Mastering Pricing Strategies for Beverage Brands

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Drink Up Live podcast out there. For those of you that have decided to join us on this rainy, cold morning, at least here in Minnesota, it's rainy and cold, right, Adam?

It is.

It's what it looks like out my window. I've not been outside yet. It's the luxury of, uh, you know, working from home and doing virtual podcasts.

That's right. That's what you live for every week. You live for this podcast every week. I know you do.

Absolutely.

At least I do, uh, which is great to see all you. Uh, welcome, uh, Dave Moore. Dave was, uh, on the, uh, podcast, uh, uh, several months ago. Uh, Dave is the author of Launching Your Alcohol Brand in the US. So Dave was so gracious to come.

A great time to launch a book about launching your alcohol brand in the US.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Who on earth would write a book about launching an alcohol brand in 2025? So.

Well, we'll get, we maybe get into that later, but our main guest actually is Tom Harris. So Tom, welcome to the show, the founder and president of Ruby Pro Software. Before we get going, we just have a couple Things we just have to share with everybody we do every week. So first of all, our, uh, he, I believe he knows he's a sponsor, but Jay Williams, I'm still waiting for my water. This is a can from 2 weeks ago. I've drank it all my Freebird and there's nowhere to buy Freebird in Minnesota. If there was, I would go buy it. But, uh, Freebird has been gracious enough to, uh, sponsor us. They're actually in NASCAR now, which is pretty amazing. And then my friend, uh, Joey, which I'll introduce Joey and Jay, but maybe an opportunity there as well, Jay Williams. And then I want to thank Adam Smith for Alias Advising as a sponsor, my partner Alicia Vargo for sponsoring us with Bev Assets, and then Rocks, Ryan Hellerman, thank you for being a sponsor of the show too. And eventually it'll be Ruby Pro as well as Dave Moore. So you guys just don't know it yet. You're going to be forever sponsors of this show as well.

I was going to say, we got to get, now that Jay's in NASCAR, we got to get like NASCAR-style jackets and we'll just turn around and show the of the jacket with all our sponsor logos. We just won't even say anything. We're just brought to you by, and then back of the jacket.

That's a, that, that is a, that is a great idea. I'm sure some, a mutual friend that Tom and I have last night was giving me all kinds of good, uh, uh, good ways to do it. And I know he's a pro at that. So welcome Tom and welcome Dave, uh, uh, to it. So let's get into what the heck is, why would a technology company and an author of a book I wanna come on DrinkUp. Maybe we start there. Uh, Tom, maybe tell a little bit, Tom, tell a little bit about yourself, you know, kind of who, when, where, why, and then we can go into Dave and then we can get into it.

Well, you know, I've been, uh, I've been a technology executive at a lot of different companies for, uh, 30 years or whatever. And, um, met you and Dave, as you know, about a year ago and heard the challenges that you guys have with, uh, you know, bringing small to midsize brands to market and competing against the big guys. I mean, Dave talks about it all the time, you know, how do How do you create a level playing field between the guy who's, you know, selling 10,000 to 30,000, 50,000 cases against the million-case brands, right? Just trying to create a level playing field out there. Point, particularly around pricing. I mean, pricing is, as we talked about it, is the language between you and your distributor. So everybody's managing on spreadsheets today. You look at, you look at a distillery that maybe has 20 products and, you know, in 10 markets and you got 10 times 20 spreadsheets that are managing your pricing, right? And, you know, how many times do people see that the price, the formula screwed up or somebody entered the wrong number in or all kinds of other things that make the ownership worry about whether or not their pricing actually makes them profitable?

That's a great point. I was going back and forth with Mark Elamy, as you know, for Burnt Church.

Right.

I still haven't got that answer back. And he's like, well, the, uh, Chris comes up with a different formula versus what I have. And I said, well, it just depends how Chris is looking at it.

Right.

You know, so you gotta set the pricing rules and I, I do definitely think you need consistency. So I wanna get into, uh, uh, pricing for sure. And then Dave, um, thanks for joining us cuz you're on a bit of a journey.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, you've, you've taken this pricing, uh, you do more than just pricing, but with your winery, uh, Shug Winery. So thanks for being here with Shug. I'm gonna call Shug Winery out too. So tell us a little bit about you, how you arrived, collaborated with Tom and the importance of it.

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on the show again. I guess our first episode wasn't an epic fail, Sam, for having me back on the show, but I love the content. I love, it's usually 7 o'clock in the morning when the show's on, but I like the little snippets you share with everyone and And all your content. We really appreciate it. But I've been in the industry, you know, 25 years. I started as a rep with, you know, Southern Wine and Spirits, which is now Southern Glazers, and for R&D C in California and ran retail divisions for other wholesalers before getting on the winery side. And so my experience really comes from deep, deep knowledge and experience from both sides of the 3-tier system. So as a mid-sized winery, one of the And managing sales. We have a very small team. And my, my goal is always to utilize technology and some of the things that Tom— I've actually known Tom's brother for a long time. And he was the one that actually reached out to me and said, you need to see what my brother's doing. Always an early adopter with technology. As I grow Shug, you know, we're close to a 40,000-case brand. And we do that all with 7 or 8 people. So my plan is to continue to grow and leverage the power and harness the capabilities of technology, especially some of the things that are happening now and how fast things are happening. There's just no doubt we can do it, especially with Ruby Pro, what Tom's done. So the experience that I have really comes from, you know, a deep understanding of how the system works, right? From a supplier side and then also from a distributor side. So what Tom has created is an ability, you know, for me to leverage, you know, my time and my reach with my wholesalers. You know, big suppliers, big distributors have dedicated teams that can manage pricing grids. And anyone who's listening to this, and when I say pricing grid, it can just get overwhelming. But it's just, it's just absolutely vital. And Sam, I hear you all the time. It's like, especially working with new brands and, you know, starting with the end in mind, what's your retail and working it back. And it's just, even the, some of the big guys just don't even know. They just don't know. The price is just kind of the price somebody came up with it. And that's what we're working with. So as Tom said, I think he coined the phrase, but I use it all the time. And that's using pricing as a language. You know, the, the, the, the more time I can save my distributors, the more sense my pricing makes to retailers and to the wholesalers inside, right?

It's a—

It's just so important. So what Tom's been able to allow me to do is put all these different prices. I'm in 40+ markets across the US and add internationally, it's probably close to 70, 80 markets. So I've got one environment where all my pricing is. So it's a quick reference and it helps me manage my profitability and just knowing that confidently I'm controlling those, you know, I've looked at all those costs. I know what my pricing is in each market. So. It's just been super. I mean, it allows me the confidence to grow at the scale and the speed I want to because of what Tom's done.

Yeah. I mean, pricing can be boring, right?

It is boring. It is boring, but it's, but it's actually boring until it's wrong.

Exactly. So thanks for taking the bait because it's not boring at the end of the day. It all starts with price. If you don't have the right price on the shelf, if you, if you're losing or you're bleeding money because you don't understand what your true profit is or what your partners are making, what the retailer wants to make, what the distributor expects to make, you're going to arrive nowhere. You're just going to be sitting there at a price point that's not competitive, or you're not even going to arrive at a price point. Oftentimes brands start with price based on what their cost of goods are. And that's another thing that's amazing. I know Adam is into this. It's like, how can you price at that, but your cost of goods are more than what you want to price at? So you have to understand what your cost of goods are. And so it starts there as well. So I could go deep on this all day long. Adam, any thoughts and how you want to maybe ask? I know you're thinking some questions maybe you can, uh, bring up to discuss with the team.

Yeah. I mean, I think I just wrote down, um, because I love the way it was phrased, pricing as a language, right? Um, I, I like, bear with me. I'm trying to come up with an analogy, you know, only being about a cup of coffee in. I'm not, I'm not fully caffeinated yet.

Need a bigger mug.

Yeah, right, exactly. Um, I think that the reason I love that is like, you know, you think about like, Duolingo or whatever, like trying to learn a language, like, A, if you know, if you tell somebody like, hey, I'm learning Spanish, like it's understood first that that's going to take a while before you're fluent. Right. Second, that you're probably not going to try to get hung up on saying everything the exact same way every time. Like the point of a language is to learn multiple ways to deliver the same or similar communication.

Right.

All the words at your disposal. Um, and so I think the, you know, maybe the question for either one of you, right, is like, or for, for all of you, Sam, you included in this, is, is because it's part of what I go through with people even operationally is like, how do you get people to emotionally, I guess, let go of it has to be this price or my brand's dead, or it has to be this margin or my brand's dead. Because like, from a language perspective, it's like, well, I have to say it this way or nobody's going to understand me. Well, that's just not true.

Right.

You don't have to use the same words every time for someone to understand you. In fact, if you do use the same words every time, And you sound robotic, people are probably going to avoid working with you for different reasons. Right? Does that make sense?

Well, it's interesting you bring that up, Adam, because one of the things that I expected when I got into this journey and Dave corrected me very quickly on this one. Let's say you're even in with one of the big guys, like at Southern Glacier. They don't talk about pricing the same way in California as they do in Florida or Texas.

I bet not.

They just don't, right? And so, you know, being able to talk about pricing the way that market talks about pricing is a critical element of success in the pricing business. So, you know, and at the same time, you think about your brand and the pricing is one element of it, but what's your go-to-market strategy and how does your mark— how does your pricing get reflected in your go-to-market strategy or how does your How does your market, how does your pricing support your go-to-market strategy? Right?

Yeah, totally.

Are you trying to like, you know, what, what's your strategy for on-prem and how does your pricing incentivize on-premise to bring your product on board?

So without taking us too far down a rabbit hole, if you can, based on your experience, I'd just be really curious to use them as ends of the spectrum. If you, if you could pick one or two things that's different between the way people talk about pricing in California and the way people talk about pricing in Florida, like Was there like a flashing neon sign of like California talks about this as their number one priority or as their, you know, top 2 things, but Florida does this instead, or the numbers are this different, or does that make sense?

It does. And I guess, well, first of all, there's, you know, I mean, there's regulations that force certain markets to have different market, to have different conversations, right? I mean, you've got the Case 1 markets and then you've got the markets where it's the Wild West to some extent. And one of the things that amazes me in like California, Dave, your price grid in California is probably 30 lines in each product, right? Um, and we kind of feel like Southern has to do that for whatever reason.

That's the quantity discounts there, right?

Yeah.

So when you—

I gotta, I love this. I gotta slow you guys down because you guys all speak the sales language far more fluently than I do. When you say the price grid has 30 lines, what does that mean?

So like there's a—

go ahead, Tom.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Go ahead. Okay. It's your place. You talk about it. Well, it's a, it's a, uh, it's a matrix of, um, you know, if then, you know, there, California allows, uh, quantity discounts. One case might be a certain price, a 2-case, you know, brand combo, a 3-case, and it, and it can just, it just multiplies and expands from there. It can get really, really complicated, but what you, what you figure out and the reason why it gets complicated is because now there's more focus on compliance than ever before. Back in the day, back in the Stone Ages when I started, it was like if a customer wanted a price, I'm the supplier. If a customer wanted a price, I could just extend the price to 'em. But now there's just rules and regulations, which I think are a good thing. But what happens is it's the typical 80/20 rule. 20%, you know, 20% of your— the 80% of the pricing you have in a grid, Really, sales reps and managers follow 20, you know, the 20% of it. But these other opportunities have to exist for big box retail and just to maintain compliance. But to know which one of those kind of those line items resonates most with not only your retailer, but your distributors, right? I mean, I always, I tell this story where a wholesaler or distributor rep, a sales consultant's out in the field. They have an opportunity, for example, for a Pinot Noir to sell You know, in a, either retail store or a restaurant and they flip open their, their SFA, their unit, the pricing has to make sense, like literally within seconds. Like it just has to, okay, Mr. Retailer, Mrs. Retailer, if you buy 2 cases, this is the chug price. If you buy 3, you know, it just has to make sense like immediately.

Mm-hmm.

And there's just, it's, uh, it's, it's just the, uh, a mind-numbing number of options that are out there. Because there has to be, but we end up going and what Tom's done is really make it easy for us to hone in on which ones are most vital, how profitable they are for me and the distributors as well.

No, I mean, I, A, thank you for the answer. It's super insightful for me because I, Sam knows this and I think, you know, Dave and Tom, you may as well. I know it's been a while since we've spoken, but a lot of the brands I talked to and a lot of the brands everybody in this business talks to who are new, well, you know, oh, I'm going to start here. And then California's next, you know, or, or LA's next. Maybe it's not the whole state. I'm like, oh cool, you're going to go take a swing at the world's 9th largest economy. Awesome. Sounds good. Right. But I think that, you know, you say things like an if-then statement that very much tracks for me because I think the same way operationally. And so thinking through or having a little bit more context, I guess, for, you know, I tell brands, I talked to a brand the other day, it wasn't, it wasn't California, it was Amazon. They were like, hey, what do you think about us selling on Amazon? I was like, let me run you through all of the awful math. that you're going to have to overcome. And then I actually put him in touch with Eric Martindale. That's why I was reaching out to Eric, Sam, was I trying to put a brand in touch with him. But I think to the point on— oh, might've lost Dave, or maybe that's my connection. Tom, can you still hear me?

I'm seeing the same thing you are, Adam. I think Dave's video just went off and Sam's video just went off.

Well, all right.

It's you and me.

It's you and me, Cody.

I think it's you and me. Maybe this tees up the question then. So I think that's part of the beauty, at least in what I saw While back, last time I was looking at it, what in Ruby Pro was, I'm constantly arguing for brands on the sales side. Like I'll do the ops work. So I get paid for, but on the sales side, I'm constantly arguing for them. Like every channel, every retailer, every distributor, like you need a thorough analytical breakdown of your numbers, right? Your sales, your margins, your so on. And that's a big ask, like for somebody to sit down who's never done it before in front of a spreadsheet.

Yeah.

Even if you're mathematically inclined, that's just a, a lot of, that's a time suck, right?

Yeah. And it, and it's a, it's a great point, Adam, because, you know, people don't get into wine and spirits producing because they love math, right? They, they get into it because they love the product. Love, you know, getting in front of, they love getting in front of restaurant owners and customers and, You know, and and and helping them enjoy the food experience or helping them enjoy the night out. Right? So, you know, a tool like Ruby Pro can give you a framework to capture those cost of goods and capture the the distributor's cost and capture the retailer's cost so that you're not flying blind when you're thinking about what are all the different cost factors that need to go into determining what the profitability of that sale price is. And and we have. Also what we call gaming models. You talked about, okay, people love to go from cost of goods up, right? And so what does my FOB need to be? And then what does that mean to a retail price? Well, that's a gaming model we have. We have a gaming model where you can start with your cost of goods and what kind of margin do you want to make? And we'll tell you what your FOB is based on that margin. But then you also have to understand what does the distributor margin need to be?

Mm-hmm.

And then what does the retailer's margin need to be? Okay, well, that's going to drive what that suggested retail price is. However, what we think is a better gaming model, and this is the one Sam has always pushed, right, is the retail price down model. Now, your cost of goods to some extent are your cost of goods, right?

Right.

Like there's a certain, there's only a certain amount of operational cost you can take out in order to get your cost of goods to the right level. But you know who your competitors are, you know what your comps are, you know, hopefully, you know, where your suggested retail price needs to be in order for you to penetrate the market against a certain competition base that's on the shelf right next to you. And so we provide a gaming model that says, okay, what's your suggested retail price? Okay, great. Well, you can expect that the retail level is going to expect 30% margin or maybe 25% margin depending on the state. And then the distribution is going to want Frontline to be in the 30% margin range, and maybe they're going to be able to Come down to—

you want to actually, you actually, Tom, you want to actually show what it looks like? I would love to have you put it on the screen so people can see what you're describing.

We're losing him again.

Because it's so fricking easy.

Yeah.

You just, so many people don't know how to work their pricing.

I think what he was getting at is, uh, and maybe, maybe the bandwidth won't support it given the issues we're having with Sam and Dave, but I think he was maybe asking if you want to pull up a—

Do you guys have me? Do you have my audio?

Yeah, Dave, we have your audio.

Okay. We do. Um, I'm in, uh, Sorry, but I'm in, I'm in Salt Lake City. It's parents' weekend. Go Utes. But I was trying to find, my wife is sleeping in the room. I'm trying to find a quiet place in the little cafe that's not working. So I just stepped outside. It is not raining here. It's sunny and probably 50 degrees. So sorry you guys have bad weather, but if you don't mind, I'll just stay on audio if that's cool with you guys.

Audio's great, man.

Yeah.

So I think what Sam was getting at, Dave, was if the bandwidth will hold for us doing a screen share, which is Totally. I mean, we can give it a shot.

Yeah, we can give it a shot. Why not?

Right. Totally. The question I have while you're working on that is, did we ever introduce you to a guy named Adam Callanan?

Name's not familiar.

So Adam, if you're listening or you hear this later, Adam is our buddy over at Pentane. It's his current company. He started, he was the one who started and sold Bottle Keeper, the glass bottle, like metal doozy. So he knows his way around starting a company, but Pentane, I was, it's so funny. I was talking to him the other day about this and I said, Because his focus with Pentane is less on, like, if Ruby Pro is the, you know, margins, pullbacks, sales numbers, state to state, like capturing that math, if you will. Pentane and Adam's program is capturing the math of, well, okay, based on all those numbers living where they live, what does that allow you to do from a marketing or an advertising standpoint? And what's your return on ad spend and how do those numbers track? Right. So obviously it's all, it all matters. It's all part of the equation. Right. But I asked him the question the other day. I said, if I give you, I give you, Adam, rough parameters on, I want this shelf price. I want this, uh, ad budget, whatever. Like, what's the equation? Like, what's the variable that I need to factor in to work backwards from that into, well, I cannot produce it for any more than X. Right. Because if we start there, everything else gets a lot less stressful. Right. And, and he was like, it's a phenomenal question, but he goes, I would start with, and I was looking for my notes. He's like, I would start with contribution profit to acquire a customer and then back into average order value with your minimum contribution profit being like $25 to $30. You want to be gross margin, all that.

Right.

But I was like, again, if you see which all of what we're talking about for a guy or, you know, a guy or a gal who's like, I want to make an energy drink. I want to make a seltzer. I want to sell a wine is like, it's just going to break their brain.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

But I think Dave could attest to like, if you start there, everything, like the dominoes just fall so much easier, right?

Yeah. And I, I can't encourage, you know, if there's anyone listening or, or new brands is, is to hire Sam or you, Adam, in the beginning, you know, to, to figure out what those margins are, what those gross margins, I would call 'em contribution margins, right? And it's so important to start there. I mentioned it in my book, When it comes to, it's a pain point with a lot of brands that I've, that I speak with and have talked to. They're like, you know, oh, my, my product is this. It's so great. It's so much better than that. And I'm like, okay, well, what's your, let's take a look at your pricing. And I don't know about you, Sam, when you talk to some of your clients, like I get, I get some resistance from people. It's like they want to enter the market and this is the price. You know, well, these are your cost of goods. Well, this is what your price on the shelf is going to be like, oh no, no, no. I want it to be this price. Whether it's aspirational and it's, it's value-oriented or cost of goods, it's like, it cannot be understated how important it is to make that very first step. At least get your target pricing right. You, you know, the consumer, retail buyers always say that the consumer will tell Dave, I want my price to be— the consumer don't lie.

Consumer never lies.

Just put it out there and if they buy it, they buy it. And you know, so, um, it's, it's really pivotal, Sam. I don't know if you wanna mention that, just like, cuz you come in, in contact with a lot of new brands. I do here in the Valley, in Sonoma Valley. A lot of new brands will come to me and ask about sales strategy and stuff. I always start with pricing. I mean, it's a whole chapter in my book. It's just, I think it's kind of, it's not, I like it as well. I like numbers. I like spreadsheets. I like graphs. I like data. I like those sorts of things. But what we really want to encourage our founders and our brands to do is get out there and be in front of customers and show the passion and all those sorts of things, knowing that their pricing's in a great place.

Yeah, it's, uh, it definitely starts with pricing. When we have an initial conversation, I ask, A few things. One is who's your competitive set? And the reason I ask that, that's going to inform the price you're going to be at. Then I'm saying, based on the competitive set, this is the price you need to be at. Then we go to the discussion. Uh, Tom had mentioned I work it backwards. I'm like, okay, in this market, what the retailer expects to make, or the account they're going to make.

I think you wanted me to share the screen and I'm able to do that if you guys want.

Yeah, please do. What I'm describing is he's gonna share the screen, then we work it backwards to the, uh, to the distributor, what they need to make. And that's probably around 25 to 30%, right? Yeah. But the problem is we'll get to the cost of goods, and this is a real life example, or maybe he's gonna show, but I had a supplier, their cost of goods, they were losing money based on that.

Yeah. Are you guys able to see the screen here?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is what I'm just gonna— go ahead, go ahead, Tom.

Yeah, so like this, this is an example I use for tequila brand, right? And I've got wine examples if anyone wants to see those. But, you know, um, Adam, you would, you would ask about like how many lines in the spread, in the, in the price grid. Well, this one has 4. Um, and I, like I said, I've seen ones with literally 30. No, but, um, you know, you can talk about frontline. I think Dave called, or, uh, Sam calls it false line. What does that— what does the frontline number look like for your, for your conversation to start with the distributor? But then in this particular case, we really, we have a one-case, we have a one-case upfront deal, which is really where people are going to talk off of.

Yeah.

It's really frontline is really just talking about what is your total discount. But then what's your depletion allowance in order to get to this number? Right. In this case, we've got no depletion allowance. But for, for a 1-case, you know, for any customer, whether it's on or off-prem and it's standalone, meaning it's only good for this one product.

Mm-hmm.

But now we may quickly want to move to a 5-case brand deal. So this means if I'm buying any 5 cases in this tequila brand, And we're trying to get to, we're starting at a $59.99 price, but we're trying to get down to a $50.99 price because we think that that's really where the market is going to buy it off of the off-premise location, right? So in order to get to this number, and hopefully our retailer will take a 28% margin on it, and maybe our distributor's going to be willing to take a I'll say a 25% margin on it, but that means me as a supplier, I've gotta give almost a $16 depletion allowance in order to be able to support this shelf price. So that's kind of why—

Sorry, I just wanna make sure when you're done talking about this is that I can extend a little bit on DA just to— so when you're ready, just queued up or teed up for me.

Well, and the other thing that people need to recognize too, and Dave, I'm almost done, so I'll let you go in a second. But like, so this is a 25-case family deal. Now, not too many small suppliers are actually expecting to sell 25 cases in a single deal, right? But what this actually means is it's actually the distributor's family. So it's anything in the distributor's portfolio. If the distributor has a 25-case deal, Right. Well, you want to be part of that deal. So how do you get to part of that deal? Well, you're going to give price breaks to be part of that deal. And so in this particular case, you're giving almost a $25 DA to help the retailer at this price point of $45.99. And this is probably a larger off-premise location that you're trying to push to, but you're getting to 27.5% margin and maybe your distributor's even willing to go down to 20% margin, 22% margin in order to get this 25-case deal.

No, they're not. Just so you know.

Right.

I know, I know, I know.

It's a bit of a fictitious deal price level, but the point being that, you know, you want to be part of the larger deals. You gotta figure out what you're willing to give up and what gross margin you're willing to go to. And at Frontline, we're starting at 63%, almost 64% gross margin, which I see a lot of times in the spirits world. The wine world would love to get to those numbers.

Hmm.

Being willing to go down to that 57% margin in order to be able to get into those larger deals is a critical component of Of that success.

Well, when you're, when you're starting out too, Tom, let's just call it what it is. Sometimes they're gonna lose money to be competitive, like RTDs, cuz the cost of goods are so high on the can. And Adam can appreciate this.

Mm-hmm.

You know, they need to be below $20 for a 4-pack, but for some reason, well, I gotta be at $24.99 on my 4-pack or I'm not gonna make money. I'm like, look, you're not gonna make money for 2 to 3 years if you wanna come in and compete into this category.

Yeah.

So this will actually help them. figure that out. Because remember I asked, who's your competitive set? What is the expected, uh, retail margin? And what is the expected distributor margin? And a lot of cases until they get the volume up, volume needs to go up for cost of goods to go down. Adam, I don't know if you have some thoughts on that, but real, really you need to have 2 to 3 years of, uh, money in the bank to make this work. Because if you come in uncompetitive, you'll never, you'll just collect dust on the shelf.

Yeah. And by the way, the one other thing that I'll throw in there and, and, and, you know, Be great to hear from Dave about depletion allowances. Right. But we're saying this is our, our FOB. But you need to recognize this is not the distributor, what the, what the distributor is calculating their margins off of. Right. They're, they're taking their margins off of the lading cost, which has to include the state sales tax, or I mean, the excise tax in the state.

Mm-hmm.

Every state has them. It also has to include the shipping costs from your location to the distributor. Right. And in a lot of cases, there's other taxes like local taxes that they want to take into account. Maybe they're selling into New York City or some other place that has a local tax. Right. So, so you have to recognize too what the distributor is actually calling their cost basis. And it's not your FOB.

Yeah. From a, from a, well, I'm going to shut up because I want, again, the layman over here. I understand the word depletion and the word allowance, but I would love to have Dave explain to me what those words together in this, in this structure mean.

Yeah. So it's, it's, as you, as you mentioned, Tom, the retailer has kind of a, what we call a minimum margin requirement, right? They, they, and sometimes it's a range. Sometimes if it's a, if it's a feature, they might work off of a little bit less. So does the distributor. They have their, their kind of target margin, kind of a margin requirement they call them more. They're willing to lean in on, on other opportunity buys or whatnot. And I know we're talking a lot about setting up pricing and it's It has to start there. But I also want to speak to, you know, those midsize suppliers out there and maybe distributors who are on the phone that what this tool allows you to do is participate in these bigger deals. Maybe you're not familiar with how a depletion allowance works. And what that is, is I sell my wine at full FOB to my distributor, let's say in Florida. As they sell the wine through the particular channel, there's a depletion allowance that they send me a bill back to the winery to say, I sold 3 cases at this off-premise deal and 10 cases at this on-premise deal. And so they're billing me back. That's a depletion allowance I have guaranteed, or I promised to pay for every case that that distributor sells. So the advantage for me is I get my cash soon, right? My distributors pay in 45 days. I get cash on full FOB, and then I'm tracking. And the other thing we haven't talked about yet, and I'm certainly anxious to discuss that on this call as well, Because Tom and I are talking about this next week about me turning on his capability of auditing those buildbacks. So number one, Ruby Pro allows you, allows me to, it would take a team to be able to do and manage all the DAs and the profitability and speak with each one of these trade development markets and find out what pricing levels SUG is capable of participating in. But the next thing, and I'm really looking forward to doing this with Tom and his team next week, is turning on the capability for Tom to say, hey Dave, with your depletion allowance billbacks that I'm sending to Ruby Pro and the depletion reports that I'm also sending to Ruby Pro, Tom's going to be able to calculate how many cases at what level, what DA level, right? What discount level, how many cases of each I sold. And here's the example that I give. I noticed in my Chicago market, It's a really competitive on-premise market. I've got a wine from the Petaluma Gap. It has to be at a certain price for it to be— it's got to be below $20 to be competitive and buy the glass. Well, by the time I give my DA, my depletion allowance, my discount, my support, it's a pretty low— it's a lower margin than I'd like at the winery. And I expressed that to my distributor and they were able to come back because I don't have these reports at the hand, but this is stuff that Tom's going to do. Is be able to say, well, Dave, um, you're only selling 12% of the wines you're selling at that are at that level. Look at the ones here we're selling at full margin for you. So this blended margin is just pivotal. It's gonna allow me to say, okay, I might have to concede a little margin, a little profit on one particular item, but I'm making it up on another. And that process—

On audit, Dave, real quick on audit, just so I'm clear, are you, uh, is Ruby Pro able to match up with, are you on VIP, Dave? I'm assuming you are a VIP customer.

Correct.

So are you able to—

but I can— I'm even sending Tom, you know, the other, my other distributors are not on VIP. Um, I can just send him depletion reports.

Mm-hmm.

And so he takes those depletion reports and then he basically is able to aggregate the data to say, okay, this is what's going on at the different levels.

Correct.

Correct.

Yeah, that, that's correct, guys. So I, and I, I, I just turned on this field, by the way, over here for percent of business. And we talked about it a little bit ago, Sam, you, you started talking about it.

Yeah.

And you got the different price levels, right? But part of the question when you're really trying to figure out what is your true profitability in a particular market is really what is your weighted average?

Correct.

Right. And so, you know, when you look at, hey, we're going to sell 60% of our, of our cases are going to be sold at the 1-case deal, right? And maybe we're going to get 30% at the 5-case brand and we'll get 10% at the 25-case family, something like that, right? Well, maybe you're willing to bring this number for the 5-case family down, recognizing if it's only 10% of your deals, but it's going to get you on the shelf at larger, maybe larger retailers, right? You're willing to take that down, but you're still going to wind up with a 62% gross margin in the market because that lower margin deal is only going to represent 10% of the sales, right? And that's a lot of what Dave's talking about right now. We can take in your depletion allowances and we can bounce that up against your price grid, which does 2 things. Number one is it tells you whether or not the distributor is charging you back a depletion allowance that you've actually agreed with them on. Right. And we see it all the time where distributors are sending in a price. And I'm not saying any distributor is doing anything nefarious. I'm saying that, hey, a lot of times their backend processes aren't that great, honestly.

Yeah. Remember, People are working off of Excel spreadsheets on all this stuff. It is wrought with human error. The systems today in 2025 are still just— it's no one's fault, Tom, as you say. It's just mistakes happen. And so, you know, for Tom's team to be able to— this isn't anything new. This is standard practice. What Tom's been able to do and his team with Ruby Pro is, you guys started the call off, was level the playing field. What I have here is I have a team of analysts basically. You know, it takes a little bit of time to set up and those sorts of things, but it's just, I, you know, the value in continuing negotiations, getting opportunities coming back to me to say, Dave, we've got an 89-location retailer that we'd like to offer this price to. I can just dive right in and start, you know, gamifying, as you said, Sam.

Yeah.

And just kind of looking in and going, okay, well, let's take a, let's say how many cases we're talking about. Now we're negotiating and anyone on this call that understands sales, it's like, if we're talking, that's a good thing. We're talking. Okay. Let's, let's keep it going. What about this? Or what about that? And negotiating just as much as you're with your retailer, you're negotiating with your distributor as well. And they're negotiating with you. So this has leveled that playing field. You know, larger suppliers have teams or dedicated personnel to do this. You know, Tom's done it with a tool.

Right. This is your RevMan team. You don't need to hire a RevMan team. You have it right here. You know, Breakthrough has, I think it's probably 3 or 4 people a market that do just RevMan. That's all they do is pricing. With this tool, sorry, uh, distributors, you could probably use this tool and probably reduce your manpower, become more efficient, uh, quite frankly. So I'm not trying to get rid of jobs, just repurpose them, I guess I would say, for the folks. But, uh, yeah.

I wanna jump in real quick. We got, uh, Welkin Coggs. Good to see you in the chat, buddy. Several comments from, from Robert. So first the comment and then the 2 questions. He said, absolutely, Sam, these alcohol margins are in a different galaxy. We start in the negative position and then start to chase margin and improve the verticals. His 2 questions are, A, how can a brand owner dictate the price? Doesn't the current market condition dictate the price points? And 2, B, on-premise equals food service and off-premise equals retail D2C, correct?

Correct.

Okay. And so then from a, from a price dictation standpoint, right? Like for all of you, I guess, I mean, is there any, maybe let me paraphrase or phrase it differently. Is there any world in which the brand owner is truly able to dictate the price or is it really more of a—

Yes, 100%. Totally. And, uh, I mentioned it in my book. I, I met a brand owner at a, uh, at a conference recently and she had an aspirational tequila with a great package. And she was like, you know, we were talking margins. She's like, oh, my margins are 200. And she's, because she's created the value, right? I mean, I mentioned in my book, one value is value pricing. Like I have single vineyard Pinot Noirs that I make and I sell mostly direct to consumer here at Shug in Sonoma County. When I buy the fruit from these well-known vineyards, it's more expensive fruit, right? The winemaking process and barrels and new French oak is slightly more expensive than my Sonoma Coast that retails at $19.99. But because I can sell a bottle for $80, the The cost of that wine is not 4 times as much. It is more.

Sure.

But if I can, if I can create a wine and sell it at $90 a bottle and I sell out immediately to say, okay, well, I might, I'm going to take my customers with me then. It's like, hey, I'm going to make it slightly more exclusive and raise my price. There's nothing wrong with me as a brand owner to answer your guest question. Like they can absolutely dictate it for sure. But that kind of comes with—

Pinot Noir, it's worth every fricking penny. It is a really good product. It really is good.

I'm waiting still for my samples, Dave.

I guess.

And this is where like, I'll come buy him dinner.

Come to the cave actually and visit you.

Come on out and see me, guy. That's a better—

that's what we need to do.

I do not want to send us all the way down this rabbit hole, but I do think it's, it's interesting between the, like the wine world, the spirits world, the beer world, the RTD world, the non-alc world. Right. I'll pick on energy drinks. Right. 'Cause we've got a couple of folks doing that right now. Total departure from wine, right? I would assume, I'll put it that way. I wouldn't argue. I would assume there's a little bit of that that can happen, right? But that's a market where, you know, if you came in and said, hey, here's a $5 per 12-ounce can or even a 16-ounce can energy drink, it can be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Good luck, right? Like you're not dictating that price. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, 2 words. Oh, go ahead.

I'll let you finish.

No, go ahead.

2 words. Liquid death. I mean, I mean, that's just, that's just—

Fair point.

It's just incredible. And so it can happen. Now, I think what we're, I mean, most of us on the call are talking about is when we get in these competitive sets, we want to get into retail and we don't have the marketing genius that those folks had. I mean, just incredible. And we see it all the time and I guess we get caught in our own little vacuum of You know, I've got wines I want to be competitive on the shelf, right? I can't dictate that price. I know I've got to be within a range so then I can work it upstream to say, okay, well, how profitable am I going to be based upon my cost of goods and based upon the DA or the support that I'm giving the distributor? And Tom's tool has allowed me to capture all of that, right? And that's really what I guess as a mid-sized winery or what we all want as salespeople, there's opportunities coming down. Right. There's an email to say, Dave, we have an opportunity. So clearly they've already seen the pricing that I've set up in the system, but they're just like, I just need a little, you know, I need another dollar here, or I need a little. And therein lies the negotiation. And that it can't be understated about how often I use Ruby Pro for that. Yes, I set up the pricing. Yes, I've got all the visibility. I'm tracking all those things, but I'm on it. It's on the background. Like my email, it's on the background of my computer at all times. Cause I'm just kind of, okay, can I, move there. Or then Tom might send me a report and I'm like, this price is not working. I mean, there's zero sales at this, you know, price I thought was the best price in the history of winemaking and wine selling.

And it's something very important, by the way. So Tom's your partner. So Tom actually is looking at your price. He's just not a software company.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, we're on the phone all the time with people talking about their pricing and what does it actually mean. And, you know, and again, Dave's a numbers guy, right? Like Dave knows his numbers. But honestly, I meet a lot of brand owners who don't, right? And it's not a criticism, it's just not who they are. And so trying to work with them and make sure that they understand what their numbers actually mean. And there's some complicated models out there, guys. I mean, Sam, you and I spent how much time talking about free goods, right?

Did you get that done yet? Is it George's Live, right?

Yeah, we got free goods in there.

Absolutely. Well, what's so important, what's so important, Tom, about that is, is, is how, is how Ruby Pro can be used towards those ongoing discussions, those languages that, you know, and, and keeping the conversation, keeping you engaged with your distributor. I was recently at a trade show in Florida and I noticed the new vintage of my Sauvignon Blanc was $2 higher than my Chardonnay and my Pinot Noir. And Sauvignon Blanc, um, should be— somebody getting attacked there? Or is it, it sounds like the wolves in Minnesota. Not me.

That's the Addams doll. It's not my dog.

I didn't realize you could hear my dog.

Yeah.

So it's not me.

What, what's so, so I noticed this, right? I'm like, and I went to my trade development manager and said, hey, we got the wrong price. Can I quote, you know, for the trade show, the price it should be? And so to follow up that meeting with one email going inside of Ruby Pro, you know, capturing that line item, the DA that I'm willing to give to get it to the price that I want. Looking for those yes or no answers, approved or not approved. And if you as suppliers can get to the point to where you're sending emails like that to your distributors to say, I've already done the math. I know this is your margin requirement. So they can just, you're gonna, you're gonna be so well appreciated by your wholesalers. And I know this not only because of the feedback I get as a supplier, but also as a distributor, I was in charge of those things. So when I had a supplier engage with me that instead of say, instead of sending me an email to say, Hey, can we schedule a Zoom to talk about the pricing in Sauvignon Blanc? Shit, that's gonna take a week.

Mm-hmm.

And then, and we have the live call, it's gonna take another week for them to do the math on their end and bring out the grid and all those sorts of things and get it back to me. With one email, I can get approved. And so the, the amount of time it's saved and the, the rapport you build with your distributors is, uh, is just tremendous value for a, a winery like my son's.

It's a, it's a great point, Dave. And there's a, there's another trend that, that we're seeing. Right. And Sam is driving this trend hard, but it's the idea that, you know, especially in the smaller brands, the broker model is a critical model for success, right? Like you can't be in every state and be able to drive sales effectively in your state. Dave, how much traveling are you doing in order to be able to keep yourself present in the distributor's mind all the time? Right? So you know what we can do here on Ruby Pro is we can give your broker access to the pricing directly, so they always know what the latest pricing is. They don't have to hunt for it. Additionally, they can create draft pricing. They can't publish it. They can't make it the final pricing, right? But but they can create a draft that says, "Hey, I'm going into this distributor tomorrow, and we want to talk about you know how do we drive this product." Maybe it's your you know the vintage that you're trying to make sure gets off their shelf, or maybe it's something you're just introducing into the market, whatever it might be. And you want to empower your broker to have those conversations, but you still want the control over what that pricing is going to be. Giving them access to the information that they need to be successful, but maintaining that control as the owner is a pattern that we're seeing a lot now in giving the Empowering the broker to work on your behalf, but maintaining that control as the owner.

Yeah, I think that's going to trend. We're going to continue to see. I'd like to hear Sam's thoughts on that. He's built a robust business on this idea that we have, we just, not even an idea, the fact that we have fewer wholesalers in the market, we've got more brands than ever, and being able to manage that, right? To To be able to, I do use brokers and I like to call them more sales agents than brokers, you know, agencies in the market.

I guess we call them sales agents as well.

Yeah. And for me to easily go in and calculate what the fees are or what the margins are for that particular market just allows me to manage my profitability. I would like to say something about the negotiating with your wholesaler and with your retailer. When those opportunities come in, those, you know, that, that retail opportunity. Well, let's talk about, let's, let's flip it and say a slow moving brand. Let's one that's not moving. Let's do that. Right. Let's, let's, let's go on this pain point and pull off the bandaid of like, shit, I put the wine in there. The pricing was perfect. Everything was perfect. And then nothing happened. And typically what the response you'll get from your distributor, Sam, I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, happens in, you know, That first answer is like, well, let's do an incentive, you know, because, and I think the reason for that is, is because that's kind of like the easiest way to offer something that might move the needle. Right. And I have a thought about incentives and they, you know, just, I, that's why I think it's that, that word incentive. And Sam, I don't know when, you know, when you, when you were, you know, distributor or supplier, kind of how often was that kind of the first when something wasn't moving? Incentive. Is that the first answer?

It would be an incentive for the team and also would be tastings for the retailer and accounts. Let's activate the account in the marketplace and let's all put— let's put a deal together, actually get them to drive.

Got that. Put a deal together. That's what I was hoping you would say. Sometimes you ask me questions like that, you put me on the spot. So I would just turn it right around, flipping it right on you, but you hit it. You're exactly right. Let's put together a program. And so if you've got your pricing and your structure inside of Ruby Pro, now we can say, hey, if we dropped, you know, we're sitting at $2,199 at most markets, especially in today's market. In my opinion, you gotta be $1,999. It's just kind of, that's the, you know, then you can do this math. You can do some things internally with yourself or maybe even with your team, run a few different scenarios. And now when you get that distributor on, you know, on the phone, you can say, hey, let's do a, what's called a margin enhancement for the retailer. And we know their minimum margin's 30%. What if we did a deal where we're giving them 35%? We're enhancing their profit margin. You can do all those sorts of things prior to calling your wholesaler and making the presentation. And if you have all these numbers in front of you, or even better yet, you kind of, you send an email teasing them to say, would this be an option? And you've done all this math. You export these really, really slick sheets that Tom has. You're just setting your— you're just—

you said something really important. I wanted to talk about that is that you can actually Ruby Pro, you can actually export the sheets in Excel, PDF, PowerPoint to your retailer, your accounts, and to your distributor and to your team, which is really important.

Yeah. And to be proactive and participate in that is, it's, you know, it's how Suge's able to, you know, to leverage, you know, my voice. I handle global sales. I run the winery. We have a small team and that's the plan. We continue to use, you know, sales agents in some key markets, but But to be able to have meaningful discussions like this and negotiations, even with the retailers, I have my own relationships, can't encourage suppliers out there enough. I think that's what the big change is gonna continue to happen in the industry is suppliers are gonna have to be more active in the sales process. No longer can we just depend upon our distributors, no fault of theirs. They're overwhelmed, you know, so it's just, it's something that's vital. And if you can Be proactive, run some different profit scenarios and all those sorts of things, because you, you know where your profit's going to be. You have internal approval, or you, maybe you can make that decision yourself, but you can run these scenarios. And, and now, now you're negotiating. Now you're discussing. Maybe the distributor also is like, you know, we haven't done a great job on this either. You know, we're willing to concede a little margin on our end as well.

Right.

So now you're negotiating. Yeah.

It's really, really good, Dave. You know, so first of all, it's Halloween and the werewolf is out.

Clearly. Be careful, guys.

Be careful, please. Because it must be a full moon or something's going on.

Yeah, he's a 20-pound terror.

So one of the things I wanted to, I'm going to give Tom an opportunity just to bring it home in terms of some last closing comments, as well as you, Dave and Adam, and then I can certainly wrap it up. But the one thing at Bev Assets we do, we call Ruby Pro our pricing analytics So when we bring in a new customer, a client, we introduce them to Ruby Pro. And what we say is we want to get your pricing on Ruby Pro, and this is why. And Dave, you answer all the questions. One is our brokers have a view as well as our distributors. It manages our pricing in one spot and it keeps everything really clean. But this is really expensive software, right, Tom? I mean, people can't afford this.

Uh, yeah, thanks, Sam. Uh, no, actually we started at $20 per market per month.

No way.

There's a really, and there's no startup costs, so we'll help you get your pricing in and, uh, and convert off of those spreadsheets and into Ruby Pro. And, um, yeah, and there's no, there's no upfront commitment. There's no term commitment. It's, you know, uh, $20 per market per month and, and, you know, get at it. Uh, it's, uh, I mean, in, in terms of like my perspective on this, Sam, I think what we're doing is we're leveling the playing field. Yeah.

You absolutely are. You can, you pay $20. A market would be like Florida, or like you had a different structure in Tampa versus Miami. Like Tennessee would be a good example. You might have multiple structure. I guess the best example would be if you had multiple distributors in a marketplace.

Yeah.

Like Tennessee's a common one where you might have a couple of different distributors in Tennessee just because of the nature of that particular market or sets of markets. So like Tennessee can be multiple markets. There's a few other states like New York where you've typically got upstate and, uh, and Metro. But yeah, I mean, you can look at it as where you've got a price negotiation between multiple distributors. Each one of those is a market.

Got it.

All right.

And then, uh, so how do people find you?

Well, um, I mean, first of all, you know, my email address, tom.harris@rubyprosoftware.net, uh, .com. Love to hear from you. Um, uh, but, uh, the website, you can come on and ask for a demo and And what's the website?

Is that www.rubyprosoftware.com?

rubyprosoftware.com. And, uh, yeah, just love to, love to meet you and talk about what your current situation is.

Is that right? Right there? Ruby Pro Software.

That is correct, Sam. Great job. Okay.

Yeah, there you go.

Um, you know, and, and the other thing I'll put out there, if there's any wholesalers listening, you know, we also have solutions for wholesalers. I mean, we meet a lot of wholesalers that are on this midsize, small side of the market that are still using QuickBooks. You know, it's a nightmare managing your inventory, managing, you know, especially if you're in a state like New York or Pennsylvania where you've got, you know, price posting states and you're double entering everything, you're managing your spreadsheet for pricing, but then you're also double entering that pricing into the New York, um, you know, liquor state liquor site, right?

Yeah.

We can help you manage that data and manage that process from end to end for—

You're gonna actually save them money at the end of the day.

Oh, absolutely.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah. And again, our model is we're long-term thinkers at Ruby Pro. We're here to have a long-term relationship with you, right? We don't charge startup costs. Typically we have by-the-month pricing, no commitments, and reasonable pricing to really help the small guy be able to compete with the big guy. And there's the wolf again.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's, we just, like I said, we're, we're, we want to be partners with you for the long term. And we want to help the small to midsize suppliers and wholesalers really compete against those large guys. Honestly, we're seeing that the small guys, especially, you know, are seeing advantages over the big guys.

100%. And by the way, this is not just spirits, wine, and beer or cannabis products, Adam. This is food.

Oh, I'm aware.

I have an introduction to a few people teed up. I'm going to send it after we get off the phone.

Well, it's funny because actually one of our largest customers is actually on the food side.

Funny.

But yeah, it's, agree with you, Sam. And I think as we see the market pressures, a lot of the small people are taking advantage of it. Like they're picking up the, I see the wholesalers picking up brands that the large guys are dropping. And I see the small suppliers really creating those relationships either through the broker model, the I know, Sam, you're pushing real well, or like Sam, like Dave does, just getting out and pressing the flesh in as many markets as you can and creating those meaningful relationships and telling those meaningful stories about your brand that really resonate in the markets. Um, and if we can help to level that playing field by giving you technology that helps you make better decisions, then that's what we're here for.

Yeah. You're the, you're the RevMan team and I, uh, and, and this, this tech stack that you've created, which is amazing. I'm excited to get into the VAT taxes in Kentucky. So I'm just calling you out live.

Yeah. And we're constantly improving the product, right? I mean, there's so, you know, every state has its own nuance to it.

Yeah.

But yeah, we're, and, and as you know, Sam, we love to partner with our customers where they have, where they see that there's a need. We're, we're happy to fill that gap.

Yeah. Hey, we have to ask the final question. Um, Adam, I'm going to ask, uh, um, Tom the final question and we can wrap up.

Absolutely. Tom, what is the difference in your mind between success and failure?

Difference between success and failure. I think the main thing that I see, number one, is the brands that can focus more on the customer, the better you're going to be, but you can't lose sight on the ball of your own profitability. So know the customer and know you're profitable. And if you can do those 2 things, you can find success. Okay.

Brilliant. Well, as we, uh, let's just wrap up. We'll go around the circle. Adam, any closing thoughts?

Yeah. I mean, I'll call out some of the, some of the phrases I loved. I mean, again, pricing as a language, um, what Dave mentioned about having Ruby Pro running in the background. I think a lot of brands, at least a lot of the folks that I talk to, you know, regardless of where the question comes from, a question will come up and it's as it should be immediately like, oh, I got to take a look at the numbers. Should absolutely. But the problem is if you don't have something like a Ruby Pro or, you know, I'll call out Pentane or, you know, Cost of goods sheet that I do. If you don't have something like that constantly up and a working document that, you know, oh, I'll take a look at the numbers, will take you a day, 2, 3, a week, 2, because other stuff will come up and you'll forget about it. And then you'll end up making a, you know, in-the-moment decision based on how you feel. And you'll go, oh yeah, it's fine. We can afford to lose a dollar here, a dollar there. We'll take a, you know, bail back on that, whatever. And that adds up. And then you look at your numbers at the end of the month, you go, oh, we lost a boatload of money. So I think that's the point I would leave people with. And then finally, it's, it's, you know, the same thing that Sam brought up is like folks like Tom and tools like Ruby Pro can be affordable and give you kind of the leg up or the tool in your tool belt to be able to compete on a larger level. And so take advantage of them.

Tom, uh, anything we, uh, you want to discuss that we missed or any closing thoughts on your end?

I think we covered a lot of ground here, guys. I mean, it's a complicated topic, honestly. And we're trying to make it simpler. And, you know, it was a great question, Adam, about what drives success versus failure. And what I love is the idea that I can help brands spend more time in front of customers and less time worrying about whether they're profitable, but giving them the tools to know that they are. And so, you know, if technology can help you spend more time with the customer, that to me is the benefit. And, and at the same time, we can drive your costs down or we can, you know, give you better visibility into better decision-making. That's gonna just help you in all facets of the business.

No, 100%. Uh, y'all are excellent partners. You know, again, we tell our clients and we copy you on a lot of messages to our clients. We're like, this is our pricing and analytics team. It's really important that everybody understands and listens to what I'm telling you is what Ruby Pro is, they're partners. They're not a technology company. They're a solution company.

And it's funny because like meeting guys like you and Adam and Dave, they, uh, that really understand the business side of alcohol. Uh, you know, so many brands we see are focused on the formulation. They're focused on the taste. They're focused on the differentiation of the product, which I'm not saying isn't important. Of course it's Important. Totally. No, of course it's important, right? But if you want to be in the business long-term, you gotta find a way to be profitable.

100%. And that's, so one of the best investments you can make is with you guys. You bring great value. I'm so excited that you came on the show today.

Yeah, I'm grateful to have the opportunity.

I would encourage everybody to go listen to this show. There's a lot of things that were shared in here, little nuggets that you'll just capture if you go back and re-listen to it. I know that Several friends do that, but wishing everybody a happy Saturday. Thanks for joining us on this rainy, cloudy, cold day in Minnesota. At least it's where maybe it's sunny somewhere else in the world, and we'll catch you soon. Ask the two of you to remain on the line because we got to make sure this stuff downloads.

Yeah, appreciate it. Hey, thanks again, guys.

All right, lost Dave, so I'm not sure.