BevNET Live L.A. 2025 - AGENDA
MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2025
7:30 AM - 9:00 AM Registration Opens; Breakfast Powered By Be LOVE -- Location: Promenade Ballroom - Lobby Level
Breakfast, coffee and beverages are served from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM PT and are included with registration. Registration and badge pick up opens for the day at 7:30 AM PT. 
8:00 AM - 9:30 AM New Beverage Showdown Semifinals -- Location: California Ballroom - Lobby Level
The New Beverage Showdown serves as a platform for beverage entrepreneurs to gain exposure, receive feedback, and secure partnerships or investments. Watch the semi-finalists pitch and vote for your favorite to help them make it into the finals!
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Sponsored Workshop: Unapologetically Sweet, Surprisingly Strong and Delightfully Weird – Ingredion Beverage Innovation -- Location: Malibu - Lower Level
Get ready to challenge your taste buds and your assumptions. In this unapologetically bold workshop, we’ll unpack the sweet controversy around stevia (spoiler: your flavor house might be using it already), spotlight the power of protein with a sneak peek at our Vitessence® 200D innovation, and dive into the delightfully weird world of hydration textures. Whether you’re a stevia skeptic, a protein pusher, or just here to play—this session is for the beverage rebels ready to shake things up.
with Adams Berzins, Global Sugar Reduction Applications Lead, Ingredion; Kelcey Pusateri, Senior Technologist, Ingredion; Taylor May, Senior Culinologist, Ingredion; Jessica Raskin, Account Manager, Ingredion
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM 1:1 Meetings, Powered by L.A. Libations -- Location: Outdoor Sinder Lounge - Lobby Level
Prior registration is required and meeting times are sent individually. Please check in at the One-to-One Help Desk before to heading to your meeting room. Meetings will be 10 minutes each and the complete schedule is posted at the Help Desk.
with Nicole Dawes, Founder & CEO, Nixie Beverage Company; Todd Davis, Natural Foods/Multi-Cultural Category Manager, King Soopers/City Market; Nate Cooper, Founder & Managing Partner, Barrel Ventures; Giuseppe Infusino, Managing Partner, CIO, InvestBev; Ryan Fagan, Deal Partner, Gryphon Investors; Jon Halper, Owner & CEO, Top Ten Liquors; Brad Barnhorn, Board Member and Strategic Advisor, ; Kim Route, Category Manager, INFRA; Jomaree Pinkard, Co-Founder, Hella Cocktail Co & INCLUDED CPG; Aaron Hinde, President + Cofounder, LIFEAID
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM Networking Break --
10:00 AM - 12:15 PM -- Morning Session -- -- Location: California Ballroom - Lobby Level
10:00 AM - 10:10 AM Welcome Remarks --
10:10 AM - 10:30 AM Full Circle with Poppi: Advice from Allison and Stephen Ellsworth -- Allison and Stephen Ellsworth just sold their company to PepsiCo -- they'll talk about how they grew the business, brought in talent, helped define the Modern Soda category, took over TikTok and what they'd do differently if they had the chance. It's a long way from the New Beverage Showdown, which they won in 2016!
with Allison Ellsworth, Co-Founder, Poppi; Stephen Ellsworth, Co-Founder, Poppi
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM Ten Years of Trends: A Decade of Investment with Doelher Ventures -- Dreher opens the books on 10 years of investing in entrepreneurial beverage brands, offering perspective on the evolution of the industry, as well as insights into the investment environment for CPG and the ways brands can expect that to change in the near term.
with Dr. Sebastian Dreher, Venture Manager, U.S., Döhler Ventures
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM Health Ade’s Closing Kick -- How a CEO and board found alignment around a growth plan, from strategy to tactics to communication; with key lessons for founders to take their own next steps forward.
with Chris Lansing, Former CEO, Health Ade; Steve Young, Managing Partner, Manna Tree Partners; Bob Nakasone, Managing Director, First Bev
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Sponsored Workshop: Energy, focus, resilience: The innovation for differentiation -- Location: Malibu
Shawn Wells, is recognized as "The World's Greatest Formulator" with over +1,100 formulas created and +40 patents. As the Chief Science Officer of NNB Nutrition, Shawn guides us through customer need states for functional beverages: what we now know, what we've gotten wrong and what science says our bodies need. But most importantly, what innovations exist to carry the industry into the future of what differentiation looks like for consumers. NNB  will also be sampling their proof of concept drink with the industry's most innovative functional RTD ingredients. 
with Shawn Wells, CSO & FISSN, NNB Nutrition
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM Brands in Motion: Founders in the Marketplace -- Three recent New Beverage Showdown winners share on-the-ground lessons about sales, marketing, growth and the battle to establish innovative brands in a highly competitive marketplace.
with Ila Byrne, Co-Founder/CMO, Parch; Scarlett Leung, Co-Founder, Pretty Tasty; Susan Buckwalter Hartman, Co-Founder, Recoup
12:00 PM - 12:15 PM BevNET Best of 2025 Awards - Presented by Zuckerman Honickman - Announced; New Beverage Showdown Finalists Announced --

Location: California Ballroom - Lobby Level

 

Our annual awards, including Brand of the Year and Person of the Year will be revealed!
12:15 PM - 1:30 PM Lunch Powered by Saint James, Sampling & Taste Radio Studio -- Location: Bayview Ballroom - Rooftop & Sinder Outdoor Lounge
Lunch is served in the Bayview Ballroom on the rooftop level and in the outdoor Sinder Lounge. Lunch is included with registration. Sampling continues in the Promenade Ballroom and Taste Radio Studio livestream interviews take place in the Peninsula room on the lower level.
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Sponsored Workshop: The Hidden AI Advantage: What Winning Brands Know Before You Do -- Location: Palisades - Lower Level
Some brands always seem one step ahead—faster to react, smarter with data, and better aligned with distributors and customers. Their advantage comes from an embedded layer of real-time intelligence you won’t find in dashboards or spreadsheets. In this workshop, we’ll introduce BevGenie, an AI-powered conversational agent built on top of the ConsumerIQ Intelligence Platform, and show how it helps brands move faster, plan smarter, and execute with confidence. You’ll see how real-time data, once fragmented and reactive, becomes unified and agent-driven—surfaced by BevGenie and ready to act. Whether you’re in commercial, marketing, or operations, this session highlights what’s now possible when AI quietly powers day-to-day decisions without adding complexity to workflows.
with Shyam Jayakumar, CEO, BevGenie; Brian Berlin, Industry Advisor, BevGenie
1:30 PM - 4:00 PM -- Afternoon Session -- -- Location: California Ballroom - Lobby Level
1:30 PM - 1:55 PM Distribution To-Dos: Building, Merchandising, and Growing Your Brand -- UNFI is the prime national distributor for hundreds of beverage brands: what are they doing to help build brands, what's the state of relations between entrepreneurs and this key route to market, and how are sales trends shaping up for 2026? 
with Melissa Angle, VP Merchandising & Supplier Relationship Management, UNFI
1:55 PM - 2:20 PM Inside Beverage Investment -- What do experienced consumer investors see when they look at innovative categories? Our panel discusses faith in brands, founders, and financials, and what it takes to get a signature on the check.
with Nate Cooper, Founder & Managing Partner, Barrel Ventures; Bill Moses, CEO, Credibl.AI; Brian Rosen, General Partner, InvestBev
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Sponsored Workshop: The Functional Beverage Playbook: From Idea to Scale   -- Location: Malibu - Lower Level
Functional beverages are booming, but lasting brands need more than trendy ingredients. Experts share how to align consumer insights, choose smart ingredients, and create craveable taste—so you can scale and grow with practical strategies for sustainable success.
with William McCormack, Business Development Manager, Beverage, dsm-firmenich ; Natalie Taak, Director of Beverage Marketing, dsm-firmenich
2:20 PM - 2:45 PM Friend Finder: How Three Successful Brands Found an Audience to Grow With -- No matter the functional promise, it takes a lot more than a good idea to build a successful brand. Our panelists show how they used marketing, data, and trial-and-error to identify and connect with their core consumer audience. 
with Jordan Bass, CEO, HOP WTR; Michael Brandt, CEO & Co-Founder, Ketone IQ; Kyle Watson, Chief Brand Officer, Celsius
2:45 PM - 3:10 PM Inside The World’s Biggest Beverage Startup -- Over just the past two years, Generous Brands has been not-so-quietly building a cold-chain powerhouse -- and it's not done yet. Now that it's brought Health Ade into the fold alongside Bolthouse, Sambazon and Evolution Fresh, what are its plans for growth, both in-house and bolt-on? 
with Todd Putman, Chief Transformation Officer, Generous Brands
3:10 PM - 3:30 PM Your next profit tailwind: Buying as well as you Sell -- This targeted session on Strategic Sourcing and POV on key inputs, supplied exclusively to BevNET by Agrowgate, will offer a valuable perspective on process and the costs of materials, ingredients, and other key expense drivers -- and what the key financial signals to watch will be in the year to come.
with David van Wees, Partner, Agrowgate; Tim Near, Partner, Agrowgate
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM Battle Plans: Hemp-Based Cannabevs Face 2026 -- The panel will feature three outspoken industry leaders representing some of the category’s top brands: Jake Bullock (CEO/Co-Founder, Cann), Justin Tidwell (CEO, Nowadays) and Mikey Mohr (CEO/co-founder, Houseplant). Their voices will serve to provide a snapshot of the brand strategies that are forming just weeks after the signing of the spending bill, and explore scenarios for finding a path forward through Congress.
with Jake Bullock, CEO & Co-Founder, Cann
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Sponsored Workshop: Risk, Reward & Regulation: THC Beverages in 2026 and Beyond -- Location: Palisades - Lower Level
THC beverages are redefining how and why consumers drink, introducing new dimensions of function, ritual, and experience. This fast-paced session explores the science, policy, and market forces driving this emerging category and how it is reshaping the broader beverage landscape.
with Ben Larson, Chief Executive Officer, Vertosa; Theo Terris, Chief Executive Officer, Uncle Arnie's; Diana Eberlein, Chief External Affairs Officer + Chair CABA, Vertosa; Samantha Catalina, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, CounterMeasures; Ryan Pinsky, Vice President of Sales, Vertosa
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM BevNET Live Official Party, Presented by Matriarch Wealth Management -- Location: Bayview Ballroom - Rooftop
Head to the rooftop ballroom of the Marriott for additional networking! Enjoy cocktails, food and the 360 degree views of Marina del Rey.
Please note that event agendas are subject to change.