New Beverage Showdown 23 - Finals: Perfy

Speaker 1 [00:14] All right, our final presenter for the morning session of the New Beverage Showdown Finals is Vasa Martinez, who's the founder and CEO of Perfy. Why not, Vasa? How are you? You're clicker.

Speaker 2 [00:30] I'm definitely using the laser pointer on this. Um, today we're gonna start with a video. It'll be interesting

Speaker 3 [00:36] to see if the next big soda brand will actually be called a soda, right? That's the big question. Is soda a bad word now or is soda now a sparkling or seltzer? Uh, so that's, I'm very, very curious to see how that progresses over the next 5 to 10 years. Who's gonna step up and save soda?

Speaker 2 [00:58] So I chatted about that yesterday and I basically said thanks to the brand, the brands that are already starting this functional soda category. Um, today I'm gonna start with a briefer version of the founding story. To be honest, I can't go through that again. Um, but the idea behind Perfy all started from years of traumatic events in my life, and what my goal is to turn pain into purpose with Perfy. So, when I was drinking sodas and taking notropics and adaptogens to try to deal with the pain, I thought, well, hell, why, why not make my own? So that's really the, the start of Perfy. The big right now. But when you look at the data, you'll see that Gen Z is the least likely to say that they're very well with their mental health. And on top of that, 74% of Gen Z said that they had unwanted weight gain during the pandemic. So my hypothesis is that metabolic health and mental health go hand in hand. Right now, 1 in 10 people in America are type 2 diabetic, and by 2025, 1 in 5 will be if we keep up on the same pace. On top of that, 98 million Americans, one third of America are pre-diabetic, and of those, 80% don't even know. So, when I talk about Perfy and I talk about making a healthier soda, everyone says, oh man, beverage is tough, and, and everyone knows soda is bad for you. But my question always is, but do you really? Do you look at the data? Right now, over 150 pounds of sugar is consumed by an average American. That's a shit ton. So, excuse my language there. Uh, my hypothesis is, how do you make something with this amount of sugar, this is 1 sugar cube or 3.5 4 g. Taste is good. As something with this amount of sugar. And that's 14 sugar cubes, or about 40+ grams. And the way that I sought out to do that was A lot of the presenters up here this week have said, hire people smarter than you. Well, yeah, I hired R&D that's actually good. I don't have the story that I was in my kitchen with one of those sparkling things and fruit. I don't. I, I went straight for the best and I said, hey, we need to use allulose. Allulose and sea salt will help make a full sugar soda mouthfeel. And I think that's what people want. Because the consumer journey, people go from Coke to Diet Coke to LaCroix. And there's a huge gap in the middle of Diet Coke to LaCroix, and that's indulgence. So again, I said, how do we bridge that gap with something that's decadent and delicious, where people don't have to feel like crap afterwards? And that's what we did. So what is Perfy? Perfy is a low sugar soda enhanced with nootropics and adaptogens for a happy brain. The reason it's low sugar ties into the metabolic health, the diabetes. The reason it's for a happy brain is hopefully people that were going through the same things that I go through can resonate with the product. And hopefully it makes them feel good. Today we're gonna go a little bit deeper on what Perfy actually is. We're now keto certified, not keto-friendly, which is great for us. Um, so diabetics can trust us. They say that Perfy has the same impact on their blood sugar as water. And for me, one of the, the huge goals pre-launching and then launching three months ago was, let's send it to diabetics, and let's have them test their blood sugar. There's no way you can lie or market your way around that. If it's bad for their blood sugar, you're done. And then we expod at the LA Fit Expo where people that are just 2% body fat walking around jacked, the Conor McGregor's or the rocks of the world. And at first it reminded me of my time at Quest. We at Quest, we couldn't hand out a Quest bar. People are like, oh, no, I don't eat that. And people are like, oh, I don't drink soda. But lo and behold, later on during that show, people like, everyone told me to come try this. It's so good. And it reminded me a lot of that, my, my early days at Quest. Perfy's also brain boosting. We use 50 mg of L theanine and either 30 mg of ashwagandha or turmeric based on the flavor. You might ask why, well, why such a low dose? Well, I don't want Perfy to be a supplement, and I also want sheriff's stomach, and I obviously if you're a beverage brand and people drink 2 or 3 or 4 cans a day, that's not bad. So that's why I went with that amount. One of our major points of difference is that we're not from concentrate. I'd be hard for press to find any CSD that doesn't have concentrate. I think I said that right, Double negatives. Um, well, it's tough to find. Not for concentrate is a goal. That's why we went for so much freshness. There's nothing artificial. It's caffeine-free. Why is it caffeine-free? Damn, I'm not gonna, it's my last slide. Um. Because people would drink at night, boom, familiar but different. OK, Ben.

Speaker 1 [05:30] Great job. Let me grab one of your microphones. Yup. Oh, that's for you. I got one right here. No, I'm good, thank you. Um, Bonnie, uh, a low a low sugar soda for a happy brain, uh, is the market looking for a product like this? I think so. I think they absolutely are. Um, Poppy Ollipop have done a great job and. Educating the consumer that there are better for you sodas out there, um, I would like to slow clap your branding, uh, and your positioning and the taste of your product. Uh, I think it's absolutely delicious. I love that you've gone with 14% juice. I love that you added real flavors in there so people are actually also getting the health benefits of the fruit. I don't think your competitors have done that aside from S spin drift, right? But I don't know if they're really trying to be a soda, um. I think you've really hit the mark with this one.

Speaker 2 [06:20] Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 [06:22] Matt Vasa talked about how people go from Coke to Diet Coke to LaCroix and there's nothing really in between Coke and and LaCroix. Does Perfy fit into that space?

Speaker 4 [06:31] It, yeah, from a bridge perspective, it's interesting, right? I hadn't thought about it until you, till you brought it up, uh. Again, great category to play in, really big, uh, really established, so, uh, well done in terms of that in terms of, um. Moving those consumers on that journey and as we age it's the same thing, right? It's it's also an age an age curve as well as a health and wellness curve so I maybe so yeah it's it's a good thought uh but uh and and the unlock on value of course is huge so I like it.

Speaker 2 [07:04] Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 [07:05] Danielle, uh, again, a brand, a brand that's sort of centered around better, uh, better for your mental health or a better for you soda addressing mental health, uh, does that speak to you on the can? I mean, do you see what Vasa is trying to, uh, express on the can of, on the front of the can of Perfy?

Speaker 5 [07:19] Uh, well, first of all, I just wanna say that you're a really relatable presenter, which is wonderful, um, thank you. I think that I appreciate that he kept the adaptogens in the new Tropics lower in the communication hierarchy actually, so that it would have broader appeal, though I think that, you know, the consumer doesn't necessarily know what adaptogens in new Tropics are, so you need to bring the actual function, the benefit to the front. Instead of the uh feature and um you know I uh I think your approach overall is really thoughtful. I think the flavor was nice it was a little sweet for me, but I understand the target and I would just um. Oh, you know, I actually think I'm gonna go against Bonnie. I actually think that your visual identity is not differentiated enough. I think that you really need to stand out between the poppy and the culture pop and find your own identity.

Speaker 2 [08:15] Fair enough, I appreciate that. And regarding the um. The hierarchy on our new label that launches in August, it says for a happy brain up top, and we quantify the amount of the functional ingredients on the side. The flavors on the bottom, much easier to read. So we asked a lot of friends in the industry, tell us what you would do, and they did, and we did it.

Speaker 1 [08:31] There you go, Mike, you get the last word, and we haven't necessarily heard too, too much about taste. How do these products taste? And by the way, I love fruit punch. There's not enough fruit punch flavors out there, folks. So how did the fruit punch taste? Like fruit

Speaker 6 [08:42] punch. There you go. Like fruit punch should tastes like. It tastes like Hawaiian Punch. If you have a, I mean, you want it to punch you in the face because that's what fruit punch is supposed to do and it does, and that's awesome. Let me ask you a question. Do you know how hard it is to make science interesting? You know what you just did in front of us here? Do you know what you like, it didn't sound like marketing and it didn't sound like science, like. Like Vasa, you know this already, but I really like you as a person and I think someone just needs to interview you about all the things that you love about this and just. They, you need to like perfy, it's like bottling your essence, and when you drink it, you're like, oh I get it now, but it's not coming through on pack like perfy, the word perfy and uh like I almost cried when you talked about your mom yesterday and, and uh so I'm a little choked up right now, but you gotta figure out how to get that on the pack because new tropics and diptogens are not what you're selling, and you're, and even the, even the calm, you know, that's not it either. There's something there if you capture that, you're gonna win.

Speaker 2 [09:46] Thank you, will do.

Speaker 1 [09:47] Outstanding. Very well done, Vasa. Thank you. Outstanding job by the 1st, 1st 3 finalists that we saw today. We're gonna see the other 3 finalists or the final 3 finalists at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You don't wanna miss it. We're gonna announce the winner of the competition at 3:50 p.m. Eastern Time. Uh, but right now I'm gonna bring up my colleague Jeff Kleinman up to the stage for our next presenter, and our judges will step off the stage. See you soon.

Speaker 6 [10:19] Oh, Bonnie.