Larry Kahn, a partner and managing director with private equity and venture capital firm Beechwood Capital, is not a fan of surprises. In his five years with Beechwood, Kahn has invested in a variety of entrepreneurial companies, including baby food brand Once Upon a Farm, chickpea pasta company Banza and fresh, organic food maker Urban Remedy. In an interview included in this episode, he stated that forthrightness about both successes and failures has been critical to Beechwood’s relationships ...
Jan 03, 2019•40 min
In this special edition of Taste Radio, we feature highlights from interviews with a few of the leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs and who joined us on the podcast during the second half of 2018, including BodyArmor investor Kobe Bryant, Angie’s Boomchickapop co-founder Angie Bastian, “Bizarre Foods” host Andrew Zimmern, Blueprint founders Zoe Sakoutis and Erica Huss, America’s Test Kitchen/Milk Street creator Christopher Kimball, and AriZona Beverages co-founder and chairman Don Vultaggio. S...
Dec 31, 2018•33 min
What will 2019 hold for funding, innovation, and emerging categories in the food and non-alcoholic beverage industries? In this episode, BevNET and NOSH editors offered their predictions on how they see the business of food and beverage evolving over the next 12 months. Also in this episode: an interview with Danny Grossfeld, the founder of HotShot Coffee, a brand of canned coffees that are served hot. Grossfeld was inspired by a trip to Japan where warmed beverages are commonly sold in vending ...
Dec 28, 2018•50 min
“I’m starting a new category.” It’s a familiar refrain often heard in the food and beverage industry, even if most times what’s spoken isn’t necessarily true. But in the rare cases in which an entrepreneur is indeed breaking new ground, the challenges are plentiful. GT Dave, the founder of GT’s Living Foods and a pioneer in packaged kombucha, has experienced firsthand the difficulties of introducing an entirely new category to the market after launching his brandin 1995. For years, GT’s was the ...
Dec 21, 2018•49 min
Humm Kombucha co-founder and CEO Jamie Danek says that after several years and lots of practice, she’s finally become a good listener. Danek admits that during her first few years at the helm she had a talk first, listen second approach to leadership, and, as a result, struggled as a manager. She eventually realized that for Humm to grow, she needed to evolve from being what she described as a “solopreneur,” who constantly put her voice ahead of others, into an attentive leader. “Listening is th...
Dec 18, 2018•41 min
Aloha, a brand of organic, plant-based protein bars and powders, almost said goodbye to the market. Serial entrepreneur Constantin Bisanz created the company in 2014 with grand aspirations to democratize access to organic, healthy and better-for you food. At launch, the brand’s direct-to-consumer platform featured a wide variety of products, including snack bars, elixirs, vitamin supplements and teas, that were promoted as nutritious and made from sustainably-sourced ingredients. Although Aloha ...
Dec 13, 2018•43 min
Organic snacks are commonplace these days, but that wasn’t the case just a few years ago. Nicole Dawes is one of a handful of entrepreneurs who helped who helped usher in the current golden era for organic products, having launched Late July, a brand of organic tortilla chips and crackers, in 2003. During an interview included in this episode, Dawes explained that the company was born of necessity and a heritage of entrepreneurship: at the time, there were no organic crackers, one of Dawes’ favo...
Dec 11, 2018•41 min
In this episode of Taste Radio Insider, we continued our exploration into the evolving food and beverage market in the U.K. from the perspective of two London-based entrepreneurs: Jarr Kombucha co-founder Adam Vanni and Moju Drinks co-founder Rich Goldsmith. Each discussed how they are scaling their brands in the emerging categories of kombucha and cold-pressed juice in the U.K., and what they view as the biggest opportunities for their respective companies. Note that our interview with Vanni ca...
Dec 07, 2018•37 min
As a co-founder of Method, Adam Lowry helped marry ultra-stylish packaging and environmentally friendly cleaning products to create one of the world’s most iconic consumer brands. After selling the company in 2015, however, Lowry wasn’t content to simply sail off into the sunset. In his next act, he’s trying to revolutionize the way people think about dairy alternatives with Ripple Foods, a maker of pea-based protein beverages and foods. Ripple has gotten off to a fast start, having captured the...
Dec 04, 2018•43 min
Veteran CPG executive Arnold Ventura cut his teeth in food and beverage as the founder of bottled aguas frescas brand Coba. While ultimately unsuccessful, his experience as a beverage entrepreneur laid the foundation for his career, as he went on to take leadership roles at PepsiCo as part of its emerging brands unit and at Califia Farms, where he spearheaded the company’s business development and e-commerce divisions. In July Ventura was tapped as the CEO of bean snack brand Beanfields and in a...
Nov 30, 2018•32 min
The first thing you'll notice about AriZona co-founder Don Vultaggio's office is that it’s immense. We’re talking the size of an average apartment and fashioned with old-school sensibilities; think lots of wood, marble and leather. The second thing you'll notice is the commercial kitchen to the left of the entrance, conveniently staffed by a private chef. The grandeur and amenities are to be expected for the office of a billionaire and one of the richest people in the world. After a few minutes ...
Nov 27, 2018•39 min
Nik Ingersöll spends a lot of time thinking about ugly bananas. The co-founder and CMO of Barnana, a fast-growing producer of snack foods made from imperfect and misshapen bananas, Ingersöll is responsible for the brand’s marketing and design strategy. To put it another way, his job is to get people excited about snacks that might not be the most visually appealing. And he’s been lauded for his efforts; Barnana is known for its bold packaging and quirky promotions, which includes the Barnana Car...
Nov 23, 2018•46 min
Upon its launch in 1998, few could have predicted the runaway success of alkaline water brand Essentia, including the company’s founder and CEO Ken Uptain. After two decades on the market, Essentia has developed into a premier bottled water brand that is nearing $180 million in annual retail sales, numbers that have attracted rumors of a potentially colossal exit. Uptain admits that the brand’s remarkable growth has surprised him, yet Uptain, a mild-mannered and reserved man who was semi-retired...
Nov 19, 2018•31 min
Hugh Thomas and Joe Benn say the best insights and feedback about their brand come from an “Ugly Mob.” It may sound unseemly, but the mob is actually a group of loyal consumers of Ugly Drinks, a flavored sparkling water brand co-founded by Thomas and Benn. Based in the U.K., Ugly made its U.S. debut earlier this year via a direct-to-consumer platform and at independent retailers in metro New York. Despite differences in the British and American beverage markets, Thomas and Benn use a similar pla...
Nov 16, 2018•27 min
A five-time NBA champion and 18-time all-star, Kobe Bryant is unquestionably one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Following his retirement from the NBA, his prowess as an investor is proving to be as special as his court vision. Two years after playing his final NBA game, Bryant is now the fourth largest shareholder in fast-growing sports drink brand BodyArmor, having invested a reported $6 million in the company in 2014. Following the Coca-Cola Company’s acquisition of a minority...
Nov 12, 2018•30 min
How did a three-year-old brand with a retail footprint of less than 2,000 locations land $7 million in new capital? Wyatt Taubman, the founder and CEO of wellness shot maker Vive Organic, explained it in three words: “test and learn.” In an interview included in this episode, Taubman offered a detailed look at the Vive’s strategy for raising money since its debut in 2015. From friends and family, to seed funding to the recent completion of the aforementioned $7 million Series A round, Taubman no...
Nov 09, 2018•31 min
Lance Armstrong is back. Sort of. Armstrong, who admitted to use of performance enhancing drugs and blood doping while winning the Tour de France, has become a podcaster and investor. Despite his being persona-non-grata at professional cycling events, Armstrong’s analysis of the races has become a popular way for fans to augment their thirst for the Tour, as well as a few other races. As that podcast has grown, cold brew brand High Brew Coffee has started to sponsor it; from a product direction ...
Nov 06, 2018•28 min
The latest installment of Taste Radio Insider kicks off with a discussion about the hottest ingredient in food and beverage, CBD. Amid surging interest for the cannabidiol, the hosts examined CBD’s influence on innovation strategies and discussed the factors affecting its future. Later in the show, we feature an interview with entrepreneur, investor, and author David Yeung, who’s the co-founder and CEO of Green Monday, a global platform for plant-based food and lifestyles. Yeung was recently nam...
Nov 02, 2018•50 min
It was about eight years ago when Hayden Slater received the bad news: his startup juice company, Pressed Juicery, had been ordered to be closed following an inspection by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health. Slater and his two co-founders were newcomers to the food business and didn’t realize that Pressed, which initially made juice out of a local cupcake shop and whose first retail location was a broom closet inside of a yoga studio, lacked the permits necessary to operate. Devastated ...
Oct 30, 2018•48 min
Taste Radio listeners may recall that we first featured Spindrift founder and CEO Bill Creelman on the podcast in 2016. At the time, Spindrift was undergoing a major shift in its business strategy, discontinuing the craft sodas upon which it was founded to focus on its fast-growing sparkling water line. In the years since, Spindrift has continued to thoughtfully evolve its positioning as a premium and differentiated sparkling water brand in various ways, such as curbing its use of added natural ...
Oct 25, 2018•45 min
For Marcus Samuelsson, finding the inspiration to cook new and interesting food is often as simple as opening the front door. Outside, the acclaimed chef, restaurateur and television personality sees a country brimming with vibrant cultures and, with it, an opportunity to learn from their cuisines. His perspective is rooted in the PBS TV series, “No Passport Required,” which Samuelsson hosts. An exploration of the diverse spectrum of immigrant cultures and food in America, the show takes viewers...
Oct 22, 2018•55 min
While cold brew has been the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. coffee business in recent years, it’s just now starting to heat up across the pond. London-based Sandows is one of a handful of British coffee companies paving a path for cold brew in the U.K. and was first to market in the country, according to co-founder Hugh Duffie. Taking their cue from speciality coffee brands in the U.S., Duffie and co-founder Luke Suddards created a foundation for Sandows based on direct trade sourcing and u...
Oct 19, 2018•37 min
BluePrint founders Zoë Sakoutis and Erica Huss admit they don’t drink as much juice as they used to. It may seem odd that the creators of BluePrint, which pioneered the packaged cold-pressed juice category and helped mainstream juice cleansing, have cut back on their consumption of fruit and vegetable blends. However, Sakoutis and Huss point out that since the launch of their brand in 2007, there’s been a dramatic increase in the amount of information that consumers have about nutrition and heal...
Oct 16, 2018•55 min
Jon Sebastiani, the founder of Krave Jerky and Sonoma Brands, might want to invest in your company. Just make sure that you’re not chasing the latest hot trend. He’s really not into that. Sebastiani founded Sonoma Brands, a unique consumer product incubator and private equity firm, in 2015 following the sale of Krave Jerky to The Hershey Co. for $240 million. Earlier this year, Sonoma Brands launched a new $60 million fund and has in recent months deployed the capital to expand its holdings. The...
Oct 12, 2018•44 min
It’s hard to overestimate the impact that Patty Spence, the founder of market research firm SPINS and CEO of stevia-sweetened beverage brand Zevia, has had on the natural food industry. With SPINS, Spence transformed the way that natural product sales data is tracked and aggregated and in doing so created a powerful resource for a fast-growing industry. After departing SPINS, Spence became the CEO of Zevia, a company that he acquired in 2010, and has since played a key role in stevia’s developme...
Oct 09, 2018•39 min
Matt McLean, founder and titular figure of organic beverage company Uncle Matt‘s, is fond of saying that orange juice is ounce-for-ounce the most nutritious beverage on the market. He might be a little biased; after all, orange juice is the brand’s flagship line. There are, however, a few qualifiers to his promotion of orange juice, notably organic sourcing and high quality standards, each of which are rooted in Uncle Matt’s business philosophy. “We want to be consistently great at everything we...
Oct 05, 2018•41 min
No matter what you’re hired to do at Health Warrior, your first assignment is always the same. The company, which makes plant-based snacks and foods, including a flagship line of chia bars, makes all of its new employees build their own desks, without any building materials or instructions. According to co-founder and CEO Shane Emmett, the DIY activity is designed to instill an entrepreneurial mindset from day one. “A start-up is hard,” Emmett said in an interview featured in this episode. “You ...
Oct 02, 2018•40 min
It would be fair to say that things are going well for Country Archer. But it wasn’t always that way. A maker of clean-label meat snacks, the brand’s flagship jerky line is the fastest growing in its category among natural retailers, and the company recently announced $10 million in new funding from its primary investor, Monogram Capital. Nevertheless, not too long ago, Country Archer faced rejection in the very retail channel in which it’s now the fastest growing; in fact, it had been written o...
Sep 28, 2018•44 min
It may be hard to imagine, especially for millennials and Gen-Zers out there, but there was a time in the not-so-distant past when organic food, sustainable sourcing and fair trade were uncommon sights in the food and beverage industry. Yet, thanks to innovative entrepreneurs like Marci Zaroff, these concepts have now reached the mainstream. Zaroff has been at the forefront of progressive food and lifestyle trends for nearly three decades. She’s a serial entrepreneur who pioneered eco-friendly f...
Sep 24, 2018•36 min
According to the Oxford English dictionary, a Renaissance man is defined as “a person with many talents or areas of knowledge.” It’s an apt description for Ben Branson, the founder and CEO of Seedlip, an innovative brand of non-alcoholic distilled spirits. A branding and design specialist by trade, Branson’s passion for botany, history and alchemy led him to distillation, a craft in which he’s become a self-taught expert. What began as a hobby has since transformed into Seedlip, a highly publici...
Sep 18, 2018•47 min
