 What are you selling? We're selling a feeling. We're not selling a beverage or CBD. Ben Whitty, founder and CEO of Recess. You ready to answer some questions? Let's do it. Give me your investor pitch. Recess is a consumer wellness brand. We create products and experiences designed to help you feel balanced, centered, and inspired, so you can be your most productive and creative self, despite an increasingly stressful world. So what was the brief? So we knew we wanted to do a CBD sparkling water. I had started experimenting with CBD myself because I've always been a naturally kind of wired, hyper-anxious person. And when I started using it regularly, I felt more balanced and even keeled. And so the brief was to create a sparkling water that's used with CBD as well as adaptogenic herbs designed to help you feel balanced and even keeled and not relaxed. And so we wanted to create a brand focused on productivity. Right. So the key was it was a CBD brand not based on chilling, but a CBD brand based on balance and productivity. Correct. Are adaptogens in this thing you're doing the next kombucha? No, I think there's a number of set of kind of functional ingredients, whether it's CBD and hemp extract or adaptogens or new tropics that increasingly are going to become a part of people's lives that optimize their mentality. So I don't think they're the next kombucha. I think they're, in many ways, the next CBD. Your copy mentions hemp but never CBD. Explain. It's a regulatory issue right now. CBD is one of many compounds found within the hemp plant. We use something called broad spectrum hemp extract, which includes CBD as well as the other compounds. So it's both more effective and better positioned from a regulatory standpoint. How much are the effects placebo versus real? I think the perceived effect of drinking any functional food beverage or supplement is a combination of the efficacy of the functional ingredients and how they interact with us each individually. For example, some people can't drink coffees, others can have four coffee a day including before bed. There's no reason to think CBD is going to impact people any differently than that. But in the case of recess, we're really trying to help people like reduce stress and anxiety. And the opposite of stress and anxiety is arguably feeling nothing. And so in the case of recess, as equally important to the functional ingredients is your expectation about what taking a recess is going to do to you in that moment, which is every brand moment we've ever kind of created. And so everything we do is about kind of marketing a feeling. I actually look at recess as designing feelings. And our Instagram is a product, just like the beverage is a product. And it doesn't just kind of exist to drive sales of the beverage, but our Instagram is like a form of taking a recess. What did you create first, the brand or the product? The brand. What is the key to your brand? The key to our brand is our story and our narrative. I look at recess as a social commentary. The idea is that the world's kind of gone insane and everyone needs a recess. But our brand voice is very tongue-in-cheek intentionally. It's kind of poking fun at millennial culture a little bit. Do you feel the brand delivers more than the product? Absolutely. After vitamin water, body armor, and bite, everyone wanted to make a beverage. Now I hear no one should get into the business. What's the answer? I would only get into the beverage business if you're trying to launch and establish a new category, which we are not trying to create the 150th kombucha. What are you selling? We're selling a feeling. We're not selling a beverage or CBD. What are you working towards? I'm trying to build a new type of consumer brand that's never been built before with a beverage at its core, but I think there's many other types of recess. Recess to your consumer body as well as recess you consume in your mind. In your mind meaning not a product? Yeah, like the experience. If you had one marketing dollar to spend, where would you spend it? Content. Who came up with the name? Gin Lane. What were the other names you were considering? I honestly don't remember. I remember putting kind of 20 names up on the board and immediately we concluded that was obviously the right one. Gin Lane's expensive. How'd you go about that? When I came up with the idea, I'd never even considered looking at beverage or CPG. I didn't know a single person that worked in beverage or CPG, but what I did realize is that brands are what matter there. And so if we wanted to win in beverage, we wanted to brand was where we wanted to invest in and innovate on and differentiate on. There's a new CBD beverage brand that launches every day, but ultimately it's going to be brands that win. What part of the brand are you most proud of? Actually every part, because I think one of the secrets of recess is that it's kind of a complete thought. Everything is very consistent from our offline kind of events, planning and retail experiences to our Instagram to the package, and it all kind of fits together to deliver that consistent experience we're looking to deliver. What's your social media strategy? I look at our Instagram as I described earlier as a form of taking a recess. It's meant to make each post we do every day is very kind of thought through. It's meant to stop and make you think or laugh. And so it's meant to be kind of introspective and thoughtful and clever, which is what I want you to feel when you drink a recess. What's been the biggest media marketing investment? What's been the single biggest check you've written to any party at all? The designers I work with, both internal and external. We have done basically no paid advertising. I allocate our dollars to create stuff internally. Have you seen copycats? Dozens. Does it bother you? Yes, but I don't have time to be bothered by it. I have bigger challenges. Who is your competition? There's many types of beverages that don't include CBD that are our competition that we're replacing, but you're about to see this category because of the opportunity size. There already is a lot of competition and there will become more competition. I see you in food service locations. What beverage are you replacing? Spindrift. What's the best and worst consumer feedback you've got? The best consumer feedback is when we find that recess really is kind of changing people's lives and changing their mindset and their mentality and allowing them to go throughout their day more balanced and even keeled in, again, be more productive and creative than they were without recess. The worst consumer feedback? You know, there's a few people that don't like how it tastes or doesn't like how they make them feel and that's fine. No products for everyone. What's the hardest thing you've had to learn on the job? How to transition from being a founder to a CEO. Went from me in my apartment to 30 full-time people in less than a year. What part of the business surprised you the most? It's a manufacturing and supply chain. Just how complex that is. What's your biggest business challenge? Regulatory. What part of the business sucks? Navigating regulatory. What keeps you up at night? Regulatory. When will you know you've made it? When recess is sold in all 50 states. Does PR sell products? It creates brand awareness and buzz and helps us kind of convey our story and message which ultimately sells products. PR or influencers? PR. Do you work with influencers? If so, how? Not formally. We never spend a dollar on influencers. What individual PR marketing media influencers have the most impact to date? The New York Times. We've had two kind of front page New York Times articles. It feels like you're still living off the residual afterglow of such a ridiculous launch. How did you have such a ridiculous launch? It was very much by design. Beverage is a very unique category because it's all brand awareness driven and so we wanted the brand to feel bigger than it was when we launched. We launched consisted of two components. PR and Instagram. And we intentionally did not start selling through traditional retail channels. We did a direct-to-consumer launch and the reason was I wanted consumers first interaction with the brand to be our website and Instagram because that's what kind of conveys the emotion of the brand. So when you drink a recess, that's what you feel. And then we used PR to kind of tell the story. So everyone was talking about CBD but no one had a narrative. We don't talk about the CBD. It's merely an ingredient and we have a very kind of compelling narrative. So it doesn't say recess reduces anxiety. Its recess is an antidote to modern times. It helps you feel not tired, not wired, not cool collected, right? And so when people read that, they're kind of drawn in and then when they drink a recess, they know what to feel. You started DTC but is the real future C-store? It already is, yes, it already is. So a vast majority of our sales are already through traditional retail channels. Do you have to call people or are they calling you? Distributors and retailers are pretty much calling us at this point. What makes you special? I think I'm pretty good at seeing where the world's going and coming up with brand narratives. I think the secret to recess is success is our story and our narrative and our messaging and I think we've explained our mission and purpose really well. Do you feel inordinate pressure to keep this launch momentum up? Absolutely. I think recess has the potential to be one of the world's great brands but there's a lot of, you know, execution and blocking and tackling that is required to just get there. But I know the idea of recess is a big idea and it's going to exist in the world but the Bedbridge business is a very challenging business navigating a very complex regulatory environment. It's difficult and so it puts a lot of pressure on us to execute. Ben Whitty, founder and CEO of Recess. Thank you so much for coming here and answering some questions. My pleasure. I really enjoyed it. I'm Ian Wishingrad and I'll see you next time on I'm With the Brand.