Beverage School Registration & Networking

Beverage School: Basic Beverage Design

• Kelly Criswell

  , Principal, Mudge

• Kelly Criswell, Principal, Mudge

Beverage School: Inside Co-Packing

• Mitch Barnard

  , CEO, Wildpack Beverages

  

  Mitch Barnard

  CEO, Wildpack Beverages

  Mitch Barnard is the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Wildpack Beverage. He founded Wildpack in 2018 and has occupied various positions leading its operations, sales, mergers and acquisitions and growth departments. In addition to Wildpack, he has founded multiple other companies and joined an early-stage beverage brand. Earlier in his career, Mitch practiced international tax at several leading firms. Now, he is committed to expanding Wildpack Beverage and being an integral part of his customer’s growth stories. Mitch received his Juris Doctor from the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law, graduating with first class and Dean’s list honours.

• Mitch Barnard, CEO, Wildpack Beverages

Beverage School: Sales Strategy

• Bill Sipper

  , Managing Partner, Cascadia Managing Brands, LLC

  

  Bill Sipper

  Managing Partner, Cascadia Managing Brands, LLC

  BILL SIPPER is a food and beverage industry leader who has guided numerous brands from concept to commercialization to category leadership. He held senior and C Level positions at leading brands including Evian, Nantucket Nectars, Fresh Samantha/Odwalla, Naked Juice and Clearly Canadian. Bill’s strategic expertise and executional focus helped those brands succeed and can help your brand succeed, too.? Consulting closely with client leaders as they consider a sale or acquisition, Bill has supported several brands through the process. (Naked Juice was sold to Pepsico, Fresh Samantha/Odwalla was sold to Coca Cola, and Nantucket Nectars was sold to Ocean Spray). Bill has significant international experience, and works with clients in Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East. He draws on this expertise to help international brands establish presence in the US and to help US brands expand internationally.? Bill is active in philanthropic causes: He served as president of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s clean water charity, Tear of the Clouds; was an advisor to The Walden Woods Project; and served on the Board of Directors of the National Osteoporosis Foundation.? Bill has been featured on Food Network’s “Unwrapped” and in the PBS documentary “The Water Wars.” He has been a featured speaker at Columbia University School of Business, The Bottled Water Congress (Torino, Italy), the Pan Arab Congress on Osteoporosis (Tunisia), and at virtually every major US food and beverage show, including Natural Products Expo, BevNet, Nosh Live and more. His articles have appeared in leading trade publications, and he is frequently quoted in media including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and the New York Times.

• Bill Sipper, Managing Partner, Cascadia Managing Brands, LLC

Beverage School: Funding Stages for Beverage Entrepreneurs

• Keith Kohler

  , Founder, The K2 Group LLC

  

  Keith Kohler

  Founder, The K2 Group LLC

  Keith Kohler is the Founder of The K2 Group LLC, a finance consultancy.  Keith has worked with and impacted hundreds of companies with financing and financing education.  Over the past few years, he has originated and closed over $100 million in financing, with a particular focus on the natural products and food and beverage industries.  He supports founders via several other roles, including as a mentor of the Nutrition Capital Network, a Year 5 Mastermind Advisor for Babson College’s Women’s Innovating Now Growth Lab, a Wharton Venture Lab Expert in Residence and Mentor, and as the Finance instructor for The Idea Center at Miami-Dade College.  Keith has also led financing webinars for the Specialty Food Association, Hirshberg Entrepreneurship Institute, and has also been the featured expert on all aspects of debt financing for 15 years for the Natural Products Consulting’s “Financing Your Consumer Products Company” in-person seminars.    Under his newly created Financing Man brand, Keith recently launched a new retreat and mastermind-based business to help founders get comfortable with and master the finance function in their business called Making the Numbers Work for You (www.makingthenumbersworkforyou.com).  Keith also provides a complimentary review of a company's financials to give founders a 2-3 year financing strategy including debt, equity, and alternative financing options (yourfinancingreview.com).

• Keith Kohler, Founder, The K2 Group LLC

Beverage School: What Investors Look At

• Jeremy Halpern

  , Partner; Co-Chair Food and Beverage Group, Nutter

  

  Jeremy Halpern

  Partner; Co-Chair Food and Beverage Group, Nutter

  Jeremy Halpern is a partner and co-chairs and serves as the Director of Business Development for Nutter’s Emerging Companies Group. Jeremy’s practice focuses on emerging companies, private equity, venture capital and angel financing transactions, mergers and acquisitions, executive and team compensation matters, and general start-up support. Serving as the firm’s entrepreneur-in-residence, Jeremy often works on strategy and corporate development matters with companies, investors, and executives in technology, life sciences and the food and beverage industry. Jeremy is an active angel investor and is a member of the board of The Capital Network, a Boston based non-profit serving entrepreneurs seeking high growth capital. Jeremy serves on the Advisory Board and the Executive Education Committee of the MBI Health Program and on the Advisory Board of Pintley, a MassChallenge 2011 finalist company providing marketing solutions to the craft brewers and bars. He continues to serve as a mentor at MassChallenge and LearnLaunch, an expert advisor at the Innovation Hub at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and as a speaker, reviewer, judge or mentor for MIT HackingMedicine, HackingPediatrics, the Mass Tech Transfer Center, the Mass Life Science Center, M2D2, BranchFood and Startup Institute. Previously Jeremy served on the Board and Investment Committee of MassVentures, an early stage venture capital fund funding technology companies in Massachusetts. Jeremy taught entrepreneurial leadership at Tufts University for nine years and cofounded a company in the mobile technology synchronization space. Jeremy received his B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles.

• Jeremy Halpern, Partner; Co-Chair Food and Beverage Group, Nutter

Beverage School: An Entrepreneur's Playbook

• Henry Kasindorf

  , Co-Founder, Remedy Organics

• Henry Kasindorf, Co-Founder, Remedy Organics

Beverage School Expert Tables

RTD Spirits Entrepreneurial Track

Ambition and Proof: Sourcing, Supplying, Deploying Investment for Spirits Brands

• Nick Papanicolaou

  , CEO, No Sleep Beverage

  

  Nick Papanicolaou

  CEO, No Sleep Beverage

  Nick Papanicolaou is a seasoned finance, operations & startup professional with 20+ years of experience in managing deals, valuing companies, forecasting trends, launching ventures (3 so far), improving efficiencies and scaling businesses. He currently sits on several startup Boards as well as the Investment Committee and LP Advisory Committee for an undisclosed venture capital fund. He also sat on Pernod Ricard’s Audit Committee and reporting into the CFO of Pernod Ricard North America. At Pernod Ricard, Nick oversaw Castle Brands, a $40M+ sales business. Prior to that, he ran the Incubate Brands, a $20M business within Pernod Ricard’s New Brand Ventures division. Nick has helped to deploy over $700M in capital into small and emerging brands. These investments now account for over 20% of Pernod Ricard USA’s top line growth in less than 5 years. Additionally, he launched New Brand Ventures in 2016, a hybrid internal incubator and corporate venture capital group responsible for most of the emerging brands at Pernod Ricard. Prior to Pernod Ricard, he launched two companies (one in the alcohol beverage space) and spent 6 years in investment banking mostly raising capital in the equity markets. Nick is a graduate of Columbia Business School where he received his MBA in Value Investing and Entrepreneurship. He is also a graduate of Harvard College.

• Carin Luna-Ostaseski

  , Founder, SIA Scotch Whisky

  

  Carin Luna-Ostaseski

  Founder, SIA Scotch Whisky

  In a terrific twist of fate, 1st generation Cuban American Carin Luna-Ostaseski set out to create a Scotch Whisky brand that would change the way people think about the category. She decided to seek these new horizons in the form of a grand tour of her local whisky purveyor – 300 bottles of whiskies and countless tasting events later, she became a dedicated student of this sublime spirit. Carin eventually left her 17-year career as a Creative Director and successfully funded SIA Scotch Whisky on kickstarter.com, pursuing her dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur and one of the first Hispanic people in history to create a Scotch Whisky company.

• Aimy Steadman

  , Co-Founder & COO, Beatbox Beverages

  

  Aimy Steadman

  Co-Founder & COO, Beatbox Beverages

  Aimy Steadman is a Co-Founder and COO at Future/Proof, creators of BeatBox Beverages - the World's Tastiest Portable Party Punch™ one of the best-selling US RTD cocktails. Future/Proof, recently awarded one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 5000 Fast-Growing Privately Owned Companies in America, is a disruptor in the beverage alcohol market that provides innovative solutions that drive incremental profit in high-growth categories. ??Aimy Steadman serves on the following nonprofit boards: Naturally Austin, Naturally Network, and Entrepreneurs Organization: Austin.  Steadman has also received a handful of notable national as well as global accolades, most recently Austin Chamber’s A-List 2020 in addition to being featured in a recent book entitled The Immigrant Hustle.

• Carlton Fowler

  , Managing Partner, Goat Rodeo Capital

  

  Carlton Fowler

  Managing Partner, Goat Rodeo Capital

  Carlton is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Political Science and University of Michigan with an MBA in Strategy and Marketing. Hailing from the Sierra Nevadas, you can often find him enjoying the natural splendor of Northern California. Two things make him happiest: eating/drinking well with friends & family and tilting against the windmill that is the three tiered beverage alcohol system (we all concede he probably needs some healthier hobbies...).

• Nick Papanicolaou, CEO, No Sleep Beverage
• Carin Luna-Ostaseski, Founder, SIA Scotch Whisky
• Aimy Steadman, Co-Founder & COO, Beatbox Beverages
• Carlton Fowler, Managing Partner, Goat Rodeo Capital

BevNET Cocktail Showdown 3

BevNET Live Welcome Reception