BevNET's Cocktail Showdown 2 - Mad Lemon

Speaker 1 [00:05] All right. Up next, we have uh Karina Riemer, Shona Patterson, and Maxwell Hawk from Mad Lemon. Come on up.

Shona [00:18] Hello Bethnet, thank you all so much for having us. As everyone else is, we are beyond excited to be here and to introduce to you the best lemonade you've ever had with booze in a can, Mad Lemon.

Karina [00:34] So I am Karina.

Shona [00:35] I'm Shona, and

Karina [00:36] I'm Max, and we are the founders of Mad Lemon. We are creatives, visionaries, and lemonade connoisseurs, longtime friends and family. We grew up in the farmlands of Central Pennsylvania. After college, we all traveled the country and came back together in Denver to live our lemonade dreams.

Speaker 4 [00:58] 6 years ago, we started our first company together. We popped up our homemade tent, our hand painted sign. At our first farmers' market. We excitedly waited for the, uh, the crowds to fill in. It was a huge success. And by the end of the day, we had sold out of our fresh Maple sweetened lemonade. This year, we're feeling that same excitement as we've just rolled out Mad Lemon cocktails to our Denver community. And now we get to share it with sunny California.

Shona [01:37] The world's favorite beverage just got brighter. After years of testing lemonade recipes and getting feedback from those market supporters, we wanted to take that nostalgic classic homemade homemade lemonade and put it in a can to make the perfect cocktail, and we did. We craft our premium beverages with pure lemon juice. Pure maple syrup, natural cane sugar, foolproof spirits, and signature blends of herbs and fruits.

Karina [02:12] Our first flavor is the Mad Classic, and this is our twist on a vodka lemonade coming in at 7%, not too much, not too little. It's full bodied lightly fizzy, and the perfect sip of summer all year round.

Speaker 4 [02:29] Our second flavor builds on the OG classic lemonade with the addition of a refreshing splash of red raspberry and tart key lime. It's also finished with vodka and just enough fizz.

Shona [02:45] We have 4 more formulated flavors ready for staggered release next year. Pictured here the ginger pear palm, uh, whiskey, half tea, half lemonade. We're releasing in just another 2 weeks. We're continuing to develop new fun flavor combinations and blends in our Denver test kitchen. We chose lemonade because it is timeless. It has been and will always be a true classic. Mad Lemon is the wild child of the future of lemonade cocktails with a modern bite. Our cocktails are meant to be savored. They peak the senses and liven your mood.

Karina [03:31] And our vibe goes beyond the beverage. We've really created an experience that you can live and feel through our beautiful art and branding. We get to showcase our free spirit, our wanderlust style, and the madness behind the can.

Speaker 4 [03:47] A key element of our mission, um, is to support and be inspired by, um, the music, culinary and art scenes that surround us, and we're doing that through, uh, numerous collaborations, um, with art and community sponsorships.

Karina [04:06] So our audience is young urbanites at bars and festivals to hip parents enjoying barbecues and outdoor adventuring they're conscious about what about what they indulge in and they really enjoy the experience of something new and fresh. Denver, besides being our home, was the perfect place to launch Mad Lemon. There's incredible um support in our community and it's really a great base for up and coming products and uh local businesses.

Shona [04:42] Retailing and liquor stores, bars, restaurants, and venues. We expect to expand beyond Colorado within the next 6 to 12 months. Our brand ethos is be happy live madly, and we spread joy through lemonade and invite everyone to share in this incredible journey.

Karina [05:00] We really hope you all have enjoyed your first taste of Mad Lemon. Amen.

Speaker 1 [05:09] with. Nicely done. They said we couldn't fit 8 people up here, but, we did. Um, that raspberry lime, just, uh, yeah, I, there's something about that flavor that just sounds incredible.

Karina [05:28] So, did you get to try it? Uh, I did. Um, I did appreciate how you guys are incorporating the maple in there, uh, because that is a unique way of making lemonade with maple syrup. But then I was also curious, like, so if you're using maple syrup. You're also adding cane sugar. What's the reasoning behind both sweeteners? So our big reasoning really comes down to cost. Maple syrup is a quality ingredient, so we did have to kind of cut that a little bit. We also didn't want it to taste overly maple flavored, so the sugar really does give it a nice clean kind of balance there, nice little finish there, right?

Shona [06:01] It does help with the stability and consistency of the beverage as well. We wanted to hold on to that, the roundness that maple brings. We do think it gives more depth to the flavor. Um, but it does help with stability to have the cane sugar. Got it, yeah.

Speaker 1 [06:16] A lemonade-centric brand, a hard lemonade centric brand. What are your thoughts, Sebastian?

Speaker 5 [06:21] So, um, I wrote down for packaging definitely a vibe. That's, that's how I, I put it down. So, um, you're really colorful, really popping out. Um, my question to you is, I mean, lemonades are sweet, right? They have a lot of calories, and now everyone in RTD's is like, oh, heartbreak, white. and all those companies now drill everyone to 100 calories, right? So how did you approach this? Did you take your favorite recipe and thought about how, how, how much can I go down with sugar? Like how was the process and how was your thinking about the sugar content? And by the way, how many calories does one can have?

Karina [06:52] Um, they range a little bit like our half tea, half Palmer is gonna be a little less sweet, less calories. I think there's around 280 to 320, so. We kind of our motto is to have a drink, not a diet. We really wanted to be that full bodied cocktail. We wanted you to have a treat, drink one, drink two, but enjoy it. It's natural. You're also gonna burn it off if you're dancing or active, um. Yeah, so that is, that's where we wanna go with it. We, we don't wanna really follow trends. We kinda wanna be this classic thing that's gonna stay forever and we feel like lemonade is that we also really quickly sorry, we played with some monk fruit and some stevia and for us, for our palates, it's, it almost tastes sweeter than the sugar, so it really is about that flavor for us too.

Speaker 1 [07:38] Thank you. All right, uh, Tiffany, in terms of the, uh. Target consumer that the folks in Mad Lemon outlined. Do you think that's the right folks that they should be looking after? Do you think those are the folks that gonna be buying this product and looking after this brand? I think now that I've heard the presentation as opposed to just looking at the packaging, it is aligned from what I can see. Um, one of the things that I would wonder, you have 3 different channels, what's your channel mix on general percentage that you think you want to go after in your go to market strategy?

Shona [08:12] I think that it does hold up, um, in both on premise and off-premise. It's an excellent brand to take and go on any activity, um, but it does look so good sitting on the bar that it's super fun to have at bars, restaurants, venues, festivals. I think it's super versatile, so we're having a lot of fun with that.

Speaker 1 [08:36] I consider that just just one more quick comment and then I'll be quick um the venues channel is a separate channel in my mind it's a totally different way to go to approach it from a pricing to a reasoning to a packaging, etc. it's very, very different from venues, and I heard you guys say that. This seems dead on for venues and, and going after that. It seems like kind of part of what you guys are doing. So it, it looks like 100% that. So you can do a whole bunch of different stuff than you could do if you were just going after bars and restaurants. Absolutely. Carlton, as an investor, do you want to join the Lemonlution?

Speaker 6 [09:11] Well, it's kind of a loaded question, isn't it, Ray? Uh, um, I guess the, the, the, the, the, the one question I'd ask is, um, it's very smart. I mean people forget that Mike's Hard Lemonade is still a billion-dollar brand. Um, so we get, I, I, I get the, the viability here. Um, really, really high flavor load, you know, high sugar, high acid. Is it sessionable? Uh, when, when you talk to your consumers, can people sit down and drink a couple of these, or are they done after one or two?

Shona [09:37] You know what's super fun is that we through the lemonade stand we were able to sample these and through um some beer uh tasting events we've been able to sample these before we were able to launch 5 weeks ago um and we did have a remarkable reception so people were psyched on them and they wanted more um so I think that you can enjoy several.

Karina [10:00] Yeah, our friends, um, you know, we'll have little tasting parties they'll drink 2 to 3, and that's like a really good balance for people. They're buzzing, they feel good, and I know we're not allowed to say health benefits, but I don't drink a lot. I'll drink occasionally and I do not feel super hungover after these, so I think maybe those fresh wholesome ingredients do help

Speaker 1 [10:19] that. All right, well done. Unfortunately we're out of time but great job. Thank you. Thank you.