BevNET's Cocktail Showdown 2 - Island District

Ray Latif [00:05] Good afternoon. I'm Ray Latif, the editor and producer of Bevnet's Taste Radio podcast and the host of Bevnet's Cocktail Showdown 2 competition. The cocktail Showdown is a pitch competition that showcases the most innovative and disruptive brands in the rapidly emerging category of spirit-based, ready to drink, and ready to pour cocktails. The event features 10 entrepreneurs representing early to mid-stage brands who will each have 5 minutes to present their business plans and products to a panel of expert judges in the audience here watching and watching at home. Following each pitch, the judging panel will provide 4 minutes of immediate and constructive feedback. I hope it's constructive. No negativity. I'm just kidding. Um, after all the brands have presented, the judges will convene, pick a winner, and we will announce that winner live around 5:30 p.m. Pacific time. We'll also have a short interview with the winner after the announcement. The champion will take home an engraved trophy in the grand prize, an advertising package valued at $10,000. Let's introduce our esteemed judges. Starting all the way to the left is Carlton Fowler, who is the co-founder and managing partner of Goat Rodeo Capital, which is a venture capital fund focused on early stage opportunities in the beverage, alcohol, traditional beverage, cannabis, and adjacent technology spaces. Next up is Tiffany Van Damme, who is the vice president of sales for Q Mixers. Tiffany has over 25 years of proven experience in managing businesses and bringing innovative brands to market. She has deep experience and knowledge within the adult beverage industry, working for Diageo and Bacardi brand portfolios and various startups over the years. In her current role at Q Mixer, she's leading double-digit growth, working through and with distributors. Next up is Saeed House, who is the founder of Cocktails by Hawk. Saeed, AKA Hawk, uh, has been in the service industry for 9+ years, working at various places from high volume nightclubs to well-respected craft cocktail bars in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Listed on Food and Wine.com's 20 black mixologists you need on your radar, he's helped curate cocktail menus for multiple restaurants in the LA area. Last but certainly not least is Sebastian Dreher, who's the venture manager for North America for Dollar Ventures, a venture capital firm that seeks to invest in early-stage startups operating in the health, nutrition and lifestyle products, plant-based ingredient innovations, food and beverage, digital commerce and online platforms sectors. He invests in everything. As long as it's good. All right. Let's get to our first contestant for Bavnet's cocktail Showdown 2 competition. It's Kayla O'Connor and James Scully from Island District. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, judges. We're so excited to be here. Born from another morning of a hangover from seltzers. With malt-based liquor, carbonation, water, ingredients that I can't even pronounce, Kayla, a former professional athlete, and myself, a self-aware nerd, set out to do something different. We wanted to change the world. We wanted to do something real with real ingredients, real simple ingredients. What we wanted to do was become the athleisure of the beverage industry. So we were born Island District. Island District is named for a small little section of the sea coast of New Hampshire, which is where we're from. So what is it about Island District that makes us different? What makes us unique? What makes us stand out? We decided that we weren't gonna focus on the 4 to 6 hour drinking experience at the night out. We wanted to focus on the pregame. The night at the bar, the night's sleep, and the morning after. Why treat the hangover when it happens? Why not reinvent what we were doing and put it in a can? We care a lot about what we put into our bodies, and we care even more about what we put into our cans. Thus was born our tagline, Better tomorrows. The reason for this is because we want you to have a great day every day, but one-up it tomorrow.

Speaker 2 [04:30] We're tapping into uncharted waters to create a product that people aren't aware that they're looking for and ultimately need. We consciously and confidently chose to pave our own path and took the risk to innovate to create a premium offering unlike any classic cocktail mixture on the market. We didn't just want to be another canned vodka, soda, margarita, or gin and tonic. Hydration is engaging the younger consumer now more than ever, where they're consciously making the decisions the night of and what, how that will affect them the next morning. We saw the rise in the functional beverage market as an opportunity to create our hybrid craft can cocktail, driven by a mindset of proactive and not reactive. We launched with 2 SKUs for proof of concept, and we're confident that we did just that. The first of our SKU is a vodka coconut-based craft can cocktail. Coconut water contains naturally, naturally occurring electrolytes, potassium, magnesium. Potassium, magnesium are known to help replenish lost nutrients. The second of our launch skews is tequila and aloe water. Aloe water also contains natural occurring electrolytes. It's a detoxifier and also the only plant source of B12 and a vitamin known for energy. Throughout our R&D process, we were very attentive to the small details, and we knew that these small details were the ones that are going to separate us apart. So perfectly dialing in the carbonation level, the balance of sweetness, and the messaging behind our branding. As you can see on the can, there's a contrast between dark and light, and that, that is everything behind but better tomorrow is that there's always light after the night out. Pour over canned cocktails are becoming the way of the world and gone are the days of nasty soda guns and weld spirits. Driven by quality. Innovation and experience, hand selected clean ingredients while pushing the boundaries of existing offerings and telling and proving to the consumer why they're buying our products and how our products make them feel the next day. Moving into 2022, our innovation, we're launching a variety eight pack of coconut-based vodkas, craft cocktails, and we're gonna have a full shelf of five products, two wrapped packs, one of tequila and one of vodka in our variety pack of our 1st 8 pack. Elevating our initial success points from launch, May 1st, we've sold over 20,000 cases of Island District, and we look to take leverage our opportunities into new markets because we believe that we can be a national brand.

Ray Latif [07:10] And because of that, we're now 30 seconds. Cutting it short. So we want you to have the best day today, tomorrow, and make sure you always one up it tomorrow. We're happy to answer questions. Fantastic. I, I can slide over here. Well done. Well done indeed. Um, Sebastian, let's start with you. Um, you know, we heard a lot from Kayla and James about, uh, better for you parts of this product, even though you can't really say better for you, uh, when it comes to alcoholic beverages. Um, how do you think this plays out, uh, in terms of their brand and their trajectory?

Speaker 3 [07:51] So yeah, it's um I mean they use ingredients that are synonym for, for, for health and for function. I mean, the coconut, the aloey, the um honey, right? That is obviously a smart way of showing that you have functional healthy ingredients without calling out a particular anti antioxidant, for example, right? But um I think that's, that's a smart way of going around using those ingredients that customers and consumers know as being healthy, so I, I like that part of it.

Ray Latif [08:19] Saed, did you have a better tomorrow after you drank, uh, some Island District? You know, uh, the guava one,

Speaker 3 [08:25] the

Ray Latif [08:25] voca guava was

Speaker 3 [08:26] very

Ray Latif [08:27] delicious, but the one I kept on going back to was actually the tequila with the honey. I do think that the aloe, tequila, honey combination was actually, uh, surprising for me because I wouldn't have thought of putting those three things together, but, uh, that was the one that I actually kept on going back to and I was able to like get through it. So I did appreciate that. I did think it was pretty tasty. Uh, Tiffany, James, and, uh, Kayla talked about, uh, why canned cocktails could be the future of bars and that people are tired of, uh, handguns and things like that. Not handguns. It's not a handgun. What do we call those things? Soda gun. Soda gun, yeah. Well, I'm, I'm sure people are tired of handguns too, but, uh, what do you think of that statement? Do you think they're on the right track in terms of maybe canned cocktails, can, uh, place a more or have a more, uh, significant spot at bars?

Speaker 4 [09:17] Uh, I think they do. I think that's a, a surprising trend for people who've thought about RTDs, um, for the last, you know, 20 years as I have. Um, so I'm surprised by that, um, that it is starting to RTDs are finding their way into the on-premise. Um, one of the questions I do have. And just want to understand is your channel strategy and, and which channels that you're interested in, uh, going and which one you're going to go in first. Um, as I got your package, I, I wasn't quite sure, uh, which channel was your prominent channel or your go out channel.

Speaker 2 [09:54] So we really want to go deep before we go wide. So in our hometown market, we saw a surprising success on our on-premise partners. And for us being a small brand right now, um, we see our on-premise locations is basically, as our stadiums. So for example, a beach bar that sold over 4000 cases in on-premise in 3 months for us, we invested and built a VIP private area. Um, so we branded it all Island District and have a very exclusive area where they can come and rent out the space for the. And we provide product within the package. So we have had some proof of concepts that have really changed our initial thought process of how we would succeed. Um, so we, as we expand every market that we go into, we want to go in, in, in deep before we go wide so we don't saturate ourselves, but also we're trying to be a full-blown experience that there's more behind just the product, and that's a tagline of Better Tomorrow's and we're trying to create a lifestyle aspect of a following in a community and we never want to be somewhere where we can't can't put our legs on the ground backing that.

Ray Latif [10:52] And another thing that we did was with our on-premise partners, we worked with them to create cocktail menus that included our drink. So one of the things we did was a tiki bowl, where it was one vodka, one tequila tipped upside down with fruit juices and more tequila and more vodka. Um, so that was one thing we did. Carlson, you get the last word as an investor. What do you think of the presentation?

Speaker 5 [11:14] I loved it and, and toy's point, I love the liquid as well, but I, I heard two messages from you guys on the better tomorrows, um, you feel better in the morning and then also as a as a function of your ingredients, but also a great taste as a function of the ingredients. If you had to lead with one, what are you?

Ray Latif [11:30] We're focused on the juice first, always. Um, if it doesn't taste good, people aren't going to keep coming back. And so our number one thing is, is the juice has to be good and it has to be right. And we built a whole brand around the juice, um, because that's where we want it to be. Great stuff. We're out of time, but great presentation. Thank you very much.