 Yeah, man, and this goes back to 2016, which was our first full year in business. It was just me and my two brothers, and we were constantly looking for this silver bullet, you know, whether it was packaging or an ingredient or something that differentiated us on the shelf. We wanted to sell a merch store or partner with a celebrity. That was going to be the catalyst that launched this brand. What we realized is that was never the answer, you know, you could put gold in a bottle, but it would collect dust on the shelf if you didn't put the effort behind it. Three of us came together, we shook hands and we said, this shit's going to be really hard. Let's buckle down and do the work that nobody wants to do. Let's make the deliveries, let's stock the shelves, let's pour samples every single weekend. And that's how we built this brand. It wasn't sexy, you know, there was nothing magical about it. It wasn't a viral launch. It was hard earned effort. And I think if you do that long enough over time, you're going to be pretty proud of the progress. This is Startup to Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guest is Jim DeSico, co-founder of Super Coffee. By now, you're probably familiar with the rise in adaptogen-infused wellness products. But six years ago, this emerging market was still in its infancy. Jim and his brothers, Jake and Jordan, saw the potential early on and dove headfirst into this opportunity with Jordan dropping out of school and Jim quitting his job on Wall Street. Their first wholesale was a whopping $200, but they knew it was only the beginning. The path that they've taken since then has enabled their company's evaluation to explode from $3 million to about $500 million today, which makes the $10 million evaluation they asked for on Shark Tank a few years ago seem like an absolute steal. So listen in to recover everything from how they initially priced their coffee using the field of dreams model, life lessons that they took from athletics that they were able to apply to their business, and why their first round of fundraising was from friends, family, and fools. Now, back to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast. Everyone on today's show, we're talking to Jim from Super Coffee. Jim, thanks so much for joining. For people who don't know, tell us a little bit about what your company does. Oh yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I'm happy to be here. My name is Jim DeSico. I'm the oldest brother and CEO at Super Coffee. We make a bottle of coffee, enhanced with protein, healthy fats, zero sugar. We compete in grocery stores and gas stations with Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts. Started Super Coffee six years ago with my two younger brothers when we were all college athletes. I saw that you guys are number three when it comes to bottled coffee and sales. Good company you're under, which is pretty cool. You started the company in 2015. What made you guys, I know you guys all have an athletic background. Nick was also a D1 athlete. What made you guys want to jump into this? Like what was the problem you saw and you said, I got to fix this somehow? Yeah, I think the problem was there was nothing on our campus that we wanted to drink as tired student athletes. Everything that was marketed as an energy solution like a Starbucks Frappuccino in the glass bottle or a Monster or a Red Bull energy drink all loaded with sugar and unnecessary calories. As athletes, we were cognizant of what we put into our bodies when we cared about the type of fuel that we were consuming. So we just turned to a blender in our youngest brother's dorm room and it was really his idea. He started brewing coffee and he'd add protein to it simply because he was drinking a coffee before practice and a protein shake after. He was like, wait, we can work smarter here, not harder. And then we learned about other energy enhancements like medium chain triglycerides, which is a healthy fat that's good for our brain to carry it for the caffeine. So we really made this blend of what was called super coffee. We would refer to it as super coffee and started selling it to our teammates and our classmates and our coaches. Did it taste good at the beginning? Yeah, I mean, it's been very iterative. It tastes much better now, but I think one thing we learned early on is the number one purchase driver for consumer decisions is flavor. And it's the reason that soda and sugary beverages has been so successful for so long because it tastes good. People like what tastes good. So for us, we never wanted to ask our customers to compromise their taste for health. We're like, hey, this tastes good. It tastes like it's got 40 grams of sugar in it, but it's also good for you. And then what was your first step? So once you guys are just giving this to your other athlete friends, stuff like that, when did you guys have a feeling like, you know, maybe like, what was the moment you guys realized you have a company? You have something that you could drop out of school. You can quit your jobs. You can just go 100% and lean in on it. What's crazy is that moment came years after we got started, like years later. Years, like we started probably a lot sooner than we should have, but my brother Jordan, he went to a local Whole Foods market in Washington DC, right near Georgetown's campus where our middle brother Jake was playing football. And he found the store manager and said, hey, this is my product, I make super coffee. You guys don't carry anything like this. I'd love an opportunity to sell to your customers. And this was before Amazon owned Whole Foods. So this one local store manager at Whole Foods was like, sure, we'll take eight cases just as long as you bring your college friends up to my store. So that was it. All we had was one store, eight cases, which is like a $200 order, you know, maybe, maybe 150 bucks. And my younger brother Jordan dropped out of school. He was heading into a sophomore year, full scholarship basketball player, starting point guard. He was like, hey, we got a business, Whole Foods is taking this thing, let's run it up. And that's how we got going. That's fascinating. I mean, I know it from the student athlete perspective of how much time is required of student athletes outside of just the classroom. So when I think of like you guys starting a company while any of you are still in college, it's mind boggling because the demands on your time are already stretched pretty thin. You know, the NCAA caps you at 20 hours a week. But even then, that's not necessarily how many hours a week you're actually spending on just athletics alone. So your brother's decision to stop playing basketball, drop out of college and boost this company, this fledgling company kind of makes sense from that perspective. But like what about before then? Like were you guys struggling just to find the time to even manufacture and bottle all this stuff? Yeah, I mean, we were definitely burning the candle at both ends. So I had just graduated in May of 2015 and we fully started the company in I guess in August of 2015. So I was out, I was working on Wall Street as an analyst. I left that job. But that whole spring semester, call it January through May of 2015, Jordan was doing this, like he was skipping class to brew coffee in his dorm room, you know? And like he was the type of kid that wouldn't go out and party, you know? He wasn't up like he wasn't out drinking late. He was brewing coffee in his dorm room. So I think he was a little bit different that way, more of like an obsessive personality. And then our middle brother Jake, he was a senior. October of 2015, graduated in 2016 was his senior year. He didn't drop out of school, but every Saturday, every Sunday he was out there making product with us, making deliveries. So yeah, I mean, my brother sacrificed a lot of their college experience to get the company going. So in 2015, I had just moved to San Francisco. We had a tech company and it was the first time like I heard the word biohacking. And basically it was this thing where, you know, as founders of this company, we had employees and it was like anything you put into your body became really essential. Like you couldn't have it drag you down. And so now you're eating salads, we were doing coffee, nothing heavy essentially. And it became like when I became aware of like L-theanine and other supplements to just help you get through the day in like a smart way. And so I've become familiar with sort of your story, I guess, from like a biohacking San Francisco super tech, immersed culture. Whereas on your side of it, you're coming at it from an athlete's perspective. And so when you guys first decided let's say quit school and literally go first, who did you think your customer was? Like were you aware of this tech biohacker community or did you think this is athletes, we're athletes, we're gonna go to athletes? It's a great question, man. Cause back then one of our inspirations for the adding the fat to the coffee was Dave Asprey from Bulletproof Coffee. And Dave claims to be like the, he's the self-proclaimed founder of biohacking, right? He was the guy that was putting like yak butter and MCT oil and hot coffee. And this was before, so this was just a recipe. You know, it's like sort of this viral blog that Dave was listening to. The first time we tried that, like putting butter and fat into our coffee, it felt different, you know, like there was a, there was a visceral feeling. I was like, whoa, this, this is different than a cup of coffee. You actually feel some, some tangible benefits. So we were definitely inspired by that, but our audience was, was us. You know, it was, it was 18 to 22 year old male student athletes because that's who we were and that's who our friends were. We were selling it to our teammates, like I said. And then we quickly expanded into a female audience, broad college students all together. Now today, our number one customer is females 45 to 54. Why do you think that is? I think the product is indulgent. It tastes good and it's low calorie. So sugar-free and low calorie, those two things go, go hand in hand. Most of our sales come out of the grocery channel still. So women are doing most grocery shopping in the US today. So I think that it skews generally to that. I mean men, men buy it too. But I think it's a benefit just given how much buying power and sort of like trend setting that comes out of these influential female audiences. And when it came to price point, how did you guys decide, right? Because in some way you're playing like a higher end coffee game with the adaptogen mix, but it's early to the market. And so here you are where people might be used to paying two, three bucks a coffee and you're calling it super coffee and they're like, well, what's the price? How did you guys arrive at maybe your initial price point and then tell us where it is today? So initially we called it field of dreams pricing. So like price at low and the sales will come, right? Low margin, high volume. That's so great. Yeah, I mean, we recognized that we couldn't compete, like in order for us to have a healthy gross margin back then at such a small volume, we would have had to sell our coffee for six or $7. The initial price point at Whole Foods was 369 and it cost us like two bucks to make it. You know, so we had a very thin gross margin. Today it cost us less than a dollar to make and the on shelf price is 299. So we wanted it to be low and you'll see anywhere from like 299 to 399 is like where most bottle of coffee sit. So we wanted to be right in the mix of it. So like even though we offer premium ingredients, we want to be competitive with the mainstream guys. How did you guys go about raising capital or did you raise capital and at what point? So I mean, we've raised 185 million over the last six years. So a lot of money through series C, we just closed a big series C this summer. For the first three years, 2015 through 2018, we just raised a series of convertible notes. You know, my brothers and I, we don't come in from money. Like our family couldn't invest in us and we didn't really have a network of investors. So like we would meet people as we were pouring samples at Whole Foods and one guy was a Georgetown alum. He saw my brother's shirt and said, Hey, I'm a lawyer here in town. How can I help? He was like, we're raising money. We don't really know anybody. Can you introduce us to some folks? And the next week, he had us in front of five clients. We were pinching them and raised 500 grand on a convertible note and then went out and hit our sales goals and bumped up the cap on the note, raised a million bucks, bumped up the cap on the note. So all that converted into our series A towards the end of 2018. When you first got that sum of money, where did your mind go in terms of like, what to do with it, right? So you can go marketing, branding, you can go just pure product. You know, and that's a hard decision. It's not always straightforward. And you're getting a lot of advice, maybe bad advice, maybe good advice. So what was that like for you at the beginning where you're like, oh crap, here's you and your brothers, you're legit now, right? You've got the funds now. What did you decide to do? Yeah, and our focus has always been on sales. Sales velocities, sales numbers, supporting sales at all costs. In the early days, it was pouring samples in stores. No, we had a branded vehicle that we'd make deliveries in, but our accounting was a mess. Our branding was a mess. You know, like we didn't invest in any of that stuff. We knew that like the most important KPI on our business is how many bottles per store per week do you sell, right? And that's metric we call velocity because you could, a brand can tell you, hey, I did a million dollars in sales in my first year. Well, if that came out of 10,000 stores, that doesn't really tell me about the health of your customer, you know, how many people are coming back and repeating. But if you do a million dollars in 100 stores, it's like, oh shit, you got something here that people like, you know, there's loyalty here. And to that point, so I wanted to ask you it. So once you're in these stores, what is that you're learning? Like the way I look at it is to some extent you're educating the customer, you're calling it super coffee, which is probably very intelligent because people say, oh, coffee. But at the same time, there's an adaptogen mix in it. And I would argue at the time, if I was like an investor looking at your deck, I'd be like, you're super early to this market. Who knows where this is gonna go, right? And so how did you guys position the company, position the brand in an effort to educate the customer, but still make sure they understood that they're purchasing coffee? It was a couple of things. One, it was, we didn't really focus on the education piece of it too much. We weren't like, in the early days we were, you know, we wanted to talk about ketogenic and medium chain triglycerides and all stuff that was like pretty nuanced and niche, but like the biohacking community really, really understood it. But we realized like, we pointed to investors that obviously all the unicorn exits in our industry, vitamin water sold to Coca-Cola for $4 billion, buy sold to Dr. Pepper from 1.7, you know, Honest Tea had a very successful exit. So like, we were like, hey guys, if we execute this, you're getting in at a $3 million valuation, we could sell this thing for a billion dollars. You know, like this is a home run. People who were writing back then, $50,000 to $100,000 checks, they're like, I don't know about coffee. I don't know about the future of this. I like these guys. And if I lose a hundred grand, like it's not gonna affect my net worth that much. So we were pretty grateful to take money. We called it friends, family and fools. You know, like we weren't raising from people who knew the industry that well. Because those who knew the industry knew how difficult what we were trying to do was, versus the investors who actually saw what we were doing. They're like, holy shit, these kids are crazy enough and are working hard enough to actually like, have a chance and if they do half of what they say they're gonna do, it's gonna make me a lot of money back. Who's coming up with this stuff? Field of Dreams pricing, friends, family and fools. Who's doing this? This is good stuff. The gems you learn along the way, right? So Field of Dreams pricing comes from Seth Goldman. He is the founder of Honesty and he's the chairman of Beyond Meat today. Super successful entrepreneur, grew Honesty from his garage to Coca-Cola exit. And that's what he called it in his book. So we've been very fortunate to surround ourselves with a lot of good mentors along the way. So by the time you guys got to Shark Tank, by that point you'd already raised a bunch of money. You kind of came in with an evaluation of around $10 million. And I know that the reception that you got from the sharks was not very favorable towards you. They didn't really like the taste of the coffee. They all backed out one way or another. And I read that you guys came away with that experience with kind of a chip on your shoulder. I mean, what was that like for you? Was that something that you guys viewed as maybe like a step back? Or I know it was a motivating factor, but in the moment, what was your discussion like with your brothers after that? In the moment, I mean, like I said, we all played college sports. My college football coach had a 24 hour rule. You had 24 hours to celebrate a victory, 24 hours to mourn a loss. And then after that it's back to work, right? So you lose a game on a Saturday, you come back to practice Monday morning ready to go. And that's what it was, you know, we were pissed. We felt like we lost the national championship on television for everybody to see. You know, so like on that fly home, we're like, damn, what's going to happen? You know, Barbara Corkerin just scraped a pen across her tongue because she didn't like the flavor of our coffee. Like this could be really bad. But then on Monday, it's like, you know what? Let's improve the formula. Let's improve the packaging. Let's pour the samples. Let's just go control what we can control. And we bounced back from that tremendously. Shark Tank is what you make it. You know, I think we exploited, like we had a little bit too much liberty with how we promoted the episode. It's because they're pretty strict with like, you're not allowed to say, you know, Shark Tank, you're not allowed to use signs in stores. You can't say it on your website. We did all that, you know, we pushed that limit. We got like three or four cease and desist from them. But it literally, that's what allowed us to sort of use that as a launch pad. And I mean, now four years later, it's not that people don't care that we didn't get a deal. We went on Shark Tank once before, you know, like that's the story. Exactly. And, you know, now your evaluation is way, way higher than what you were asking for on the show. And you're not the first person to go on that program, not get a deal, but then end up making success. And it is kind of like a nice launch pad in regards of getting your brand out there, making the country as a whole aware of it. Other like major investors have come on since that show. And do you think looking back on it that the trajectory would have been the same had you not gone on Shark Tank? No. And a lot of it is for the reason, like it is what we made it, right? A lot of brands go on Shark Tank, you get your 15 minutes of fame on a Sunday night. And then that's that, you know, occasionally there will be a repeat on like CNBC, but not that many people watch that show on Sunday night. Shark Tank gives you two weeks before the episode, like they'll give you two weeks notice on when that episode is going to come up. Once we got that notice, we called up our friends at Barstool. We called up our friends at Yahoo. We went on talk shows. We went on podcasts. We blasted it out everywhere. And even to this day, you'll see in stores super coffee as seen on Shark Tank. So I think it's one of those things that it was what we made it. And as corny as it sounds, like it's validating for a lot of people. There's been times I was building a rack in a Walmart, like a shipper display case in Walmart down here in Texas a couple of months ago. And these people, this couple came up there doing their grocery shopping. They're like, hey, I saw this on Shark Tank. I was like, oh yeah, that was me and my brothers. They were like, oh my gosh, can you autograph my super coffee bottle? I was like, absolutely. So to some people, that means a lot. And we certainly were grateful for the opportunity, but we certainly leverage it to our advantage. Did you ever write them back though? I'm the kind of guy that if I get rejected, I'm gonna go all in getting sharper for sure. I'm just gonna go all in, watch the tape, review, fix my formula, let's go. But then I might also write you back saying, hey, this is our current valuation. I might drop a tweet to Mark and say, hey, look, and to all of Barbara, how's this valuation taste? Does it taste like ink to you? I'm that kind of guy. Have you guys ever treaded on those waters? Would you do that? Have you done that? Have you reached out in any way? Totally. I mean, we chirped them, we're the exact same. We're super competitive. So we'll hit them up on Twitter and we'll tag them in articles and stuff, but at the end of the day, they don't care. They're like Mark's a billionaire. Whether he invested in us or not, he doesn't care. But it doesn't make you sharper. I wanna like, we've spoken to three brothers who had a company before. We talked to Brevity. You guys are the second set of three brothers that are working together. But you guys all come from athletic backgrounds. How much of that do you lean into? I mean, you mentioned it where it's like, you have 24 hours to be sad. How much of that do you guys lean into in terms of mindset on a daily basis around your performance as a business? Dude, it's all of it. You know, we, I studied philosophy at a liberal arts school. You know, my brother Jordan dropped out of college. We weren't like, we're not particularly smart students and we certainly don't have any business experience or business background. So like, none of this is intellectual. I think it's all grit, you know, our ability to hang in there longer than other people during uncomfortable situations. That stuff we learned at six years old running the mile with our mom, you know, like when you want to quit, your legs are on fire, your lungs are on fire, but you keep going. And like, you do the stuff that other people don't want to do. That's entrepreneurship, you know, and that's the lessons we learned as athletes. And I mean, we were all sort of undersized. I mean, we were talented, but we were undersized and we all played division one sports. You know, I mean, to be undersized and build a career at the college level, you have to work harder than people who may be more gifted or more naturally talented than you. So we've always been fighting for things that we never really, never came naturally to us. And that's what's happening as we build this business. Makes a six foot five D1 swimmer here. I don't think. I don't necessarily get the undersized aspect, but I get the metaphor. I had a teammate who was one of the guys that he was one of the reasons that we had to work so hard. Exactly. What did your parents do growing up? Were they athletes themselves or were they entrepreneurs? What were the sort of the seeds for your growth? So they met in college. They both played sports. Mom was lacrosse and soccer at University of New Hampshire. Dad played football. They had us super young. You know, they had three kids by the time they were 25. And then growing up, my mom worked at the YMCA and my dad was a construction worker. So like he was very blue collar and sheet. Like we were basically raised at the Y, you know? So we were shooting hoops, we were lifting weights. Like we were doing all that as kids. And it was great because we liked to run around, you know, we liked to compete and we had the ability to do that. That's awesome. Where did you guys grow up? We grew up in upstate New York, in a town called Kingston. It's just two hours north of New York City. Sure. I want to talk about your brotherly dynamic. So there's three of you. You got to be alphas if you're all D1 athletes to some extent. So what has that been like working with each other? How did you guys define roles at the beginning? Have you switched those roles? Do you guys do a good job staying in your lane? What is that like amongst family? Dude, you're right on it. And in the early days, we all sort of just picked up work, you know, whatever job needed to get done. Like we'd sort of rock, paper, scissors for who needed to wake up at 4 a.m. and make deliveries, you know? Who was printing invoices the night before? Who was brewing products? So like it was all just all hands on deck back then. And then I think leading up into Shark Tank, we needed to get clear on roles, especially as we started pitching investors. So I think naturally as the oldest brother, the only one with a college degree at the time, I stepped into that CEO role. But what was clear from that point is like all three of us were equals. You know, we were peers in terms of decision-making ability and we pretty much needed unanimous vote from everybody to make a decision to move forward. But we were crystal clear about our roles. And I think what we got lucky in is like all three of our personalities are unique enough that lent themselves to a different part of the business. So what I mean, Jordan, our youngest brother, the founder, like he's the innovator. He came up with the idea. He loves to tinker, he loves operations. He's our chief operating officer. Every new product we launch is Jordan's idea, right? And then Jake, middle brother, life of the party, fun, super compassionate, can make you feel good. You know, make you feel like you're the only one in the room. He's our head of sales. I suck at sales. Jake can sell ice to an Eskimo. You know, and then for me, like I think being the oldest brother, I brought some sort of leadership or some type of like networking and relationship ability to the investor relations. That's really what I've been passionate about throughout college and now at the company is like building connections, solving problems, sort of recognizing patterns. So I took the CEO role of like raising money and then managing our marketing team as well. Was it difficult for you to learn sort of the other skill set that comes along with starting a company which is more about going from doing it to becoming an executive, to be someone who's delegating, hiring and not so much in the weeds, but now trying to take a high level view. Like a lot of people struggle with this gap because it's a whole new skills that some people bring on, you know, let's say like former PepsiCo COOs in order to do that. Sounds like you guys wanted to retain control of the company so you went in the direction you did. But was that a difficult time of learning this new skill? Yeah, I mean it's every six months we're like humbled when we press this reset button, you know, and we're like, so like every six months you have to start to get a little confidence in the business. You kind of feel like you're a senior in high school, big man on campus, and then immediately something happens, you either raise a round or you get a new account or you launch in a new state and then you feel like a freshman in college again, you know, like you just have to sort of climb the ranks and put in that time and that growth is super uncomfortable. I think the thing where my brothers and I have invested the most in over the last few years is coaching. You know, we have an executive coach, I talked to a therapist once a week because we have to grow faster than the company because I mean we've seen it with several employees, like the company may grow faster than some people are willing to and that comes with self-awareness and curiosity. You know, you have to admit what you don't know and you have to constantly be on that growth edge. So, I mean today we have 130 full-time employees and I think managing relationships, managing personalities, managing egos is probably our toughest challenge as young meters. Well, in that same vein, did you ever get any pushback or people looking down on you because of your youth when you were just starting out? I know that the lawyer from Georgetown was super supportive in helping you guys raise that early round of funding but were there any other instances where your youth was maybe looked upon as a negative by other people? Yeah, I think everybody's got a first impression. Even today, you know, I'm 29, Jake's 28, Jordan's 26, like those three young guys come in and that comes with a lot of preconceived notions or expectations on what we're capable of or how big the company is. Some people see us and they're like, oh, cute, you guys still run a company out of your dorm room. You know, so like I think that it's tough that we don't, like we take it personally if we don't get credit for like what we've built but for the most part, like once after that first impression, as we get to know people, there's a mutual respect that's built, you know? Because we, I think the key to it, especially in those early days when we raise money from those investors is like, do what you say you're gonna do, you know? And if you do that enough, you build up this reputation of reliability and credibility and work ethic. I mean, our mantra here at Super Coffee is work hard and be nice to people. And I think if you hang out with us long enough, you'll find that that's true. And I think it's tough not to respect somebody who does what they say they're gonna do, you know? Absolutely, with that in mind, like the partnerships that you've developed since then, they seem to be like a lot of athletes buy into the brand and clearly making sense with your backgrounds. But how did the major ones come about, say like A-Rod and J-Lo, you know? What clued them into the existence of Super Coffee and did you approach them first or was it vice versa that they approached you because of their interest? It's a good question. And I think a lot of the relationships we've built over the last few years, it's partially a product of like create your own luck. You know, that day at Whole Foods, our goal was to sell bottles. We were pouring samples, you know? And then we met a lawyer who introduced us to some investors and I mean, those investors introduced us to folks and that's sort of how it came about. And getting to A-Rod and J-Lo specifically, our first CFO, he went to business school with some guy who worked at an investment firm out in LA. That firm invested in us in 2018 and we built a relationship with them and one of their contacts, new A-Rods manager or business partner or something like that. And then last year, 2020, during the pandemic, we hopped on a Zoom call with him and started to build a relationship with him and J-Lo, they were still together at the time. It's a little complicated now trying to unwind that investment. But no, it all happens from like these network effects, you know, and that was my advice to college students is like, as you're networking and building relationships and doing some like career services work of what you want to be when you grow up, like if you wanna be a lawyer but some alumni at your school is a doctor, don't write that person off because that person's best friend might be the lawyer who's gonna hire you, right? So I think treat all people equally and don't treat people as means to ends but rather ends in themselves and it's all relationship union. When you say unwind their investment, what does that mean? Like it was in like a shared trust and they have to... Yeah, they had an LLC and so A-Rod just bought the Timberwolves and J-Lo's like working on movies so they might have different interests for their money. So... Maybe you get Ben Affleck though, you know, maybe you get the Boston boy. You get Ben in the mix. Who knows? Great, we'll have all three of them down to the headquarters. What are you guys working on now in terms of product? Are you focused more on building brands with different products? What are you guys, you as like the levers for growth given your latest series C? It's a great question, man. And I think the toughest part after raising a big round is focus, you know, because there's so much we wanna do. We wanna get into breakfast bars and energy drinks and shots and like all kinds of cool stuff that we can do with the brand. But our core product line is super bottled, super coffee. It's a 12 ounce bottle. You'll see every grocery store in America. How can we grow that to continue to take share from the category? So right now that's about 40% available in the US. Getting that onto more shelves, Starbucks, Rappuccino, which is the number one bottle of coffee. They're like 98% available. You know, so we got a long way to go just to get to that same level and then driving revenue from there. So rather than launching new categories like cereals and breakfast bars and stuff, we're gonna play with flavor innovation. So this year we launched a maple pumpkin for the fall, but the exciting flavor we did was a blueberry latte. We launched a summer seasonal. Maple pumpkin's a little bit familiar. You know, pumpkin spice latte. People sort of expect that. But a blueberry latte, I was adamantly against that. I was like, we're not putting blueberries in coffee and it sounds like it sucks, but it sold so well. You know, and we sold out online in 24 hours and it was a good insight that people are willing and curious to try new and unique flavors. So we're gonna have a whole breakfast lineup coming out in 2022. And will you do it quarterly? Will these be like quarterly releases or? Yeah, so what's interesting is 20% of our business is e-commerce, 80% is retail through grocery stores and C stores. And e-commerce, I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen from other D to C brands. It's a really tough advertising environment right now because of these Apple's iOS 14 changes and privacy limitations and things like that. So our cost to acquire customers has gone way up this year. However, when we launch an LTO, like a limited time only product, blueberry latte, maple pumpkin, white chocolate peppermint, that's only out for a month. We see a very low cost of acquisition and very high new customer rate. So we're gonna cycle things probably every season, you know, so once a quarter is the goal for next year. And when you release them, do you partner up with like, I hate to say the word celebrity, but someone with influence in the coffee game maybe or someone with just like a platform and then that way they can help cross promoter as well? Yeah, so we try to do it with a variety of partners. We call it like influencer partners. So everybody from 20,000 followers to JLo who's got 150 million followers, you know? And I think one person for one celebrity to cut through all the noise and media and social media and advertising today is tough. But if you see it from your favorite fitness coach or your favorite wellness chef or your favorite movie star, like that's when it starts to become patternized. So we have like a stable of people we go to. Will there be a Super Bowl ad? Oh, I wish, man. It's funny, so we are going big. We are going big with the Super Bowl this year. Anheuser-Busch is our national distributor. Super Bowl is in Los Angeles. So you'll see Super Coffee all over LA this February. But 32nd Super Bowl ad, six million bucks, you know? Six million dollars. Not cheap. Not cheap. And I mean, there's a time and a place to do it, you know? For some brands, that makes sense. But for us, it's like, dang, what can we spend six million dollars on? You know, like if we were to spend this anywhere else where can we get an ROI on it? So that's how we're looking at it. I mean, six million dollars next year is like, it's our whole paid advertising budget. You know, that's 500 grand a month. In regards to the seasonal drinks, just real quick going back to that, do you notice if average consumers share those drinks or mention them on social media more often than your staples? Like I'm thinking, you know, with Instagram these days, just looking like one long scroll of like autumn and pumpkins and leaves and stuff like that, I would think your maple pumpkin drink would do pretty well. What's it look like from your end? Yeah, so I think so. I think there is more of like this nostalgic sort of social media appeal for seasonal things, you know, especially as like the plaid shirts and the vests come out, you know, people, maple pumpkin sort of fits right in there. But the brand is still new enough that like, if somebody discovers, say, our French vanilla plant-based super coffee and they enjoy it so much, they'll post that just as much. So I don't think we've seen that much of it, but internally, like our own creative team has done a great job just pumping out pumpkin content. Here, we have a, so this is our studio that we're in West Hollywood. In front of it, we put a coffee truck inside the building and it's like literally like a 1954 truck, serves people coffee. And anecdotally, what they do is every month they come out with new lattes. And what I've seen like firsthand is sure enough, people just want to know what's new. Like it creates a, basically what happens is the consumer behavior shifts. And if they want to stay in the lane and just get their, you know, normal, let's call it lavender almond latte, they can do that. But we know they gravitate to the new stuff. And so what we've been doing is partnering with different brands where we can brand the truck. And so Chabani's on there right now. And then they're using Chabani Oat Milk and then back here in our studio space is like a really cool way. If Chabani wanted to say like, hey, we know we're known for yogurt, but like check out our new coffee creamer or our new oat milk or our new, whatever, whatever. And so it's almost like we're trying to create this like super immersive space that fits in with the brand's goals, in this case, the coffee shop, of constantly bringing the customer back in a unique way. But we're also seeing, I'm just giving you like the date of it. Like we literally see the whole, it always works. Like whatever's new always sells. It's like unbelievable. Anecdotally, I know what you're doing works. We've seen it work and it almost feeds your social media content, right? Because now you can create new stuff, new content. It's not the same drink, it's a new drink, blah, blah, blah. And so it just feeds all the engines at the same time. And so that's super smart. There comes a time in every company's existence when, you know, they find that either something they're doing is working or not working. But either way, they have to really lean into the problem or find a solution and do more. This is the moment where it's like, okay, do or die. My company either thrives or dies in this moment. What was that do more moment in Super Coffee's life? Yeah, man. And this goes back to 2016, which was our first full year in business. It was just me and my two brothers. And we were constantly looking for this silver bullet, whether it was packaging or an ingredient or something that differentiated us on the shelf. We wanted to sell a merch store or partner with a celebrity. That was gonna be the catalyst that launched this brand. What we realized is that was never the answer. You could put gold in a bottle, but it would collect dust on the shelf if you didn't put the effort behind it. So three of us came together, we shook hands and we said, this shit's gonna be really hard. Let's buckle down and do the work that nobody wants to do. Let's make the deliveries, let's stock the shelves, let's pour samples every single weekend. And that's how we built this brand. It wasn't sexy. There was nothing magical about it. It wasn't a viral launch. It was hard earned effort. And I think if you do that long enough over time, you're gonna be pretty proud of the progress. Jim, I love that you shared that, man. That's like the one question we get all the time from people too. It's like, everyone thinks there's a silver bullet. There isn't. Dude, I'm still looking for it. Yeah. There's grind and then the finish line moves. And then there's more grind and then you get hurdles onto your next journey. And it's just like, it's a series of like, in my head, it's always like bosses, like a video game. You know, it's like, oh, level six. And then you got King Koopa later. And it's like, that's literally the game. I think if anything, Mario has taught me that. It's like, there's always a bigger boss, except it's a mental challenge or a financial challenge or a marketing challenge. But they're all different. But it makes you so much sharper if you go through them. You're always chasing Bowser, but you never get to Bowser. Right. Dude, it's the journey, right? Like if you could just take a helicopter up to the top of the mountain, people would never hike. You know, like hiking is why people do it to get up there. I might take the helicopter. I'm just saying, I might at this stage take the troffer. Right, exactly. I mean, if you hike long enough, maybe you deserve to take the helicopter. But yeah, one thing on that note, I remember the day it was like disappointing. I'm like, fuck, we're not gonna, there's not an answer out here other than like, let's buckle down and do it. You know, and like, once we accepted that, that's been the motto for the last few years. That's the Ben Horowitz book, The Hard Things About the Hard Things. That's the one takeaway. There's no silver bullet, stop. There's no gold bullet. There's no silver bullet. There's no platinum bullet, just crying. Everybody's looking for the next Facebook idea, right? Like this idea that's gonna make me rich. This has been awesome, Jim. Honestly, appreciate you. Tell everyone where they can find you, grocery stores, socials, all that good stuff. Oh yeah, check us out in stores. Products called Super Coffee, 7-Eleven, Target, Walmart, Kroger, Nationwide, CVS. We're available at drinksupercoffee.com. We're on Amazon, and on Instagram, we are at Drink Super Coffee. Well, thanks so much, Jim. Thanks, man. Fellas, good to be with you. Thanks for the opportunity.