New Beverage Showdown 23 - Semi-finals: RUUTS

Speaker 1 [00:14] All right, up next on the showdown, we have Alex Mallon, who is the co-creator of Roots. Come on up, Alex. Good to see you again. Grab one of the microphones. Please keep an eye on your time,

Speaker 2 [00:30] OK. So we all want to feel good, and in theory, there are plenty of healthy beverage options deep in the aisles of Whole Foods, but in practice, we often lose to our taste buds. We now have seen many innovative products over the recent years in many beverage categories and many functional health categories. When it comes to iced tea as a product and mental health as a function, there's been very little disruption. As a generation, Gen Z has experienced more mental health issues than any previous generation, and now more than ever, it's the responsibilities of companies to create brands and products that support their customers. Meet Roots. The first iced tea inspired by feeling good and designed to be mood boosting and absolutely delicious. All of our flavors are completely sugar free. They range between 0 and 10 calories, and they're brewed with organic and handpicked ingredients. We put a full dose of ashwagandha in each of our flavors, and ashwagandha is an all-natural adaptogen from India that completely reduces the mental and physical stress levels in our bodies. We're really focused on recreating flavors that we grew up drinking and giving it that roots upgrade, so we focused on a sweet mint green tea and a peached green tea, and we're super excited for later this summer a release of a lemon green tea that was really recommended by our community. At Roots, it's our mission to really promote mental health in a way that goes above and beyond our product and we're, we're building a community centered around creativity to help inspire those around us. Thank you for listening and we're here to help you find your roots.

Speaker 1 [02:17] Roots, mood boosting, stress reducing. I like both those things. Jackie, what do you

Speaker 3 [02:22] think? Yeah, looking at the packaging, I mean, it's Instagrammable, but the one thing I would question is you can't tell it's a tea right away. Um, they lead with Ashwagandha right at the front, which also some people don't know what the function of Ashwagandha is yet, so maybe lead with the function, lead with tea, and people are definitely gonna pick up that product.

Speaker 1 [02:40] Um, Ashwagandha, you're right, household penetration isn't really fully there yet, um, but are more consumers looking for those types of adaptions, especially Ashwagandha, David,

Speaker 4 [02:49] yeah, function is definitely something that is, uh, very trending, um, so I, I think more and more as consumers start seeing, uh, these ingredients come up, they're gonna do their research and really understand, but it's also, uh, important for beverage brands to start educating, um, on what the ingredient is.

Speaker 1 [03:10] And Alison, I mean, you know, in terms of the packaging, it has a groovy vibe, right? I think that's what I mentioned the last time I spoke to Alex, um, you know, is that something that more and more consumers do you think are resonating with, or do you think that type of packaging is resonating with more consumers?

Speaker 5 [03:23] I think it'll connect with the younger Gen Z type of group and then, uh, younger millennials, which I think is on trend with the mental health, the Ashwagandha. And I think that it's really cute, but I agree with you with putting the green tea on the front and leading with it to pull it off of the shelf, and then people can see, oh, this has function as well.

Speaker 1 [03:43] Mhm. And Brittany, you know, um, I feel like the, the functional aspect of it is, you know, how, how do you tie that functional attribute with the refreshment aspect of, of an iced tea? I mean, do you see that in roots? Do you see that, um, both of them sort of acting harmoniously?

Speaker 6 [04:00] I do. I think that there's an opportunity on the packaging though, because there is so much space to play around with that we could pull it in visually, so there might be just more opportunity for this brand to do both more harmoniously on the package.

Speaker 1 [04:12] I don't think we talked about taste. Jackie, how was the taste?

Speaker 3 [04:15] Tasted great. It was really light, refreshing, um, not very sweet. The mint was my favorite, but I'm a mint fan, um, so yeah, I would drink it. I would drink it all

Speaker 1 [04:24] the time. Fantastic. All right.