 This is Start Up a Storefront. Want to spice up your morning latte? Try adding some mushrooms to it. And not just any mushrooms, but a specific species that only grows on a small percentage of birch trees in cold weather climates. Seems a bit extreme, right? The Brandon Mizrahi, it seemed like the perfect idea for a business. Chaga mushrooms are known to have a long list of health benefits, so Brandon set out to find the perfect delivery system. After offering several varieties of Chaga beverages at a local farmers market, the one that was far in a way the best seller was the Chaga Chino. But success at one farmers market can only get you so far, and Brandon knew that this product had much bigger potential. So listen in as we cover everything from why he didn't want his branding to be associated with hippies, why humans are closer to the fungi kingdom than the plant kingdom, and why adaptogens are more of a rediscovery than a new trend. Now on to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Brandon with renewed. Thanks for coming on. People don't know. What does your company do? We sell mushrooms. Shroom sights. But it's actually a mushroom coffee, and it's the non-psychedelic mushroom, which it's funny because that's really polarizing because some people are like, oh, thank God, and some people are like, oh. So true. I'm a bit of a hybrid in that. Yeah, but the fungi and the mushroom kingdom is interesting. Maybe we'll get a chance to talk about it a little bit. It's an interesting kingdom. You know, there's the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom that we're in, and then there's the fungi kingdom. And it's it's there's 2.6 million to 3.3 million species in it. And Chaga, the Chaga mushroom, is considered the king of the fungi kingdom. They also call it the diamond of the forest. It has to be wild forage like truffles. And the reason they call it the diamond of the forest is because it's made under pressure in in in nature and like a diamond like a diamond. Yeah, so why is it considered the king? Because out of that kingdom it has so many health benefits. We just say live long die pretty because it's everything from the highest amount of antioxidants on the planet and that's compared to us ie pomegranates blueberries. It's like three pounds worth of blueberries in one gram of Chaga, which is in every drink that we make pretty much. Yeah. So for your immune system, it's an immuno modulator, meaning it can work with your immune system. I don't want to get too sciency here, but what made you want to start the company and like what what year? So adaptogens hit the market not too long ago. How were you super early? Did you sign a crazy person for a while? Yes, the word didn't even exist in like kind of the cultural zeitgeist at the time and we started using it around our product and I had not seen other brands using the word adaptogens in mass. What year was that? That was 2017. Okay, but product development around 2016, I would say. Okay, but I mean actually launching and stuff. Yeah, and you were always consuming these personally. Yes. Adaptogens and tropics, the whole bit. All of it. And were you making it yourself? I was. I was making it the old-fashioned way. So it grows on birch trees and only in freezing climates only on birch trees and only one in 10,000 birch trees. So you literally like truffles like they bring pigs out in the forest. The wild foragers out there in Alaska, Siberia, Changbhai Mountains, it grows in upstate New York and British Columbia and northern climates that have birch, wild birch forests. It'll grow on the tree basically where it gets struck by lightning or wounded, attack by insects, a sort of like a band-aid to protect the tree from infection. So kind of without it the tree would die from infection, like a wound, like an open wound and in exchange for that protecting the tree, it kind of makes this nature handshake deal where it says, all right, I'm going to protect you, Mr. Birch Tree, but now I'm going to start taking some of your amazing nutrients. And this is one of the healthiest trees on the planet. They live hundreds of years loaded with nutrients and you're not able to get the nutrients out of this tree from this forest. Because what are you going to do? Like chop it down and start eating a huge tree or boiling it in a pot, like try and steeping it like a tea. So what the chaga does is it pre-digests the nutrients at about an inch per year, growing at about one to two inches per year until after 10 years to 15 years, it's the size of maybe like a beehive. And by that time, it's the most nutrient dense superfood, adaptogen, fungi, whatever we want to call it, on the planet by far. You know, 1,600 research papers on this thing, everything from, you know, we don't make disease claims because we're not allowed to as a product, but all the research is there and Sloan Kettering, Johns Hopkins, all the top sites have, you know, PubMed have research on it. I mean, you know, like I said, we just try and say live long, die pretty and keep it simple, stupid, kiss because it's so hard to communicate all this, but the reason, the reason why it's so special is that and there's other adaptogens and superfoods and they're all great. I'm not knocking the others because like you said, I've experimented with all of them as far as I'm, whenever I hear about one, I try it. I like to experiment on myself. You know, Sheila Jeet's really interesting. There's some other really great stuff. Every indigenous culture has an adaptogen. I think it's like Maka in Peru, Ashwagandha in parts of India and you know, Rotiola, there's a list about 12 to 15 adaptogens that are kind of like the elite superfoods. So when you were first thinking about starting a business, so you're consuming them, you're a believer and then it's a function of how do I introduce this to the humans out there? 100%. Right, so there must have been 30 paths that you're thinking about. Maybe I go this route, this route, this route. Ultimate, you land on coffee. I think that makes sense, but what did you think about on your journey of like, how do I make this appeal to the masses? Yeah, so I went into it. My background is in tech. So I was building data centers and hosting websites and bringing these mom and pop shops online so they could sell. And that was pretty much out of school when I graduated from UCLA in 2004. So I did that for like 15 years. And that was my, I had no background in CPG in health and wellness in any of these spaces. So originally, I'm thinking, all right, let's bottle this. There's no chaga beverages on the market. I've seen coconut waters. And at that time, you know, that was hot and kombucha is obviously and cold brew and all these drinks. But functional beverages weren't that I mean, those are functional beverages. So it's Gatorade really, but but the term didn't really exist and adaptogens and in beverages didn't really exist. So I'm like, you know, just thinking about it as a T in that way, because that was the category chaga T. And so I talked to a couple of my buddies and they're all telling me, don't don't do this. Your background is in tech. If you want to, you know, if you want to start a company, like start building up to this, you know, and which isn't bad advice. Not bad advice. Yeah, it's like that's your kind of the product expert. That's your black belt in that that's your craft. And now you're going to go back and start over with like no training in this new, like, you know, kind of like using that analogy as like a as like a novice in this fight or battle. Or I mean, not that we need to look at entrepreneurship as a fight or battle, but I guess I did say black belt. So, yeah, yeah, I had to keep the metaphor. So I just followed my gut really and my instincts. And I said, and I agreed with their advice too, but also disagreed with it a part of me. And that was my gut. And so, yeah, I was going to originally do it as an RTD as a ready to drink beverage, you know, bottled. So I went to a flavor house. My buddy's like, you don't have to do all the formulation and the design. You can go to these flavor houses and they'll make flavors for you and you can just launch it that way. So that's what I did. And then, you know, again, just following my gut when I went in there, there was people in lab coats and they're like, yeah, these are their flavors. You can make a cherry chaga. You can make a lemon. You can do and I go, OK, well, can I get back there? Because I was already messing around tinkering with formulation at my house. I was bringing my own kombucha's, you know, growing my own stevia's. And that was sort of my health and wellness journey personally. I was just tinkering and experimenting because I had some health issues growing up and pharma just didn't seem to work over the health issues. From a young age, I was having really bad stomach issues. Remember being in like third grade, like in fetal position and so much pain. And, you know, my parents took me to see every doctor, obviously. And I was getting strep throat and sick all the time. And I was big into sports, missing all the basketball games and big games. It was just like terrible immune system or dietary. Yeah. So we didn't know. We went to see all these specialists or something. They ended up calling it IBS and they were they were looking for disease and there wasn't any tumors or disease in there. So and, you know, they're putting tubes down me and I have to drink this blue thing the night before. And it's just awful at that age to deal with that. And I just remember the doctors like looking for the disease. And they never they didn't have a holistic approach back then where they asked me what I was they never asked me what I was eating not once. And and what was I never be the issue. Yeah. And I've stomach issues. Hey, let's not ask him what he's eating. Also, IBS is like an ocean of oh, yeah, you have that. It's anything. It's a catch all catch all. And the funny thing is what was I eating? I was and I look I love my parents. My mom is the greatest. But at that time it was not I had to say that. Right. And it's true. I still feel like I have the umbilical cord attached. I'm a mama's boy for sure. But at that time, they just didn't know as much. I mean, look, it was Ronald McDonald, Happy Meals growing up in the 80s. It was the playground was there at McDonald's. Right. You know, it was these Lunchables and these these process me. Oh, yeah. And it was, you know, the Kool-Aid guy jumping through the wall. And it was to two kids, Sam and Tony, the tiger on the cereals. And, you know, it was like all these cartoons and stuff market and all marketed towards little children. And they didn't know back then. I don't think they didn't have an awareness and look at the ingredient panels like we study them now and look at the list of things. And, you know, all these different diets that exist now, keto, genic and low carb and, you know, all these things that gluten free determined didn't exist back then, right? And all these things. And anyways, I was just extra sensitive to the food system. And what I'd noticed growing up was a lot of people seem to have those same issues that I had. I just experienced them at a much younger age, way more severely. It was just a sensitivity that I have. And I think in entrepreneurship, like it's kind of interesting like how that leads opens a door because sometimes you can lead that sensitivity can lead to a superpower, you know, or that, you know, it's like that, I guess, lemon to the lemonade or like, you know, turn darkness into dark chocolate. Like it's you can turn that that bad or like tragic thing that happened to you into something that's amazing. We hear that a lot, like Brooke from Good Milk. Oh, yeah, yeah. So Brooke had IBS same thing. And then she was just such a she couldn't do dairy or didn't want to do dairy, but really wanted to create a product with no gums or binders. So I let her down the almond milk journey. And we had Karrigan on who had PCOS and same thing. And she just became like a chemist for her own body. And now she has a product that helps a tremendous amount of people. I mean, like thousands, thousands of people. And it's just her solving her own problem. And then turning that into a product market. That's exactly what happened to me. I wasn't thinking about, I was just like, this is how me so much like at the time, too. I was I was tinkering with my was a child with my mom in the kitchen and trying every diet, blood type diets. We did vegan. We did. We were brewing our own kombucha before Dave's GT was out there because we knew about probiotics. You know, we were doing we were growing our own stevia at the time because we wanted to cut the sugar and it was illegal in the U.S. till 94. It was legal in Japan. Yeah. I don't really have an answer for why sugar industry. Probably. Yeah. The lobbyist is the big lobbyist 100 percent. So, you know, once you start doing R and D in the kitchen, you start thinking about a company until they just kill that. Yeah. At the at the doorstep, basically. Yeah. Exactly. And so I was doing we were doing that and just always tinkering with different recipes and trying to heal myself. That was that was really how eventually I discovered this product. And then growing up, I got into, you know, different adapt regions, and I was actually by I had a girlfriend whose parents were making these these tinctures. Like they were they were living off the grid. They had this this company where they would rehab, like, injured wild animals, like super hippies that moved off the grid, living near the Black Rock Desert, where the burning man is. And and so I went over there and they had this like they built this like house in the in the in the hillside. It looks like I'm in like Frodo Baggins' house in the hobbit or Shire, the Shire, whereas Gandalf, you know, like and then and then they had this like like there was like llamas on the property and eagles. And they were they would basically rehab these animals and then release them into nature. And then they had this other magical place where there was our other office where they were taking all of these plants and and extracting them into tinctures. So I so they started giving me this one and that one. And they I told them about some of my issues. And so the next thing I know I'm taking a couple of drops of nettle root and St. John's Ward and and all these names I'd never heard before. Catsclaw, what is this stuff? You know, and they showed me how they were making it and kind of gave me the tutorial on it. And that kind of like got my interest into alternative ways to doing it, because it really had helped me. And then I just kept kept doing that and discovered Chaga. And this stuff had helped me more than anything. I mean, cured my asthma, got rid of like skin issues, like some acne that I was having. I was like getting a ton of grays. And then and then my my hair is, you know, got more like jet black the color because it has the highest melanin out of anything on the planet, too, which is amazing for your skin, psoriasis, your hair color, all those things. And for your pineal gland, which is like in between the left and right hemisphere of your brain, where people call it like your third eye sometimes. And there's some woo woo stuff. But but I like to stay away from that part of it. We specifically didn't go in a branding direction of like tie dye tie dye and like what's your horoscope type thing? Even though like, look, I'm not knocking that I'm super into all things spiritual. But we just wanted to go in a more fun route in terms of the branding. I want to ask you like a business question. So when you were going down this this like journey, both personal, but also there's a product here at some point. Did you look at the business side of like adaptogens and were you starting to understand there's something here? This is going to become the next thing. So we today, we get like pitch decks around all these companies starting their adaptogen, make whatever they're doing, right? And they're launching all in like similar but very different ways. So I got a couple of these decks and I'm like, I don't understand any of this. I don't understand the market. Is it big? Is it not? So I know nothing. So then I just started doing my own research. And in doing my own research, what I learned was you have the CBD market and a lot of people think this market, well, we know it's booming. So that we take, OK, check, it's booming. Cool. A lot of people that feel like the CBD market, let's call it my mom. It's taboo. It's still they don't want it. They don't want to be a part of it. There's like a very similar trajectory where the adaptogen market is not riding that wave. It's almost like if I understand the benefits of CBD, but I still feel weird about, let's call it going to church. I'll just go here. I'll take a little left to my adaptogen world where I'm OK and I like this party better. And so these two markets are like following each other. Is that how is that? Is that it? Pretty much. I mean, yeah, it's kind of like, you know, it's like part of the set, you know, the waves that they're very correlated. And I feel like it's not that you can't have one without the other, because like I do think if CBD did fizzle out, which I don't think will happen. I think the adaptogens are here to stay. I mean, these type of things predate religion. I mean, these adaptogens, I mean, we're talking about Utsi, the Iceman was discovered. Like the oldest preserved caveman in the Italian Swiss outborder. There's a museum firm over there. And they found Birch polypores in Chaga around his neck, as a necklace. And that and that dude lived to like 60 years old. And he didn't even die from natural causes. It was like a rival era warned. So like, you know, and this is in like 2000 B.C., you know, before Christ. So we're talking about like, I don't even know how many thousands of years ago, like, you know, four to five thousand years ago where our ancestors were using these things. So it's almost like a rediscovery more than like this new trend. I think it is a I don't I wouldn't call it adaptogens. A trend. It's definitely a wave right now. But I think it's I think it's a movement more than a trend. You know, it's I think it's here to stay in the same way. Cambodia came and it's here to stay in the same way. Almond milk came in. It's here to stay in the same way. Coconut water came in. It's here to stay thinking it's a whole new category. Yeah. Functional beverages. And look, they existed before like we were talking about earlier. Yeah, like and like Gatorade and electrolytes and and protein drinks and all these things. So Maka, like the Incans, that was a thing, you know? And then it's like all of a sudden people are doing it now again. Yeah. Yeah. That's so fascinating because it was like the thing. Yeah. It's more of a rediscovery, I think. And I think the reason it's happening now so much is because people are really like like myself had bad experiences with pharma and Western medicine. And I'm not just here to sit here and knock Western medicine. Look, man, the greatest invention of all time is surgery with anesthesia. You know what I mean? Like, can you imagine like in the wild battlefield, sawing off your leg or just like taking the bullet out the whiskey in the cowboy? Like, so look, Western medicine is incredible. And God bless the doctors and all the doctors out there. But look, we know that there's been a lot of lobbying and pharma and a lot of a lot of scary stuff, especially in the US. And a lot of people have had side effects and had a lot of problems from that industry. So I think I think it kind of people are looking for a natural way to heal themselves in a more holistic approach is my experience. And what I was looking for and, you know, to go back to your first question, you know, when I was in those flavor houses, it was just, you know, maybe it was the the kind of instincts that I was getting from the chaga or the sort of internal compass. But when I see this person in the lab coat and he's like, yeah, we're just going to add this natural flavor and that natural flavor to it. Sounds pretty good. Natural. It's a natural. It's a flavor. Cool. Like, but then when you realize that's what Coca-Cola says on their label, you know, and that's what all these terrible products are natural. So when I started asking too many questions, so I'm asking the the person in the coat, you know, the lab coat, like, hey, what's in this? Strawberry natural flavor. They're like, don't worry about it. We'll supply it to you and, you know, smell it. And they were kind of dodging the question. So then I kept grilling them on it. So I'm like, OK, but what happens if I want to get this flavor from somebody else? What happens if you guys run out? What happened? You know, and what happens if my question? What happens to my customers are vegan and they want to ask what's in it and or this or that they couldn't answer. They're just like, you just say strawberry, natural flavor or lemon, natural flavor. And I go, where does it come from? And they would not answer that question. So then I go, all right, then I thought about it and my gut was telling me, all right, this is maybe the quick way to launch the drink, but it's not the right way to launch the drink. So I went in a different route. The way that we landed actually in coffee was I was making it as a tea. So I would get the chaga chunks, grind them up like like like coffee. How do you source it? So so like, how do you buy it? Yeah, so I'm buying it from Wild Forge. The same way they buy truffles. I was going to ask how how sustainable is it if you have to forage for it? Yeah, great, great question. That was my number one thing that actually did research on this, that and the health benefits and the efficacy of it. Because I'm like, all right, if I'm going to put it all this time on this thing, like this better be, you know, scalable. And it also better have better have the efficacy and the research papers on it and not like I'm not selling people. Take this pill and you'll lose weight or take this pill and you're going to grow your hair. I wanted it to be real and not just be anecdotal to, you know, so in terms of standably harvesting the chaga, they leave 20 to 25 percent of it on the tree so it can be re grown, be re harvested. They actually GPS the trees are our wild foragers. So that makes it easy to find it so they know where it is. Especially one in 10,000 birch trees. Exactly. That's smart. So that's that's pretty much considered sustainably harvesting the chaga. You said that it takes several years to grow to full size. So it's like they GPS it and then like, you know, five years later, they come back and reharvest. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And is it one of these things where if I have the whole thing, let's say I have the whole thing, whatever it looks like, how big is that mushroom? It's about this. It's about the size of a beehive, like a large beehive. Imagine I take that and I don't know, I just I just cut it in half. Nick has one half. I have the other. Are we going to say one of these things where you're just going to magically feel everything or does it not work that way? Yeah. So it needs to be doses. You have to really do you have to steep it. It needs to be extracted. So you can steep it, which is the way that that, you know, they would do it over a campfire the way that the indigenous people would do it. Yeah, because you could eat it, but it's more like a tree bark or a wood. If people want to Google like chaga on the tree, they'll see it. Looks like you would never in a million years think that this was in the fungi kingdom. It looks like a piece of tree bark. Got it. OK. And steep it. You steep it. So there's a process, a little bit of a process. Yeah. And then there's more modern extraction techniques. But but also with our company, we wanted to keep it solving free because a lot of times when they extract from any plants or even CBD or whatever it may be, or your vitamins in your cabinet, you can extract using solvents, meaning alcohol, ethanol. And that's where you get the fat soluble compounds out of it because water will just extract the water soluble compounds. So a lot of brands will introduce or a lot of extraction companies will use fat soluble compounds like alcohol, ethanol, acetate, which is nail polish remover. So really like harsh chemicals and harsh things. And those aren't on the ingredient label, but it does kind of change the taste and quality of your item. And then to get it from a liquid to a powder, like in your vitamins or any powdered beverage, whether that's like an athletic greens or, you know, liquid IV or anything that's in powder format or drop in mixed format can either be freeze dried or spray dried. And when you spray dry something, it's with a chemical. When you freeze dry it, it's just you're literally just freezing it. And then it's getting into from a liquid to a powder. So we were using a solvent free extraction method actually using pressure, high pressure to extract the fat soluble compounds, meaning like 5,000 PSI, like a traditional like pressure cooker will use like 15 PSI. So it's almost it's like a dangerous. What does it look like? It's in it's in like a special like factory type of environment. And it looks like an industrial type of big, you know, like it's something that you can equate that to. Is that like travel? If you were to travel to the bottom of the Mariana's trench, like is that 5,000 PSI down there? That's a good point. Yeah, that's that's a great question. It is. Yeah, probably like that's where you experience. I mean, I don't know 5,000 PSI, but, you know, I know as you go up or go down, the pressure goes up exponentially. So it's similar to that where it's just like technology is now keeping that sort of you can look at it like it's keeping that particle and intact or the pressure and then they can extract it without it kind of exploding. That's kind of a trick we used to get the to do a solvent free extraction to get the water soluble and the fat soluble compounds, the triturpenes and the polysaccharides and all these scientific words like like in CBD, they talk a lot about those words too. And yeah, and then and then it gets freeze dried. You were initially drinking it from in a tea form. Correct. And so your product is exclusively for coffee. So how did you make that shift and why most importantly? Yeah, so I was I would have been happy to get this out to people in any format because like I said, it helped me so much. And literally the reason I'm starting this company is to help other people like it helped me. That was that was pretty much what it was. And I'm not saying that there wasn't like it's a this is a nonprofit or I'm not trying to make money. I try to do both, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, I'm not one of these people that doesn't believe in capitalism. I'm very capitalism and I believe that you can pair capitalism and having a good product that helps people, you know, upgrading products, whether that's like what Impossible Burger has done. Sir Kensington has done it for ketchup or like a million other brands, you know, you know, we can sit there with PETA and be protesting and putting blood on ourselves and or you can start Impossible Burger. So I think they're just different ways to the water fall on it. And so I was making it like a tea and then I would be happy to launch it to anybody in that format, you know, and I liked how it tastes like that. I was also adding some organic fresh pressed lemons and some monk fruit to it and making this like chaga lemonade, like chaga Palmer. I think we were calling that one. And then I was doing this like rice, rice milk with a lot of cacao and cinnamon and doing this sort of like the horchata horchaga. We like kind of recipe kind of like decadent. But and then I was doing it as a latte. I was experimenting with different flavors. I got curious, you know, after making it the old fashioned way. And I was sampling it for my friends and family. Every time they came over, check out this new drink I'm making. And they were just I couldn't hang on to any of it myself. So I said, you know what, let me let me get this out there. We got all these amazing farmers markets out here. I don't need to hire like a research company and pay them to do this market research. I'll just go out to Melrose Place, figure out I'll buy a tense and and get a license and, you know, figure this out. So I went I went there. I got one of the square card readers set up the tent, put the flavors there. Every week after a week, I'm seeing when we were kegging it at the time, too. So, you know, it was on draft. And so we're serving the plain chagachee, the chaga Palmer, the horchaga and the chagachino, right? Which is this creamy latte of a mushroom mocha ton of flavor profile. And just week after week, that was what people voted for when they when they ordered. Yeah. And it was like five to one, seven to one, ten to one chagachino versus the other drinks. So I'm like, all right, if this is the delivery system, people want this chaga in, I'll meet them where they're at. I'm not going to decide for them. They've clearly voted. We did this for three months. And did you have to explain it to them or would you say the people that were coming up were like, they understood. A lot of them hadn't heard of chaga. I mean, we had like information and it was the same amount in each drink. But in terms of the education, we had a lot of educational like literature there and stuff that we like to taste. And they love the taste. Yeah. So they're like, whatever it is, I like it. I like that. Pretty much. Some people some people are more interested in the health benefits. Some people don't even care. They're just like, this tastes better than my normal coffee. I'm going to have this. And some people care about both. So, you know, they voted for this one. And then I was thinking like, you know, at the time I kind of ran into these issues with the with the RTD with with bottling it, you know, because of those flavor houses and, you know, dealing with that. So I was like, you know what? Like, let me meet people where they're at. They want this version of the drink as a latte and as more of like a mocha frappuccino flavor profile on me. And then I did some research. I'm like, that is actually the number one selling coffee on the planet, the mocha frappuccino Starbucks obviously sells that in the RTDs as well. And like all the gas stations and places markets around the country. So look, those are America's taste buds. That's what they like. We're going to do a clean, healthy version of that drink. So instead of like process cocoa, we're using rock a cow from Peru. Instead of crappy, you know, cinnamon, we're using saline, cinnamon from Sri Lanka. We're using the chaga mushroom. We're using Madagascar vanilla, real vanilla, no binders, fillers and multifiers, no solvents, just clean, clean, clean. And that translates to the taste. You don't get that weird funky aftertaste when you drink our monk fruit. You know, it took me six months just to find the monk fruit supplier for this drink at all these trade shows and supplier conferences. So then we said, all right, let's meet people where they're at. They wanted in a coffee delivery system. Where did they get coffee from the coffee shops? So we approached the trendiest coffee shop in LA at the time and maybe still is Alfred coffee, Melrose Place, which is where we were doing the farmer's markets. And it took about three months of talking to their managers and their owners and their product development team. And then they put it on the menu and then it was quickly one of the most popular drinks on the menu. I was going to say it must have sounded so crazy to them. And even, and even like to some extent to you, right? And so here you are on this journey. And not to say it's like a left, but it's very tangential. And also margins wise, is it easier? Is it not easier? Because at some point you're also, you're reliant, right? So, so kind of like that symbiotic relationship between the chaga and the tree, you know, there has to be, they have to be willing to absorb you, sell you in order for you to win. That's seemingly a huge hurdle. So Alfred, you do a three month run. It's crushing. Cool. Does it always say is like the sales time three months for a coffee shop to finally go, all right, yeah, let's try it. Or is it, is it easier? Yeah. Because the scalability of just the, like the pitch is well, at that time too, they're like, we want to do it. I mean, there's been so many hurdles and challenges because at that time too, they go, okay, after three months of convincing them, they go, okay, but we're going to do it on draft in a keg. And then so now I got to find a co-packer to do it for one coffee shop and actually they have like a few locations too. So that's like the logistics of that. You know, I'm already doing this myself at the farmers markets, but I got to deliver this to Alfred Beverly Hills, Alfred Studio City, Alfred, you know, here and there. So I got to go and find a co-packer to make this stuff every week for me. And everyone said no, who wants to make like a few kegs for you and kegs are pretty, yeah. So I finally find this one co-packer all the way out in like Camarillo, like an hour and a half away. And, you know, I pitched them like, like an investor almost, you know, and get them excited about the future. And yeah, we're going to scale this thing, take a chance on us and kind of became friends with the owner. And they took a chance on us and they did it for us and they co-packed it and then we would be taking kegs and now we got to get a refrigerated van to transport it from Camarillo to these locations. And it's a latte using. And it's a latte using at that time. It was an old milk, but at that time that be even predated like the nut milk. Yeah. So it was a blend of cashew and almond milk that we were using at that time in there. And after like a week, we started noticing that it was fermenting and starting to taste sour and turning into like a yogurt. So now we're like, all right, we got to do a kill step on these on this with the co-packer. So now we're heat treating it and figuring that whole thing out. And now we get three weeks of shelf life on it in the keg. And we're like one of the first companies at that time doing a latte in a keg, but not just a latte, a vegan latte and not just a vegan latte, a mushroom vegan latte mocha. You know what I'm saying? And so it was like such a while. We it wasn't like we just took it one step further. We took it like five steps further and we jumped through all those hoops and jumped over all these hurdles just to get into one cafe. And then it was always called the Chagochino from that. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And then it became so popular after that first day. Anyone try to buy it from you? Everyone try to buy the name or the rights or the concoction, the formula? I mean, we've had a lot of people wanting to invest and we've had a lot of like we've had a lot of people come to us in terms of like wanting to do different projects with us with it. And, you know, I mean, just that it got so much exposure because you had everyone from like Paltrow to Courtney Kardashian to Hillary after all these celebrities drinking at Alfred and they were taking photos of it. Like they they were ready to take photos of their latte, but in a way that it was completely brand new because it's a it's the first mushroom coffee that I've ever seen at a coffee shop. And the fact that it tastes good and like they were just people were obsessed in the grand vision were like, let's if Starbucks can create this drink called the Frappuccino and it's the most popular coffee selling drink on the planet by far. Why can't we do the healthy version of that and launch out of all these coffee shops? We don't need to open our own. There's a million coffee shops that exist. And, you know, the innovation at that time in coffee, I would say it was like bulletproof. People were putting butter in their coffee, but not really in the cafe. You know what I mean? An MCT oil. Yeah. So but not really so much. Yeah. Yeah. No, they still do. And Bulletproof is a big company now. You know, so good for them for innovating. I'm all about that. You know, I look at the competitors like almost like allies in that way. You know, if you're all fighting, you're all educating the market in different ways. As long as you're surfing the same way, as long as you're running in the Wolfpack, the competitors are helping spend those marketing dollars, helping educate people. So every like you said, every brand is a little different, you know, we're different because we really wanted to taste delicious. We want to taste like coffee ice cream, whereas another brand is maybe about like just the benefit. Just the benefits, not so much the taste, or another brand might be about not about coffee, but about this, you know, so there's always going to be a difference. I don't really look at the other brands as competitors. Did you ever think of like creating your own shop in some way where people can come in and kind of try all of your different beverages? So that way, you obviously have the hero product. You learn that doing the Melrose Trading Post, but it's also like you still have other products that maybe the market is more ready for. I don't know. And so I don't know if you ever thought about just doing like a shop or a pop up or yeah, but in like a retail setting, I really thought about doing like a pop up like next to Alfred or something. Yeah, yeah, they have a lot of pop ups. The Glossier was in there and all these cool places. There's pop up spaces there all the time. And I've thought about it. But the mission that I wanted to focus on and this is the issue too with with running this business, especially me, because my personality is to want to do all these things, all these different things and staying like staying laser focused in that tunnel like that's working is challenging for me because I honestly want to do all these things. I want to do pop ups. I want to do all these other beverages. I want to, you know, but the first mission was get this in every major city in every third wave coffee shop, independent coffee shop and and chains and get this on the menu in the same way that impulse and we're not trying to take away anything off the menu. Same way that impossible burger went to the burger joints and offered them whether it's Fatburger or Mami or Burger King even now. Right. And I think it's them and beyond impossible. Maybe I don't know Burger King, which one they have. But, you know, these plant based burgers that just gives people the option to have that on the meatless Monday or whatever, versus saying, we're taking away your meat, you know, it's just another option. So we wanted to do the same thing in coffee. We're like, let's give people the option. We're not going to take away their mochas or the frappuccinos or whatever. We're just going to give them a healthy option at the coffee shop. So that was really like the mission in the same way that the frappuccino became it. Well, let's be let's be this at be the mushroom coffee at every coffee and how many how many coffee shops are you at right now or how many cities are you in? We're currently in over 1500 coffee shops and we're in almost every major city. I mean, we're in the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Vegas. We're in LA in New York, Miami. But what has been the marketing, you know, like the strategy for you guys from a marketing perspective? Obviously, Alfred creates some good good posts. Great. You have celebrity endorsement in some way. But then just in terms of like, is it is it today less education than it used to be? Yeah, it's incredible. Now you can focus on taste probably way more than you could before. Yeah, now if you if you walk around Los Angeles or New York and you ask somebody if they've had a chocochino, yeah, most likely they have or they know someone who has. Yeah. So they've heard of the drink or they've heard of mushroom coffee. So the education now is just so different than it was when we were I was literally knocking on there's a coffee shop on on Sunset here called Blackwood. Yeah. And I remember my barber was next door. I'm getting my haircut and I'm like, all right, I'm going to go walk into Blackwood as I'm the first coffee shop, like literally like next door and talk to them about this mushroom coffee thing. And I had created some like marketing materials that I wanted to test and kind of script that I wanted to test that could be replicated. So it's sort of like a trial and error thing. And I walk in, I talk to the barista and I'm so nervous, like I'm sweating and like, you know, I don't know why nature does that to you. It's like you turn red, you sweat. I don't know. It's like it's like, you know, what evolutionary benefit. How does that help me when I'm? Yeah, like, how does that help me in these moments? Brendan is sweating. And he's turning red. People watching, you know, you know, we're kidding. You sort of pouring his body. The first time I met my was she was, you know, my girlfriend at the time by my wife's parents. Now that happened to me. It was like over Christmas. And I remember taking like a steam shower and then wearing like cashmere or red cashmere, like sweater to a Chinese restaurant to meet them. And I walk in and it's so hot in there. Can they like turn up the heat and all those things together and being a little nervous and literally had to excuse myself because I was pouring in sweat like a fat Elvis who just ate like too many peanut butter sandwiches need that five minute break. Oh, man. So, yeah, so I excuse myself. So you go into a coffee shop. Oh, yeah. And same things happening. I'm sweating. I'm like turning red. And I just forced myself that it's so crazy. That was the hardest part of this entire journey for me. Everyone has like what's the hardest thing for them sales part? Yeah, just like getting the guts to walk into that cafe and like pitch them this thing. I thought they were going to laugh at me. And there's a line of people there and they're like busy making drinks. The barista's in here. I'm walking in like knocking on the door like some, you know, door to door magazine salesman. And, you know, I'm just expecting them to treat me like like you know, terribly. And I don't know. I'm just scared to do it, you know. And so I walk up, I talk to the barista and I show them this this presentation of the box and marketing materials. Have you heard of mushroom coffee? I think I actually ordered a drink first because I was so nervous. I'm like, can I get a lot? Just to get out of the way. Just to start talking. I'm a paying customer. Yeah, I'm a paying customer. Now I'm going to annoy you. So that's how it went down. And then he was like, oh, that's so cool. And he was so into it. And then he started taking photos of it. He's like, I'm going to send this to our owner right now, Keith. And then somebody walked in who was from the farmers market. I was like, our big fan. He's like, oh, Chagachino's here. And I'm like, oh, this is like a sign. Like I'm getting so much love right now. That's so cool. The barista's taking photos of it. The big super fan from our farmers market, Andrew's here. And he's screaming Chagachino. And so that's how it all went down. And then it took me like a while to track down Keith. And, you know, I had to have Shane. Like, go reach out. I had to get a haircut when I didn't need one. You know what you should have taken from that is every pitch that you had lined up after that, have someone waiting outside and be like, all right, in two minutes, I want you to walk in. And he's like, oh, Chagachino's here. Totally. That can't buy me love, right? It's like, that works. You know, that fake it till you make it. That cheerleading team. I mean, that's kind of what we did in a way, like not to that extent. But then after refining the pitch and getting black went on board, then it quickly became one of their most popular drinks. We then said, you know what? I'm going to start hiring my first salesperson. And that was a scary moment, you know? And I had personally signed up like five or 10 local shops at that point and it's crushing it at all of them. So then I hire, and I hired two of them in LA to get started and they just crushed it. They just got it into almost every coffee shop in LA and the baristas and the decision makers were really receptive to it. So we're like, all right, if this is working so well in LA, let's get this out in New York. And we just slowly grew it like that. You know, that's basically how it went down. Did you ever have any problems fulfilling the orders as you scaled though? Oh, well, one thing I didn't mention was, so Alfred at one point, this is before we started scaling, they then say to us, look, we need our kegs for this new kombucha drink. So sorry, no more kegs. And you know, that was after I had the, you know, figured out, got into the rhythm and the groove and that the dude in Camarillo, I'm driving to Camarillo twice a week and I'm like all this stuff, getting the refrigerated truck over there running one and I kind of figured out this like ridiculous system of doing that myself. And it was actually like really a blessing because I always wanted to do it in a powder format because that's how we were making it at the Copac or anyways, you know, we were just mixing the powder into it. So, and plus I thought, you know, it tastes so much better when you're using freshly ground coffee beans from the cafe and, you know, whatever milk they're making, nut milk or whatever it may be or oat milk, it just tasted better, like fresh like that. And then they just drop and mix it into the latte. So Alfred, after like two months, they come back to us saying, you know, our customers are keep asking for chocolate chino and it's not here. Like we need it back and we're, but we're not going to do it in the cake. We want to do it in as we just added to our lattes like you guys like a mocha or whatever vanilla. So we said, cool, that's, yes, that's exactly how we wanted to do this the whole time. I've been running around, renting kegs and make, oh my God, thank God I get to stop going to Camarillo twice a week, driving a refrigerated truck. So then we started doing it that way. And once we did it that way, I knew I could scale it. And that's when we started going out to all the cafes and doing it that way. And then you went e-commerce too so people can go directly to you. Correct, over COVID, people really wanted this thing. They were asking, cause a lot of these cafes shut down or they were just doing window service. And so we quickly got this thing out during COVID. And there are some articles that saying like, Chaga is the number one thing to like, help your immune system like to prevent and to help you when you get COVID. Anything like that during COVID? It was wild. It probably ran to it. Yeah. So we, so we had it on our website. Yeah. And these boxes are like both register boxes. So we made a register box for the cafe and something that people could have at home. Yeah, exactly. So instead of adding the sugar to your coffee, the thing about it like that, you just add a packet of that. Is this one, one packet? Yeah. So like a half? Yeah, like a half. Honestly, it's more like 20 servings. We were super generous in the way that we did these packets cause we were in such a rush to get it done for people at home that we just used the portions we were giving to the coffee shops. And one thing we realized was, you know, the coffee shop size cups, especially for iced coffee, and this can be drink hot too, but mainly people order it as an iced oat milk type of deal. And those were like 16 ounce cups and people at home are using like eight ounce mugs. So we're giving people kind of a coffee shop size in per packet. So we, I always tell people as much as I can and to go with half a packet and you can stretch that to 20 drinks too. I was going to ask. So like I know with say vitamin C beyond a certain percentage, your body's just going to end up peeing it out and you're not going to get any benefit whatsoever. Is that something similar with Chaga where beyond a certain point it stops having an effect? Not that I'm aware of, but you know, I know that there's a daily effective dose, which is anywhere from 500 milligrams to 1.5 grams. And that's what we're giving people, we're giving them their daily effective dose. But I do know that there's studies where people that like, you know, and again, we don't make these disease claims, but like people with cancer who want to use this in addition to whatever their chemotherapy and stuff like that, they'll use up to like 50 times the amount, like 50 grams of this stuff. And there's a lot of research on that. So you can really scale it up unlike vitamin C, like your body can really accept this. And I think one of the reasons for that is our DNA is a lot more similar to the fungi kingdom than the plant kingdom. So like a lot of these supplements that we take, well actually like there are some that are made from the fungus kingdom, like penicillin was made from a fungus. But during evolution, what happened was the, the, you know, I think it was like single cell or prokaryote, eukaryote. And then, you know, then the kingdom was branched off as evolution happened. And then the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and the fungi kingdom were all one. And then a billion years later, the plant kingdom branched off. And you saw the animal kingdom, which is us and the fungi kingdom together for another like 500 to a billion years. So our DNA resembles the fungi kingdom and is a closer match to that than the plant kingdom. That doesn't mean like kale and plants aren't bad for you. It just means that like the bioavailability and the nutrient transfer from this to us is a lot higher in the, from the fungi kingdom. And I don't know if that's the exact reason why you can have more chaga than the others, but it's just a fun fact that I had learned when going through this exercise of learning about the mushrooms and the fungi kingdom. But I've had it, I've had it in my latte and it literally to your point, what you said before, like instead of using sugar, like this sweetens it up just the right amount. And I usually don't put any, any sort of sweetener in my drink. So it's just like almond milk, good milk specifically and the espresso. And this makes it a little more delicious. Yeah. And we've, and we've done collabs with good milk. We love that company. They got a great product. So it's super drop and mix barista friendly, but also friendly for people at home, just like tearing a packet of sugar and add this to it. What's next? What's on the horizon for a renewed? So we're working on a matcha chaga mix because our audience really likes matcha too. So you're partnering with someone on the matcha side or? We're talking to some suppliers right now and we already got the formulation done. It's just a matter of like, who are we going to use as a supplier? How are we going to call out their brand? Or are we just going to, you know, use a really high quality ceremonial grade matcha from Japan and just, you know, pre-mix it for people. There's a lot of people making it that way. They're adding this to their matcha and a lot of people just add it to a plant based milk for like this kind of cinnamon, toast, crunch, mocha milk kind of taste. So that's what we're working on right now. And then I got a couple of other things we're working on in terms of beverage. I got a project that I'm working on that's like totally separate from this, this powder game, which is, I mean, look, we would love to bottle it at some point. Yeah, CPG seems right up your alley. Be the bottled mushroom coffee. It seems like you're ready to drink category is, why not? I would love to do that, especially with the awareness that we've built, you know? So that's always on the table. And then, you know, it's building the team has been kind of like a hard part, especially with the great reshuffle that's been going on. Getting the team strong is key before we sort of expand and do other things. But we are, I am actively working on other projects like we're working on a clean cola right now where it's very similar. We go ingredient by ingredient from a Coke or Pepsi and we take the bad ingredient out and put the good one in. So if they're using like a lemon natural flavor, we'll use lemon peel. If they're using orange, orange peel. If they're using caramel color, we're gonna use like that color from a vegetable or malt which they use in like a beer or something like that. Taking out the phosphoric acid that's pertain the high fructose corn syrup, all the bad stuff because it's such a delicious drink but it's like they have shame every time you drink it. You know what I'm saying? I haven't come across a brand that like has nailed that close your eyes, taste it and you don't know what's what. I've had some like, you know, apple cider vinegar cola flavors, kombucha flavors or like a prebiotic drink. Like, like all like pop has a decent one but it's not a complete cola replacement, Coke replacement for me. It's just tastes like, it tastes like maybe a little bit, this could be a little cola flavored for this kind of a beverage. So I'm trying to literally just reinvent that for, again, this is selfish because I drink Coke zero sometimes and I love it. And every time I do it, I have to feel bad. I'm drinking aspartame. I know that causes cancer. So I know I feel like you drink so little of that. And if I drink the other can, I know it has all these terrible ingredients in it. Where are you guys at from like a fundraising? Are you just self-funding it right now or are you raising capital? Just self-funding and, you know, I've really been flirting with raising capital lately, especially as I get into the bigger things like that at that point. And you know how it is running a business like this. It's like, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs. It's like you're between the inventory and the ordering that you have to do before you sell it and then the warehousing and everything. It's like you're almost like a bank in that part of things. And it's very capital intensive to run a CPG company. So yeah, I mean, at some point we're gonna have to raise, you know, and it's just the timing of when, you know, I wanted to build it, show the proof of concept, especially with such a wild thing like mushroom coffee. You know, we literally started out saying WTF is a mushroom coffee. We wanted to come out like Eminem with high my name is, you know, just like loud and aggressive. And it's funny, we did this coffee fest and we had this big sign that says WTF, you know, what the fuck is a Chagochino with a question mark. And people would walk by and they would look at this and they would see Chagochino and be like, what the fuck is a Chagochino? I'm like, yeah, exactly, read the sign. And like, you know, and they're like, yeah. So, and it's just so great to now see people like hear of this thing and know what it is. It just makes me smile. I was in New York the other day, Hugh Jackman has a coffee out there called Laughin Man that they serve it in a lot of great coffee shops in New York have it. And I'm just like pulling out my phone on Google and I go, where can I find a Chagochino? And Google has like five or six, we obviously will look it on our website. Google right there had six cafes tagged because somebody must have mentioned their Yelp review or whatever. And so I click on it and I go within like a quarter mile radius to like six coffee shops in New York that have this drink. Those are the kind of things that make me feel good, especially when you deal with all these challenges, especially when you driven a refrigerated truck from Camarillo twice a week. And you've sweat and turned into a tomato in a coffee shop with lots of like good looking people around you. And you've like gone through all of this. You're just beginning. Yeah, you're just starting. And that moment you can zoom out and see what you've built. Yeah. And on the other side of the country so far and like it's just totally, it's just, those are nice moments. Totally. And those small wins in business is what you need to keep going. We gotta think long-term and we gotta have that focus but it's all about celebrating at times of small wins. That's equivalent to like where they say stop and smell the roses or whatever. Well, listen, tell everyone where they can find you and ultimately how much they can buy the product for. Obviously their local coffee shops, farm cup right here has it, right in Hollywood. Yeah, so they can go to drinkrenew.com and we spell nude like naked. So it's D-R-I-N-K-R-E-N-U-D-E dot com and you can find the product there. We're also working on a 30-serving eco-friendly canister that's gonna be launching in about a month and then people will be able to just kind of like scoop that into their coffee with a measured scooper. Like the athletic greens. Exactly, exactly, you're like a protein kind of powder type deal. Our audience, that's the number one thing they've been asking for. So we'll have that launched in about a month from now and we'll have like little refill bags that they can use for that as well that'll be discounted. And yeah, for your audience right now if they want to try the Chocochino where you want it to run a promo code STS15 gets you 15% off on it. STS15. Add it to your coffee, upgrade your coffees. Supercharge your coffees. Yeah, thanks for coming on the podcast brother. Yeah, this is awesome, great talking to you guys. That was our conversation with Brandon of Renewed. If you enjoyed this episode, don't keep it to yourself, share it with a friend. Recently we started putting out a bimonthly newsletter. We highlight certain moments in our podcast episodes that you may have missed, along with little tidbits of behind the scenes information about the recording. You can find the newsletter at our website startupstorefront.com. Another way you can support the show is to leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We are found at Startup Storefront on every social media platform with the exception of Twitter where you can find us at STS Podcast LA. The team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Lexie Jameson, Owen Capolini and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is by DoubleTouch. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next time.