BevNET Live Winter 2018: Growing and Staying the Course – A Conversation About Guayaki

Since its founding, yerba mate brand Guayaki has been guided by what co-founder David Karr calls a “regenerative mentality.” That ethos has permeated into all areas of the brand, from its ecological sustainability initiatives to its vertically integrated supply chain. But over the past two years, as Karr and Guayaki’s Patrick Lee explained today on stage at BevNET Live Winter 2018, the company has been working to extend that philosophy into a self-distribution model with the creation of the Yerba Mate Co.

In this conversation from the conference, Karr and Lee talk with BevNET editor-in-chief Jeffrey Klineman about how the Yerba Mate Co. has evolved over the last 24 months, and about its commitment to creating what they called a “legion of the system affected” by setting the goal of hiring 10,000 formerly incarcerated people over the next decade. They also discussed how Guayaki’s in-house media team is deepening the brand’s connection with lifestyle and activism, why it “feels like the beginning” for Karr despite 23 years in the business, and how Guayaki is setup to “scale without the silliness,” according to Lee.