Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 514 - Super Coffee CEO Jim DeCicco

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

Jimmy DeCicco is the CEO of Super Coffee. Super Coffee is a healthier, protein packed alternative to coffee that is ran by Jimmy and his two younger brothers, Jordan & Jake. Super Coffee is making a big splash in the world of keto-friendly beverages. What started as the brothers hand brewing, packaging, and delivering each bottle of coffee in 2015, turned into a feature on ABC’s shark tank, and a partnership with J-Lo and A-Rod. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Bro, guess what? This year has gone by so fast. We're already in the fourth month of the year. It's getting warmer. We're in April, and do you know why April is so significant? Well, it's warmer, meaning you're going to be eating more fruits, oranges, limes, watermelons. Ooh, watermelons. Funny you say. Yeah. Anything specifically special about watermelons? Well, I gave you two of the Element watermelon packs because you didn't have any.

And their new watermelon flavor is out. It tastes absolutely amazing. If I were going to compare it to something, it would probably be like a watermelon sour patch kid, except not unpleasantly sour. It's refreshing. Got it. Yeah. So I did have a couple here. I finally dove into one of them because you gave me two.

I was too stingy to even crack one open because normally what what i do is i have uh element electrolytes with my workouts i wanted to sit back and actually enjoy you know like actually taste every little sip of this you're right dude it's really freaking good um i do kind of like sourness so like i want to see if i can make it with like less water to kind of get me there but But I think it's just, you're right. It's actually really freaking good. It's not overbearing. Super refreshing. Highly recommend it.

And it's available right now. Yes. April, I think. Today's the 13th. So this officially dropped today. You guys can head over to drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. Pick yourself up a value bundle. I highly recommend that you guys pick up a bunch of the watermelon flavor because this

thing is bar none. Like this really is probably the new number one for me as well. The next element pack I get, I'm going to get four watermelons. Four watermelons. I don't want any other flavor but watermelon. Okay. So he's going to get four watermelons. He's only going to pay for three.

That's what happens when you get a value bundle. You pay for three boxes and you get the fourth one absolutely free. Again, that's at drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. Head over there right now. Pick yourself up a element value bundle right now and include the watermelon flavor for sure. What up, Power Project crew? This is Josh Sutledge, aka SettleGate, here to introduce you to our next guest jimmy desicho jimmy desicho is the ceo of super coffee super coffee is a healthier protein-packed alternative

to coffee that is ran by jimmy and his two younger brothers with the help of friends and family the brotherly trio raised over a hundred thousand dollars to get started and during their first year the trio hand brewed hand packaged and hand delivered each and every bottle of super coffee to the customer. The startup's first milestone came in their local Whole Foods stocked 400 bottles of super coffee and sold out in just four hours. Jimmy and his brothers were also featured on Shark Tank but were unable to land a deal. Jimmy credits this experience as one of the most impactful in the company's history and has also stated it was the experience of walking off the set of Shark Tank, but were unable to land a deal. Jimmy credits this experience as one of the most impactful in the company's history and has also stated it was the experience of walking off the set of Shark Tank without a deal that inspired him to turn his experience of no into a resounding let's go. Jimmy and his brothers continue to work tirelessly to help mass produce positive energy,

so much so that it caught the attention of J-Lo and A-Rod, who recently were brought into the Super Coffee family as investors and minority owners. But that is a different story. Please enjoy this conversation with our guest, Jimmy DeCiccio. Oh, man. We're not going to be able to repeat that again. Yeah, we can. So we were just talking about, are we recording?

Yeah, we are now. Kevin Bass. I know, but I don't know if it's gonna have the same impact same way y'all should watch that episode listen to that episode it was a good one it was amazing it was we went through a lot we talked for what three hours and 30 minutes or something or three hours three hours yeah damn yeah yeah it was good i feel like with that with that episode like we were just saying before like kevin he has a lot of cool viewpoints on things good i feel like with that with that episode like we were just saying before like kevin he has a lot of cool viewpoints on things but i feel like we were able to really talk through

some things and maybe uh i feel like he won't be as because he's just seeking truth and he's seeking facts but i feel like he's calling certain individuals quacks when they're not actually quack so i like you know like you mentioned the impact thing a lot of those people are making a but I feel like he's calling certain individuals quacks when they're not actually quacks. So I like, you know, like you mentioned the impact thing. A lot of those people are making a big ass impact. Like a lot of those people are changing lives. Baker and Asprey, all those people are having.

For the better. Huge impact. Even Joel Fuhrman. Yeah. As much as we may disagree, Joel Fuhrman has made thousands of people healthier. Yeah. I think,

uh, who's to know whether Joel Fuhrman is wrong or right i mean he uh he had a very simple plan that sounded very healthy to me he just was a lot less into meat i think he said what 10 to 20 percent of your diet should come only from meat it's a seasoning right right yeah yeah sprinkled in there right um but he wanted you to get a lot of uh vegetables and fruit and things like that. There's a lot of people that live a really long life eating like that. It's better than the standard American diet. Much better than the standard American diet.

It's hard to say what's good. It seems to be fairly easy to pick out what's not great and what's shitty. That's true. That's true. Mark, you want to clarify some of the stuff you said about how you actually like that there's overweight people that was pretty funny

that shit I laughed so hard I mean not even just overweight you said like I love that there's obese people well the main thing is it just makes me look better that's the main thing everybody needs a fat friend, you know? Now, more so of just like we live in a country that's free and diverse, and that's what's going to happen.

You're going to have people that are really, really advanced, and they want to get out, and they want to learn every day, and they want to learn a ton about science or history or whatever. And you're going to have other people that just want to, uh, you know, watch movies all day. You're going to have some people that want to exercise all the time. You're going to have some people that don't, but I, I don't have any, any, uh, all I know is how I, how I enjoy, or I barely know how I like to enjoy my own life, much less for me to say a way that I think everyone else should live. I know for myself that like losing a hundred pounds. Now my situation is different because I wasn't like just, I wasn't just big and fat. I was big and fat and I was powerlifting and I was like,

I don't know. It was for a purpose in some way, but I know that I'm not necessarily like people like, oh, if you lose weight, you're going to be super happy. And I haven't really seen that from a lot of people. I've seen it from some people where they get more confidence in their body and they feel a little bit better about themselves. But where I've seen that the most is when someone loses like 20 or 30 pounds. Where I've seen that the most is when someone loses like 20 or 30 pounds from people that have lost like a lot of weight, like a couple hundred pounds. I see some like psychological scarring a lot of times because the situation that they were in was was so rough.

And I'm not saying don't make the journey. I'm not saying don't do it, but it really changes you a lot. And I think that people understand that people are actually smarter than we give them credit for. I think we think that people are dumb and lazy or whatever it is we want to kind of throw out there at someone that's overweight, but we're not being compassionate to the fact that, you know what, they actually probably understand that if they reach for it, it's going to be a lot of pain and suffering. It's going to take a really long time. It's going to be kind of complicated. And they also kind of know, like, when I lose 100 pounds, that's not the end of the journey. I have to now maintain that every day. And that's a hard standard to live. So you're changing everything about yourself. You're changing your standards. And so when I said I love that we have, you know, all these different kind of people, it wasn't necessarily saying, like, that I love that people are suffering and that people are sick.

I certainly don't like that i that i love that people are suffering and that people are sick i certainly don't uh like that at all i just i think it's because we live in a free country and because the country is set up the way that it is we'll always have that and it's good that everybody has their choice you know to do just to do what they want it would be weird if like you know it was mandated that everybody have like some sort of fitness protocol about probably help it probably be healthier but it's good that everyone has that choice to make we also kind of andrew and i were talking yesterday a little bit about like what would happen if coke was taxed and mcdonald's and just things kind of get weird i think we don't understand like how many farms does mcdonald's

pay for like getting their tomatoes and getting their pickles and so forth and In-N-Out Burger and Wendy's and how many wheat fields and how many I mean it's like the list of the list of good things I would imagine goes on and on and on and on and we can also hate say hey these companies are giant animals and they're like ripping the universe apart one by one because they're destroying crops or however someone else wants to word it. But look, man,

they're creating a lot of resources for a lot of people. And I don't know what this country looks like without Coke, without Pepsi, without Nike, without some of these giant manufacturers. I think that Coke and Pepsi and Nike and like all those companies, they're all somewhat related, even though they're completely different and they have completely different

missions. So my thought is if, if Nike doesn't exist or if McDonald's doesn't exist, that may be like Nike doesn't exist. And maybe just some of our pop culture and some of the things that we've gotten over the last couple of years, the things that I loved when I was a kid growing up watching basketball and Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan, and just like all these fucking awesome things that

I had as a kid that I really loved and allowed me to dream. And I wonder if all of that kind of gets shattered if we start making a lot of laws and rules. I'm sure there's some middle ground, but it's just throwing some conjecture out there towards taxing these companies and then not taxing some of these other companies over here. The old butterfly effect. That's what we were talking about. The old butterfly effect. Yeah.

I really, I liked what you kind of, you just like put us like, uh, I don't know. You kind of stopped us in our tracks when we were talking about like taxing, like the bad foods or whatever. And you're like, well, somebody is going to say that meat's bad. And it's like, Oh wait, hold on. No, no, no. That's not what I meant. You know, that's what, yeah, exactly. And then, you know, like with somebody's gonna say that meat's bad and it's like oh wait hold on no no that's not what i meant you know that's what yeah exactly and then you know like with mcdonald's like yeah fast food's bad like yep yep i'm i don't go to mcdonald's so we should tax it

but don't you dare touch in and out yeah somebody's like that's 41 grams of fat we have to tax that you know yeah but i'm on keto bro it's okay we'll just run it by lane norton everything be okay yeah like gatekeeper not gatekeeper what is the uh gatekeeper sounds good that's cool but then he'd have to go up against the autophagy god oh god that was so funny the autophagy god kevin was funny with that yeah my brother said he hit a hot button topic when he brought up autophagy again and uh they talked about sim land oh he's like that he said that one went over pretty good that's cool yeah somebody had uh on twitter had posted a picture of uh peter itea and uh what's her name uh the girl patrick yeah and they're like is this the autophagy god or is this what they look like but see that that's the thing it's like it's interesting because when i was looking at his like the people that weren't

on his quack list right those are people that like i really really paid a lot of attention to early on and then i started discovering you know marxism peter atia ronald patrick blah blah blah uh and like all these it's kind of like a different look at health or like uh that just doesn't look at just the calorie deficit and just the straightforward shit and they're all on the quack list they're just like come on yeah there's a lot of great people on that list too and like someone like a peter it and some of these guys, they're throwing out so many ideas and so many concepts that that's how you get to, that's how you get to answers the fastest.

Yeah. So it might sound like craziness when Peter IT talks about taking certain medications that are medications that people would take if they had like a heart transplant. It sounds, it sounds insane, but who knows where the future will bring us? Who knows what,

maybe everybody will be on medication like that to be able to live to be 140 years old. We don't really know. Dan Duchesne is one of the great, he's the guy who wrote Body Opus years ago in the 90s talking about a ketogenic style diet. And then our guest that we have on the show today created a coffee that has mct oil in it dan duchesne like popularized um mcts and uh our previous guests that we had on michael zampano who talked who we had on from champion nutrition and also a forward thinker throwing saturated fat into uh protein and creating like muscle milk and and now like you know here we are with better products that make dieting easier. So, you know, it's, these people might seem crazy. They might seem wild.

You're like, what are you, you know, giving whey protein to athletes sounds insane. And then now it's not insane. Right. So somebody has to kind of crack that barrier. Yeah. It takes weird, like, yeah, it takes, it takes putting out really just like weird ideas that aren't popular that don't, don't initially make much sense. Like the carnivore diet, when it started getting popularized, I know people have been doing that for a long time before it started getting really damn popular.

There's no studies behind it, so it's... Right? Yeah. a lot on TV when they talk about like medications and stuff that older people might take or people that have, that are pre-diabetic and they talk about your A1C and they talk about like lowering your A1C. Under most normal circumstances, people have a fairly low or modest A1C. It's kind of like their fasting glucose. I might be misspeaking on this a bit, but the gist of it is that if you're on like a low carb diet for a long time, your body kind of recalibrates and your a1c might be a little bit

high yeah we've got guys like ron penna and guys like myself and sean baker who've been running low carb for a long time it's a little higher so someone might look at that and say but then you got like guys like peter itea who's like i just don't even look at that anymore unless you're unhealthy if you're unhealthy then he's like I got concerned because then we have to probably have like an intervention and figure out your diet and everything. But if you're already pretty healthy, he's like, I'm not overly concerned with it running a little bit high. So how do we like know these things or learn these things? We need to have people that have unconventional thought. And a lot of these things that are proven need to be questioned, like the whole idea of like ldl cholesterol that a lot of the carnivores have been looking to afterwards right um even

though there's been a lot of research in that area they're finding hey maybe there's a lot of this stuff that doesn't make sense if you're actually a healthy individual right right yeah if you have other good markers of health and then also maybe it also means that it like uh there's been some people who say it doesn't matter at all and it's like like, well, maybe that we're swinging too far the other way. Like, I don't think that's smart. I don't think that's healthy to say, Hey, don't pay attention to it at all. If your cholesterol is way out of whack, that seems, uh, that seems a little reckless. And then if, when you go down the list of other things to look at your triglycerides

and, and so forth, um, then it really makes sense to really be paying attention to that. Yeah. Surprised Dr. Tony huge wasn't on the quack list or I guess maybe not surprised. forth, then it really makes sense to really be paying attention to that. Surprised Dr. Tony Huge wasn't on the quack list, or I guess maybe not surprised. Dr. Tony Huge. Yeah. This shit's proven. Oh my gosh. Proven with gains.

Have you ever tried this coffee before? No, I have not. I think I have. I have not, no. I think it's like everywhere. Yeah. I want to say it's like in... See it at Walmart? Yeah, I think it's like everywhere yeah i want to say it's like in uh you know walmart yeah i think it's like in walmart i think it's i think it's at like gas stations um is it called super coffee and we're getting that wrong yes it's called super coffee yeah and

it's got like collagen and mct and i think uh maybe it has butter in it too i don't remember but let's see let's see that flavor profile. Yeah. It's one of the few that actually tastes really good. Some of those are like a little bit weird when you try them that they don't have sugar in them. And so, uh, sometimes because they don't have like, you know, a good sweetener in them, sometimes they don't taste very good, but that one sounds really good. And it will give you a good little zip, a little jolt of caffeine. You want to find it?

Yeah, I'm looking for the ingredients or whatever. Ingredient profe. Come on. Well, this is what it looks like. There we go. I'm excited to see how they got this thing off the ground because it's difficult. I think a beverage might be the most one of the most difficult things to get into so they must have had a lot of resistance in getting into this because

it's a huge space there's some big ass companies in it already and uh it kind of reminds me of like trying to make like a shoe or something you know like there's how many shoe companies are there there's like five or six that are like the big ones and then there's everybody else right and yeah there's like so many different caffeine drinks or coffee type drinks it's just yeah coffee's big oh i can't find anything like 2018 or 2017 they've been killing it since i think they make some different kinds of stuff too. I think they have like a creamer. I think they have like a straight up

just drink it, like ready to drink coffee that has some other ingredients in it. I think they make like a kind of add to your coffee type of thing as well. I think it's going to be interesting because when I saw them on Shark Tank the pitch we saw they were pretty young

they were pretty young dudes that started this so I wonder where they got the inspiration for all that what do you mean different labels but I think this one's fairly accurate looks like 5 grams of fat, uh, one carb and 10 grams of protein for only 80 calories. Nice. I can't find the caffeine content though. Uh, 200 milligrams.

Yeah. It says it on the can. Hmm. I think a lot of times that can really vary. So you have to like get that tested, which I'm learning. Caffeine content? Yeah, you have to get it tested because like every batch can be quite a bit different. Sheesh.

And so it's just one of those things that if you're going to, if you can, you can say like more general stuff, you can say equivalent to a cup of coffee. Right. Are you making it yes okay that's just oh they got pods too oh oh yeah yeah you gotta try out those pods oh hell yeah pods really took over yeah they really have air pods i didn't really discover that until andrew and last year but it's kind of weird having those pods in your ear though like that coffee the grinds get all caught up in your ear they don't cancel any fucking noise whatsoever it makes it harder here yeah well i mean y'all just turned this into like a total dad joke

we went to the dad level both of you guys just took it like... And it seemed like I'm bored. I really did that shit. It seemed like it just drops dead. Questions everything he's ever done. He's like, I'm out. Oh my God. But yeah, those Nespresso ones though, I didn't understand what the difference was. The other ones right here.

The ones in there? Yeah. Yeah. I tried to put a regular like coffee pod thing in there i'm like tom it's not working what the fuck this thing sucks and he's like you're an idiot like yes i am oh my god so you're the one who broke it yeah okay you're welcome we see you get it yeah i wish i didn't like it it was really good though i think these low carb things are great like because uh sometimes you're traveling or sometimes you're doing something and you just i don't know like you're just you're bored and you want to just like reach for something and years ago you didn't have any

options you know the the convenience stores and the uh stores that were at the airport just had like pure junk food didn't have you know now now they're packed with those core power drinks that are loaded with protein. We're starting to see more things that are like similar to super coffee. And it's great to have, you know, products that make staying on your diet and staying on your plan a lot easier. What's up, fellas? I can't hear you.

I don't know. It'll be able to hear us at some point. And it also doesn't. You guys hear me? Yes. We can hear you. We're good. Mm-hmm.

I can't hear you. Hang on. Mm-hmm. It says noise canceling. Yep. He canceled us right out. He'll be able to figure it out eventually. I can see you.

You can hear me, yes? Yes. Yep. Can't hear you. Oh, man. Andrew. Maybe it's... Shouldn't be.

We're deaf. I'm going to jump out and jump back in. All right. That's good. If he does, is it like... I've done that on Zoom before. You got to turn off and turn back on your AirPods. I know.

Sometimes it's going to... It's always AirPods. It's always AirPods. It's always AirPods. Yeah.'s always it's always airpods yeah like zoom and airpods aren't homies yeah they ain't getting along so good who made zoom fucking samsung probably yeah because i think we had uh benjamin bickman i think he had on uh the like the samsung pods or i don't fuck they're called and it sounded really good. So I'm like, hey, what do you got there? Hey, when you text somebody and you recognize

that they have a different phone. Yeah, fuck off. You're like, this fucking clown, right? Yeah. It's horrible. Hey, there we go. Let's go. Cool. All right. What's up, man? You have your morning coffee? Man, I'm jacked up. I'm three hours ahead. So hopefully you guys had your coffee

yeah we got some we got some right here nice yeah so let's uh let's just dive right in onto you know beverages like it seems like the hardest one of the hardest things to dive into in the coffee space uh that seems preoccupied you know so so getting started and coming up with this super coffee must have been very challenging. You must have heard a lot of negative comments about, oh, you shouldn't do that. You guys are crazy. You'll never be able to make that. It's also going to be very difficult to make something that's shelf stable and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.

So what were some of the things that you faced with trying to get this thing off the ground? Yeah, man, it's a good question. And I'll say, I think it's one of the easiest categories to get into one of the hardest to be successful at, you know, there's no real, there's nothing stopping anybody from from blending something up in their blender and putting a label on it and bringing it to market. But figuring out all the details that you just walked through is extremely difficult in a very crowded category. And for us, I mean, I think two things that are table stakes, the product needs to be good. It needs to be different enough. And the branding needs to be good. But those two things alone, that's just the starting point. Then you need effort. Then you need go-to-market strategy. I mean, today, the reason our brand has been successful over these last five years, we have 110 full-time employees and they are hitting stores

every single day. We have an army out there. I say that our team is our barrier to entry and they just happen to be pushing a good product. So what was the inception of it? Because I saw the Shark Tank video a few years ago, but when did you guys like really really start that stuff how many of you was it that like it got it going um to then when you got to shark tank and then when you started like blowing up yeah man it's a good question so my uh my two brothers and i three of us we started this thing in 2016 and we were all college athletes uh mark we actually played at kingston high school i i caught up with your brother about that. Same water. Yeah, man. And it was my youngest brother, Jordan, who was falling asleep in class. He had 5 a.m. basketball practices. He was playing hoops down at Philadelphia University. And he said, man, there's nothing that I want to drink. The Starbucks Frappuccinos,

just coffee with milk and sugar. Let me start brewing my own stuff, coffee, protein, MCT oil. Back then he was messing around with bulletproof and the butter and, and alternative sweeteners like monk fruit and Stevia. And it worked for him. I mean, he was a full scholarship basketball player. You know, he didn't want to start a coffee company, but it worked so well for him and for his teammates and his classmates that he saw a big opportunity. And he realized that as a full-time student athlete, he couldn't start a company. So he dropped out of school and he called me and my middle brother, Jake, and said, boys, I'm starting a coffee company. And Jake and I both decided to join him for the first 18 months. So from 2016 to 2018, we really did everything ourselves. We made the product by hand,

we made deliveries. And then in February of 2018 is when our Shark Tank episode aired. And that really introduced the brand to the nation. When you say by hand, bro, like, okay, I don't know much about making beverages, but that seems kind of like, oh, yeah, we blend this up and come drink it. What did that look like? So none of us are like chemists or food scientists or anything like that. And we literally the first batch that we ever sold to whole foods, we brewed in Jordan's blender in his dorm room. We poured it into an honest tea bottle. We took the label off. We put our label on and we went to whole foods and we said, Hey, we're super coffee. You guys don't sell anything like

this. And they were like, shit, man, we'll take eight cases. And then we were too small back then. You're too small for distributors. You're too small for factories. You need minimum run sizes for all of that. So we started making it this Domino's sugar factory in Baltimore. They had a bottling line in the back and all of our products are sugar-free. So it's ironic that it was a sugar factory, but they let us use their bottling line. And we'd come in at 8 PM. We'd brew up a big batch, like a hundred gallons of super coffee. We'd bottle it. And then we'd get back to work. We'd make deliveries the next day. And what we did that first year, we built up a book of business, like 20 stores from DC to Baltimore. And we poured samples every weekend. We were the best selling bottle of coffee in all

20 of those stores. And that story alone, it was a condensed story. That was enough to go raise money and tell investors like, Hey, with your dollars, we could do the same strategy in 200 stores, 2000 stores today. I mean, today we're in 50,000 stores nationwide fighting with Starbucks and Dunkin. You know, I think a lot of people would say, OK, well, obviously, like you went to school for this or you read some books on this. Is that obvious? Is that something that you did? No, man, we we went to school for sports. We were athletes. And I'll tell you what, that's a big part of our identity and the reason we're able to do what we do today. This shit is hard. It's not complicated. It's a simple strategy. It's just not an easy one.

So what we do is, I mean, we've taken the lessons learned as athletes, waking up early, putting in the work that other people don't want to put in. And that translates directly to competing in the crowded beverage category every single day. And then you learn on the go. I don't want to make it look easy. Five years ago, I didn't know half of what I know today. And we've had good mentors and good coaches along the way. So this certainly hasn't been the three of us bringing this thing to life. There's been a lot of people who have helped us get here. How did the bottling at the sugar factory happen?

Yeah, so part of us is, I mean, our motto is create your own luck. We called every food manufacturing facility from Virginia to Pennsylvania. An actual phone call, not just like an email or text, an actual phone call. Oh yeah. There we go. Phone call. We showed up cold calls and I mean, you create your own luck. You know, nobody's ever got lucky sitting at home on the couch. And the other thing, I mean, we coming from Kingston, New York, we don't come from money. You know, like we, our dad was a construction worker. Our mom was a worked at the YMCA. Uh, so it's not like we could call our family and say, Hey, do you want to invest in this

company we're starting? So we were pouring samples at Whole Foods and Jake had his Georgetown football hat on. And an alumni was like, hey, I went to Georgetown. I got my master's degree there. Would love to, how can I help? And it turned out that he was a lawyer. His clients were high net worth individuals in DC. That next week, we just met this stranger.

That next week, we were in front of his clients, pitching them to invest in our company and they made an investment, but that never would have happened if we weren't that Whole Foods, Porn Samples building this brand. I think people get lucky sitting on the couch all the time nowadays with Netflix and chill. So I just had to correct you real quickly right there. One thing where I think people get caught up in all kinds of weird stuff, like when they're trying to create something or invent something or bring something to market. And one area where I see people get caught up in all kinds of weird stuff, like when they're trying to create something or invent something or bring something to market. And one area where I see people being super reluctant or gun shy is when they're trying to bring the market almost somebody else's idea. You mentioned Bulletproof Coffee earlier.

What allowed you guys to feel the freedom to make a product that is probably very similar to some of the things that Dave Asprey brought to market? I think he maybe even did so later on after you guys, but I think it's a worthy thing to talk about because a lot of people are like, ah, you know, so-and-so kind of has that concept or idea. I'm not going to bother making it. What was your thought process on that? Yeah, I think everybody's got to be able to answer two questions, right? Why will you succeed at first? Basically, why does the world need your product? And then why will you succeed once others copy you? And certainly we were inspired by Bulletproof, the keto diet, this idea of fat for fuel. And we were the first to market on the ready to drink side. So our product was different enough.

And then why will you succeed once others copy you? The answer for us has become authenticity. It's become more for Walmart than for Whole Foods. You know, like I love Dave Asprey. I mean, he's inspired us to do what we do. But biohacking is a very niche market. You know, you're not going to appeal to the middle of America Walmart shop. For us, what we were able to do with the science of biohacking is disguise it with a mainstream flavor. You know, our products taste like a Starbucks Frappuccino, except they're $2.79 at Walmart. So I think that's how you democratize health, is by giving

people what they want or what they expect and sneaking in the benefits. We don't talk about medium chain triglycerides. We don't talk about ketosis. Our product provides all of those benefits, but it tastes good and it's good for you. When you guys managed to actually get onto Shark Tank, did it make a massive difference for you? Did it really shift you that much? Because we were talking about that earlier and it's like, I was wondering, because you know how like a lot of people can do things on social media and bootstrapping stuff nowadays, right? Did it actually really make a big boost in terms of your business or, or was it a smaller benefit? Was it a lesser benefit than you expected?

So it's a tricky one because everybody expects shark tank. Like once you're going on the show, shark tank is like a black box. You go film and then they don't tell you when you're going to air. So you can't really prepare from a inventory perspective. You don't really know what the lift is going to be, but you don't want to sell out either. So we made a bunch of product and some people were like, oh, you'll do a month's worth of sales in 24 hours, that type of thing. But there was no real method to calculate that. So the night the episode aired, we did see

a nice spike. It was probably, I don't know, 10 days of e-commerce sales in one day, which was great. And then the nice thing about that is like the next day at the level stayed pretty high. But anything like that, any opportunity like that, it is what you make it, you know, cause only a select amount of people saw that episode on Sunday night when it aired. And now, I mean, today here we are three years later, we're still talking about it. You know, we're putting up signs in grocery stores and as you know, we didn't even, we didn't get a deal. We didn't even get an offer. You know, like it was, it was embarrassing as athletes. We felt like we lost the game on national television. However, it's been great for our business because it gave us confidence and it gave us access to,

to private investors. And it really, I mean, it empowered us in grocery stores to drive sales and, and, uh, put and put signs up that people recognize. From that episode, did you end up kind of learning that you didn't know what the fuck you were doing? No, what was interesting is like, we were on that episode and we're like, nobody in the world knows more about Supergolfie than the three of us, right? Because it's intimidating sitting across from Mark Cuban and Barbara and Robert. And like, these are some of the smartest people in their fields, but like, we're like, fuck man, they don't know about this. This is our thing. You know, this we're the best at this. So we, that, that gave us confidence.

And, uh, I mean, they respected what we were doing. I think that our valuation was a little bit high for them at the time, but I mean, that's, that's, uh, makes the show good. What was the main thing you learned from that, uh, episode or, or like kind of being on there and not getting a deal? Was it kind of embarrassing to where you guys were like, Hey, you need to kind of regroup or were you guys still really super positive? Back to work, man. It was a, we had, we filmed on a Saturday and we come Monday morning, we showed up,

we, we improved the formulas, we improved the packaging. We started pouring samples. So it was motivating. You know, it was like, it was like, you lost the formulas, we improved the packaging, we started pouring samples. So it was motivating. You know, it was like, it was like you lost the championship. You had a good team, you lost the championship game. And then the next season you came back and you won, you know? So like we put in more work than we ever had before. And like I said, it gave us confidence.

You know, we held our own in the Shark Tank, you know, and that was, uh, that was the confidence we needed to hire people older than us, smarter than us work with investors that are smarter than us. No, we, we just felt like we were doing, doing the right thing after coming out of there. What are your three roles as like brothers that like started this company and how did you guys delegate that? Like, like, like, are you the guy who talks in front of the camera to most people people and what do your other brothers do as far as like all the business is concerned for people watching this i'm sitting in the back of a car these two guys are driving that's the youngest brother that's the middle brother we're uh we're making we're making deliveries today i thought you were in a limo. Yeah, it's a Hyundai Sonata, so not quite a limo.

But the distinction of our roles is crucial. If we were all doing the same thing, we'd kill each other. And we're super close in age. I'm 28, Jake's 27, Jordan's 25. And when we first started, we all did everything. We'd take turns making deliveries, printing out invoices on QuickBooks, making the product. For example, we sort of rotate through all the grunt work, which was good because it really allowed us to learn the business from the ground up. And then what we found is as the business grew, our personality sort of gravitated towards different disciplines.

Jordan created Super Coffee. So he's like the operations and innovation guy. Today, he's our head of operations. He's our chief operating officer. So he makes all the product. He comes up with the new stuff. Jake was the best at pouring samples and selling into customers and closing new accounts and getting big orders. His personality is very carefree, happy-go-lucky. He can win over any room. Jake's our chief revenue officer. And that's a skill set that I don't possess. And for me, my passion was networking and building

relationships. And I've led all of our investor relations over the last five years. And the three of us, I mean, we stay in those lanes, but we combine on the big stuff, the vision, the culture. Like I said, if we didn't, if we, if we all worked on the same thing, it wouldn't work. You know, we, we would kill each other. What were some major missteps or mishaps that you maybe had in trying to create this product? Did you guys end up ordering like 10,000 items and then you couldn't do shit with them and they spoiled or you got some horror stories for us? Oh, my gosh. You must have heard this one before because that's exactly what happened. We, uh, in the early days, the only facility we could get into was it was called HPP or high pressure, high pressure pasteurization really for like cold press juices, like fresh products.

So it doesn't give you a shelf life. It gives you like 90 days refrigerated. So perishable items. And we found these beautiful bottles in China and what, what you do. So you, so we ordered these bottles. They came over on a boat, took 30 days, spent every penny we had on 10,000 bottles from China. And the HPP process, you fill the bottles with your product, you run it through the HPP machine, and it puts an intense amount of pressure on the bottles to kill the bacteria. And when we did that, we started hurting. So we got these bottles from China. We filled them up, put them in the HPP machine, and we started hearing what was like gunshots bang bang pop and we're like oh shit that can't be good

the bottles from china didn't work with the hpp machine so they all just started blowing up leaking and i mean there was nothing we could do with them except for the ones that we saved we just poured samples and handed out for free but as an early company, something so devastating like that, that could really set you back. So yeah, I mean, that was a lesson. And we make mistakes every day. You just got to make less costly ones. As far as like investors are concerned, how early?

Because you mentioned like, you know, you guys were pouring out Whole Foods and you started getting investors. It's like, you know, someone from Georgetown met you with a lawyer, et cetera. Um, but like, how did that, how did that work early on? Did you guys have, okay, this is what our company brings in. Like, did, did these investors have contracts? Like, how did you guys learn how to handle that really early on and how has that evolved? Yeah. So it's evolved dramatically because in the early days i mean you need a lawyer to teach you

how to do this stuff yeah uh but in the early days we didn't know anything about how to structure it how to price around what a convertible note was any of that we just knew we needed money beverage is a very low margin industry you know we only make 25 30 cents a bottle. And it's also low margin, but also low cash. We're not selling apparel or sneakers for $300 and putting 150 bucks in the bank. So even to this day, I mean, we're 110 employees, 100 million in sales. We're not profitable. We lose money every month because we continue to invest in growth. So over the last five years, we've raised $70 million from investors to grow as quickly as we have. In those early days, we just knew we needed money. We needed to buy the bottles. We needed to rent the delivery truck. We needed to eventually hire people. And back then, there was no right... There's many right ways to do this. There isn't

just one way. So we found the guys from Whole Foods, the Georgetown guys. We raised 500 grand from them. The most important thing about raising money is we did what we said we would do with it. It's like, with your 500,000, we'll turn this 100K in sales into a million dollars in sales in six months. So that's what we did. We went out. We made some mistakes here and there. And then as we were running out of that cash, we said, hey, we did what we told you we'd do.

Now, if you give us a million dollars, we could turn it into $2 million in sales. So that was really the pattern for the first three years, through 2016, 17, and 18. And then in 2019, we had enough volume, enough run, like operating history, enough sales data to go out and raise a big institutional round. We raised our series A. We raised about $15 million at a $50 million valuation. And that was a very different structure than those one-off convertible notes with high net worth individuals. But yeah, my full-time job is raising money. So early on, even before you guys got into any stores, did any of you have a normal job to support yourself everywhere else? Or was it just school and then you guys got into any stores did any of you have like a like a normal job to like support yourself

like everywhere else or was it just school and then you guys all dove into uh this coffee company yeah man good question it was it was the latter it was school and we all drove no man i had i had just graduated in june of 2015 from from colgate university where i played football. And in August is when we all started Super Coffee together. So for those three months, I was working on Wall Street. I was like a financial analyst. That was supposed to be my career. They didn't really like it. Jordan told me he was dropping out.

So I joined in with them. But we couldn't pay ourselves for the first couple of years. On Sundays, I would go to Baltimore Ravens games and sell Bud Light. I was literally the guy going up and down the aisle saying, get your beer here, $6.50 Bud Light. That was good cash. I'd make $300 a game. But we weren't living large back then.

It was very lean and a lot of work. Sounds like you guys must have had very supportive parents. Yeah. Mom and dad were awesome. They've always been our biggest fans. Our mom, they never missed a game. Our dad played football in college too. parents yeah mom and dad were awesome they've always been our biggest fans you know like our mom was they never missed a game uh our dad played football in college too and uh they i mean they were just good good supporters in the early days like when we first started their job was done you

know they put three kids into college i had graduated with a good job jordan was on a full ride and we called them we're like mom george dropping out of school i'm quitting my job she was like what the fuck are you guys talking about shut up and get back to class you know like she was so confused and upset and like because we didn't know this world you know we didn't know what a startup was we didn't understand like it was so foreign to them that i think that just scared the shit out of them and then once we got some momentum once shark tank happened like all that stuff they've just been along for the ride, cheering us on. They've been great.

What do you think was like a defining moment that led to that decision of saying, yeah, we're going to quit what we're doing. We're going to focus more on the super coffee. Yeah. And this really goes to the credit of my younger brothers, Jake and Jordan. Before I joined, while I was working on Wall Street, they put that product in the bottle and went to whole foods. Like, like I said, and once whole foods expressed interest in this, it became real. You know, Jordan was like, this, this can be something big. You know, Starbucks Frappuccino has a 90% market share of a $2 billion category. Nobody is attacking that thing. And we have an opportunity here, but I can't be a

full-time student athlete do this. So he kudos to i mean he had the the courage the courage to drop out of school and get started and then jake and i have always been here to support him along the way how did the um because looking at your instagram you can see the partnership with like a rod and jlo and all that type of stuff so when did that start happening and um i guess what kind of difference is that potentially brought to what you guys do? Yeah. So they've been amazing partners, even through this whole relationship stuff that they're going through now. And we met them through one of our West Coast investors last March, right when COVID was becoming a thing. And we had our first, we had a Zoom call with a rod it was only supposed to be a rod we had a zoom call

with him uh in april of 2020 and in the zoom call you see a woman's arm next to next to alex on the bench where like jake and jordan are like elbowing each other like that's jaylo that's jaylo and uh she pops in and she's just totally humble and kind and said boys i love what you're doing i don't drink a lot of coffee but i love what you're doing i see boys, I love what you're doing. I don't drink a lot of coffee, but I love what you're doing. I see the potential. I see what you're working on here. Then we got to meet them last summer. We went out to their house in LA. And that's really where we consummated the deal. We said, look, guys, this is going to be big. We don't want this to be an endorsement. We don't want to use your brand. We want you guys to be owners in this company with us. And they wrote a pretty big check both last summer and then again this past March of 2021.

And J-Lo's at a point in her career where she said to us straight up, she's like, I'm sick of making other people money by using my name to make money for all these other brands, whether it's endorsement deals, Pepsi, whatever. She's like, I want to make money for J-Lo. She said she's made so many other billionaires. And that's why she just launched JLo Beauty. That's why rather than endorsement deals, she's becoming owners and things. And her and Alex, despite whatever happens with their relationship, I think they're always going to be good business partners because they truly make each other better. What kind of rules have you guys had to set up amongst yourselves, amongst the three brothers, so you guys don't punch each other in

the face every day? Has there been some defined rules where you're like, hey, we need to do things this way because it's just not, we're arguing too much? It's a good question. We don't really have any rigid principles. We have some practices that we use every single week. And the first is just candid feedback, you know, and we have a brother's call three days a week at 7. A.M. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, no matter where in the world we are, just so we're all on the same page because a lot happens in a day. So we can't go a week without talking.

And so we'll, we'll have those calls, but on those calls, there was a time like when we, before we started working together when we were in college and high school, if I gave Jake feedback or if Jordan gave Jakeake feedback or if jake gave me feedback i'd be like fuck you dude you don't know what you're talking about like shut up like get off my back no but now we all respect each other's feedback in this in the sense that it's like okay i did something that he's telling me i could do better and or i'm not doing something well enough or i'm not paying attention here,

or he's hearing something from one of my direct reports that they wouldn't tell me. So it's really this collaborative. And as triggering as it is, sometimes nobody ever wants to be told you're wrong or you're not doing something right. That's uncomfortable to receive. But now we respect that it's coming from the best intentions to make the organization better.

And today, I mean, there's still fights, but it's all about the little things. What color should the labels be? What should we name the new flavor? Those are the ugliest fights. Thank God we're aligned on the big stuff. In 2020, when you said you got that deal with A-Rod and J-Lo,

obviously the pandemic started happening and all of that shit happened. So did anything slow down what you guys do in terms of business in 2020? Or did anything slow down what you guys do in terms of, in terms of business in 2020, or did you have to make any changes or was everything pretty smooth because it was a consumer consumable product in stores? Yeah, man, it was a wild year. And just like everybody, there was a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of fear. And when things started closing down in March of 2020, we saw a big spike in sales.

That was like when people ran to grocery stores and bought all the toilet paper and the water and stuff. So anytime there's more foot traffic in grocery stores, there's more Super Coffees sold, right? But then in April, traffic fell off. And that didn't really come back until 2021. And it's still not back to pre-pandemic levels. really come back until 2021. And it's still not back to pre pandemic levels. So for us, what was what was tricky is our sales did not grow as fast as they should have last year. Like I said, I mean, this time last year, we probably had 70 full time employees. And we were faced with a choice.

Everybody was scared. Our employees were all at home watching the news. Most of our employees are in grocery stores every single day. And the choice was, guys, we're not going to force you to work. But if you choose not to work, we'll keep your job. We just can't pay you. We're a cash-burning startup. And we'll furlough you. But we totally respect your decision. If you do choose to work, we're going to take every measure to do it safely. And our distributors sell more products than just super coffee. They sell soup and water and other products. If you continue to work, we have to help the helpers. Because store managers are calling out sick all over the country.

Distributors aren't showing up to work. We are a part of our country's supply chain. We're going to show up to work. Let's put our masks on. Let's do it safely. Let's keep the shelves stocked with everything, not just super coffee. Not one person chose the furlough option. We all kept showing up.

We took care of our customers. We took care of our distributors and a lot of other brands. I mean, we got a lot of heat for it. You know, they're like, Oh, you guys are disgusting. This is so aggressive. And it wasn't that at all. It was, I mean, people were, you saw both sides of it, right? People were like doubling down and evolving their businesses. And some people were closing up shop and hoarding it up and we chose to keep moving forward. So I think that brought us closer as an organization. And I mean, it was expensive. We continued to lose money last year, but it was in hindsight, it was the right decision. Tell us about what's in the coffee. You mentioned MCT oil a little bit earlier. I think you mentioned collagen. What's a super

coffee comprised of? Yeah. So the original recipe is organic coffee, 200 milligrams. So it's about two cups in every 12 ounce bottle. We had 10 grams of protein. And today we have a whey protein line and then a plant-based protein line, which is actually really nice. That just launched this year. We add MCT oil, healthy fats for fuel. MCT oil is a carrier. You'll see it in vitamins. You'll see it in other things because it's easily absorbed through the blood brain barrier so it works really well with the caffeine so you feel that extra focus that's truly what makes it super uh and then it's everything is sweetened with monk fruit so it's an all-natural plant-based sweetener from southeast asia uh beautiful sweetener it's like we used to use stevia if you guys saw the shark tank episode

barbara literally scraped her tongue she was like oh no it's fitting though yep i think we got good sorry back yeah we're back sorry you were saying uh barbara scraped her tongue and then and then it went weird. Oh, dang. My bad, guys. I'm sorry. I'm going to move. Barbara, she was like, guys, I can't get this taste out of my mouth.

And it was the stevia. And that's when we realized we had to switch to monk fruit. Let me ask you this. As far as scaling to, I think you mentioned that you have a hundred full-time employees now that work in stores. Um, what exactly do they do? Cause like, I, I'm not sure exactly since it's sold in stores and like, you know, on shelves, what do your employees do in stores? Are they like doing samples and stuff? Like, what does that look like? Yeah. So you'd think that once you get your product in a store, it's up to the grocery store to keep it stocked and your distributors to bring it. It's not the case at all. And it's

really the wild west. And the reason that companies like Coke and Pepsi have such a demanding presence on our food system, even on the snack side, Kellogg, Nabisco, Mondelez, is because they have this infrastructure where their sales reps are hitting stores every single day. And grocery stores are overwhelmed. They stock thousands of products across hundreds of different categories. And with that in mind, if Coke is in there every day, Coke distributes Dunkin' and Pepsi distributes Starbucks. If those guys are on the shelf every day, if they see super coffee sold out, they're taking that space. And there's 10,000 employees for Coke, 10,000 for Pepsi in the field every the field every day. We only have a hundred, but it's a battle,

you know, and we, we pick our battles wisely. Like we call it the 80, 20 rule where 80% of our revenue comes from the top 20% of accounts because we can't possibly see as many accounts that Coke and Pepsi sees. So our, our team is picking, picking the right accounts that deliver the most fruit, the biggest orders, the best customers, and they're servicing the shit out of those because it's literally hand to hand combat. The day you don't show up to your store is the day that somebody takes the shelf space. Who's the strongest in the gym out of you three? I certainly have the strongest. Jake's got the best endurance. He's a freak. He could just get up and run a marathon if he wanted to. And then Jordan is the smoothest athlete. He was the point guard of the family. Jake and I were the two brutes.

You guys get an opportunity to train together? Or do you keep that separate? Every day. Oh, nice. Yeah. And we still compete. We'll push each other whether we're running. We do a decathlon in New York City every year. Raise money for charity. So there's some track meet events, some bench press, football toss, that type of thing. So we try and keep it competitive. And you guys know, it's a part of your identity. It's who you are. You can't give that up. Once sports is over, a lot of people lose a big part of themselves. They don't know what to do. And one, I mean, we've translated that energy into our business, but also we can't go a day without training.

Did you guys have any inspiration on like when you were first starting out, like, you know, when your brother said that they blended that and they blended up the coffee and took it to whole foods doing that in and of itself. And I think maybe your brother was 22 or 23 at the time. Like that takes a lot of belief in terms of what you're doing. You know what I mean? Cause most people wouldn't take that first step to do that.

So, I mean, I know you said you had hardworking parents, but was there anyone that like inspired you guys to take those steps to do that or to see the potential possibility in that? Cause you know, it's not often that you see people just do that without having seen something like that done in the past or a parent or, um, I don't know, somebody within the family. You know, you know what I'm, you know what I'm saying here? Yeah, no, I do. And so a couple of things happened and Mark mentioned it in the beginning with, did anybody tell us not, not to do this? Right.

And, and we reached out to this guy, his name is Seth Goldman. He's been one of our closest advisors, uh, throughout all this process. He's the founder of Honest Tea and he sold his business to Coca-Cola for a few hundred million bucks. He's now the chairman of beyond me, but he replied to our cold email back in 2015, before we ever sold a bottle. And he said, boys, please don't do this. The beverage industry is brutal. It's unforgiving. I promise you, you're not going to like it. There's too many coffees out there. All the, all the typical responses, but read my book. I wrote a book on how to start a beverage company. If you, if you like the book, let's talk, read the book, talk to him. Uh, and he was still like reluctant about starting a coffee for kids who've never done it before. So we go to whole foods hearing, hearing Seth tell us, no,

like that was the inspiration that we needed. So at that point, we're kind of like, fuck this, you know, nobody's been betting on us except the three of us and selling into whole foods, a product before it was ready. That was like our naive ignorance and impatience. It was like, we're not going to wait to get this thing perfect. Let's go sell it. Let's see if people would buy this. And then we just focused on sales and the product has improved incrementally every single year. We're always renovating our formulas, our packaging, all of that. But my advice to any entrepreneur is start before you're ready because you're never going to feel ready. It's always going to be scary. What made Whole Foods a target? Proximity. It's half a mile away from a dorm room. And back then, it was... I mean,

Whole Foods still today is standard in healthy living. And this was before Amazon owned Whole Foods. So they had a local program. And we're like, look, rather than going to the Georgetown farmer's market and selling samples next to eggs and chicken and stuff, let's get into a real retailer and see if we can scale it there. And that was a good proof of concept that we needed. There was also strategic value in slapping a Whole Foods logo on our investment decks. It wasn't like we were killing it in a mom and pop shop. It's like, these are real sales numbers and a real national retailer. You mentioned earlier, you kind of used the term democratize health. Is that kind of a mission for you guys? Do you guys have aspirations of maybe doing this with other products, perhaps?

Yeah, man. So our mission at super coffee is to mass produce positive energy and it starts with what we put in the products but also our culture and how our team treats people how we treat each other how we treat our customers our partners like we really believe optimism is contagious so i think that's been cool to see it one with our products on every shelf but two with the interactions our team has and three and i don't want to say super coffee is silver but like i said if you can make something mainstream accessible tastes good and and for 2.99 i don't know am i frozen again yeah yeah you said three i'm sorry no you're good you were at three and then everything just went so three i said three yeah we didn't we just heard the number three and then just

nothing oh no i'm sorry i was just saying that uh mental health is it's it's a tough problem to solve because people don't know where to start and for super coffee something like optimism uh something that's healthy zero zero sugar and can be on every shelf in the country that's that's making something that's making positive energy accessible and that's that's really what we're damn it i'm sorry guys i'm in and out i know it yeah it's uh it's cutting in and out a little bit that's making positive energy accessible. And that's really what we're working on. Damn it. I'm sorry, guys. I'm in and out. I know it.

Yeah, it's cutting in and out a little bit. That's okay. You guys are making your deliveries. I know. I was all set to do this tomorrow, but I was like, shit, if that doesn't work for you guys, let's make it happen.

Right. You know, for the three of you, I don't know if you necessarily know right now, but obviously your business is growing really fast. You mentioned like you had evaluated at a hundred million or you had a hundred million in sales. I'm not sure which one it is, but it's a big number. For the three of you guys, are you, do you have plans on continuing your roles as like the decade goes by? Cause like a lot of people, when they have business, they have plans to exit it at the same time too, right? So how do you guys see that evolving through the next few years? You've obviously probably thought about it, but how does that maybe look? Yeah, it's a good question. And given that we've raised so much outside capital from

private investors, something needs to happen with the business, right? Whether we go public or whether we sell to a strategic like a Nestle or an Anheuser-Busch, something like this. That's how our investors make their money back. When you invest in a private company, those shares aren't traded. There's no market for those shares. It's not like you can just go on E-Trade and sell your shares at Super Coffee. So yeah, eventually we'll partner up with an organization that can help take our brand globally, whether that be a Pepsi or a Nestle. Or if we determine that going public and scaling this on our own is the right path forward, which isn't typically the case for brands. You know, brands are built to be rolled up into interstrategics who can make them more efficient, whether it be through manufacturing and distribution and that sort of thing.

But I guess to answer your question, I don't see myself doing this in 10 years from now. It's certainly probably a five-year plan. We've already been doing it. This is year six. So we'll probably be doing it for another three to five more years before we pass off the reins to a new executive team. A saying that you don't really hear it too often anymore, fake it till you make it, but it is still around. I'm curious.

Uh, did you ever have to like maybe overhype the company to maybe get into a store or land a big partner or something like that to where you're like, Oh shit, that actually, that, that worked. They believed it. Or were you guys pretty like, you guys pretty straight up and honest with everybody, you actually didn't have to fake anything? Dude, that's the secret to life, right? Is painting a picture because two people could look at the same situation and one person could be pessimistic, the other person could be optimistic,

but it's the same exact situation. And what I've learned about raising money is the value of your company is whatever investors are willing to pay for it. And we've seen extreme examples of this recently with the rise and fall of WeWork. They had a very persuasive, convincing CEO who was able to convince some of the smartest investors in the world to invest at $47 billion. And now today, I think the company's worth $9 billion. So persuasion is tricky and we've never lied. We've never done anything unethical, but we've certainly painted a very positive picture of what this brand is and what it can be. Is it hard to manage that many employees? You said you have 110 or something like that. So that's got to be challenging, I would imagine.

Yeah. I mean, we've grown up quick these last few years. We have a really good executive coach, but the key is to hire great managers. Right now, as the CEO, I have four direct reports. Jake has six direct reports. Jordan has four direct reports. And all of our direct reports manage the business. It's like you got to keep the people happy because the people take care of the company. So I never thought we would get to this point of 100 employees or what it would be like to manage 100 employees,

but it's keeping the culture moving. It's putting your values out there so people understand what you stand for and then hiring good people to manage the business. You said you're in 50,000 stores. Is that literally all over the US? And you also mentioned needing to potentially partner with something else to go global. So are you guys not outside of the United States? Are there difficulties in doing that? Oh, you guys hear me? Now you're back. Yeah. Yeah. You asked if we're only available in the

US. Yeah. Are you only available in the US? Cause you mentioned 50,000 stores and are you also outside available, like available outside of the United States too? Yep. So we're only available in the US and we're probably only 40% available in the US. So we have 60% of opportunity here in the States. Uh, and our national distributor partner is Anheuser-Busch. So basically, we can be distributed anywhere you see Bud Light. So that's going to be the build on the home front in the United States these next couple of years. But every day, we're getting hit up by exporters of different countries. They want to sell super coffee in different countries. For us, we see that as white space. There's a lot of foreign countries that drink a lot more

cold coffee per capita than America does. But we've seen how intensive it is to grow a business in the US that we don't want to do that internationally until we're ready to. And I think a strategic alignment with an Anheuser-Busch or a Nestle or somebody like this can really help take this business global. What do you think has been the best form of marketing for you guys? What do you think has been the best form of marketing for you guys? Really word of mouth, but not like telling, obviously like loyal customers telling their friends about it. But in the early days, it was us pouring samples, educating customers on a new brand. There's no alternative for that, that human to human interaction, especially between

founders and customers. Today, we spend a lot of money on Facebook and Instagram ads every month, but that's blocking and tackling. You sort of have to do that. We did just get into partnership marketing last year. You guys mentioned J-Lo and A-Rod, but we do a lot with smaller fitness influencers, the Devin LeBakes, Jen Widerstroms of the world, Patrick Schwarzenegger is an investor in our business. So folks like that help move the needle. But marketing, there's not any one silver bullet. It's a lot of little things. It's a lot of blocking and tackling, just maintenance. This is a company that came up when social media marketing was getting really, really hot. So obviously, did that make a very big difference for you? Yeah. I mean, social did that make a very big difference for you?

Yeah. I mean, social media for us is mainly a customer service channel. You know, we're posting new product launches, people are hitting us up. Where can I buy it? What's in it? How much, you know? So like it's, we get a lot of inbound. It's a lot of messaging with our customers. So that's, it's cool to be able to build those relationships with our customers across social.

And then obviously with the rise of like influencers across social media, even new platforms like TikTok, big brands pay a lot of money to get those viewerships or those eyeballs. But what's interesting, you can go look at J-Lo's page. She posted on Monday of this week. She's got 150 million followers. She put up a post on Monday drinking super coffee, four photos of her drinking super coffee, which is amazing.

Doesn't move the needle as much as the fitness influencer with 500,000 followers saying, guys, super coffee is my go-to morning routine. So it's not necessarily a reach thing. It's sometimes more who's the person, who do they influence, who's following them. And that's tricky too, because not every famous person is the right fit for your business. What else are you guys working on? You got a new product that you can talk about? Yeah. So we're super excited.

We just launched our first summer seasonal. It's a blueberry latte, which I was pretty apprehensive about. But my brother Jordan came up with this flavor and our winter and spring season or fall and winter seasonals like a maple pumpkin and a white chocolate peppermint they do really well for us nobody's ever really done a summer coffee especially blueberry flavor man this thing tastes like a blueberry muffin so good it just came out last week and it's uh it's got plant-based protein uh and sugar-free so really excited about that one. And then we're experimenting with some pretty high-tech robotic stuff when it comes to cafes. Imagine a robotic barista. We haven't done any

retail yet. We're the only bottled coffee brand that we can name that doesn't have any type of retail presence. Starbucks has cafes, Dunkin' has cafes, La Cologne has retail. So that's a disadvantage to us because people can't come in and hang out in our stores and interact with the brand and the smells and the flavor. I say Starbucks cafe, you guys immediately know what it smells like, what it feels like, what the magic marker on your cup looks like. We don't have that. So we're starting to experiment with that in more of a high-tech manner how would that look like would there be like a super coffee thing and then like a uh like a robot hand like you know the crane things that pours and whatever like is that kind of what you're talking about here or am i tripping dude it's fucking sweet it looks like

a like a cat like a tesla factory like you know those machines that make Fords and Teslas? It's an arm. It can pour six cups of coffee per minute, everything from cappuccinos and espressos and lattes to cold brew. and Peter Thiel basically pays college students to drop out of school and work on their ideas. And Jordan comes up with Super Coffee. One of the other Thiel fellows in his class came up with this robotic barista that we're collaborating with now. That sounds amazing. Sounds a little Terminator-esque. How about it? I can picture people yelling at the robots.

You poured too much cream in it. Just kicking the robot on their way out. Oh, man. Yeah, they'll never spell your name wrong when they write it on the cup. How do you guys eat? Do you all eat pretty healthy together, or are you guys on separate plans? Like you got one guy eating some junk food and the other guy on the keto diet, or how does that work? Yeah, man, we're all on the same the same wave. Like, well, uh, we're not strict keto, you know,

we're, uh, I'm trying to put on some weight and we'll eat, we'll eat very low carb, high fat, high protein, you know, and I'll cycle in and out of keto maybe one or two weeks every quarter, just as a reset. And I feel really, really mentally clear when I'm in ketosis. But amongst the three of us, we all agree that too many carbs, too much sugar really slows us down. Now, if I'm getting after it in the gym one day, I'll eat some bananas, some sweet potatoes, that type of thing, maybe some pasta, but really just low carb, high fat. What does work look for you? Maybe you and you guys on a daily basis, how much each day, how many hours are you putting in each day, each week on the business that you guys are currently running? With the time that you're putting in now, has that been how it's been the whole time? Do you think you're working more now than you were in the beginning? What's that look like? It's a good question. So like we were definitely, now we're getting more out of the hours that we're putting in. In the beginning, we'd work a lot of 15, 20 hour days just because we were

doing shit inefficiently. We were doing things hard, just brute force, making product by hand. All that was just long hours. Today, we'll probably average 12 hours a day, 6am to 6pm or 6am to 7pm some days. But what I need to do to get the most out of my hours, I got to break it up. So from 11 to 1 for a couple hours in the middle of the day, maybe I go get a workout or go for a run and clear my head, go out to lunch. And that's stuff that I was never comfortable doing in years past. We're the type of people, we feel guilty when we're not working. We feel like we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. But now today, I feel like I need to balance mental health with the grind. And then

when I come back to the office at 1pm, after a two hour workout or a lunch or a meeting or whatever, then it feels like a new day, you know, so from then 1pm to 7pm, I'm locked in again. Jake and Jordan, Jordan probably works the most just because of from an ops perspective, he's, he's up late at night, sort of filling orders, taking inventory, that type of thing. Jake certainly travels the most. Um, and when you guys know running your own business, it's not, it's not nine to five, it's not five days a week. There's not a day that goes by where you're not clearing out emails, where you're not getting back to people.

Now, even if I'm on vacation, I'll always go through my inbox. It's not in an unhealthy, workaholic way. It's our life. It's what we enjoy to do. Awesome, man. Great having you on the show today. Congratulations on all the success to all three of you. Keep those deliveries going.

Guys, thank you so much. You caught us right in action. I'm sorry for any technical difficulties, but it's been an honor to hang out with you thank you so much have a great rest of your day yeah thank you you too guys thank you cool story man yeah i gotta go get some of this damn coffee i had it twice it's pretty damn good i think i had the original one it's like vanilla something but it's just like a golden white bottle. But it's good. It's really fucking good coffee. Yeah. It looks like on their website they have a coffee and they have a creamer and then he was saying they're going to have

some seasonal stuff, so that sounds pretty good too. Yeah, they got the ready-to-drink, they have creamer, they have grounds, pods, bundles. They'll definitely have the pumpkin spice on Halloween. I was like, what? I got you though. Yeah, and then they have plant-based ones now and dairy-free. have the punt against Spife on Halloween. I was like, what? I got you though. Yeah.

Yeah, and then they have plant-based ones now and dairy-free. I've been throwing protein in my coffee for a long time. Probably way back when muscle milk was around. Oh, snap.

The original muscle milk that powdered. Yeah. Not that ready to drink. They got to dump some of that in my coffee and it was fucking unreal. Originally muscle milk

was a powder? Yeah. I did not know that. I thought it was always ready to drink no they made it so you missed out because it was the best tasting thing ever really yeah it was fucking unbelievable the their original formula it was um the uh when you scooped it out, it looked like cake batter or something. It was like really like dense. It was like, it would be like the kind of dirt that like worms would be in, you know, it would look like that. And it was like heavy.

The bottle was like really heavy. You know how you, if you get like really good cookies, they're pretty heavy. They're full of like butter. That's what this canister was like. You know, it was like you know it was like uh kind of the size of the steak shake type thing but it was a lot more dense because there was like triple the amount of fat in there oh i was about to ask you why was it like that there was like 20 grams of fat i think like per thing that's amazing but like i didn't you know i didn't

know as much back then so i'm like oh this tastes good. And it had protein in it. But it also had carbs too. So it was like loaded with everything. But I can't remember, I can't remember like how many carbs or whatever. But after you use like more than one scoop of it, you started eating kind of a lot of calories. That's a true meal. That's a true weight gainer. Oh my God. That is a true weight gainer.

There's no BS there. It pretty much was. And after I started to recognize how many calories were in it, I started to cut it with isopure chocolate protein powder too. Cut it. Yeah. Exactly. What year was this?

Shit, this is probably 2006. Oh, snap. Not that long ago. Yeah. Freshman year of high school. Between 2006 and 2010 or so. That's crazy. Living in Woodland.

Living in Woodpile. That's interesting that he said, though, his little brother was a teal fellow. He was a teal fellow that those like yeah like he was a teal fellow when he made super coffee see that's one of those things where it's like that i think that also has an impact you know i mean when you're around people like that when you're around other people that are making things and like huge yeah when like everyone that that are teal fellows they're starting they're starting businesses and stuff so that's a really awesome environment to be in that can help you see possibilities. I mean, he didn't say that like that, that spurred anything, but I feel like it may have helped.

Oh, it had to be huge. Yeah. Probably like how, uh, like acting academy is right. Having all these kids that are, you know, artists or whatever. Yeah. Thinking differently. Yeah. Yeah.

That'd be cool. Or some of the academies that you mentioned where there's a, or like a dojos where there's like the Donna, her group and there's just different thinking. Right. So everyone there is open to, uh, different ways of,

of doing jujitsu. Right. Yeah. Everyone's open to trying different things. And I think that, um, that must've been huge. And the robot coffee shop sounds, uh pretty damn amazing it does i i see yeah i can see how the possibility would be

i don't mind like they're gonna be some people who i want a human barista but bro you barely talk to them anyway and you don't it's always awkward trying to like as you're waiting for your transaction to go through these, there's never anything to say. Yeah. You got to like make up shit. How about that weather? Man, it's hot out there.

Hey, Siri can hold pretty good conversation. I wonder how long we got to wear masks for. Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be down for a robot barista though. Cause they'd probably make it perfect every time.

I mean, she, I went to Dutch bros the other day and asked for light ice in my freaking, in my iced, whatever, like, iced coffee. But they didn't put light ice. I think you could, like, talk more random to, like, a robot. It'd be easier, right? Yeah. Or maybe more seriously. Like, hey, like, you know, you get your coffee and you ask the robot, like, what's the meaning of life? Or what do they see in your future?

Right. But if you asked a person that, you might feel pretty awkward and they might feel awkward. But with a robot, maybe you don't have the same concern. Slowly heading deeper and deeper into Black Mirror. Uh-oh. Man, I hope they film more of that stuff. They probably will. I hope so.

Yeah. I mean, what a perfect time. Anyway, sorry. But yeah, a robot barista, man, that shit. Yeah, that shit, that could go dark real quick. Start shooting at you when you walk in. Awesome. Well, let's take it in for our landing there, Andrew.

It will. Take us on out of here. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it. We got some new shit going down in the newsletter, so if you are not signed up, please do so ASAP because this email is going to go out as soon as

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My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? We should have Alexa as a co-host. That'd be sick. Yeah, we could do it. Like with a speaker or something. And Seema Yinyang on Instagram and YouTube and TikTok. And Seema Yinyang on Twitter.

Mark. At Mark's Melly Bell. Strength is never weak and TikTok and see me, Yin Yang, on Twitter, Mark. At Mark Smelly Bell, Strength is Never a Week. This week, this is Never a Strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.