BevNET's Cocktail Showdown 2 - Plant

Speaker 1 [00:04] All right, uh, up next. Uh, for Bevnet's cocktail showdown 2 competition is Simone Juan from Plant Botanical. Come on up. Thank you.

Speaker 2 [00:20] Hi everyone, thank you Bevnet and judges. Um, this is a real, uh, pleasure and thank you for this opportunity. Um, so before I, oh, where's the thing here it is. So before I go into what Plant Botanical is, I kind of wanted to go to the why because why, you know, if you don't have a good why, those, you know, 100 days of not taking a break and pushing your product can be hard, but I do have a why and it started in the year of 9/11. Um, I was cooking in my kitchen and a pressure cooker exploded on me. And it was a crazy event. I was at 3rd degree burns and I was in ICU for a month and I was on opioids and antidepressants and I was living next to the World Trade Center, so it was quite a year. So after the year of being on opioids and all of these prescribed medicines and these doctors took great care of me, I thought I needed a different method of health care and so I went and um use alternative medicine and I was shocked at how these botanicals could really help you. So I studied botanical medicine, herbology, acupuncture. I did a 4 year master's degree and then I have been practicing for almost 20 years before I started this, I was actually working at a cancer hospital, um. Then how did I get into booze, you ask? Well, actually I was making a remedy and I have one here, um, for stress, anxiety, sleeplessness, and pain. And while I was in another country I was given a gift and they were spirits and it was amazing. I should be talking to you guys actually um sorry. I'm talking to the other people that I've already bonded with sorry, um, so I was, um, I was in, you know, they gave me this gift as a spirit. I said, oh my God, what's in this? And they were like, oh, goji berries, ginseng, and I'm like, oh my God, why would you do that? You know, they said, because you don't feel bad the next day and I just thought, oh my God, all those hangovers could have been prevented. Are you kidding me? So I said, I'm gonna go back home, make this, give it to my friends, give it to myself really I like to drink. And um and that's what I did. So basically, could you make a spirit better like people in other countries do and. Yes, you can. So we launched plant botanicals, cocktails with benefits. We have functional botanicals, powerful adaptogens, and in our RTDs we use fruit puree. We wanted to make something that people could feel good about choosing, not only for their body but also for their environment. So the plant-based benefits um consist of four herbs in every product because we want to have some detoxification, we want to have some immunity, we want to have some stamina, you know, we have goji berries, ginseng, dandelion root, and um. Oh my God. Uh. Angelica, anyway, you, that's right there, sorry, I've said these four herbs 2 million times, so these plant-based benefits are really what I stand for in spirits. The other thing we're really passionate about is sustainability. We don't wrap our cans. We don't use any plastic. We only use not, um, BPA free lined cans. Our cartons are recyclable, and our sorghum vodka is our vodka is made from 100% sorghum. Three reasons why sorghum is better than corn, wheat, rye, or, you know. You know, some of the other ingredients that most alcohol is made from one, there's, uh, no increase in global warming. So when you use other ingredients you have to burn like the rest of a stalk of a corn, and that smoke goes into the air, gets caught, increases global warming. Um, the sorghum, you use the whole plant, so you, you don't have to burn anything, so that's awesome. And then 2, there's less pesticides when you have all those extra ingredients that are being burned. Hello, bugs love them, so you know, that's great. It's food for them, but we don't want bugs. So then there's more pesticides, and we don't need more pesticides. Then the third thing is water conservation. It's heat resistant, drought resistant. Um, so it takes half as much water to use in corn, wheat, or rye. There's only 9 million bushels of sorghum grown a year, and there's 60 billion bushels of corn grown and used a year. So just choosing sustainable ingredients was a large part of this, um, passion. So we're just trying to be the wellness choice for this category. We want people to feel good about it. We pretty much try to check all the boxes. We're non-GMO. All of our ingredients are non-GMO, vegan, gluten-free. Um, we are kosher even. We are only one carb, one sugar for people who are concerned about, you know, calories, so we're keto friendly, and we just, you know, try to make sure that we were checking all the boxes for people because I am a healthcare provider, so I wanted to provide something that people could feel good about drinking. So, we just, uh, why are we here, right? We're here about flavor, right? We really care about flavor. Oh my God. Oh crap, yikes.

Speaker 1 [05:21] Nonetheless, well done. Yeah, time flies, but, uh, really good job. Yeah, when you're having fun up here, exactly, exactly, um, cocktails with benefits, uh, what do you think of that proposition, uh, Sebastian?

Speaker 3 [05:39] Well, it's, it's very interesting, obviously, um, very on trend. I remember 5 years ago when, you know, when the total idea of having less calorie cocktails, you know, was, was really controversial and that obviously before hard seltzer came out. That's interesting. My question to you is, how do you make sure because the dosage for herbs is so important and obviously you have that background, um, um, how do you think about the dosage you can put in there versus the taste. Profile like like what's your philosophy on that?

Speaker 2 [06:04] I mean, I started, you know, distilling and using oh yeah we worked for like a year on doing that so it's um it's about balancing it. It doesn't taste botanical. It doesn't taste like herbs. No one wants to drink an herbal drink, you know, like when they're out partying so it's about balance and making sure like our vodka we use lemon peel. We use fresh fruit puree, so a lot of those fresh, high flavor ingredients help mask the botanicals.

Speaker 3 [06:31] So, but just to be sure, so you have the botanicals in the distilled spirit, or do you add them to the RTD?

Speaker 2 [06:37] It's vapor infused in the spirit.

Speaker 3 [06:39] OK, that's good. OK, that's, that's good to know.

Speaker 1 [06:41] Thank you. Sure, thanks. Saeed. In your experience, are consumers looking for adaptogens, botanicals, things like that in their cocktails?

Speaker 4 [06:48] Um, yes, um, the one I feel like for me when I, when I was drinking all these, uh, I was reminded of pretty much like Lacroix. It's like you had like coming with like the, the flavor profile and saying that you have passion fruit and pear, even though I didn't get any like, I barely got any of it. It's like the hint. I just wanted more of it. The one that I. the blood orange lime juice or lime that that kind of reminded me of just drinking like a seltzer with some lime like just hard seltzer with a squirt of lime. So I was like, oh this one I could get through the pineapple and lemonade, I was like I want more pineapple. I wanted more fruit and I strawberry and the other ones.

Speaker 2 [07:29] I hear you, for sure. I mean we're Trying to keep it all friendly for um we really sell at grocery stores so it's those people who want to drink a lot. We're not really like an intense, you know, one cocktail per package so um we kept it light because I'm I like to be keto. Definitely

Speaker 4 [07:46] I definitely could go back for like to like go back for another one. Yeah,

Speaker 2 [07:48] you're gonna sell more. I mean you're gonna drink more.

Speaker 1 [07:52] Well, speaking of selling more, um, it seems like Plant Botanical is in line with, uh, the Natural Channel, Tiffany, um, and, uh, I'm wondering, do you see it going beyond Whole Foods into places like Bevmo, Walmart, Total Wine, etc.

Speaker 5 [08:05] Absolutely. um, I think the packaging is fantastic. I think the can is great. I think the, the exterior is great. I think the concept is, like he said, it's, it's on trend. All, all, all wonderful. I think the only challenge would be, um, assortment, having an assorted pack. You're asking everybody to like this, like 4 different types of flavors, um, and then it's 8. So, that would be an adjustment. It's, that's super easy to change. That's not a, that's not a barrier or something to, to adjust, but just consider if you wanted to consider that, that type of thing for commercial viability. Um, it is one of the things we found is, uh, challenging for people is number of products and having variety and assortment packs.

Speaker 2 [08:48] We actually have 4 packs. Cool, 4 packs and we're actually at Target's 7, yeah, because it is hard to go into a variety pack without knowing, like a, you know, it, it's just easier to pay less in the beginning, I think, and try something smaller, but we are in, um, I'm so glad you said that that really makes me feel good, um, we actually are in 7 states and we're in, um, Target, Kroger, Safeway, so, um, we are seeing that the buyers like this kind of concept. It's got great shelf appeal. Thank you,

Speaker 1 [09:18] Carlton. You get the last word on Plant botanical.

Speaker 6 [09:20] Yeah, uh, I'm curious about, um, how your, your breakdown between the spirit versus the RTDs is going as, as you're expanding out in the seven states and like building on that, you, you know, Total Wine comes calling and says, I, I'll take one, either your RTD or your spirit, like what, what are you choosing?

Speaker 2 [09:36] Um, we haven't had, I don't know. That's a good question. Um, really the RTDs is where the growth is at, but I really support the vodka bottle to differentiate us and those winter months when seltzers go down. And um the vodka and we're making a tequila too and tequila seltzers. The bottles will help support the sales during those off months because they do go down 70% in the winter. Are, are you, are you

Speaker 6 [10:01] seeing the consumer switch over to the spirit, um, and, you know, like basket level data? You're able to prove that out? This is sorry,

Speaker 2 [10:08] the vodka is launching this month, so I haven't seen it yet. Um, we do Target did buy the spirit as well, so we shall see.

Speaker 1 [10:15] All right, well done, Simone. Thank you so much.