 This is Starb to Storefront. It wasn't very long ago that we as a society were told that a small amount of alcohol, say a glass of wine with dinner, could be beneficial for our cardiovascular health. But a recent study from the World Heart Federation has turned that notion upside down, saying that any amount of drinking alcohol can contribute to the loss of a healthy life. So what are we to do with this new information? Sure, there are plenty who will ignore it, but national trends show a shift in drinking habits. No and low alcoholic beverage sales have increased 33% in the past year, with the non-alcoholic beverage category predicted to grow by another 35% this year. In other words, the future looks bright for Ted Fleming of Partake Brewing. Partake is a non-alcoholic brewing company and Ted has been ahead of the curve for a while now, winning over the taste buds of casual beer drinkers and professional critics alike. But there's still a lot of work left to do, as there is still a very real stigma about non-alcoholic beer and massive companies with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. So listen in as we cover everything from why alcoholic breweries see Partake as a threat to their business, what the design of Ted's ideal brewery would look like, and taking his bike to appear on Dragonsten and getting caught in the rain. Now, on to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Ted from Partake. People who don't know, please tell us what your company does. Yeah, I'm Ted Fleming, I'm the founder of Partake Brewing. We're making phenomenal craft non-alcoholic beer. We're expanding across the US super fast into amazing retailers and people are just loving what we're doing, really changing the game around non-alcoholic adult beverages. And our friend, Marissa, thinks you're a national treasure. Yeah, she's hired as my publicist. Let me ask you a question. How big is the category? Let's start with that. How big is the category and where is it moving in terms of non-alcoholic beer? What's the trend? Yeah, so right now we think in North America, it's about a billion, billion and a half category. We see that going to 10 billion in the next five to seven years. Really phenomenal growth in the category. Europe, as a comparative, they're at five to 10%. Even Spain is 13% of their entire beer market is non-alcoholic beer and we're just like 1% here in the US, so lots of room to grow. Where did the idea come from for you? So for me, I know when I go to London, as an example, there's a big after-work beer culture and it can turn into alcoholism pretty quickly. And so I know there they have different gins that are non-alcoholic, some beers too. And so what was the moment for you where you were like, maybe it's a personal story, where you were like, this is the thing I need to solve and maybe there's a market? No, it was totally a personal story for me. So if you back up to 2005, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a bit of a slow learner. So it took me a few years to kind of figure out what that meant for me in terms of diet. And there was this key moment for me. I was on vacation in in Europe. And, you know, when you're on vacation, you kind of let your guard down a little bit. I had a couple of drinks and I was already starting to kind of reduce my alcohol consumption. But on vacation, I kind of let my guard down. And I ended up in the hospital, unfortunately. And I was a new dad at the time. I had a three month old daughter, my first. And, you know, that time in the hospital was really that time to myself where I could say, hey, I got to change some things and I got to make them permanent. And there's a lot of great reasons for me to do that, not just for myself, but for my family. And so when I got back to Canada, I started making a really, really concerted effort to get away from alcohol. But I was a beer lover. I love craft beer. I'd go out socialize with my friends. I'd have people would have beer after playing sports. And I struggled to stay on the path I wanted to because there weren't great options for me in the non-alcoholic category. So that was sort of the seed that got planted that eventually turned into partake brewing. Wow. What was your first step? First step was actually a friend of mine. She was a beer writer in Toronto and she was pregnant. And she wrote this article about all the best non-alcoholic beers in Toronto. And I went and got some of them and they were phenomenal, except I had to drive like Toronto's not quite as bad as LA for driving, but it's not great. It's pretty bad. Easy, easy, easy. And it took me hours to source this product. And I said, well, this isn't going to be a long-term solution. So I said, someone's got to be selling it online. There wasn't, but there was a company in the UK that was and they had a business model. And I sort of used that as a template and brought that business model to Canada. And over time, I built a customer base and I started to understand what I was doing. I was building a community and I was really this sole advocate for changing things for people like me who didn't drink and still wanted to be social and still wanted to have a great tasting product and didn't want to be asked questions. And social situations like, why aren't you drinking? And we just wanted to be social and have a good time with everyone else, not answer a bunch of questions. So I started that business model. And then the fans of ours, our consumers, they said, hey, Ted, can you get Kraft non-alcoholic beer? And went out to a bunch of breweries in our area and said, hey, I've got this really great customer base. I've got this channel. Will you help me do this? And I got the door slammed in my face, basically. So I said, hey, I'm going to do it myself. And we launched on Kickstarter in 2017, about five years ago. How much did you raise on that campaign? We raised, we had a goal of $10,000. We raised that in the first day. And then we ended up raising $30,000 by the end. And that sort of got the ship sailing. Did you reach out to that company in the UK to get any advice from them? Or because you're starting a brand new enterprise here. I'm imagining that you'd have to have some sort of roadmap other than just what you could find online from them. Like, did you reach out to them or anyone else? Yeah, I developed a bit of a rapport with the founder of that company. He didn't give me a roadmap. But it was a fairly simple business model, being e-commerce. My biggest challenge in that business was sourcing most of the products coming from Europe. And then being in Canada in the winter, shipping liquids, a lot of product froze. So that was a challenge for us as an e-commerce business. And so I started to, and it was difficult to access the US market as well. Like Canada as a marketplace is one-tenth the size of the US market. And I had fans in the US, like they could find us online, but they couldn't order or we couldn't send certain products because of labeling. And they were so mad at me because I couldn't or wouldn't do this because it wasn't legal. And so creating our own brand and own product and the shipping side of it, there were a lot of warts on that business. And creating my own brand and my own product was a way to get around that and serve the US customers that I said, you know, one day I'll get to this. Just got to figure it out. So once you had the capital and you had to go into fine-tuning like recipe development and making sure things tasted the way maybe you wanted them to taste, what was that process like? And like how long of a journey? Because it's hard, right? It's hard to get it right. Yeah, I think before we launched on Kickstarter, we had a prototype. So that was the point of like we got the prototype launched on Kickstarter, worked with a friend who's a very accomplished home brewer to kind of, you know, experiment. I'm an engineer by trade. So yeah, we were developing the recipes. We threw a lot out. A lot went down the drain. There were some pretty awful versions of that but eventually got to a point where, oh, this isn't so bad. And we, you know, a lot of, you know, success as an entrepreneur is right place at the right time. And I just happened to get a call from a local college that said, hey, we hear you're in this business. We've got a brewery, like a new brewery that the government's funded for our school. We haven't set up an academic program around it, but we're trying to get industry partners to work on it. So I was able to work with them. We were able to access professional brewers and professional microbiologists to really take the prototype to the next level and get it commercial scale ready. That's crazy. And then we did the Kickstarter and then took it commercial. When it came to that, what was their goal? What was the goal for the university? Were they trying to figure something out in particular on this journey? Or was it just like, let's maybe add a curriculum to brewing? Yeah, they were trying to do a curriculum to brewing but at the same time, they were trying to work with industry and recipe development. And, you know, we didn't have a brewery at the time. Most small brewers did, so they would actually do their experimentation at their own facility. So it was actually somewhat of a mismatch between industry and academics, but, you know, again, we were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. That's so incredible. Did they sell the beer on campus after that? They do, yeah. Yeah, yeah. They have a little restaurant and they have a local agricultural program there, so they do sort of field-to-table type stuff. Okay, walk me through the moment of like, here you are, you're getting sales, things are working, Kickstarter went well, you have maybe like six, seven, eight different flavors in the marketplace, and then you realize like, oh, you need to scale this up. Like, you see it. You have the orders coming in. What was that like? Where are these people coming from? Where are people bothering? Like, where are the emails coming? Where is the market? And, you know, what is that like for you? What was that moment like? The big change over point for me was, we started to see people coming to the brand that were like, they weren't like me. They didn't have to be in the category. They didn't have a medical reason or some acute reason to be drinking. Non-alcoholic beer, they were choosing to drink it. And they were choosing to drink it because it tasted good. We had variety across all these craft styles, so people had like these access points that they've never had before for styles they liked. And I think what's unique for us, even within non-alcoholic is like, our calorie count is only 10 to 30 calories for an entire can. And a lot of people would say, oh, you know, I like the idea of non-alcoholic beer, but you know, if I'm gonna drink something non-alcoholic, I don't want the calories. And, you know, once we had a product that had amazing taste, and we've won like world awards for the best non-alcoholic beer, and then we combine that with like, it's basically calorie-free. Like you burn more than 10 calories in the act of drinking a beer. And so- You hear that pitch? Yeah. It's calorie-free, everyone. So people started actually- It's a workout. Yes, people started making their own, you know, case for why they should drink it and what occasions. And that was when things really took office. Like the, you know, our market, our total addressable market, went from people who couldn't drink alcohol to every beer drinker. Have you ever thought about making one version alcoholic? Because if you think about it, right, so the reverse of it is if I'm a Bud Light, if I'm a Anheuser-Busch, I have the market, now let me start releasing things to the smaller niches, non-alcoholic, salters, and blah, blah. Here you are kind of going reverse, where all your customer base doesn't drink. Do you ever think about doing that? It's crossed my mind. Like, I think if we were to do that- Maybe under a different name also, like maybe- Yeah, possibly. You know, you build the infrastructure and it's easier to make alcoholic beer than it is to make a good non-alcoholic beer. But I think what we decided was like, we're here for a purpose. We serve a very specific customer and we have a specific mission. And if we did that, we would probably lose focus. So it was important to us to stay focused and stay focused for our customers. And we think this is a 20, 30-year market evolution where we can have huge positive impact, but we need to stay focused. You know, one of the things that you've talked about in other interviews, you weren't able to find a beer that suited your taste. You weren't able to find one that was worth the drive to Toronto every time to go get it. And I'm curious about the market as a whole. When you look at the percentage of growing non-alcoholic beer drinkers across like Europe, the U.S., you see that growing. But I'm curious about what you have to do to influence that along, or if you just let that kind of matriculate on its own and just supply the beer in the meantime? I think to this point, we've kind of allowed the market to develop. We've raised a lot of capital recently. And I think a big part of the reason behind that is I think we need to get much more aggressive and tell our story. I think ultimately for people that don't drink, can't drink, trying to drink less, it's a bit of a hostile environment out there. And that was my experience. You go to a bar or a restaurant and you say, hey, do you have a non-alcoholic beer? They'd often say no. They'd look at you like, why would you even want that? Like that category is awful. Here's a soda. Here's a water. And when you're out with a group of friends, you don't feel like you're included. You don't feel like you're at the kids' table. And so I think we have a bigger mission. And that's why I'm looking at this in a 20 and 30 year time horizon of like, we need to change the stigma around not drinking and make it totally normal. And there's a lot of work to do around that, but that's our mission. When it comes to your customer, who is your customer? Like if you can put them in a bucket, like for me, I'll just give you what feels intuitive. So we build breweries, as you know. And so when I go to the breweries that we build, who are they? And they're all people that are generally single, looking to meet somebody, probably, I would say mid-20s seems to be the right market. And then I'll throw my personal end of it where I think there will be a day where I stop drinking when that day is approaching. Like I know it's coming. Like I don't even drink beer anymore. I just drink wine. And so then, and I know I fit into a customer profile. And so who, like, is your customer, I'm just going to guess, like 37? Take that customer that you have at your brewery and then as they move on in age and their life changes in terms of like, they become a parent, they're not quite as athletic. They don't have the same metabolism as they did before. They've got higher, you know, they've got careers and more responsibilities. It doesn't mean they don't want to be social. They don't want to go out. They don't want to have enjoyable time with their friends and have those connections that happen over a beer. They still want all that. But, you know, they see the value in a non-alcoholic product and a low-calorie product. And that's where we fit in of like, okay, take that 28 to 45 age person who has developed a taste for craft beer and as their, you know, as their life evolves into a more mature state, like that's where they start to say, okay, there's a time and a place for that same craft beer that I love, but there's also a time and a place for non-alcoholic beer and I can just pick and choose on occasion or how I'm feeling on a given day. And it's actually a very complimentary product. I think early on in the evolution of our category, a lot of breweries saw us as a threat. And I think about a year ago for us in Toronto, which is one of our key markets, we started to see a ton of breweries just bringing our product in and just, they just saw that as like, hey, we're just serving our customers and they want this and it's complimentary. And the person who drinks non-alcoholic beer, they're usually driving where people go because they have a smaller suite of options. And so if you can serve that customer, it's not just them, they're bringing five or six other people with them. That's fascinating that they saw you as the competition, as a threat, when I would say like sense. Well, to me, it's like those are the people that you want because one for designated drivers, they can have a couple of non-alcoholic beers and then drive everyone else home. And then two, like you talked about just now, on the progression of people who are drinking, like you talked about your time drinking is coming to an end. I think about in my lifetime, I went from in college, just drinking to get buzzed, to get drunk, to have a good time. And now it's like I only drink for taste and that pattern is coming down for me as well. So I think of it as, you've got these breweries that exist now who are making beer and they're serving a different customer than you are and it's like a different stage along that path. So it's fascinating to me that they can't see the natural pairing of the two, like a symbiotic relationship there. Yeah, if there's any breweries out there listening, we'd love to partner with you because I think there's a lot of crossover and you're going to bring more customers to your brewery, to your tap room if you're partnering with a great non-alcoholic company. We just have brewery, cider and wine and we're missing the non-alcoholic piece. When it comes to like price point, so this is an interesting thing, right? So your customer's a little ordered, they probably have some more money as their responsibility. So what is the price point that you find works? We're a very similar line price to alcoholic beer. Some place is a little bit below, but you know. Are you a higher margin item though because maybe there's less processing time or does it not really matter? There's that, but you know, there's some ads and some subtracts from that. Like I think our product is much more delicate in terms of making it. So there's some precision brewing that costs more money and then in some cases, there's some de-alcoholization. So there's extra capital expenditure around how some brews are made. Okay. Is most of the people who drink this male? Like what is the split? I would say 60, 40. I think our brand is somewhat unique. I think probably the category as a whole is probably mirrors alcoholic beer. I think our brand skews more towards women a bit more and I think we're just seen as an accessible brand and the calorie component of what we bring to the table I think is particularly appealing. So you just closed the big round, right? Congratulations. Thank you. What are you going to do with it? What are you feeling the pressure? Pressure to a pool, dive into it. Yeah, it's super exciting. Again, I frame it up around that 20 to 30 year mission that we're on and how do we start to tell the story of the category? How do we start to tell the story of our consumers? How do we advocate for them? How do we get the product in more retailers and more on-premise? How do we change that negative stigma and make it a more employee? I want to know. Yeah. It's I think basics for food and beverage. We got to get out and sample. Like people, when they try our product, they're like, wow, this tastes good. I can't tell the difference between an alcoholic beer. It's 10 calories. Okay, where do I buy it? Like that's, it's calorie free. Mostly it's calorie free. Yeah. Yeah. By the time you're done. That's the conversation we're having and we just have to have that conversation like 100,000 times, a million times. So it's just boots on the ground, CPG, full attack, tastings at Bevmo or anywhere. And we've had our hands tied behind our back for a couple of years, right? So we're kind of itching to get out there and do that, you know, that work. The guerrilla marketing. When it comes to moving into America, is it challenging or is it pretty straightforward being a Canadian based company? Yeah, pros and cons there. Like it's certainly in some areas that, you know, you're seen as a premium product because you're from, you know, you're- Oh, there's some allure to it. Outside of the U.S. It's by Trudeau? Yeah. And then some people are like, well, it's not made in the U.S. And I want to support local. So there's some of each. And that's why, again, I think our message and our mission is really important because that resonates with people and that transcends those things. U.S. market is very fragmented from a distribution point of view, especially within beer, as you probably know, that, you know, we have to get distribution on a state-by-state basis. And even then, sometimes within the states because I was looking at where you're distributed and you've got a bunch of whole states, but then you've got Eastern PA and Southern California, like San Francisco and Pittsburgh are not on the map just yet. And it's interesting how that works where you can have all of Washington state, all of Maryland, but sections of states. Yeah. That's kind of the chicken-in-the-egg thing, which I think a lot of consumer package could brand go through, right? The retailers say, who's your distributor? The distributor says, who's your retailer? Sometimes that map gets divided up just based on, hey, we got a retailer and they have this footprint in this only this one portion of the state. Well, then the distributor for that portion of the state comes on and maybe not the whole state. Where is your highest yield, though, from a business perspective? Like where do you see the highest yield? Is it in more distribution? Or are you going direct to consumer? We actually started as direct to consumers. So we were probably the first beer brand in North America ever to start as. And was it like subscription model or was it just? There was some subscription, but it was really based off of that e-commerce store that I built originally and going into that consumer base. What quantity of beer were people buying the most of? Was it six packs, 12 packs? Like I'm thinking if I'm buying something online. Do you even sell it like that? Or do you go radically different? Do you go 10 packs? On e-commerce, we only sold 24 packs to get the shipping cost as a percentage of the total cost down. Today, we can subdivide that much into six packs. So we can do six packs on e-commerce. Is that the highest yield, the direct to consumer for you? Yeah, you're keeping the distributor and the retailer margin when you do that, so. And is that what you're doubling down on now? Or is it now? No, it's still an important part of our business, but it's really about building that retail footprint. Going back to the vision, like how do we do that? We're not going to do that through e-commerce. Like that's a great, it's a great channel, but how are we going to change society's view of non-alk and that accessibility and variety? We have to do that through retail and we have to do that through on-prem. And marketing. And telling the story to get people to, okay, it's on the shelf. Now how do they know about it? How do they choose partake? How do you think about that? The marketing side of it, is it like you're hiring CML? Are you going television commercials? Or are you going just Instagram videos? What is the thing that you just want to, what's the story you want to keep telling and where? Yeah, I think we want to do events so that we can get that boots on the ground sampling, but we also want to be able to leverage, like this is the lifestyle that this product and this category in partake unlocks is, you can still have fun. You can still be part of the event or the party fit in, feel perfectly great when you go home and great in the morning and do what you need to do. But that connection between like an event sampling and being able to amplify that on social, I think that's sort of the key. As someone who builds breweries, I just like think of like, can you imagine if we built a non-alcoholic brewery and then you have an event or you just open for business every day? And the amount of social media or just like news coverage that you would get, and it's funny too. It's like, everyone here is sober. Let's do that. It's fascinating to think about that. No, but if you think about it, like it becomes kind of your best marketing hack. It's almost like if I'm in food and I have a food truck, wherever I go, the business goes, and if there's a cool event, that's a lot of social media content for free. This is similar, right? And then you can just have shelves or fridges of alcoholic beer if people so choose, but the juxtaposition of it is so fascinating. And then you also have creative license to like make the design however you want. And so today, if I say let's go to a brewery, you're already imagining what this might look like. But if you build it on your own accord in a totally different way to break the stigma, right? Now you're destroying someone's construct or narrative that they've built up, and I think that's pretty powerful. Yeah. It's something we've actually had fun with, right? Like we can place our product in places where beer, alcoholic beer traditionally can't go. And that surprises people and it gets them to pause and say, oh, is that a beer? It's like, yeah, it's a beer. Just happens to be non-alcoholic, but it's a beer. And that's what you can do with it. You can walk down the street with it, or you can take it into places that people kind of do a double take. And so I think that's memorable. And we have some fun doing that type of thing. Yeah, there's somebody who gets clips, the cops drinking while driving. You can drink and drive. Yeah. That's a good clip. We're here for it, right? There's drinking and driving. You can do legally. You can have, you can carry. You can open the carry. Yeah, you can walk around. Yeah. You can walk around with it. It does not have to be Vegas. Nope. You can do it right in LA. Yeah, let's have some fun with that. There's a lot here. I'm like super intrigued in this. You know, one of the other things that kind of ties into all of this when it comes to marketing and fundraising was your appearance on Dragonsten. And we've had a lot of companies on Shark Tank, but I think you are the first one. Congratulations to come on this show having been on Dragonsten. Thank you. And I'm curious about the similarities and differences between Shark Tank and Dragonsten. I know that Shark Tank comes from the British Dragonsten. I know that was the inspiration for it, but in terms of the specifics of the bump that you get from being on it and what the the dragons in this case do to your evaluation. So on Shark Tank, we know that from data, they typically cut your evaluation in half. And I know from the deal that you struck, they cut your evaluation in half and then some. So I believe you were asking for like 300,000 for what was it, 20%? Sounds about right, yeah. And the dragon that you made a deal with gave you 300,000 for 50%. You know, like can we just talk about like... Did that deal go through? Yeah. So yeah, first thing I tell people is you can't believe everything you see on TV, of course. Most of the deals, by the way, that have come on here, never actually get executed. In arbitration afterwards, they always fall through. DD, DD. Yeah, I do diligence. Yeah, I think about only 10% to 15%. It might be a little higher these days of the deals that happen on TV actually come to fruition in some form. I went into that with the idea that, look, you're not held to whatever deal you get on the show. You're not held to it. There's no, there's nothing binding about it. You basically agreed to talk later. And so, you know, I took the approach like I don't need to get a proper valuation. I just need to get a deal to talk about something. Yes, because then, was in your mindset that as long as they say, yes, I'm one more likely to be on air, and then two, I will get talked about as having made a deal on that show. Yeah, but there's two sides to that. I still get messages today of guys saying you would never have accomplished what you would have accomplished if you didn't have 50% ownership from this dragon person. Yeah, that's motivating, though. She and I have never, we neither of us go out of our way to say that we don't have a deal. Like, we're talking about it because you guys asked, but... Yeah, well, yeah. It looks like she got the deal of the century. Yeah, we're also, you know, she and I are friendly. Like, I can call her up and say, hey, I got an issue and she'll return my call. So we've got a great relationship. We actually happen to live in the same city in Canada, Calgary. Okay. And, you know, she's great at running her business and they're very successful and we've been very successful. And, you know, she told me when we were talking about the business and potentially working together, she said, like, there's no point in you taking my money at this stage. You can do it yourself. Like, I think you can do it yourself. I believe you can do it yourself. And, you know, to this day, I don't know for sure if she was trying to let me down easy or if she actually meant it. But, you know, either way, she was right. On a lighter note, I read on your blog that you actually, so you have a cargo bike that you rode to the studio that day. Oh, yeah. That's alone, remarkable. But it also rained on you when you were biking there. One, I want to, like, your blog didn't go into all the detail that I wanted. How long of a ride was that? And what went through your mind that was, like, oh, yes, this is a good idea to bike to the studio? Yeah. Well, part of the issue was like trying to put a cargo bike into a, like, a car or a van. Like, I just, I had no other, I wasn't that organized, so I had no other way to get it there. So I kind of got myself into a corner there. So I was riding along the North Shore of Lake Ontario and there's this huge storm and huge waves coming off. And the cargo bike is not aerodynamic. So you're just getting, like, blown. It's a giant box in front. And there's a big road along which I was, you know, parallel to where I was riding. And, you know, people are looking out their window like, that guy is nuts. All right. And I've got this bike which had actually had a draft tap coming out the top. So I actually served draft out of the beer. That was, you know, a poor man's food truck. But I got there. I was wet. I still had, like, six hours before I actually got on air. Like, the waiting part is the tricky part. Yes, yes. Like, how many times can I rehearse my pitch? Like, I don't know, maybe 37. Right. Something like that. But, yeah, I dried off by the time I got into the studio. That's good. I would imagine that, you know, even if you hadn't, wardrobe could have fixed you up with something. Yeah. Like, there's no way that they're letting you go on TV soaking wet. Yeah. I was disappointed. They didn't do makeup on me or anything else. Oh, really? You're beautiful the way you are. I was hoping for the, you know, the royal treatment. You didn't need it. We had a company on the podcast that they were trying to solve a problem that you're probably hitting or will hit soon where they basically are trying to find a way to make beer into a concentrate. Right. And the whole concept is, at the end of the day, you're shipping water. Every beer company is shipping glass or cans and water. Right. And so they actually found a way to do it where they would, at any bar, they could just install this. It's way smaller than a keg. It's like a little tabletop unit. Fits in easier to carry than a keg because it's empty. And then there's concentrate. And if someone wants an alcoholic beer, you know, water, concentrate, and then boom. And they can do it for like, I forget the number, but it was like maybe like 600 beers before it had to be, before the filter itself, the thing he had, the concentrate had to be replaced. Do you ever think about that? Is that something that's on your radar? Well, funny enough, if you check out our April Fools posts, we actually have a pod for a Keurig. That's our, that's our version of that. But, you know, I think, you know, going back to a concentrate and like this, you know, certification. It's not that far off from reality. Right, right. April Fool's in 2022, but 2023, it's reality. That's right. You know, a few April Fool's jokes have turned into reality over time. Yeah. Donald Trump, I heard went to Expo East because of your tweet. I heard about that. Yeah, let's not go into that one. That's how I got my social media accounts taken away from me. That's how you got canceled by your own team. That's right. That's right. But yeah, I think there's some interesting stuff happening on that front, like that, you know, that brings up questions of like, how do you like, we ship a lot of water effectively in our product, right? Like that's, that's a potential great environmental benefit, right? If you can ship a concentrate versus a, versus a lot of the liquid. So I'm excited to see where some of that stuff goes. Like I think like traditional brewed beer is going to be of a different quality than a soda beer, but it may be, may have interesting applications. Yeah. Do you have one plant right now or how many? We have two and we're looking for a third. Where do you want your third to be? In the U.S. Los Angeles? We'll see. You got a line on a brewery? Oh, I. He's got a line on a few breweries. Well, the hardest part about getting a brewery is getting the licensing. And so we have that. That's our whole skill set. We have the political allies to help us do that. We haven't gone far enough down the path to understand the licensing we would need as a non-elk brewery. It might be different. It might be different. It might be different. It might be the same. The zoning would just need to be manufacturing, but that's probably it. How do you envision it? Is it just like a production space, 10 barrel, 20 barrel? Yeah, I think it would be much larger than that. Like we're doing batches that are 500 barrels at a time. So some pretty significant volumes. Canning, a lot of canning. Yeah. Okay. We'd be looking for something that's pretty sizable. And the question of where is it located? I think we've got some work to do on figuring that out. But we've got great consumer support in California, the Northeast, Pacific Northwest. So probably in one of those markets where we're seeing really, really phenomenal traction. Tell me what it looks like in your head 20 years from now. What is the whole stigma? What is it? Is it gone? Is it different? Or is it now this group can play with this group and they can be allies or friends? Or is the market moving to more and more people are not drinking because of science coming out? Like what does it look like in your head? You have a wand. This is the energy that you see. Yeah, I don't like I'm not going to want to tell people what they should drink less necessarily. They have to come to that choice on their own. It's more our job is to make sure they have great options if they decide to do that. You know, one of the visions I have, and I explain to people what does the future look like for me. I'd love to go on a road trip with my daughter before she goes off to college and be able to go Calgary down through the Midwest and the West Coast of the US to Mexico and be able to stop into any small town and pick up my beer or go to a restaurant and have non-alcoholic beer on the menu and it just be completely normal for me to order it. No one only gives me a funny look. No one says, you know, why would you want that? Just feel like completely normal as a beer consumer. That's also one hell of a road trip. I'm excited for it. I'm making plans already. Yeah. Are you into Tesla while you're doing this? Yeah. Yeah. Charging stations and non-alcoholic beer. That's a good future. What does the taproom look like to you in your head when you close your eyes and think about it? What does it look like? Yeah, we've already got over a dozen styles I think we'll have over 20 by the end of this year. So, you know, I'd love to have something that's, you know, we're trying to push this message of like, not drinking can be fun. It's like, you don't have to drink alcohol fun. It has to be a fun space. It has to have variety. It has to have all the best things that a taproom has, which is community, a place for people to congregate and to connect. That's what I want it to be. Do you think people drink because of the alcohol or do you think people drink because that's the only option? Like, for example, if I go to a brewery, I'm going to have a good time. And I know that. But the fact that I'm being served alcohol doesn't really matter, right? Or maybe it does. I think for some people it does, but I think for most people it doesn't. It's about who they're with. And that's, you know, that's part of our brand name, right? Like partake is about being with other people and sharing an experience and sharing a moment. And, you know, often that happens over drink. And I don't think alcohol has to be part of that. When it comes to the brewing process, though, are there any types of beers that are more difficult to make non-alcoholic than others? Well, we took the challenge from square one, right? Like we said, no one's made a non-alcoholic IPA that we know of or that's any good. And so we said, okay, if we can nail that, then we can make anything else. So that's why we started with the hardest thing. You started with that. Wow. We started with that. What makes IPAs so much more difficult? It's an experiment gone wrong and people like it. Yeah, there's so many people who love it. So they're just dialed into what that flavor profile is. It's funky. And it's usually associated with a high alcohol content. So if you can make something great like we do in a non-alcoholic format and can really satisfy those people that drink a lot of IPAs and are very honed in on what that should taste like. And that's what we did. And so we took that. That was the product we had on our Kickstarter. And yeah, even going back to that, like just talking about community again, I had guys call me up and say, I hate IPA. I absolutely hate it. I don't know why you're making it, but I'm still going to buy 10 cases from you because you're the only person out there trying to make things better for me. And I know you'll eventually, like if this is successful, I know you'll eventually make something I like and done that. They hate IPAs, but they're like, instead of finding another beer, they're just like, I'm going to keep trying IPAs till I find one that I like. No, I don't think he bought it. Even though he's like, I'm going to give it away to other people. I don't like it, but I want to support you because supporting you today is going to get me where I want and whether he likes a blonde or a red ale. Sure. Do you see your velocities changing significantly? Like did COVID do anything to impact your sales from like just something interesting, like a data point around velocities and things picked up? Yeah, it's hard to different. Like it's hard to know what they would have been without COVID. We grow our business five times over during COVID, if not more. We're the number one non-alcohol beer in Canada, head of Heineken, a head of Budweiser, like we're just crushing it. And early stages in the US, but we're seeing that same velocity rise over time as people start to experience the brand when like going back to the sampling, they try it, they love it, they buy it, they tell their friends. Like that's how you build a business. Are they knocking at your door? Sometimes. They're knocking at my virtual door. Are they taking into space seriously? Are they actually putting some resources and time into? Like an acquisition target to me. Yeah. Come on, Ted. You mean the big companies like Anheuser-Busch, Coors? Yeah, they've, you know, we've got conversations with all of them. Like it's just a normal part of business, right, to talk to people that we could do business with. Who knows what that looks like. But I think we've earned a degree of respect that we didn't have a couple of years ago, but people from those big companies see us at the restaurants they're at and they see us at the retailers they're at and they see us at events they want to be at and they're sponsoring and they're like, oh, you know, we've got our products in this big event and what's this non-alcoholic company? We should pay attention. Yeah. So I think we're doing something that they've had trouble doing themselves. We have an authenticity of purpose that they really can't replicate being in alcohol and us being really focused on serving the non-alcohol consumers. So, you know, there could be a fit down the road, absolutely. But, you know, we're trying to run the business in a way that like we could own it forever. You seem like a really humble guy, Ted. Are you aware of what you're building? Yeah, I am. You're doubting, right? Do you want to brag a little bit? A little bit? We're pretty good. I got a great team. They make me look good. What can I say? Like we're, yeah, we're number one. We're number one. Canada's national treasure. Number one, you're beating some huge players that have endless bank accounts. You should be very proud of yourself. I am proud. Yeah, but we got a lot of work to do. That's how I like it. That's what every great entrepreneur says. I'm not done yet. I want to go on that road trip with my daughter. When you think about potential partnerships in the future, are there any events or focuses that you want to see come to fruition? Because I know from just a few triathlons that I've competed in, there's a beer company called Athletic Brewing that sponsors, I believe, Ironman now. And that to me seems like a good fit, because what you're selling is the taste of the alcohol without the hangover that's going to impact performance. So is there anything like that in your mind that seems to be just a match made in heaven, perfect pairing? Yeah, I think we've had great success with musicians. It's a culture that a lot of people think is very toxic professional musicians, particularly in rock and hip hop. But I think there's a pushback from those artists to make it cleaner. And so we're getting great feedback from artists, but also from venues and from the music and entertainment community that people want this type of product. And our branding speaks to that occasion. Even the packaging speaks to that type of occasion. So don't be surprised if you see us at your next concert. Are any of them investors? Any of these musicians investors? No, not at this time. No. 50 Cent, I just think about him. He's onto this stuff. 50 Cent if you're listening. I have your autograph, 50 Cent, please listen. Well, listen, thanks for coming on the podcast. What else do people know? Where can they find you? Where can they order more importantly? You can get us online at drinkpartake.com in California. We're in Total Wine, Bevmo, Ralph's, Pavilions. Lots of other great retailers around the country. Wegmans is a great retailer for us in the Northeast. Whole Foods in the Pacific Northwest. And we're continuing to build and continuing to add great retail partners. So you can find that all out on our website. And follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook. Perfect. Canada's top entrepreneur, Ted. Thank you. Thanks for joining. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. That was our conversation with Ted of Partake Brewing. While I still have your attention, if you're not already subscribed, you should seriously consider doing so. If you are subscribed, then you should seriously consider leaving us a review. And if you've already done both, well, then from the bottom of our hearts, we thank you. We are found at Startup Storefront on every social media platform except for 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.