The Importance of Packaging in Beverage Success

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Drink Up Podcast with Sam Anderson and Lou Dumas on this Saturday, February 28th. Lou, we will get into your background and all the various and wonderful and interesting things you were doing in just a moment. But before we get into that, shout out to the sponsors, Sam and Alicia at Bev Assets, myself and Alias Advising, Ryan Hallamann and Rocks Advisor on the Rocks Advisors, who is hopefully getting on a plane soon. I know his flight was a little bit delayed, but to Expo. So if you're heading out to Expo and you're watching this and you've not already talked to Ryan, I will not be there this year, but if you want to talk to my, you know, call him my Expo surrogate, as he and I have been working on a lot of projects together, I'm happy to put you in touch with Ryan. And Jay Williams, a freebird. Well timed, Sam. That was beautiful. So there's, uh, there's Sam's freebird for the morning. Uh, so with that, we'll jump right into it. Lou, welcome, brother. Good to see you.

Good to see you guys.

Thanks for having me. Of course, man. Um, so just tell us, I guess we'll start off with, uh, the day job, right? How, how we know each other the first time.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I am in the beverage co-pack business, so The can that Sam just opened, that, that's music to my ears every time. It means we're seeing more and more cans out there. So I work for Circle Beverage. I direct your sales there based out of Indianapolis. I call Metro Detroit home. I live in Livonia. And so yeah, all things canned beverage, co-pack, non-alcohol currently, but yeah.

I think there's an aluminum shortage, isn't there?

There's always a shortage of some sort.

There's rumors.

Yeah.

I think it's, it's always interesting when people take steel out of commission and then claim there's a shortage. It's like, well, that seems like there's a real path to understanding how that happened.

It's crazy how that works. Well, before we get into your, uh, your extracurriculars, how did, how did you come to be in, like, I know this about you, everybody listening is about you, like you have tattoos related to the print world, which is an incredibly wonderful and nerdy thing to have for yourself. Uh, so how did you come to be involved in the print world slash co-packing?

Yeah. Yeah. I, it's funny. My, my dad's a printer. My, my uncle is a printer. I'm one of 4 kids. We'll say my dad, my brother's about to turn 50 on Monday. So kids, but, um, but so dad would come home from work after 12-hour-plus shift and tell us 4 kids, like, just do me a favor. Don't go into printing. And so 3 of us listened. I was probably the most outspoken, adamant teenager, like, listen, old man, zero chance of that ever happening. You need not worry about me. And at the age of 20, decided that I was going to walk away from a full scholarship and get married. And the first job that I could find that was going to pay the bills was good old printing. Uh, I've been in printing. Yeah. Since I was actually 19 was my first real big boy job working.

Wait a minute. Is there printing on this can?

Oh yes.

Uh, I, I was the traditional ink on paper for about 15 years. And so, uh, on a giant converted phone book directory, remember phone books?

So this was—

Oh my God.

Phone books.

Briefly.

How do we survive? How do we get in contact with people. We had to like go through a phone book and find a phone number. Like, that's crazy.

Uh, honestly, one of my favorite movies is The Jerk. I, my wife bought this awesome sticker that's on my laptop. It, that's him pointing at, he hates these cans and it's such a great double play for me. Um, when that scene where he finds his name in the phone book and the, I'm somebody, things are gonna start happening now. That's such a real moment. I remember feeling that, like seeing your name in the phone book for the first time. And yeah.

Oh, that's fucking— that's Steve Martin, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, phone books haven't been gone that long.

No, no. I mean, magazines, phone books, all of it. But, um, but yeah, so I did 15 years in, in commercial printing, segued into beverage. Um, really kind of just, I was selling labels, I was selling shrink sleeves, um, selling some packaging. And was tasked with, hey, go find us some new vertical markets to kind of focus on. Because we were doing like some pharmaceutical labeling, some high-end stuff at this printer I was working for at the time. And I've, you know, I was a craft beer enthusiast since, you know, I'm from Michigan. Bell's Oberon was like my gateway drug into craft beer. And just, just loved, loved, was an enthusiast first. And so I was like, well, If I can go hang out at a bunch of breweries and claim that I'm working and sell them some labels and what have you. And one thing led to another and, you know, got to connect with some of the mobile canning guys here in Michigan, down in Indiana, and then just kind of expanded from there and really into more of a beverage-facing packaging kind of role.

Very cool. Well, that's a good segue into, which I have to share real quick. So everybody knows, you both know, I love asking this question of people, like, what's the origin story? This week I've gotten everything from medical chemist, church piano player. Um, God, what was another good one? Realtor, like just the various, like, I started here, now I'm doing beverage. Okay. I just, yeah.

I get a lot of attorneys that started RTDs.

I've got a couple of attorneys right now. Yeah. Attorneys has been less frequent.

I'm like, you're an attorney, a successful attorney, and you're going to open up an RTD.

Why? Because apparently attorney work is fucking boring, man.

Yeah.

Okay.

This isn't going to be boring, man. Just buckle in and get ready. And they're like, why does this cost so much money? I'm like, well, it's, that's the way the business goes.

Why do you cost so much money before you start making money? Yeah. Well, so that's a great segue, Lou, into tell us about that logo on your hat.

Yeah. Yeah. So the Robots One is by My business that I co-founded 3 years ago now, a partner and I, uh, he's outta Las Vegas. And we at first had this idea for, hey, how do we take what's happening with all the AI innovations and bring it into, um, the beverage space? And, and we both come from printing backgrounds. And so kind of tapping into what our previous experience was, it's like, all right, well, how about graphic design? And taking some of the AI-aided components of whether it was ChatGPT, whether it was, you know, Google with their offering and they've got some great funny names now.

What is that?

Something banana now, uh, uh, for their image generator.

I'm not even familiar.

And then the graphics are pretty darn good with these AI agents right now, aren't they? Oh my gosh.

And I mean, now you're seeing like 3 years ago, we thought we were cutting edge when we were just able to get something output that looked, you know, if something had 4 hands, all right, we're getting close guys.

But, um, fantastic.

Yeah, so we started out that way and then realized that there's still a whole lot of iterate— iterating that would take place with that. So trying to come in with an offering of like $250 for a label design and then realizing you're spending 6, 8, 10 phone calls because it's still not quite there. So we realized pretty early on, like, okay, this is, this is gonna need to be a fully automated offering and really have people essentially doing a lot of what they're doing now. And that's going—

it's like a SaaS opportunity then, kind of like the subscription base.

That's when, when I hopefully look to kind of go come full circle with it and, and have a website that does what I want it to do in that regard. That's, that's exactly what my end goal would be is to, you know, whether it's kind of white labeling, like an Adobe Firefly or something like that, where people can go and iterate to their heart's desire to get their base design.

Yeah.

And then we can come in with their placement of all of their, you know, government warnings, logos, everything else that needs to be dropped into a label design, and then have them approve it on a site, send it to print, and just have that storefront. So that's like the 2.0 version that someday, you know, I, I hope to roll out. But in the meantime, uh, I, I pivoted the business really in earnest about a year ago into more of the custom packaging with, with both my business partners and my background in printing. One of those things in the beverage space that seems to be an afterthought so often is the actual packaging, you know, and people, it was a shocking moment for me when I realized how little the liquid cost and ingredient cost is relative to the whole equation.

So, so it's the can, the printing, the lid. That's where all the cost is. It's not the liquid.

Yeah. Hello everybody. And that, you know, when you have that eureka moment and, and, but you see what people are so focused on and, and what they're not. And inevitably people are just kind of, it's that afterthought that somewhere along the way, like, oh, well, who do I go to for custom printed cans, custom printed 4-packs, 6-packs? Uh, do I put anything on my case trays at retail? You know, all those decisions. That, that are being made and oftentimes kind of being made very quickly because they're like, okay, well, I've got my formula down. I've got my co-packer picked out. Now I got to go and do all these other things. And inevitably it's like, I can go to WestRock because I hear WestRock's name all the time. I go to GPI, I go to like the big players and it's like, and they're great. Don't get me wrong. They, they do a phenomenal job. They're in the position they're in because they do a great job. Are they right for a startup brand? I mean, I'd venture to say no, you know, they might have a different opinion and that's okay. But at the end of the day, that's really what the Robots One is currently focused on is helping some of like those startups and middle market brands navigate those decisions in the custom packaging realm. And yeah, we're making some pretty good inroads. We've got a nice growing library of dies and people like, what is a die? Cutting die, you know? So, but if you want your 4-pack, if you want your 6-pack, A lot of these places, even some of the big guys are charging you for a die, even if, even if they already own it, because now you, you know, you're paying for the rights to it essentially.

Right.

Yes. Things like that, that are just those prohibitive $2,500, $5,000 types of costs upfront. That's like, shoot, I didn't even think about this as a brand owner. So if we can kind of help navigate through some of that and extend the courtesy of not making them pay for a die that I already own. Why wouldn't I?

You know?

And so that's, that's what we're doing.

So, A, I want to be abundantly clear, lest anyone from GPI or WestRock be listening and think we're putting words in their mouth, right?

Right.

When we, when we say startup, we mean people who, with all due respect and credit to the effort being involved, don't know what the fuck they're doing, right? And having, having spoken to the GPIs and the WestRocks of the world before, and occasionally still now from time to time, like, usually like, we'll help, but you got to be ready to play. Like, you got to come correct. You got to know what you need because like, we don't have time to take you by the hand and walk you through it. That's what we mean. A, B. So Lou, my question to you is the flip side of that, which is, as you know, you know, were we not in public, I wouldn't need to ask this question, but I will because I'll be interested in your answer. So, you know, when the folks that I work with and sometimes Sam works with who are that person who are, you know, trying as hard as they can, but who don't know what the fuck they're doing and they need someone to take them by the hand and walk them through all the options and explain why one might be better or one might be worse and help them weigh the pros and cons. Like, I make an introduction to you to a brand owner like that. How does the conversation with Robots One start from there and proceed forward?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and thanks for cleaning up my PR mess that I'm probably leaving behind.

You're good.

Um, yeah, I mean, as far as like that introduction goes and, and just getting an understanding first of like, what are we talking about here from, I like to really understand what the brand's End goal is like, of course it's sell a whole lot of product, uh, you know, of course. But like, how are you coming to market with it? Are you, are you targeting D2C first? Do you know what D2C is? Are you targeting retail? Do you have some retail positioning or relationships or some ins?

Mm-hmm.

If you're in the alcohol space, you know, now we're talking 3-tier system, things like that. And there's, Additional layers of complexity. Do you understand what the TTB requirements are for package sizes, things like that? You know, inevitably we have so many conversations with brands are like, okay, well, I want to do an RTD with vodka and, you know, whatever. Cool. When I want to go into a 16-ounce can, you know, up until recently, you know, and all of these kinds of things that are, that are just constantly changing.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, my goal kind of with Robots One and just like working in this industry is to be as educated and up to date with what the industry, both non-alc and alc and hemp, THC, we can talk about that and all of these regulated, um, products and markets and just be able to kind of help just navigate the bigger conversation first, because then that's gonna really flow into like, what does your packaging now look like?

Mm-hmm.

And so being able to lead is more, you know, I guess I'm an old guy in the industry now, so it's a bit of subject matter expertise that has come with that. And, and it's fun to be able to play in those conversations and just maybe help pull down some roadblocks that, you know, the brand is gonna encounter at some point otherwise.

Sure.

So from a, and I'll ask this and then I'll, I promise I'll let Sam get a word in. Between both, right? So between—

Okay. I'm just having fun listening.

Between Robots One, Circle, and maybe they're 2 different answers. They very well could be because they're different businesses, but in terms of, from your perspective, biggest hurdle, gap, incorrect assumption, whatever title you want to tag to it that you see early stage brand owners go through, like what's the biggest one? What's the number one on that list in your mind?

Throw it up at me one more way.

Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, what's the biggest—

The biggest hurdle or just in general?

Yeah. Like the most prevalent challenge that you see new brand owners face? Because I think everybody's answer to that question is just a little bit different. And I'd be curious to hear what yours is.

I'll answer that after he answers it, that I think of what it is.

I mean, uh, fundamental, maybe misunderstanding of costs, like true costs, I think is—

Bingo.

That's what I was gonna say is the cost that I see from people. I'm like, what's the cost of your can? $2.75. I'm like, what? And what do you want to sell it for? $14.99. I said, you realize you're losing money. Like, what?

Right.

It's like, it's amazing to me that that happens.

Yeah. And I mean, don't get me wrong, like, it's a fun industry. See, you know, in a relatively short amount of time, look at, I mean, I've got Meijer here, you know, and Kroger, but any of your grocery stores, I mean, look at how many aisles now exist in beverage that We were taking up more and more space at retail. And so I think anybody, any new entrant can, can look at that as like their case study and rationalize very quickly, like, I should be doing this, you know, and thinking that they see a number on the shelf and maybe not understanding all of the tiers and all of the people that are gonna just to get you there are gonna take their cut. And so I don't know.

I think they all think they're gonna be the next Olipop and scale it and sell it in like 3 to 5 years and make a billion dollars.

Right, right. And so like when you have those discovery calls early on with, with a brand and, you know, you're trying to kind of gently navigate those waters together where, you know, okay, if I've got a call with somebody, you mentioned an Olipop, like when you're having a call with folks where they kind of already have a pedigree, they've already been through it with another brand, now they're venturing into their own. All right, that's a different conversation. They're the ones that they're educating me a lot of the time.

Sure.

But so many, what, 80% plus of the first initial discovery call conversations are with people that don't come from the industry that have an idea and maybe it's a great idea. A lot of great ideas just Don't always make for great products. And that's the tough part and the scalability and the cash flow and all of that, that it takes to be successful. You know, getting on the shelf is, is one thing. And then what then, you know, and that understanding of marketing the products and sips to lips and all that stuff. It's, it's an endeavor.

It's just interesting to me is I think the biggest realization, realization that a founder has to come to at some point is they all say to us, this is the best tasting liquid, all natural ingredients. And that's why my price is worth goods charged. But then they get to the market and they see everybody's at a certain price point.

Mm-hmm.

And then they have to decide, is it really worth the price worth goods charged? Can I change my ingredients? Can I do something on my can to make myself more competitive? Because the reality is, sure, they might punch through. There are brands that can command a bigger price, but they just didn't get there overnight. At the end of the day. So I think that's the biggest realization I think they have to look at is their cost of goods, as you said, but they also have to determine, okay, what am I putting in that can? And I, I do it in a way where I can be competitive. And these are real life discussions that both Adam and I have daily with folks about what's in that can. I'm not trying to change the dream because I think part of the reason a person buys a brand is because of the message in which the founder brings.

Right. 100%.

But cost of what goes in that can, you know, and what you put on that can, I think has to be a real discussion when you go to market.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, give an example and I'm not gonna name any more names now. I'm gonna try to avoid doing that. But I've had some great products that like try and put as much wind behind those sails as you can, even just as an enthusiast.

Yeah.

And just timing and market tolerance and things like that, the occasion, all of that where it, you can have liquid gold, but you know, if the market isn't ready for that liquid gold or the market's doing something entirely different, like You know, you look at what the current headwinds are. If you're in the alcohol space or you're looking to bring a new alcohol brand and you're seeing all of the headlines of decline, decline, decline, okay, you might have the greatest new RTD ever, but you're facing some real headwinds. And it's just because the segment is, it's cyclical for one, whether it's the craft beer boom in response to a bunch of bad light beer for a lot of years, or it's the— Hard seltzers that were the reaction to the craft beer boom where everybody decided they were going to try to get healthy. And now the growing THC space that whether you smoke it, drink it, chew on a gummy, it's taken market share. Right. And so at the end of the day, the dollars are somewhat finite. And so yeah, I might be willing to spend on a Starbucks and I might be willing to spend on a good craft beer and a good bottle of bourbon. But there's only so many dollars to go around too. And that's where those decisions—

So how does a package make a difference? So you talked about the store aisle being like that. There are a lot of the center store has gone to beverages. I mean, go walk it. There's like 3 aisles of it. It's just crazy. And what they put in there, there's probably a reason they've done it. But so there's a, there's a sea of brands out there, right? And you're in this ocean and I'm walking down the shelf. How does what you do get people to stop in that that center aisle to find a brand? What kind of things do you do to help them?

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's, there is a sea of just a lot of people trying to stand out, right? And whether, you know, I remember early days working with craft beer brands when I was out in California, and you would see some of the brands that would just intentionally try to get their cease and desist letter, you know, just blatant usage of cartoon images or whatever. And it really was just like, we're going to draw attention to ourselves this way and thus it will be okay because people will be talking about us. And so there's that method. But I mean, true sheer, like going into a store and how do people make decisions? I feel like that's changing though too. Reviews, for better or for worse, you know, people like My wife doesn't buy hardly anything without checking a review these days and beverages included. Like if you're going to put your hard-earned dollars towards a $25 4-pack of something, it damn well better be good, you know? And you want, you want to read at least 5 other people saying how great it is before you're going to go ahead and pay that money for something like that.

Yeah.

So yeah, I mean, it's funny. I was like, I was buying a microwave unrelated, but my microwave broke. And I always heard, do not replace the microwave. Just go, I mean, do not repair the microwave, replace the microwave. It's cheaper to replace it. Right. So we get in our car like on a Tuesday and we head down on Tuesday night to Warner Stallion. That's a big appliance retailer here in Minnesota. I'm sure, Adam, you've probably bought some things from Warner Stallion anyway. So we arrive at Warner Stallion.

Okay.

Anyway, so I go to Warner Stallion. I give them my cubic feet, the microwave I want, and I decide I want to get the, Hair dryer and everything else. So I, I settle on the microwave, right? We go back to the salesperson's seat. We sit there and I bring my phone out and I start looking for reviews on that microwave. I also said to him, hey, do you price match? And he looked at me, he said, you're cheating. I said, no, I'm not. This is what every consumer does. I wanna get the best possible price I can get.

Huh.

And I wanna see what it is gonna sell for. You match the price? He says, yes. If you show me the price, I'll match it. So I can imagine in real time for beverages too, if you're walking the aisle, you're looking for reviews, you wanna get the best value for your buck because you know what, let's face it, economics, you know, you gotta like, if I can shave off a couple bucks every week on, you know, buying my 12-pack of whatever I buy, that adds, that's real money over the course of the year. So from a package standpoint, what can you put on a package to actually get that message out, to actually get them to stop and say, hey, I see value Yeah.

Yeah. And that's where, you know, part of it's design, right? You want something that is going to be timely, that, I mean, there's all kinds of theories and I am not, I mean, I'm not a designer. I'll come right ready with that. I work with a lot of great designers, but I can in no way take the credit for what work they do. And no, I don't think AI will ever take my job. fully replace that element, because I think there is just a certain part of the brain that comes up with some of these things and also is cognizant of just cutting through the clutter, right? At the end of the day, I think a lot of what design and packaging has to do is cut through the clutter. You see folks that as things get more busy, the designs that are more minimalist now are the eye-catching, you know, and then You start to see a trend where everybody's starting to go minimalist. And so now it's, it's, you know, some of it's looking at what is your segment doing? Who are you sitting next to on the shelf? And, you know, there's a lot of hard iced teas that look very similar. Why? Because, you know, there was one or two brands that came out with that look and they sold like hotcakes. And so it becomes a me-too design kind of initiative.

I want to get to—

I don't love that.

Sure. I want to interrupt real quick. So Mason's had a question here. He says costs are only going up. COGS have risen on everything. So does it mean we are going to see less premium products? He also said no phone here. Cell phone jammers are all the rage. No signal in the stores. No price checking. That's funny. I hadn't heard that.

Um, and they wash out your signal purposely, probably so you can't price check.

They probably do. So his question was, are we going to see less premium products? And to that, I'll add maybe just a comment. Like, again, back in the days at Best Buy, right before I left, they had moved to those digital price tags. I don't know if you guys have seen, but like even the grocery store has them now. The difference though was we would have at Best Buy, like if you go in one now, if you go to the appliance section at a Best Buy and have the digital price tags under the cost, they will have like a 4 out of 5 stars or 3 out of 5. Like, They will have an updated review. So I guess the question to add to Mason's is, are we gonna see less premium products and/or do we think we'll start to see in like the beverage and food section, a review on product on like digital tags in the store?

Interesting. Those digital tags and yeah, dynamic pricing, that, that's a whole other conversation. We'll, we'll save that one.

Well, I think they change it based on time of day and occasion, don't they? Or, hey, Sam just entered the store, raise your prices cuz he's not looking. Sure.

But I mean, he'll pay extra for anything.

Does that, uh, because I've been hearing, you know, whether it's like stuff that BevNet puts out or Expo or any of the newsletters, like people are looking for nostalgia and they're looking for what feels like, whether it's costed this way or not, a premium experience. Like, is there, whether it's from a packaging perspective or an end shelf price perspective, like Are you guys seeing that people are still being drawn to something that feels premium, or is it the value play?

I mean, there's, there's arguments for both, right? And we really play in the middle market space, both Circle, Robots One. We're, we're working with brands that are really kind of either targeting to get into the middle market, more of a startup, or firmly kind of in that middle market where, you know, when I say that to qualify that, they're, they're not the Coca-Colas, they're not the Pepsicolas, the, Maybe they have some aspirational value to get to that point, but oftentimes it seems like so many entrants in the beverage space are looking to be acquired by those types of— if that's the end goal is to be a competitor to them, it's really, okay, hopefully I'm the next Poppi that gets acquired by Pepsi, right?

Mm-hmm.

But from a premium standpoint, I don't think it's going anywhere. I think We like what we like and we as consumers seem to be more than willing to buy and pay for what we like. But I mean, yeah, there's sacrifices that are made. There's also this whole K-shaped economy. You know, it's fascinating to see how many luxury products are still flourishing because there's enough people.

What blows my mind, I did a post about this. Adam didn't like it, by the way. He never likes my posts.

I don't see him as often. Jackass.

I know, they must be like blocking us or something. You gotta go see, you gotta go visit me. I have to go visit you too. They don't like bring you up on my, my feed for some reason. I have to do the same thing. But anyway, I did a post about water. So I was in a Whole Foods or it was a, a Lunds, and on the shelf I took some pictures of water. It had like, um, the Lunds brand, then it had the, um, Pepsi brand, you know, they had the, uh, it had the Coca-Cola brand and then it had like Avion or whatever. And there were like 5 different price points as you kind of scaled up. The Lund's brand was like, you know, 50 cents. And by the time I went to the 4th brand on the right, it was like $4. Exact same ounces, everything else. It was just the name and it was water. I wanted to pay $4 because it was Smartwater. It was Evian. It was like a badge that they're running around. It's like, well, this is from the Swiss Alps. I'm like, hey man, I'm sorry, but now all the water people are gonna be mad at me. I'm about to say this, but isn't water just water? Maybe it's not, but you know, at the end of the day, maybe I got the ionic. special, like, you know, juice in there and it's gonna make me smarter. Smartwater, right? But people, I think they buy things for a badge. Like, I, I literally have this water here. You know why? Because it's a badge to me. I proud, I love this, everything it represents, the founder behind it and what he talks about. I love his water because of who he is and what this brand represents. So I got, I, I tote this around to share that this is Freebird. I'm, I'm free as a bird.

100%. I mean, why do people wear Nikes? Why do they, you know, any of those buying decisions are made because they feel that this somehow represents part of who their persona is, including what we consume.

Do they talk to you about that when you're doing like design and stuff like that and bringing the message out? Do you guys get into the ideate about this stuff?

Some, I mean, at least like, what are we trying to convey for sure? Like, Are we, you know, work with a lot of functional brands. And so function is a buzzword in, you know, beverage especially that cover a whole lot of ground as far as what, what's going into the beverage. At the end of the day, I don't know if you follow, uh, I bet you guys do, Mark Gallo, uh, Co-Pack guy out, out in California. Super, super just, uh, in tune with the beverage trends in the market. And I love his posts. And he had one the other day. I think it was just yesterday even. It was talking about like beverages that, you know, are targeting not just the time of day anymore. It's not just, okay, I need my morning caffeine pickup. I need my post-workout afternoon, you know, whatever. And it's like, but now it's, it's not just that I need my chamomile tea to help put me to bed or whatever. It's It's what is your state of mind and what are you consuming to kind of enhance whatever that is, the flow state, the go state, the recovery state.

Yeah. You're talking about occasion-based marketing. People consume brands based on the occasion. Now Coca-Cola talked about it 20 years ago when I was there, it was basically like, hey, family night, you know, merchandise Coca-Cola next to the, you know, rotisserie chickens in the deli section. So if you can like, hey, I'm working, you know, pre-workout, post-workout, during workout. Hey, it's the evening. I don't want to drink, but I want to be part of the crowd. I'm mindful drinking. I mean, I think all those messages is, I think, where people win. But how do you convey those messages? If I'm down the shopping aisle again to the center store, am I capturing them in social media before? Probably. Am I hitting them somewhere else before I get to the store? Maybe that's the question.

Yeah, that's, and that's, you see a lot of that. I'm fascinated. My Instagram feed has become a very good lead gen tool for me because it just seems like inevitably I'm getting hit with 3 or 4 new brands every time I log in that I wasn't aware of that have, you know, brought something to market or bringing something to market even. It's like, sure. So we're, we're constantly inundated with those kinds of hits and You know, and yeah, who are they, who are they trying to draw in? And, and so you have some brands. I've got a, a friend that owns a golf course RTD brand, and it's really, it, it's just marketed to folks that are playing golf and want to have a transfusion or, you know, some other line of—

That's not these guys. Is it, is it these guys?

It's not actually. It's not. That's, uh, that, that's another one out there then. Yeah.

We talk, we've talked to them. I'm nothing, I haven't done anything with them, but that was interesting golf course brand.

But, but yeah, I mean, so, so now a lot of times going back to what you're saying with, you know, the can that you held up with the Freebird, it's finding community in the brands that we are embracing is a big part of it. And I think some of these brand owners will even start out maybe a little more niche than what I would think at first would make sense, but it's like, okay, well, build your community first and then expand from there. And, and, you know, there've been enough brands that have gone and started that way now where I feel like that's what the craft beer market did really well, was they, they really focused on the community first.

Yeah. So many brands try to go play in the oceans, talk about every week, but there's rivers and streams you can play in and build a very successful brand. Right. And, uh, we've seen, we always talk about going, um, an inch wide and a mile deep for a brand. But I think before you ever arrive in the store, you certainly have to have that design of the can. You gotta get your messaging right. And the whole bit. Can I pivot a little bit on this? Because this is a really, I'm really interested in this. I believe this is your world and Adam set me straight as well as Lou. But can we talk about this? Sorry, I don't think we broke it down though. The cost of this can, can we just like, like, what is like the true, like, okay, this is a can. Like, what is the true cost of the can? Soup to nuts. I got, I got the, I got a sleeve or I got a digital print.

Right.

I got the, The, what do you ever call this? The top.

And yeah, so basically this, there's this, this just comes into 3 pieces, right?

You got the top and the can, or is it 2-piece, or there's a sleeve, a can, and the top. Is it 3 pieces basically?

If you're putting a sleeve on it, yeah. Yeah. And so, all right, so we can break that down. Uh, if you're buying a can direct from the mass manufacturers, right? The, the Ball's, the Crown's, the Ardoz. You're buying a full truckload per artwork. So single SKU, you're, if you're in a 12-ounce sleek can, it's 202,000 cans. You're in a 12-ounce—

You'd have to make a commitment for 202,000 cans.

Of one single artwork.

Yeah.

But, but now you're paying 14 cents delivered-ish, 15 cents, depending on where you're going. And then the end is going to be another 4 to 5 cents depending. You have to buy 351,000 of those on a pallet before, uh, you know, you're gonna get that discount rate direct from, uh, the manufacturer. So a lot of people can't bite off that big of an apple upfront as they're getting started. So why do shrink sleeves exist? Why do craft brewers put pressure-sensitive labels on their cans? Why is there now a digital can printing industry that didn't even exist that is now flourishing? It's really to get those minimum order quantities as far down as, as Makes sense.

So if I came out with a can and just called it water, well, no, nothing else on it. It's just water. Here's the UPC code. Can I save a lot of money?

As long as you buy 200,000 of them.

I'll have to buy 200,000 of them.

Pardon?

I still have to buy 200,000 of them.

I mean, in order to get any kind of customization, and you might as well put as much info as you want at that point, because your price is essentially, it is what it is from the mass manufacturer guys. You can paint to your heart's delight with your design, as long as you can fit it on that 360-degree area. And it'll cost you the same as if you just put water on there and, and your UPC and, you know, your government required ingredient panel, nutrition panel, all that good stuff.

Hmm.

Interesting. What if I did like a co-op with several people and we came up with our own name, but it was different brands for the can purchase? I'm thinking there's a business there.

So, so I think what you're getting at is like, so I have 5 RTD brands, 5 competitors.

Go ahead.

2 things. I think what you're getting at is, well, what if we had multiple brands on the same truck? No. Right. Like it's, it's 200-some-odd thousand cans per like water number 1, 200,000-some-odd cans for water number 2. Like if you want them fully printed now to Lou's point, what we've seen in The craft beer industry, and I love this idea, is breweries will buy a truckload of cans that say like the brewery name and then like their tagline at the top and bottom of the can. And they'll leave the middle blank or just painted like a basic white. And then they'll label around the middle specific to whatever beer they're doing. So you can get creative with things like that and ways to make your dollar go a little bit further, but then you're also adding You know, in, in, in exchange for that flexibility, you're also adding the cost of labels and applying labels. There is a cost addition there, but you can get creative with it.

100%. And, you know, it's funny, the decisions that are made out of necessity, and then those decisions that get made in an attempt to emulate what people are doing out of necessity. And early on, I was, uh, I was running an operation out of Sacramento that all we did was print and apply shrink sleeves to cans. And so we were selling to breweries, we're selling to wineries, we were selling, you know, as this was just as RTDs, alcoholic, uh, you know, cocktail cans were starting to kind of come to the, to the market. And, um, you know, so yeah, the majority of what we were doing were smallish runs. We were doing You know, 10,000, 20,000 cans at a time with shrink sleeves applied to them, maybe even some different SKUs within those kinds of order quantities. And, and then I was approached by one of the largest winery companies and said, hey, we kind of think we'd want to put shrink sleeves on cans. And my first question was, why? You clearly are able to hit the minimum orders and then some with your volumes. And, and it was really an attempt to look more crafty. Was, was the explanation that I was given. And we really want it to be something that, and so, yeah.

Yeah.

And think about it. I think, you know, as big boys get bigger, it's like, hey, this is craft. We actually hand label this product. It's not, it's not digitized. We actually, our people put it on where we make it.

Right. Right. And so I went from doing 10,000, 20,000 cans at a time to 1.5 million cans with shrink sleeves on them. Because like I said, they're one of the big biggest winery outfits in the world and, you know, definitely in California.

Wild.

You know, just a whole lot of different ways to, you know, stand out on the shelf.

Yeah.

What do you think about QR codes?

I'm for them.

Do people use them? Are they— well, like I see on the back of Jay's can on, uh, they have a QR code here.

Yeah. I mean, as far as this is where I kind of nerd out on some of the print stuff. Um, we, it's funny because QR codes have been around for a while now. I think probably at least 2 or 3 decades, at least, at least 3 at this point. But we didn't really see people starting to use them until COVID, right? When, when you were forced to scan a code to order at your restaurant and, uh, you know, cause there weren't menus being handed out. And so it really forced a lot of those paths forward with QR codes. I mean, if I go and order a grocery pickup from my local Kroger, I get to the parking lot and I scan the QR code on the parking little sign so that they know that I'm there. You know, there's, there's all these different use cases for, you know, why QR codes work. On the brand and on the product side, I don't know, for somebody that really wants to go down a path of what makes sense for a, you know, a certain type of beverage, I mean, I definitely see that. I see it. use case for it in like regulated products, right? Where now we're getting into dosages and things like that where, okay, that, that, that's a perfect use case for it. Is somebody really gonna scan your code to see how much mushroom you put into your nootropic something or other? Then, then I question the real estate.

It just took me to the website and it says join the flock. So it asks for my email, right? And it tells a little bit about You know what the value I can get, like the different things I can order online and I can order merch from him, but there's nothing about what's in it.

Yeah. I mean, I, again, from the peanut gallery over here, like I think to Lou's point, right? Like if you're talking about like a THC beverage and it's, hey, I want to, like, I want to have an immediate way to check and make sure that this, like, see my certificate of analysis, see my dosage rates, like all those. 'Cause some people from a safety perspective want that. Cool. Great. Brand I used to work with had QR codes on their can that if you scanned them, it took you to a website and then you held the can in front of it and it would do this really cool, like animation, kind of like the 19 Crimes wine bottles. Like it would do something like that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Super cool. But how many people are like buying a single can? And then I don't mean this to be rude, but playing with it before they drink it or while they're drinking it, they're not, they're, they're on the go. They're in the car, they're at a sporting event, they're having it while they're working in the middle of the afternoon. You know what I mean? So I think from my perspective, it's for now anyway, until the technology continues to improve, and I'm sure it will, but like, if you have to scan something, it's a matter of how many steps there are to it. If you've got to, you know, find the QR code, turn the can, scan it, do the thing, put your email in, like, it's just a lot of steps. And so unless it's truly driving some sort of functional use in terms of the information people are looking for. I don't know that I see utility in it beyond that right now, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.

See, now, now the printer in me though, uh, just loves this idea of having an interaction that occurs from something, you know, even as simple as a QR code. And I, uh, I, one of my many business ideas that I've, you know, spent some time exploring is even Taking like your, your Snapfish type of photo memory book or, or even just like your kid's Little League pictures and, and having some kind of scannable attribute to that where like, hey, you want to send out a whole bunch of like your kid's cards and now they can scan 'em and now you can see like your kid hitting that first base hit or, or whatever it is, you know, having those kinds of use cases like, oh man, that I'm amazed we don't have more of that out there yet.

Interesting. So that's innovation. I was going to ask you about what type of innovations do you see coming in with the, um, with cans? What's, what's like, what's like, Adam showed me a couple of things, but what's the big, what's coming? What are you seeing?

I mean, cans haven't changed a whole lot over the course of like decades. We saw, you know, when Prop 65 came, what was that, 2017? California pushed that forward and the BPA non-intent liners, you know, were a thing. And that was one of the biggest disruptions to like the canning beverage can space in what, 20, 30 years. They were running these epoxy liner cans and everything was pretty well known entity, but it also coincided with like a lot of different product types then going into cans that weren't, you know, you had soda, you had beer, and then you had a lot of people trying to put a lot of different types of things into cans. And where I see the technology continuing, I guess, to evolve that people probably don't pay the slightest attention to, don't know about, really is in response to what's happening to make sure that the contents are safe and that the cans aren't springing leaks. Because, you know, you've got some combinations of things like you want to put a whole bunch of electrolyte into a can. Sounds great. I would love to have a canned, you know, electrolyte beverage after I go play tennis or whatever.

That's right.

And have that be infinitely recyclable, all the attributes of it. Cool. But a whole lot of salt in a product combined with any level of dissolved oxygen at elevation, and you've got some big problems on your hands because those cans are spraying lakes all over.

Interesting. There's, you know, you don't consider things. Let me ask you, we, Adam and I know a guy, he's called Safety Sip. And he's been pushing this thing to put like a, like a, like a piece of plastic on here. Do you see that as something that's viable? He's, I mean, it's his dream, Jared, if you're watching this, but basically he's saying that a lot of people cut their hands on this stuff or their mouths. And he's developed a product that kind of goes on there, but is that something that's viable or is it too expensive to actually accomplish?

I mean, you look at what La Colombe was doing with their lids for a while there, right? Do they still? They don't do that anymore, do they? When they first came out, they had those little plastic caps on their lids. Remember those?

That is part of La Colombe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know if they still do that. That's kind of— I haven't thought about those.

Yeah, I don't think they do now that I think about it. But, but I mean, you know, there's, there's a lot of innovations and I don't know if somebody can find a way to Have the can of tuna fish not rip my hand open when I go and open it, 'cause I've done that a few times. I'd buy, you know, maybe pay an extra 2 cents a can for something like that.

Interesting. All right, Adam, time to revisit that. But he's trying to get it like scoped in or specced into like, basically being mandatory.

Yeah, I think the— yeah, I'll, I'll, right. Like I'll, I'll do, you know, credit and respect to Jared, but I think the difficulty there is just, you know, some of the stuff that we've talked about with Lou, we've talked about before, like it's overcoming the hurdle of minimums, right? Like, yeah, from a consumer perspective or, or, you know, having to line another 2, 5, 10, 20 cents per can. Okay, sure. For an added safety feature, you're probably going to have some people take you up on that, but you work that math backward into the millions of dollars to fit the equipment to make them at scale. That's the part that I think gets a little bit tricky.

I mean, the interesting thing though is like, you know, I'm sorry, just necessity kind of being that mother of— in the THC space, you know, going there and some of the different types of packaging requirements, especially some like state-driven. So it's not across the board, but certain states that, um, you want safety seals, right? You wanna make sure that this is not something that kids can get, get and crack open like a, a regular can.

Mm-hmm.

Those kinds of innovations, it's funny what you end up seeing, like, okay, this is required, this is something we have to do. And so like now HackTech offers a slap-on security cap that can go on, you know, the, they have things like that, that, okay. Um, what now comes out of something like that though? You know, is there some kind of safety mechanism like what you're talking about, Sam, that, you know, something almost seemingly unrelated then drives forward this practicality, a use case?

Yeah, it's interesting. We should have him on to talk to you and do a little, your little circle of, uh, what it is. I think, I think the big people that make this ball said, if you can bring us a client that wants to make the investment, they'll do it. But from a tooling standpoint, if I'm using the right terminology, you have to change probably some things on those machines to actually do it. And that could be expensive proposition, I'm assuming.

And those are the downstream considerations that so often these, like, even going back to the whole Pac-Tek thing that I just mentioned, yes, it serves a purpose. Yes. You, you know, absolutely want to keep products safe and out of kids' hands. Yeah. Is it a complete pain in the backside to manufacture every step of the way? You betcha. And, and so, you know, cost structures, all of that could have to, you know, come full circle with where we started. Okay. Are you factoring that into your equation? If you're saying you want to launch a THC brand, in what states and what are the requirements for things like that?

Well, I mean, again, going back to the retail, you know, not appliances so much, obviously given their size, but I think about like the, every year, every Black Friday and it's Funny to draw the comparison between this and beverage to me, but, you know, earbuds, like expensive earbuds, right? Most of the year, those would be locked up behind a glass case, no different than like Sudafed at the pharmacy, right? But come Black Friday, when, you know, the warehouse ships me 300 more units than I would typically ever carry in store, I don't have enough glass cases and/or people with keys ready to open them. For the number of sales we're going to be making. So what do we do? We put the, the, you've all seen them, the, um, we call them the spider wraps, right? The little locking mechanism strap, you know, makes a god-awful noise if you try and remove it, right? Got a little magnetic key to take them off. So you put that on there, no different than, you know, these pack lids, right? But there's a, there's an ebb and flow to the need for that, right? There's a, well, okay, that we only do that to that extreme during the holiday season. And we know We're still going to get some units stolen and people are going to cut them off elsewhere. So we can't hear the alarm. It is what it is. But the juice is worth the squeeze in terms of getting the product out there, making the sale, so on and so forth. Obviously, a different story when we're talking about the safety of children, you want to try and control that and be even tighter with it. But I'll be curious to see whether it's special lids, additions to those lids, like, where does every state or federally, where do we fall in terms of like, okay, well, does this product sit behind the counter locked up and that's the only place you can go get it? Or is it like a dispensary model and you can only get them there? Or does it just sit on the shelf and it's got a tamper-proof lid and we roll that way? You know what I mean? Like neither one's a perfect solution.

Yeah.

100%.

All right. Well, we're rolling with 5 minutes left. Do you want to ask the major question that we always ask everybody?

Sam, I did most of the talking. I think you should ask it.

All right. This is a very important question, Lou. What is the difference between success and failure?

That is a good question.

I don't know.

I've had a lot of failures. I think success comes through failure. And, you know, I've started 3 companies now and 2 of them have been to date just money pits. One of them is going well and it's the current endeavor, you know, so would this be a successful endeavor without those failures? Probably not. You know, you learn through your failures. So yeah, I'm okay with failing, but failing quick. That's, I'm a big believer in, all right, let's fail quick. Let's learn all the lessons that we can glean from it. And now we put that into the next endeavor. And hopefully that one's a successful one.

I love that. That's, you know, I think we do learn from our failures and if you're open to it, to go back and self-reflect what happened, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and then hopefully you don't make the same mistake going forward. You know, I've been an entrepreneur for 3 years and it's, uh, definitely not for the faint of heart, but definitely, definitely love it. And you definitely, you meet failure every fricking single day, but you also meet success as well, which is great. All right. So to wrap up, we can kind of go around, uh, maybe start with you, Adam, closing thoughts and then Lou, and then I'll just wrap us up and I'll ask you 2 to remain on the line so we make sure that everything downloads.

Yeah. Um, I think, A, Lou, it's just good to see you. I've not been to Indy as frequently as I was, so I've not had a chance to break bread with you guys. Hopefully, uh, shared, uh, Shared friend of ours will be producing again this summer, potentially a couple of them. So hopefully I'll see you guys this summer. But no, I mean, honestly, I'm going to keep it really simple. I think something Lou said early on, which was every brand, every brand I talked to when they think about cost savings wants to look at the liquid. And I'm trying to think of a good way to, like, that's like saying like you want to save money on your mortgage. So, you know, you're going to work on Like buying a more effective microwave. Like, it's just, that's a small percentage of the whole pie. Like, don't overtax that relationship with your liquid when there's packaging and tolling and freight and all these other things involved. Right. So I thought that was a great call out. And then other than that, I need to, I need to pick your brain more, Lou, because you know who The folks I work with are in the size that they're at, and we need to talk more about Robots One in general and not just, you know, much as I love Matt and Aaron and the team, we've, we've been a little Circle heavy and, you know, we gotta share the love. So that's what I'll end on.

Love it.

Appreciate it.

Lou?

Yeah, no, thank you guys. I, I appreciate having me on. Love what you guys are doing. Love, I love the beverage community. You know, that this is, getting into this was, was more of a passion project. Like I said, I wanted to, you know, work more closely adjacent to craft beer was really my kind of gateway into the beverage industry. And, and it is just one of these industries that billions and billions of dollars, but it's a very tight-knit industry at the end of the day. A lot of the same names and faces. And so having opportunities like this just to connect with good people and talk about stuff that we're passionate about, like this is the good stuff. So no, thank you guys.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing the difference between success and failure. Really the epiphany I had is to go back and look at that can, because I thought it was always the liquid was the most cost in that can. And if you start to think about That there's an opportunity maybe to help these founders as they start their journeys, to give them the optimized or give them the best path forward to bring their market to the brand to market. Because by the time they arrive with me, I'm going to start talking about like, who's your competitive set? You know, what's your cost of goods? Which I know Adam and you would do a lot of that work too. But I ask that because if I understand who their competitive set is, that's going to determine what price they're at retail at the end of the day. Then what markets you want to go into, we'll build price structure. And then we'll, we'll start to cost out. Okay. If you're going to build a brand, this is how you're going to activate the brand in the marketplace. But I never thought about, I always thought that it was the liquid in the can that was the most of the cost of the can. And if it's not, that kind of blows my mind to think about that. So lesson learned for me and hopefully other people paid attention. Want to call out Mason. Mike Levinson actually joined us today for a few moments. I don't know if you're still out there, Mike, and obviously always Alicia. Thank you for joining us and anybody else I missed. Thank you for joining us this Saturday. Uh, everybody have a great weekend. Enjoy wherever you're at. Go for a walk, get outside, get away from your computer and do something good for yourself outside of AI and robots. Go move your body and take care of yourself. With that, Adam and, uh, Luis down the line and see you later, everybody. Have a great Saturday.

Thanks, guys.