrinsically, and it's a social commerce vehicle, right, of, of TikTok. It's intrinsically a discovery platform. So, this is where consumers are spending their time seeking and searching interesting new products and experiences. So, that felt like the right space to bring arguably a, you know, very innovative, perhaps novel, perhaps. Disruptive takes you a moment to understand product because the consumer is in that headspace of discovery and interest and intrigue. So it made sense for us to start there because that's naturally where they are. And then there's a natural halo effect. You can see it through the trends of if they're purchasing on TikTok Shop, there's a natural halo effect to your Amazon or to your, you know, direct to consumer site. So we really want to just start it there to create buzz and excitement because you get sales as much as awareness that translates naturally into, you know, you can influence preference, but not always behavior, right? Like, uh, you can target me, but I have specific stores that I shop at, so I might buy there first, but if it becomes a habit, I'll transition to my regular places that I shop. So that's really why we started with TikTok Shop and Amazon in terms of that kind of at scale provider and then D2C, you know, for our actual like core consumers, anyone else who wants to, to kind of sign up and get deals long term, like subscribe and save. So that kind of designated when we turn those on and then also just supply. Like we were. Frankly, just kind of surprised by how well it did. And so we were, uh, you know, immediately out of stock. And so it's also about supply and inventory and getting all those stood up and figuring out where we send that. So that, that kind of naturally fell out of the three.
[00:33:19] Justin Kendall: Are you completely sold out at this point? Out of
[00:33:21] Speaker 5: our initial stock, yes, but we have product in, in transit right now. So I believe we're still sold out before I checked on this of TikTok shop, but going to be back online soon. We have it on Amazon and we should still have some stock on our C4Energy.com, but it Really is the demand is so high that we are just trying to, to catch up. My supply chain team, you know, loves those chats, but they're just as down. Like we're having, we had a really fun HQ tailgate party last week to celebrate the launch. So this is very much like a full team effort across the board. Like, yes, it's a, it's wonderful that I'm able to speak here from the marketing side, but there's a full product development team, there's a supply chain team. Everyone has touched this to really bring it to life. So, it's really been a labor of love from the entire NutriBullet team.
[00:34:04] Jessica Infante: So since the response has been so good, is there any interest in building out like a brand family of flavors inspired by different beer styles, because there's, there's
[00:34:13] Speaker 5: a lot. Nothing's off the table, you know, obviously, there's only so much I can share like at this stage, but, you know, I think we're really encouraged by what we're seeing here because again, anything we do is for the. Consumer, right? If there's a consumer unmet need and this is something that they're telling us that they're interested in, we'll go after it. But yeah, like, a flight, a flight of beers sounds honestly delightful in terms of, of beer-inspired flavors. And as we mentioned, there's so many different directions you can take a, a flavor. So, we're definitely excited to continue into this, this space for sure.
[00:34:42] Justin Kendall: I think we've covered everything. Is there anything that we didn't ask about that you kind of wanted to hit?
[00:34:48] Speaker 5: I think one thing I just, I hopefully y'all find this interesting is the marketing campaign to support this. So obviously a lot of it is through social and authentic through affiliates and influencers and just pure chatter and conversation and sharing, reading articles that y'all have mentioned before, right? Like people really sharing and engaging. We also created an entire campaign around this and running some small media buy towards it, and it really is just an homage to the beer. Space, right? I, I'd say beer advertising is probably some of the most iconic advertising of our generation. And so we really kind of leaned into the classic beer tropes, but because we're an energy drink, we're, we don't necessarily play by the same rules in that space. So it was just a really, really fun campaign. I, I want to send y'all some of the ads because I think you would get a kick out of it. But even the way it starts, it's like, it's not a beer, it's an energy drink that reminds you of a beer and an ad that reminds you of a beer commercial. So it's very meta and it's very those tropes if you, if you know the beer space of how that, that goes. So. We had a lot of fun making it, and I think y'all would even know this, you know, in beer advertising, you don't traditionally show anyone consuming alcohol in the actual ad. Well, since we're an energy drink, we can, so we have a whole ad about people drinking an energy drink throughout the entire ad as a direct play off of that. And, and frankly, unless you're in the beer industry or you've worked on beer campaigns, you wouldn't know it. So that's a bit more of an homage to the beer space, and we hope people really enjoy it and have a lot of fun with it. Well,
[00:36:08] Jessica Infante: since you've worked both in energy and beer, where do you find that the industry are similar and where are they different? Oh, that's a
[00:36:13] Speaker 5: good question. I think where they're similar is beer is fun. Like it is a fun, it's a social occasion, right? It's such an enjoyable space to work in and the people that you work with are so passionate, right? So the people, whether it's supplier, wholesale, I've never met a more passionate person than I'm when I'm in a wholesaler talking about the brand, right? So I think there's a level of fun and passion in beer that also translate as super similar in energy, right? And I don't just think it's because it's a younger kind of cohort in terms of The core demographic. I think being having caffeine is the, the main ingredient. You have that natural stimulant. So, I think there's a level of energy that both carry quite well into that social space. And honestly, I think the way they differ is, is probably just core consumer. It's a little bit like opposite day, right, in terms of when you look at the beer landscape, historically been, has skewed a little bit older over time. So millennial into Gen X, into baby boomers, in terms of the waiting and a little bit of Gen Z. It's really opposite when you think. About the energy drinks space, so heavy consumption within Gen Z and millennial, and then it's less and less as you get to Gen X and not really present in baby boomers. So that's a little bit opposite, but I think the things that that matter in terms of fun, passion, socialization are very, very common between the two.
[00:37:29] Jessica Infante: Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that.
[00:37:31] Justin Kendall: I think this product is fascinating just because we're seeing so many different avenues where Bev O companies are trying to find footing. You know, we've seen. Like something that's hot right now is the hard sports drink area. And so
[00:37:46] Speaker 5: I super light, right? I think y'all just recently talked about that.
[00:37:50] Justin Kendall: Yeah, we did super light spiked aid, vodka, all, all of that. We've got another one that just came out though. It's malt-based. It's a firelight, right? Yeah, from Deschutes, and it, it, it's always interesting to see how industries sort of take from one area and sort of repurpose it for their own means. And you know, clearly this is an opportunity that you all saw to sort of tap into a beer audience, you know, for them it was to tap into a sports drink audience. So I think it's fascinating to see where these sort of crossovers come, even, you know, you were talking about other CPG like milk and cereal with the serial killer, so. As you're sort of looking at where the opportunities are, what, what do you see as, you know, the next sort of crossover space?
[00:38:37] Speaker 5: Well, that's a really good question. I mean, I feel that we've identified a couple just in the last year ourselves, and I think for us, we're just going to continue to double down in those areas. So, like you mentioned, the cereal space or the breakfast occasion. So having an energy drink in the morning is like a top 3 occasion, which maybe surprises some folks, just, but that's, that's really how it's evolved. So for us, we're like, OK, how do we bring The flavor profile of perhaps the breakfast space into the energy drink space, and that's something we're gonna continue to explore. We'll be at Nx this week, quite literally, and so we'll be actually featuring some of our, our next wave of cereal-inspired flavors within energy drink space. So y'all know us for serial killer. We're also coming out with Coco Loco, so like chocolate inspired with some marshmallow. I'm sure you can guess what that's inspired by. We are also innovating in formats within the flavors, so we'll have additional mini cans, so 8.4. O, only 100 mg where these are 200 mg. It's more of that like microdosing of caffeine consumption. So we have new flavors in that space. So Buzz and Honey O's, we've got Jacked Apple Crunch, obviously serial killer in the small format in the mini format, and then we have a variety pack exclusive called Berry Dilute. So we're going to continue to double down in that breakfast occasion flavor inspiration. We have some other flavors that are coming out in the breakfast space, which I can't quite talk about yet, but we're going to continue to find ways to get into that, as I mentioned. Previously, I think we'll continue to explore into the beer space as well as just like the mocktail space. So we just did a soft launch, probably about a month ago on our, our social media channel, so people caught it of a transfusion inspired flavor. So really getting after that golf, like where sports and culture and lifestyle intersect, which makes total sense for, for our brand. So we have a transfusion flavor that we're looking to, to bring, you know, to actual sales. So through TikTok Shop and other places. So be on the lookout for that. And then we also Have the soda series. So we're also looking into soda. I think that's another space to your question, Justin, in terms of where do we see it. So breakfast as an occasion, as well as the soda space. So we launched Cherry Cola this past year was a Casey's exclusive and it's going national next year. So really leaning into the soda flavor profile. We're calling that nostalgia space. If you think about soda, Cherry Cola popped in like the 1980s, so you combine that nostalgia space. We have that, and then we also have uh root beer float, which is, which is launching as well. So I think the soda space, I think the sober curious mocktail, beer space, as well as the breakfast occasion in general, thinking about different occasions that you can hack, are just three clear areas that we're going to continue to, to lean into, and you'll see that, you know, within our strategy is we're going to continue to be disruptive with flavor, but with flavors that consumers are telling us that they really want.
[00:41:15] Justin Kendall: Is there a day part that you don't hit at this point?
[00:41:18] Speaker 5: There's never a day part that we're going to turn down. I think that we're not necessarily hyperfocused on the. Night space personally, just in terms of of where we are as a brand in terms of what we're we're looking at. I think there's the right occasions and moments where certain products, especially when I think about our minis, 100 mg, fit every single occasion. So I'd say we're attacking all occasions, looking for continuous growth. That's probably the one we focus the least on because that's just probably furthest away from, you know, what our product offers and where our consumers tend to consume our, our brand of energy drink.
[00:41:53] Jessica Infante: I always Forget that energy drinks are a huge part of beer wholesalers' business and obviously not your brand as we talked about, but it's just always fascinating to me. It
[00:42:02] Speaker 5: is though, and, and, and apologies if there's any confusion on like the, the beer wholesaler side of it. I just know for KDP obviously Keurig Doctor Pepper is like different, and I'll be honest, I don't know our full wholesaler portfolio if they ever bridge into the alcohol space, but um, they, they probably do like big guys or another ones. I just don't have that list in front of me, so if y'all need to do that.
[00:42:23] Justin Kendall: Emily, thank you for doing this. We can't thank you enough for taking the time out. If people want to find All Hopped Up, where can they look?
[00:42:30] Speaker 5: Great question. So you can go discover it on TikTok Shop. You can hit us up on Amazon as well as our own website, C4Energy.com, so you can tap in on All Hopped
[00:42:39] Justin Kendall: Up. And is it gonna be year-round or is it gonna be wall supplies last here?
[00:42:43] Speaker 5: It's definitely while supplies last, so I wouldn't sleep on it. So if you're thinking maybe in a little. Bit. I, I will get that. I was like, click that buy button now and it's, it's in a six pack because how could it not be? A 6 pack is all fits the space, right? So it is while supplies last, but demand is high. We're, we're brewing, air quotes, since it's not actually being brewed. We're producing as much as we can to hit that demand. So yes, while supplies last, you should grab it. Thanks
[00:43:09] Jessica Infante: again for doing
[00:43:09] Speaker 5: this. Of course, thank y'all. It was lovely to meet you.
[00:43:13] Jessica Infante: And that's our show for this week. Thank you for listening. The Brewbound podcast is a production of Bevnet CPG. Our audio engineer for the Brewbound podcast is Joe Cratci. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Gilang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinsky. Our designer is Amanda Huang. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your colleagues and friends and review us on your listening platform of choice. You can find our work at Brewbound.com. And we also welcome feedback and suggestions at podcast@brewbound.com. On behalf of the entire Brewbound podcast team, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.
