BevNET Cocktail Showdown Winner Announcement & Interview

Speaker 1 [00:11] Two quick things. Number 1, after we make the announcement, we're going to invite the winner up on stage and take some photos. So please bear with us. After we do that, we're gonna ask folks to please clear the room because we're gonna be doing an interview with that winner here on stage. But the good news is there's still plenty to drink outside because the Bevnet Live welcome reception begins as soon as we're done in here. So once again, if you can, please exit the room when we make the make the announcement and uh please enjoy the reception. Also want to do a very quick debrief with our amazing judges, talk about what they really liked about the winner. Cassie, in general terms, what do you think?

Speaker 2 [00:51] I think scalability, right? I look at the dollar opportunity and creating a new category, and I think we've got a, a clear winner in the scalability.

Speaker 3 [01:01] Taylor. Uh, I think, um. You know, Having a good pathway to distribution is important that that is like a key factor that we're looking into, um, and just like keeping it innovative. I think innovation is kind of where the this category is going, um, and, and the ability to take a risk here and there and for retailers to have an opportunity to jump on it is. Ideally something we're looking for and you know,

Speaker 4 [01:30] yeah, I think it's the, the hard work and the hustle of bringing something super unique to a, a wider range of an audience that may have never, you know, got to try something like that so

Speaker 1 [01:44] outstanding. Probably my favorite judging panel we've had yet. You guys are awesome. Round of applause for our amazing judges. All right, it is time to announce the winner of Bevnet Live's cocktail showdown and a $10,000 ad package. That brand is Yoju. Steven. Excellent work. The stage is once again yours. Congratulations, Steven. Ken, congratulations. The judges want to thank you and congratulate you as well.

Speaker 2 [02:32] It's really incredible job. The liquid's great.

Speaker 3 [02:35] It's been great job. Oh my God, get in here, you guys. I'm so proud of

Speaker 1 [02:41] you. All right, Steven, y'all killed it. Yours. Let's take a photo. Yes, come on, we can take a photo with these wonderful guys here. Oh, here,

Speaker 4 [02:49] hang on, uh, net.

Speaker 1 [02:56] Hey, folks, it's Ray Latif, the editor and producer of BevNET's Taste Radio pod podcast. You're watching the Taste Radio studio here at BevNET Live Winter 2024 and I'm here with the winners of the BevNET Live Cocktail Showdown, Steven Tang, Ken Miller, the co-founders of Yoju. Congratulations, gentlemen.

Speaker 5 [03:14] Thank you, Ray. It's uh great to be here and we're so excited and uh yeah, just ecstatic right now.

Speaker 1 [03:19] Yeah, yeah. So did you expect to hear your name called?

Speaker 5 [03:23] Well, you know, we never had

Speaker 1 [03:25] expectations, you know, I mean if you feel confident.

Speaker 5 [03:28] We did practice a lot, so we were confident in our presentation and we, you know, we're confident in our product and we've seen validation that people like it and at the tasting ahead of time, people said they really liked it so we thought maybe we have a chance.

Speaker 1 [03:39] Yeah, well, you guys had a great presentation. I think the judges were really impressed with the professionalism that you showed, not just on stage but all the hard work that you guys did. In the pre-production, getting the the right liquid into the can, the packaging itself, a thoughtful retail strategy. So all those things seem to really move the needle for them. Um, how long have you since this brand been in development? I mean, how long have you've been on the market?

Speaker 5 [04:04] Uh, just a little over 2 years.

Speaker 1 [04:05] OK. And how long did you actually, uh, how much, what was like the, the planning process for a product like this? Because you can't just say, hey, we're gonna put. Uh, yogurt, drinkable yogurt, soju, and fresh juice into a can and say we're just gonna put that out to the market and hope for the best. I mean, talk about that, that mindset of creating a business strategy that was going to work from the get-go.

Speaker 5 [04:25] So we did start small, um, we started with just one skew which is the original yogurt, um, and you're right, we didn't know whether this was gonna work because it's so new, um, and there's really nothing else like it. Um, so we decided to start with a, uh, uh, a small set of retailers that we thought this might work for. So Whole Foods, uh, was one of our first retailers and we're lucky to, to connect with Taylor and, um, get in his good graces early on. Um, and his consumer, I think the Whole Foods consumer is really willing to try new things and try innovative things, um, and they also tend to know what Soju is, I think because they are more attuned to kind of cultural and ethnic, uh, products and foods as well. And so we thought that would be a great place to launch. We just started uh very small, very regionally with just a select set of like natural grocers, um, and we tested to see if people would be interested in the product and I think we were able to find a niche there in the beginning that really worked for us, um, and kind of just grew it from there.

Speaker 1 [05:19] When I think about this product and I said this on stage, if you told me that I should try. A cocktail that's made with drinkable yogurt and soju, I would be a little skeptical, but if you said, here, have a sample, I'd, I'd try it, um, and I'd probably be impressed. In fact, I was impressed and I have been with your liquid, but how do you get liquid to lips, Ken? I mean, what has been your demo process? What's made it really effective?

Speaker 6 [05:44] Yeah, so we, part of our core strategy is definitely getting, you know, cans and hands, uh, you know, demoing and, uh, getting people to try the product. Uh, so we have a really large brand ambassador team of, uh, really diehard Yoji fans that help and spread the good word of Yoji either through events and demos and, you know, really getting people the opportunity to try the product for the first time.

Speaker 1 [06:05] So are these brand ambassadors, are they paid or are they just really big fans of the brand?

Speaker 6 [06:10] Um, they are paid, yes,

Speaker 1 [06:12] yes, and so I'm curious about that because, you know, uh, an ambassador program can be kind of expensive and sometimes it's not as efficient as it needs to be. How do you make sure that they're speaking in the same way that you would want to be speaking to a customer?

Speaker 6 [06:23] Yeah, we go through a pretty intense, uh, training process and, you know, we look at the data of how well demos are, are, uh, being done and, you know, try to correct things if, you know, things could be improved from a conversion perspective, um, but yeah, we, we train them up and make sure that they can talk about the product that. Really showcases Yoju in its best light.

Speaker 1 [06:41] Um, price point again, I think is a question that came up a number of times during the, the, uh, presentations today. What is your price point and, um, is it something where you're speaking to a premium consumer with that price point?

Speaker 6 [06:54] Yeah, so we, uh, we do price about $1 to $2 above kind of the, I guess the average set for the 4-pack or the 8 pack, and really it's exactly as you said, we're trying to be um, uh, more of a premium size, uh, product, you know, we do have like real fruit juices, uh, you know, real sugar, there's no artificial sweetener, so our ingredients are high quality, and, you know, the price point kind of matches that as well.

Speaker 1 [07:14] I'm curious, Steven, as to who you might be speaking to. Uh, for someone who's obviously not necessarily familiar with soju and certainly not familiar with the soju cocktail, what's their point of reference? When you say, hey, you should try this, what do you tell them it could be like? What, what are their expectations for a product like yours?

Speaker 5 [07:33] Yeah, so our product is interesting because we have to educate them on two fronts, sometimes one on the soju and two on the yogurt, um. So, uh, on the soju front, it's a little bit easier. We tell them it's kind of like a, a Korean vodka, uh, which usually gives a pretty good comparable to what they should expect. Um, so, I think Korean vodka and soju really historically though it's made with rice, it it is today made with many different grains just like vodka is and so, I think that's a good point of reference when we try to educate people, um, what it tastes like. Um, and so that usually works pretty well with soju. For the yogurt aspect, we usually tell them it tastes like a creamsicle uh or a cream soda. Um, or like a creamy lemonade. Those are all kinds of words that other people have actually told us, so we kind of borrowed those and that's kind of how we describe it now to people who've never tried it before.

Speaker 1 [08:20] I'm making an assumption here, but I, uh, I'm assuming you guys are relatively young, um, and this is not an easy business, the beverage business. How are you guys getting up to speed on what you need to do to be successful? Let's start with Steven and then we'll go to Ken.

Speaker 5 [08:33] Right,

Speaker 1 [08:33] um,

Speaker 5 [08:33] so we are newcomers to the space. It's, uh, it's been fun. Uh, we both come from a software kind of tech background before where the, the, how to scale a business is very, very different. Um, so we're really just learning by doing and like 2 years ago. Um, we really knew nothing about distribution. We really knew nothing about supply chain. Um, our first foray into trying to get into Whole Foods was really just to walk into our local Whole Foods, try to talk to the buyers, and then they said, oh, we'll actually have to talk to corporate. There's this guy named Taylor. So like we literally just like went door to door and um cause there's really nothing you can read about how to build a business like this online. Um, so we kind of just went door to door and um learned from people and then just ask, you know, who else should we talk to to figure out this aspect or this problem we're having. And that's really how we've kind of been learning, but you know, I know we still have so much to learn.

Speaker 1 [09:21] Yeah, yeah, and Ken, you know, I mean, what are you learning how you learn on the job? How are you learning too because the longer yours take to fix, the more difficult it's gonna be to recover from them.

Speaker 6 [09:31] Absolutely, yeah, we've learned a lot over the way and even though we come from You know, from software traditionally, you know, uh, we can translate a lot of our skills with the, the marketing aspect that Steve does, and then my background is in sales and sales strategy, so just different inputs, you know, different sort of things that you have to consider in terms of scaling a business. I do also want to point out that we do take a lot of, uh, customer feedback. Stephen and I both do tastings every single month and we hear the customer feedback live, you know, when we do enter into new stores. So, just always kind of paying attention to like, are we speaking to the demographic, to the target customer and You know, what are, you know, what are people saying about a liquid? We, we take pride in making the best in quality liquid that we can.

Speaker 1 [10:10] Outstanding. Where's the party tonight?

Speaker 6 [10:14] Well, it's the bad thing. Well,

Speaker 1 [10:16] yeah, I mean, there you go. As, as emerging entrepreneurs, you gotta take the booze where it's given, right? You know, so including Yoju. No, I mean, you're based here in Los Angeles. Any, uh, any plans to, uh, have a fun dinner or, or bar to go to?

Speaker 5 [10:27] Um, you know, friends hosting like a little white elephant thing, so maybe that, um, but you know, we'll see where the folks of Bednet take us. I like it.

Speaker 1 [10:35] I like it. You know what, you guys are awesome because I can tell that you're passionate about what you do, but you're also really serious about what you do. Um, and that's what you need to be, to be successful in this beverage beverage business. So congratulations on the big win. Very excited for you guys and for the future of Yoju, uh, and I hope you're excited for the next two days because there's a lot more to come.

Speaker 5 [10:55] Looking forward to it. Yeah,

Speaker 6 [10:56] looking forward to it. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [10:57] Fantastic. Thank you and thanks so much to our audience. We'll be back here live on the live stream 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. That's Monday, the 9th. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I'm Ray Latif signing off for our amazing team at Bevnet Nash and Taste Radio and of course the winners of the cocktail showdown, signing off for everyone. We'll talk to you next time.