You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI Handle here.
It is a Thursday morning, April twenty four. A couple things before we jump into how the California economy is doing and it's good news, which I don't understand this but so be it.
First of all, some.
Of the trending stories we're looking at. Oh, here's one, Neil your wheelhouse. Jack in the Box announced plan to close one hundred and fifty to two hundred underperforming stores. It's a financial plan they're calling Jack on track. Originally we're gonna call it the Clown is Dying, but that one didn't work out.
So Jack in the Box harder sell. It is a harder cell.
Also a quick word about Friday, where we do Ask Handle Anything.
It's kind of fun.
We started a thirty on Friday morning and you ask me questions about whatever the hell, and that came out of the fact that everybody here on the station is asked about everybody here on the station. What's John like, what's Tim Conway like, what's Neil like? And I get those questions and you get those questions. So Ask Handle Anything is a thirty Friday morning you get to record
the questions during the show. Go to the iHeartRadio app and the iHeart app and then click onto KFI and then in the upper right hand corner there's a microphone. Click onto that and record your question. And I don't care what question you ask. You know, I'm pretty open about life. It's just kind of fun.
Okay.
Now, some news about the California economy. The governor announced yesterday that we are now number four in the world. I mean, the United States economy is first a twenty nine trillion, China eighteen trillion, Germany at four point sixty five trillion, and we are that we are next to the at Our economy is ridiculous.
It's growing.
And let me ask you, how does the economy grow when you have businesses leaving California. I can't think of the last time a major business came to or came back to California. You can't afford housing in California. The taxes are crazy in California. Oh, I know how we do it. What we do is we market our traffic because people from all over the world want to come
in California, California and live with our traffic. I don't get it newsome attributed to a growing population, record tourism spending coupled with a high concentration of venture capital and new business ventures. I guess that's really where it's at. I mean, we do have agriculture big time, until illegal migrants will no longer be allowed to work in this country and then our agricultural sector completely disappears. High tech centers, we have a lot of those manufacturing centers. I didn't
think we were that big on manufacturing. I know, agriculture we are. Oh, how about the film and television industry. You know, we're losing We are losing centers, and we are losing productions like crazy because they're going out of state, out of country.
So you know, for the life of me, I do not understand it.
In the meantime, California, as well as many other states or several other states, have filed a lawsuit against the administration challenging Trump's executive authority to enact international tariffs. Now, a lot of people don't like those tariffs because well, frankly, it's going to cost the consumer a bucket of money, and the major stores are in a lot of trouble.
Even though Trump exempted a.
Certain sector from that one hundred and forty five tariff against China. What he exempted was the big ticket electronic items computers and chips, etc. Leaving everything else in. So what happens with the meeting of the president's CEO of Walmart and Target. They went to him and saying, you know what, We're gonna have empty shelves.
You can kiss our stores goodbye. Oops. Oops. So there's a lawsuit.
The lawsuit is not to somehow lower the.
Lower the tariffs.
This lawsuit, as well as many other lawsuits that are going to be flying, has to do with the president's authority to do that unilaterally.
Usually in all of these cases.
I know I'm digressing a little bit, but the fact is we're number four, Okay, thank you. Now the tariffs which they kick in are going to be very difficult. California will not be number four because we rely so much on importing of goods, particularly from Asia, particularly from China, certainly Korea, Vietnam. So it's gonna get really interesting. We'll see what happens. This is all Supreme Court stuff. By the way, all these cases Supreme Court cases. How much
is the president? What kind of power the President has bill.
What is the California economy made on?
Is that based on our taxes as well as is that income to the state.
It is, but that is that's not the state generating income. Now, employees are part of the economy. State employees are part of the economy, and they're big. But it's what we produce, services and goods that we produce.
That's the economy.
And it's agriculture, and it's aerospace, and it's manufacturing, and it's high tech. Agricultural is based on well, fifty percent and I'm just throwing this figure out, but I think is pretty close. Fifty percent of the workers are the migrants, illegal migrants, and now the high tech people. Okay, that's obviously people who are here legally. And that's the other issue with the visas, the tech visas that are going on that the President wants to stop.
It's a mess.
But the bottom line is California, counterintuitively is number.
Four in the world.
Now it's probably going to go back to five in the world because you've got India that's moving very quickly in our direction.
But still four or five. What difference that make?
It's enormous, enormous Okay, I want to go to Pope Francis, who is not only.
Dead, but also he is going to be made a saint.
I guarantee that there will be sainthood in his future. Catholic Church is big on saints. John Paul the second is a saint. John the twenty third is a saint. Now the act of canonization may someone becoming a saint?
The Pope does that.
It's the Holy See, and there there is a long process to be made a saint, and there are people already starting to work on it. Extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way worthy to be recognized as a saint.
Yep, that's Francis.
And it implies that the person is now in heaven and maybe publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the.
Liturgy of the Church.
And you could allow universal veneration of a saint, but to venerate someone locally only Beautif beatification is needed, okay, you can.
Be beatified, that's only local.
How is I going to compare Remember I told you I was going to compare handle on the law to Pope Francis being a saint. Here it is okay. If he is only beatified, he can only be venerated locally. If he is sainted, it is across the Handle on the Law is both a local show as well as a national show. So the local part of Handle on the Law can only be beautified, the national part can be sainted. That I actually say that my legal show
deserves sainthood. Only the people that listen to it deserve sainthood.
So some of the rules and the rules.
Go crazy on canonization and they started. Actually sainthood's been going on for almost two thousand years in the Catholic Church, and it changed from zero.
And I think who was the first saint? Would it have been Peter? I don't know who is it? Those crucified upside down?
That would be Peter?
Would that be Peter?
Yeah?
Okay, got it. Are there portraits of Peter.
Cruci fight to upside down? Yeah?
Well then you only have portraits of feet. But are there portraits Peter? I remember seeing them?
Yeah, of course there's Okay, what do I know?
I don't know what Peter looked like.
All I know is that if you can, I want to know that Jesus was blonde and blue eyed.
I know that.
You're Mormon, yeah, or you watch any of the nineteen fifty sixties Bible films.
Anyway, nineteen eighty three, the big change took place.
In the Apostolic the Apostolic Constitution Divinus, Perfectionists, magester of Pope John Paul the Second. It all changed, but the basic rules have not changed. And here is what happens. The servant of God, which is actually a position. A bishop with jurisdiction gives permission to open up an investigation into the virtues of an individual nominated to be a saint.
But there has to be beatification first.
That usually happens no sooner than five years after the death, although a pope can weigh that, and you can do it sooner than that. The pope can open a process on his own, he's allowed to do that, but usually
it's a bishop who does that. And then an exhaustive search of the candidate's writing, speeches, sermons undertaken, A detailed biography is written, eyewitness accounts are collected, and here is the big one, and that is, after the death of someone who has been nominated for sainthood, if it is verified that two miracles have taken place, while invoking the name of that person that saint to be that is
considered enough. So you need two miracles. Inevitably, there are always medical miracles of someone who had was dying of some disorder, some disease, who the doctors have written off, who have prayed to the proposed saint and have survived and come out the other end in great shape, and it's attributed to that.
It's attributed to the saint.
To be two of them, and they have to be absolutely proven, prove well proven that they they were cured. Now spontaneous cures, I don't know if that ever happens, where people unexplatedly gets cured who are Mormon or who are Buddhists and somehow.
They get cured. But in the Catholic religion you got two of those.
I want to point something out too, and that is I have never seen a Catholic person pray for and get a limb to be resurrected, lose a limb in a car accident, praying for the limb to come back and it comes back.
That is a miracle. You grow another, you grow another limb. Middle name Salamander.
There was a there was a Protestant you know one of these healers one time who had a comb over, and it used to crack me up because I'm like, you can't even heal your own baldness, and you're trying to grow people's legs.
Yes, by the way, I mean this, this miracle stuff is crazy.
You know, during a passover we talk about the ten plagues, right that God visited on Egypt. He turned the Nile into red. Every March fourteenth or seventeenth, you go to Chicago, the Chicago river turns green. Okay, great, And how about turning a staff right, a stick into a snake. Any half assed magician can pull that one off. Now, if Moses had said, you see that mountain over there, Pharaoh, watch it move to the other end of the horizon.
That's a miracle. That would piss me off. Then I would go, Okay, you got me on that one.
Copperfield did the Statue of Liberties.
Yeah, that's true, that's true. In any case, you're going to see. I guarantee you Francis is going to be nominated as a saint, and that will happen five years from a couple of days ago when he died.
Mark my words. Calendar it. Okay, we're bringing back segment that was hugely popular, success from scratch.
And for some reason we didn't do it, mainly because we could only find businesses.
That were failures.
Now we're back to success from scratch, brought to you by NetSuite, by.
Oracle, and and we're going to start off.
With this new era of success from scratch with a gentleman by the name of Tate Hufferd.
Tate morning, thanks for joining us.
Good morning, Thanks, good morning.
Okay, let me introduce you as before you jump into it. To everybody, everybody's heard of craft beers, of course, particularly here in southern California, and everybody has heard of non alcoholic beers, and non alcoholic beers are disgusting and who the hell drinks them.
While craft beers are great.
And what Tate did is combine the two craft non alcoholic beers. And so let's start talking about your company, best day brewing, how it happened, why, And I'm assuming it is a success, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
Yeah, well that's a really great introduction. Kause pretty much sums up exactly why I stumbled into this category.
Yeah, I really love beer.
I love the way that it brings people together from park a lot of years after surfing, you know, I pray ski and if you're at a music show, whatever. And I love the way that it serves a real role in our culture. And I found personally when I was in my twenties, the equation was really easy, right. It's just like rig and repeat. You can do as much as you want and then you wake up and
you start all over again. And and for me, when I ran out of the corner into my thirties, that calculus started to change.
You know, Basically, the hangover started stinging a.
Little more, and I was doing less and less.
Of all the things that I love doing here in California.
And so the very serendipitous thing that happened in my life was my father in law. He would come over and he would bring over a six pack of o'duels, which is kind of directly to your point, and he would choke down one and park the other five in
my fridge. And as someone who really loves craft beer, you know, I'd open up my fridge and see the beers that I love drinking, which have four percent, six percent, nine percent, and then see the oduels next to it, and I just thought like, well, what if I could make a great tasting craft beer that has no alcohol? Why does the spectrum have to stop at low alcohol? You know, if I could go to no alcohol make a great tasting beer. Man, there's a there's a lot of use cases in my life, and that's.
Because you know, we don't have that much time tape. But let me let me throw some questions at you. Uh, how is the brewing different with non alcoholic beers?
Great question, Well, that's the big hurdle, right.
It turns out it's really difficult and complicated to make a great tasting non alcoholic beer. A lot of beer, a lot of people do things differently. And what we do is we through a full strength beer so it's got all the flavors, all the aroma, and then we use a specific piece of technology that extracts the alcohol without messing with the beer. And that's a process that's never been done before.
All right, is that your process? Is that proprietary?
Okay, so that's not proprietary, but we are one of the only brands that are using it.
Got it? And you started this when this company.
We started in twenty twenty two.
All right, so you're only three years old and I'm reading here that you are on Amazon no surprise, but also Whole Foods, Trader Joe s, Kroger, Albertson, Safeway, I mean, on and on Target, Sprouts.
That is not easy to do. How were you able to get into these stores.
That quickly, because if you know retailing, that's that's a miracle that you were able to pull that off.
Well, I think it speaks to you know a couple of things.
As you know that the category is on fire, and I think that you know, though there have been decades of perception of what non alcohol has been, you know, as as people taste our beer, as people experience our brand, and as people share that through word of mouth, that has really accelerated things with this category. And the retailers have really shown up in a big way to to really step into this category and show that it's something completely different than what it has been in the past.
Give me some flavors that you are producing.
Yeah, So our number one cellar is our kulsh It's a light, crisp, refreshing German style beer.
We make a.
Fresh line infused Mexican lagger We've got a lineup of really awesome I pas too. So we're bringing the full craft beer experience to the non alcoholic category.
Any smoke mackerel beer.
Not yet, not yet.
I'm telling you that would be a big, big seller. So yeah, you know, I'm fascinated by how you were able to pull this off because you don't have a background in this industry. Do you just came onto this and decided you saw what was going on and you went for it.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. I do not have a background other than being a beer drinker. That's the extent of my experience in beer. And so you know, as this this concept was crystallizing, and really the opportunity for the brand was was really coming to life. You know, I made a commitment to surround myself with really smart people who also understood the opportunity but that but who did have experience in beverage and in beer and who had
built big things. And you know, I credit all of the success that we've had and all of our ability to move quickly to this incredible team that I've surrounded myself with.
Okay, the company's name is Best Day Brewing. You can go to Best Daybrewing dot Com, go to Amazon, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Kroger's, Albertson's. I mean, it just goes on and on.
Best Day Brewing dot Com, Tate, thanks for joining us, good luck, hope you make buckets of money on this.
For care of Bill. Thanks for having me.
All right.
That was our first success from scratch kind of neat brought to you by a netsweep by Oracle. You can get the CFOs Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuitet dot com slash handle.
It's fun to do successful scratch again. All right? Lot going on today?
Jack in the Box announced plans to close one hundred and fifty to two hundred under performing stores as part of their Jack on track. I have no idea why they're calling it that, but I have to like Jack in the Box. Remember the clown that used to, you know, jump out of the Jack in the Box.
You know.
The other day I went to a pharmacy.
A drive through, and I ordered a burger with fries and a large die of coke, and the lady said, we're a pharmacy.
Oh okay, Now.
Let me tell you what's going on in the world
of California Government and Politics. There's a bill that was introduced to reduce the energy credits given to homeowners who have solar panels, particularly those who have solar panels put in before April fifteen, twenty twenty three, which I did, and what it says is the credits that these solar system owners are getting, and before twenty twenty three, you would sell if you didn't use all the electricity, which you didn't during the day because that's when electricity was
obviously plentiful and the panels produced a bunch of it, would go back to the utility, would go back to the grid, and you would be paid for that electricity. Well, there are a few people out there that are going, wait a minute here, because here's the bottom line. If you are selling back to the grid, then what's happening is the people who don't have solar are subsidizing your electricity, and that is unfair. And the utilities are saying, we
don't want to pay for electricity from you guys. We're not interested. But it's the law. So who introduced this bill Assembly Bill nine two to slash the credits for people who install these solar systems before April fifteenth of twenty twenty three. Well, there's an Assembly member by the name of Lisa Calderon who is there to help the public and wants the those people who don't have solar
to just have a better break. Now, the fact that she worked for Southern California Edison for twenty five years before she was elected has nothing to do with it, even though it's a bill that clearly Southern California Electric and other utilities are in favor of.
For years, Edison and the other too big for.
Profit utilities have tried to reduce these energy credits that incentivized US Californians to invest in solar panels, which is exactly what I did, and that's why I did it. Well, these rooftop systems have reduced utility sales of electricity.
They're not selling enough.
Why because we have solar and we're forcing them to pay us under this bill. And so there's two sides on this one. You have the utilities. You have people who sell solar systems, and on the other side you have Free Sample, the electrical workers, the union that installs
solar systems. And then you have folks on the other side who are saying it is so unfair for the non solar owners to subsidize those that have solar systems because they're paying more for electricity then they would be if the people that own solar systems didn't get all these breaks. All right, Well that's the fight that's going to go on. And then of course you have the environmentalists who are in the freight arguing that we want solar systems because with a solar system you're not burning
fossil fuels. Could remember, our power comes from gas powered plants, these power plants which are fossil fuel powered. Well, if you have and I don't know, I think what a third of California?
Is that true?
What percentage and what percentage of California has a solar system alternate energy? She's looking it up right now. See I wish I knew that, and I should have known that. And as soon as Anne tells me, I'm going to say I absolutely knew that.
She's asking Siri. I should have asked Siri.
The point is, whatever percentage of Californians are using solar? Okay, Well there's I said thirty, So I'll take thirty because it makes my argument even stronger. So let's say we have twenty eight we have thirty percent of Californians using solar alternate energy, solar being a huge amount of that, and that means that they're not using fossil fuels, which means that utilities want to sell their electricity have to produce their electricity with fossil fuel plants power plants. And
there is the fight with the environmentalists. If you care about the environment and think that fossil fuels is causing a lot of this climate change, well then you're gonna be on the side of keeping the incentives and making sure that the people who have solar power it makes sense for them financially. Now the other argument is it already makes sense financially whether you get the credit or not.
And yeah, that makes sense. And by the way, they're now three tiers.
I put in my first solar system before twenty twenty three, and so I was on that level Tier one, which means I sell back to the grid and so not only do I not pay for electricity, I make money on my solar panels, or the new owners do because it's transferred over. Then there's tier two, and then I just built mine, which is a reduced amount, and then Tier three where you get nothing and all you get is the energy. I'm fine with that, whether I get
nothing or not. I'm not paying for electricity. That's enough for me, so I have no problem with that, the bottom line and the assembly member. What I like about Lisa Calderon is she is completely objective about this, as she only worked for twenty five years for Edison and is not trying to save Edison's ass at all.
How much money do you think Edison gave her for her campaign? Huh? All right?
Coming out Joel Larsgard how to Money has heard Sunday twelve pm the two pm here on KFI and joins us at the eight o'clock hour Every Thursday. This is KFI AM six point forty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app