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Beer Without the Buzz · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Beer is deep. It's as old as civilization, older
0:24
Speaker 1: than writing or money. Beer is ritual, Beer is delicious.
0:28
Speaker 1: Beer is a way to get drunk. So here's a question.
0:32
Speaker 1: Can you keep all the ritual and deliciousness of beer
0:35
Speaker 1: and get rid of the getting drunk part. I'm Jacob
0:41
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
0:43
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and engineers talk about how they're going to change
0:46
Speaker 1: the world once they solve a few problems. My guest
0:49
Speaker 1: today is Bill Schufeld, founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company,
0:53
Speaker 1: which brews craft non alcoholic beer. Bill's problem is this,
0:58
Speaker 1: how do you turn non alcoholic beer from a punchline
1:01
Speaker 1: into a normal thing? People drink all the time. When
1:07
Speaker 1: Bill worked in finance in his twenties, he drank at
1:09
Speaker 1: social events several nights a week. He was also really
1:12
Speaker 1: into sports and working out, and around the time he
1:15
Speaker 1: turned thirty, he found that drinking was slowing him down,
1:18
Speaker 1: so he stopped drinking, and that, he told me, made
1:22
Speaker 1: his social life much harder. Everywhere I was going after
1:25
Speaker 1: I stopped drinking. When I tried to order a non
1:28
Speaker 1: alcoholic beer in a loud bar, restaurant. It seemed like
1:31
Speaker 1: the music would stop and fifty people would look at
1:33
Speaker 1: me and be like, Oh, my goodness, is this guy okay?
1:37
Speaker 1: Can he be trusted? Something has happened here, Like, let's
1:40
Speaker 1: try to get to the bottom of it before the
1:42
Speaker 1: night goes on. Everywhere I was going these days, there
1:44
Speaker 1: were just no options on any menu. There were stigmas
1:47
Speaker 1: around any choice he would choose at a group setting,
1:50
Speaker 1: out of social setting. And it just blew my mind
1:54
Speaker 1: that the adult beverage industry hadn't evolved the sophistication of
1:59
Speaker 1: a glass of wine or a nice craft beer or
2:02
Speaker 1: a very well crafted cocktail, and there was just no
2:05
Speaker 1: replacing that. The options were super bleak. Even five years
2:10
Speaker 1: ago there had been while the whole grocery store had
2:13
Speaker 1: evolved and the whole bar menu had evolved. There's this
2:16
Speaker 1: one dusty corner of everything that hadn't changed in really
2:20
Speaker 1: thirty five fifty years. It had the same case of
2:24
Speaker 1: o'duels that had been sitting there for thirty years. Basically, Yeah,
2:27
Speaker 1: these products somehow survived prohibition and survived right through to
2:31
Speaker 1: the two thousands. Okay, so go on, So what happens next? Yeah,
2:36
Speaker 1: I guess the moment where I had the actual realization.
2:41
Speaker 1: Me and my wife were walking to dinner and I
2:43
Speaker 1: was yet again complaining, and I just exclaimed, I can't
2:47
Speaker 1: believe that no one has tackled this yet, that someone
2:50
Speaker 1: should make amazing craft non alcoholic beer that is as
2:54
Speaker 1: good as any alcoholic option out there, both in experience
2:57
Speaker 1: and quality. And when I said that, she just grabbed
3:02
Speaker 1: my shoulder and said, that's an amazing idea, And she
3:05
Speaker 1: had never said that before. We had known each other
3:07
Speaker 1: for fifteen years at that point, first amazing idea you'd
3:11
Speaker 1: had in her eyes? Yeah, And we immediately the wheels
3:17
Speaker 1: got turning, and we talked about it the hole dinner.
3:19
Speaker 1: We started researching on our laptops when we got back,
3:22
Speaker 1: and every data point we pulled up, we were like, Wow,
3:24
Speaker 1: this is just a huge opportunity. Or I didn't realize
3:27
Speaker 1: this many people don't drink, and like I didn't realize
3:32
Speaker 1: how everywhere else except the US, that non alcohol adult
3:35
Speaker 1: beverages are an enormous market. I found myself working on
3:39
Speaker 1: it on nights and weekends and drawing up a business
3:42
Speaker 1: plan and running surveys and calling people in Germany to
3:45
Speaker 1: ask about technology, and it just snowballed for two years straight.
3:50
Speaker 1: And so going into twenty seventeen, resigned from my resigned
3:57
Speaker 1: from my job and went full time on it, which
4:00
Speaker 1: was a pretty shocking moment, and especially to work on
4:04
Speaker 1: non alcoholic beer. There was no market, there was no
4:07
Speaker 1: facilities at the time making great non alcoholic beer. We
4:11
Speaker 1: were going to be the first brewery and tap room
4:14
Speaker 1: that did non alcoholic beer as a pure focus in
4:18
Speaker 1: the country. Now you have this fundamentally a technical problem, right,
4:21
Speaker 1: a kind of kind of an engineering problem, a brewing problem.
4:26
Speaker 1: You want to make like very delicious, interesting beer that
4:31
Speaker 1: doesn't have any alcohol in it, right, which is which
4:33
Speaker 1: is a technical problem. How do you do it? How
4:34
Speaker 1: do you solve that? Yeah? So I had overwhelming passion,
4:39
Speaker 1: overwhelming delusional optimism, call it. And I thought starting a
4:44
Speaker 1: business was going to be super easy, And here we God,
4:48
Speaker 1: did you really I think I did? I thought I
4:51
Speaker 1: would be often running and things scale nicely and their
4:54
Speaker 1: vendors for everything, and here we go. And I have
4:58
Speaker 1: such respect for anyone who has started any size business
5:01
Speaker 1: out there. It is there isn't as anyone knows who's
5:04
Speaker 1: built anything, There isn't a single easy step to anything
5:07
Speaker 1: out there at any scale, Allen, It's amazing. How so,
5:11
Speaker 1: I'd read every brewing textbook out there under the sun
5:13
Speaker 1: before I quit my old job, but I'd never brewed
5:16
Speaker 1: a beer period. Resigned from my job and started to
5:20
Speaker 1: talk to potential brewers, starting to sourceburg equipment, contract brewers, everything,
5:25
Speaker 1: and I couldn't believe how much no came at me
5:28
Speaker 1: so fast, meaning everybody just said no every time he asked. Yeah.
5:33
Speaker 1: I'd gone from a firm where I was a customer
5:35
Speaker 1: of three to five hundred people. Everyone wanted to talk
5:38
Speaker 1: to us any chance they could get sure you had
5:40
Speaker 1: all the money, right, you were a buyer rather than
5:43
Speaker 1: a seller in your old job, right, And like a
5:46
Speaker 1: phone not being picked up was such a foreign concept
5:49
Speaker 1: to me. And all of a sudden, it was unbelievable
5:54
Speaker 1: how much outreach I did that just went utterly cold.
5:56
Speaker 1: Then I was moving from to a sector that there
5:59
Speaker 1: was literally no interest, and people thought, no retails, no
6:02
Speaker 1: customers know anything, wanted anything to do with this. I
6:05
Speaker 1: would go to brewing conferences, I was posting applications everywhere
6:09
Speaker 1: I could, looking for our co founder and a broom
6:11
Speaker 1: maaster and did not get one hint of interest. I
6:14
Speaker 1: would walk into conferences with ten thousand burgers and tried
6:18
Speaker 1: in network and grab people, and it was like a
6:22
Speaker 1: middle school dance. I couldn't get anyone to talk to me,
6:25
Speaker 1: and it was just like tons of nos, over and
6:29
Speaker 1: over again. And so I eventually stopped talking about non alcoholic.
6:32
Speaker 1: I just started talking about innovation and took non alcoholic
6:36
Speaker 1: out of all the job descriptions. And that's interesting. Yeah,
6:40
Speaker 1: And that's when John Walker, our co founder, reached out
6:43
Speaker 1: to me. He was an extremely highly awarded boomaster in
6:46
Speaker 1: Santa Fe, New Mexico, and our first conversation was, please
6:51
Speaker 1: don't hang out. This is going to sound a little crazy,
6:53
Speaker 1: but if you give me five to ten minutes and
6:55
Speaker 1: don't say no for three days, like I'd love to
6:58
Speaker 1: revisit this on Monday. And John did give me a
7:02
Speaker 1: good half hour to talk through it. And it's so
7:05
Speaker 1: funny looking back at our first emails. He was one
7:07
Speaker 1: hundred percent going to say now. And then he's a
7:10
Speaker 1: young father at the time, and he loved innovative challenges
7:14
Speaker 1: and he was the one person who saw the potential
7:16
Speaker 1: impact we were potentially going to have on the world,
7:19
Speaker 1: and before I knew it, he was moving his family
7:22
Speaker 1: across the country from Santa Fe, New Mexico to homebrew
7:26
Speaker 1: in an empty warehouse with someone he didn't really know
7:29
Speaker 1: at all, brewing non alcoholic beer and like with a
7:32
Speaker 1: big hope for the future. So I know this is
7:34
Speaker 1: more his domain than yours, But so just give me
7:37
Speaker 1: very basic like how do you make non alcoholic beer?
7:42
Speaker 1: And was it hard to figure out how to make
7:44
Speaker 1: it good? Yes? So basically all non alcoholic beer from
7:51
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties to this day, even ninety five ninety eight
7:55
Speaker 1: percent of the non alcolck beer market is made using
7:58
Speaker 1: the same two or three types of very simple technologies
8:01
Speaker 1: that all don't have a ton of regard for the
8:05
Speaker 1: nuance of fermentation and all the subtleties of like a
8:08
Speaker 1: finally crowd to beverage. They all just basically blast it
8:11
Speaker 1: through torch it rip out a lot of great things
8:15
Speaker 1: to dealcoholize it. And what's the problem with those techniques?
8:20
Speaker 1: Why are they bad? Ultimately they're just not soft enough
8:25
Speaker 1: and careful enough to protect the nuance of a really
8:29
Speaker 1: finely crafted beverage. So basically, you take, you take the
8:33
Speaker 1: good flavor, the taste along with the alcohol when you
8:36
Speaker 1: do it like that. Yeah, So instead of doing that,
8:38
Speaker 1: is it right that what you do is you brew beer,
8:41
Speaker 1: but you just sort of turn the dials in such
8:43
Speaker 1: a way that at the end of the process, instead
8:45
Speaker 1: of having whatever four percent alcohol, the beer has zero
8:48
Speaker 1: point four percent Yep, exactly. Yeah. So in the fermentation seller,
8:53
Speaker 1: for example, our beer never goes above zero point five percent.
8:56
Speaker 1: In the conditioning tanks, it's refining a finished product that's
8:59
Speaker 1: all under point five percent. And even to the most
9:03
Speaker 1: experienced brewers, if you're walking around in our brewery, most
9:07
Speaker 1: of it you wouldn't say is a harm all at all.
9:09
Speaker 1: It's what we're doing in the tanks with our beers.
9:12
Speaker 1: What's different? So do you have IP around your Do
9:17
Speaker 1: you have intellectual property of patents on the way you
9:19
Speaker 1: make beer? Is it a trade secret? So like the
9:23
Speaker 1: Coca Cola formula, so more towards that. It is significant
9:27
Speaker 1: IP for sure, and it is a trade secret, but
9:30
Speaker 1: it is more in the Coca Cola category where if
9:32
Speaker 1: you go for a patent, you have to publish out
9:35
Speaker 1: there your patent for contestion and approval and everything. And
9:40
Speaker 1: we knew with ten thousand birds in the country that
9:43
Speaker 1: if we publish how we make our beer, then we're
9:45
Speaker 1: in the business of policing our patent as well, and
9:48
Speaker 1: we would much rather just have it be something that
9:51
Speaker 1: we do proudly internally in our own berries, and we're
9:54
Speaker 1: super focused on quality every step of it in house
9:58
Speaker 1: at Athletic. I mean, the trade secret worked for Coke,
10:01
Speaker 1: still working for Coke, seems to be for sure after
10:06
Speaker 1: all that. I don't want to say that making the
10:08
Speaker 1: beer was the easy part. Clearly it wasn't easy. But
10:11
Speaker 1: the next thing that Bill had to do, and frankly
10:14
Speaker 1: it's a problem he still has not entirely solved, was
10:18
Speaker 1: much harder. That's after the break. Now back to the show.
10:29
Speaker 1: Here's the hard problem Bill is still trying to solve.
10:32
Speaker 1: How do you make non alcoholic beer normal? How do
10:35
Speaker 1: you make it a thing you can drink without having
10:37
Speaker 1: to explain yourself? How do you make ordering a non
10:40
Speaker 1: alcoholic beer as easy as ordering a pilsner or an ipa?
10:43
Speaker 1: And for Bill, all that really comes down to how
10:46
Speaker 1: do you use marketing to change the culture of beer.
10:49
Speaker 1: We knew the marketing side of this would be equally
10:51
Speaker 1: as big as the product side, and both were going
10:53
Speaker 1: to be enormous challenges on the marketing side. It started
10:58
Speaker 1: with the name. We want to make it something that
11:00
Speaker 1: was undeniably positive and say the name save the name
11:03
Speaker 1: Athletic Growing. It's so awesomely on the nose, right, it's
11:08
Speaker 1: so simply unsubtle of a name. We wanted it to
11:13
Speaker 1: be undeniably positive, aspirational, not tied to any geography or
11:18
Speaker 1: anything like that. We wanted to be an easy bar
11:20
Speaker 1: call and then attract high performance people to the brand.
11:24
Speaker 1: And our hypothesis was if we could make moderation cool
11:30
Speaker 1: and in reach of people, our impact would be an
11:34
Speaker 1: untold positive impact on the world. I don't know if
11:36
Speaker 1: I would use the word moderation, right. I feel like
11:39
Speaker 1: one beer is moderate, you know, one alcoholic beer, Like
11:42
Speaker 1: it's not drinking right. Yeah. So previously non alcoholic beer
11:45
Speaker 1: was for people who don't drink ever, Basically eighty percent
11:49
Speaker 1: of our customers do drink, just drink non alcoholic beer
11:52
Speaker 1: at other times. And was that did you know that
11:55
Speaker 1: that's what you were going for? I wanted people to
11:58
Speaker 1: be able to have great beer anytime, anywhere, and have
12:02
Speaker 1: the choice to drink non alcoholic beer, like, I'm not
12:04
Speaker 1: out to necessarily like kill the alcohol industry. I want
12:07
Speaker 1: people to be able to make their own choices. We're
12:11
Speaker 1: never standing on a soapbox and pointing the finger condemning people.
12:14
Speaker 1: We just want the options for healthy choices to always
12:17
Speaker 1: be there. And we've found that our customers, while they
12:22
Speaker 1: do still drink alcohol sometimes for the most part, they
12:25
Speaker 1: increasingly drink non alcoholic beer through all other days and
12:28
Speaker 1: times and occasions and maybe are swapping in some non
12:32
Speaker 1: alcoholic drinks as well. So you have this idea, you
12:35
Speaker 1: want to create this aspirational non alcoholic beer as opposed
12:39
Speaker 1: to some weird, stigmatized thing, which frankly I think non
12:43
Speaker 1: alcoholic beer was before. And in a way this is
12:47
Speaker 1: even harder than creating a new category, because you have
12:50
Speaker 1: to take a category that has all these negative connotations
12:54
Speaker 1: and kind of overcome that. And I know to that end,
12:58
Speaker 1: part of the marketing you have done has been paying
13:01
Speaker 1: college athletes. And paying college athletes is a new thing, right,
13:05
Speaker 1: not just for you, but more generally because the rules
13:08
Speaker 1: for paying college athletes have changed just in the past
13:11
Speaker 1: few years so that companies can out basically hire them
13:14
Speaker 1: as spokespeople. And so I'm curious tell me about your
13:17
Speaker 1: work there. Yeah, so college athletes are really exciting because
13:22
Speaker 1: we can talk to athletes of all ages. Really, we
13:25
Speaker 1: talk to twenty one year old plus athletes for the
13:27
Speaker 1: most part, to not confuse children that that is an
13:30
Speaker 1: interesting question. Let's just let's just go there since you
13:33
Speaker 1: mentioned it, Like, is it legal for anybody to drink
13:37
Speaker 1: your beer? Are you making a choice just because you
13:40
Speaker 1: don't want to be like the Gateway beer? Like, how
13:43
Speaker 1: does that work? Kids? In non alcoholic beer? It is
13:46
Speaker 1: in most states totally fine for anyone of any age
13:48
Speaker 1: to drink our beer. We do it is that candy
13:51
Speaker 1: cigarettees Gateway argument though, Like, it's just a marketing hill
13:54
Speaker 1: we don't want to die on. And so we generally
13:58
Speaker 1: target athletes and people we market with of twenty one
14:02
Speaker 1: plus and encourage marketing to twenty one plus and selling
14:05
Speaker 1: to twenty one plus. But of course anyone in most
14:08
Speaker 1: states can fire products. But we thought, if we get
14:12
Speaker 1: the coolest high performance athletes on campus to be drinking
14:18
Speaker 1: non alcoholic beer, like, there's really no one better to
14:20
Speaker 1: reach twenty somethings than twenty somethings themselves. And so We've
14:25
Speaker 1: had athletes like CJ. Strout, the Ohio State quarterback, Jean
14:29
Speaker 1: Robinson running back at Texas, two women on the NCAA
14:34
Speaker 1: South Carolina winning basketball team this year. We're drinking r
14:37
Speaker 1: beer and so across a huge range of verticals in
14:40
Speaker 1: the college sports atmosphere, I have people drinking athletic beer.
14:45
Speaker 1: To be clear, that's that's marketing you're paying for. You're
14:48
Speaker 1: paying them to be endorsers or spokespeople. Yep, exactly. And
14:53
Speaker 1: then we have so we have a whole range from
14:55
Speaker 1: amateur to paid athletes. We have an amazing ambassador program
14:59
Speaker 1: that started with organic outreach and we have about fifteen
15:02
Speaker 1: hundred amateur ambassadors across the country or just posting for
15:07
Speaker 1: beer and merch and other reward, and then all the
15:10
Speaker 1: way to paid athletes like JJ WATD and like super
15:14
Speaker 1: elite athletes who have joined our midst over the years
15:17
Speaker 1: as well. And there are much more like traditional marketing assets.
15:21
Speaker 1: When you say traditional marketing assets, what do you mean? Yeah,
15:24
Speaker 1: anything from social media to usage of name and pr
15:28
Speaker 1: name image and likeness and autographs or and we are
15:32
Speaker 1: starting to work up towards organized to TV campaigns and
15:35
Speaker 1: media campaigns which is a lot of fun. Now, most
15:39
Speaker 1: of our marketing efforts from day one were me behind
15:43
Speaker 1: a ten at the finish of any race across the country.
15:46
Speaker 1: I did say seventy finish lines the first year we're
15:49
Speaker 1: in business, and then our sales team has continued to
15:51
Speaker 1: do that. So you would just go to a race
15:54
Speaker 1: with like trunk full of your non alcoholic beer and
15:58
Speaker 1: put it in a cooler and stand there and hand
16:00
Speaker 1: it to people when they finished a race, A ten
16:02
Speaker 1: A or whatever, Yeah, ten table cooler, draft or anything
16:06
Speaker 1: like that. Hand out. The goal is to hand out
16:08
Speaker 1: thousands of beers every weekend to sweaty people with a
16:10
Speaker 1: smile on their face who might be receptive to hearing
16:13
Speaker 1: about nonlocock beer. And I'd usually hear a joke first,
16:17
Speaker 1: and then I'd be like, you can make fun of
16:20
Speaker 1: me all you want if you just try it. And
16:22
Speaker 1: that's when the light bulb would go on. What was
16:25
Speaker 1: the classic joke? What kind of jokes would people make
16:28
Speaker 1: when you said it's none alcoholic beer, Like, what's the
16:31
Speaker 1: point is this? Like decaf coffee? Yeah, tons of stuff
16:36
Speaker 1: like that. You get tired of what's the point as
16:38
Speaker 1: a question, Well, if the product wasn't so good, and
16:42
Speaker 1: I didn't know I could win them, Like it would
16:44
Speaker 1: be exhausting, for sure, But the amount of people I'd
16:47
Speaker 1: talked to who are like rudely making fun of me
16:50
Speaker 1: to my face ninety seconds before they were basically asking
16:52
Speaker 1: where they can buy it, it was like a transition
16:56
Speaker 1: that I could have done zillions of times and I did.
16:59
Speaker 1: And these same people who are making fun of me
17:01
Speaker 1: just before all of a sudden drinking it will sit
17:04
Speaker 1: there and you see the light go on and they're like, oh, like,
17:07
Speaker 1: I could drink this with my night dinner. I could
17:10
Speaker 1: drink this like, oh like while I'm golfing, or while
17:13
Speaker 1: I'm at the beach with my kids, or you know,
17:16
Speaker 1: maybe I could have two of these before I have
17:18
Speaker 1: alcoholic drinks at night, and they would past me out.
17:21
Speaker 1: And like, people just started rattling off occasions of when
17:23
Speaker 1: they would consume non alcoholic beer and when it would
17:26
Speaker 1: exist in their life, sort of answering the what's the
17:28
Speaker 1: point question themselves in that setting. Yeah, and I know
17:32
Speaker 1: you've mentioned that in Europe there has long been a big,
17:36
Speaker 1: robust non alcoholic beer industry. It's a thing there. It's
17:42
Speaker 1: just the European culture towards drinking, which my theory is
17:46
Speaker 1: that they've never had prohibition and never had alcohol strictly
17:50
Speaker 1: taken away, and so there's a relative indifference to drinking
17:54
Speaker 1: or not drinking and societal norms of moderation or daytime
18:01
Speaker 1: cafe culture drinking. So you have a theory that, like,
18:04
Speaker 1: the culture of drinking in the US right now is
18:07
Speaker 1: still weird basically different than it is in other parts
18:11
Speaker 1: of the world because of prohibition. Yeah, prohibition, the romanticism
18:16
Speaker 1: of turning twenty one, a number of factors where so
18:20
Speaker 1: like drinking versus not drinking is a more kind of binary,
18:25
Speaker 1: big deal choice here than it is elsewhere. Is that
18:27
Speaker 1: the idea, that's how we frame it for sure? And yeah,
18:32
Speaker 1: the European non beer market has been big, and it's
18:35
Speaker 1: always been big, and it's growing fast with the same
18:38
Speaker 1: health trends that are driving it in the US, but
18:40
Speaker 1: it's starting off a much bigger base where the market's
18:42
Speaker 1: about twenty five times the size and in quite a
18:46
Speaker 1: few countries it's over ten percent of the overall beer market,
18:49
Speaker 1: where in the US in twenty seventeen it was point
18:53
Speaker 1: three percent of the overall beer market. Point zero point three.
18:57
Speaker 1: And the thing is, people think of nonlock off beer
19:00
Speaker 1: such a small specific market, and like, my secret thought is,
19:05
Speaker 1: I think this is ultimately going to be way over
19:07
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the market because alcohol makes so little
19:10
Speaker 1: sense in so many times of life. So you mean that,
19:14
Speaker 1: like regular beer is going to be the niche, and
19:17
Speaker 1: like normal beer will be non alcoholic beer, and they'll
19:20
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you're drinking alcoholic beer. You want to
19:22
Speaker 1: explain that. I think eventually alcohol probably will. Well, alcohol
19:26
Speaker 1: is a niche occasion, it's just that it's a big
19:31
Speaker 1: niche right now. Basically a thousand years of history, alcohol
19:35
Speaker 1: has been a very big niche, for sure, But I
19:39
Speaker 1: think the modern life, there's so many more occasions that
19:42
Speaker 1: make sense for non alcoholic beverages than alcoholic beverages. And
19:46
Speaker 1: we can empower people and make people feel great and
19:49
Speaker 1: relaxed and social and everything without that one ingredient that
19:53
Speaker 1: I think it's going to explode. And I've been murdered
19:56
Speaker 1: in the beer world for suggesting that non alcoholic beer
19:58
Speaker 1: can even be twenty percent. I think it's going to
20:01
Speaker 1: be fifty. Yeah, So you were creating a category more
20:07
Speaker 1: or less trying to almost create a category. I had
20:11
Speaker 1: not previously looked for your beer. But yesterday I was
20:15
Speaker 1: at the grocery store and it was not a fancy
20:17
Speaker 1: grocery store. It was not Whole Foods. It was foodtown.
20:20
Speaker 1: It was a food down in Brooklyn. And not only
20:23
Speaker 1: did they have I don't know four kinds of athletic
20:27
Speaker 1: Brewing Company beer, they had Stella zero and Heineken zero
20:33
Speaker 1: and Budweiser zero. And Brooklyn Brewing Company also has a
20:38
Speaker 1: non alcoholic beer, which I didn't even know existed. It
20:41
Speaker 1: seems like this is becoming a category, and there is
20:46
Speaker 1: this thing happening where you're like, you know, out in
20:49
Speaker 1: front whatever, cutting the wind, whatever the sports metaphor is.
20:53
Speaker 1: And if you're successful, I guess a draft on you
20:56
Speaker 1: as a terrible pun to make in this context. But
20:58
Speaker 1: if you're successful, all of these other companies are going
21:01
Speaker 1: to come and start doing what you're doing. And in
21:02
Speaker 1: the same way that suddenly there's a million craft beers
21:05
Speaker 1: on the shelf. If you're successful, there's going to be
21:08
Speaker 1: a million non alcoholic craft beer is all surrounding you
21:12
Speaker 1: literally on the shelf, And I'm trying to figure out
21:14
Speaker 1: is that good for you? Or is that bad for you?
21:18
Speaker 1: It's great. So we see this as very much a
21:22
Speaker 1: rising tide lifts all shifts. Yeah, like you just said,
21:25
Speaker 1: humans have been drinking beer since I think thirty thousands
21:32
Speaker 1: of years, but we're getting to like the exponential age
21:36
Speaker 1: in human history where it needs a real reframing about
21:40
Speaker 1: how people think about drinking, and we're trying to do
21:42
Speaker 1: that and really modernized beer for the modern lifestyle. And
21:47
Speaker 1: that's going to be an enormous step functioned switch in
21:50
Speaker 1: this category. And if we do go to even ten
21:54
Speaker 1: percent of the category, there's going to be so much
21:56
Speaker 1: room for every other beer, and Athletic wouldn't possibly be
21:59
Speaker 1: able to meet every occasion in store, and then we're
22:03
Speaker 1: going to need a lot of help. So there's a
22:06
Speaker 1: lot of opportunity for Everyone's the long and short, and
22:08
Speaker 1: we're very thankful for the dedication of the category. We've
22:10
Speaker 1: seen Heineken and has A Bosh, Brooklyn, Sam Adams and
22:14
Speaker 1: many others have to the category for sure. I mean,
22:17
Speaker 1: I guess if the big fundamental problem you have to
22:20
Speaker 1: overcome for your business to succeed is the stigma, frankly
22:23
Speaker 1: around non alcoholic beer, then the more nonalcoholic beers, and
22:27
Speaker 1: the better quality non alcoholic beers, the better for you. Weirdly,
22:32
Speaker 1: for sure, frankly, we wish we had more help, especially
22:36
Speaker 1: on the marketing front. You want more competition. You want
22:39
Speaker 1: Budweiser to be advertising Budweiser zero in football games. We do,
22:45
Speaker 1: and they're starting to do it for sure, So you
22:48
Speaker 1: want your rivals to be spending more on advertising. These
22:51
Speaker 1: are companies that are competing against you and are right
22:53
Speaker 1: next to you on the shelf. We would kill for it.
22:57
Speaker 1: There is I think an interesting precedent for Bill's story,
23:01
Speaker 1: and it goes back to the nineteen sixties. At the time,
23:04
Speaker 1: a US brewer tried to sell this low calorie diet beer. Presently,
23:09
Speaker 1: it was a flop. Nobody wanted to diet beer. It
23:12
Speaker 1: was like what people always said to Bill about non
23:14
Speaker 1: alcoholic beer, what's the point? Miller The Miller Brewing Company
23:18
Speaker 1: wound up with the rights to the beer, and in
23:20
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies they launched it as Miller Lighte. They
23:23
Speaker 1: had this famous ad campaign with athletes talking about how
23:26
Speaker 1: they like to drink Miller Lighte when they're doing, you know,
23:28
Speaker 1: manly active things, because it's less feeling than regular beer. Today,
23:33
Speaker 1: Miller lighte is the third best selling beer in America
23:36
Speaker 1: and the two beers that outsell it are Bud Light
23:39
Speaker 1: and Coarse Light. We'll be back in a minute with
23:43
Speaker 1: the lightning round. Now, let's get back to the show.
23:52
Speaker 1: Let's close with a lightning round. Fast questions you can
23:56
Speaker 1: answer them fast. In what year will I see a
24:01
Speaker 1: National Athletic Brewing ad in an NFL game? So we
24:05
Speaker 1: did some March Madness ads for our new Athletic light
24:09
Speaker 1: year this past March, but we our second half media
24:12
Speaker 1: plan this year will be our first coordinated, like real
24:15
Speaker 1: advertising campaign this year. If I'm watching whatever Tony Romo
24:19
Speaker 1: calling a game, We'll break and we'll see an athletic ad.
24:22
Speaker 1: It's going to happen, I hope. So yeah, what's the
24:25
Speaker 1: farthest you've ever run in one day? I've done a
24:30
Speaker 1: number of fifty K races if K for our American listeners.
24:35
Speaker 1: That is, what about thirty thirty two miles or so?
24:39
Speaker 1: Longer than a marathon? Seems really long? Slow and study
24:43
Speaker 1: the whole way. I know you don't drink alcohol anymore,
24:46
Speaker 1: but when you did, what was your favorite non non
24:49
Speaker 1: alcoholic beer? I would say Sierra Nevada Palel is incredible.
24:54
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just because I'm from California, but I feel
24:56
Speaker 1: like Sierra Nevada was pretty early in the sort of
24:58
Speaker 1: craft beer universe. Yeah, Ken Grossman was the pioneer who
25:03
Speaker 1: set the road for everyone essentially in so many ways.
25:06
Speaker 1: And Grossman is the Sierra Nevada person found. Yeah. Yeah,
25:10
Speaker 1: you took it from homebrewing to an absolutely world class
25:13
Speaker 1: company and everything they do and every beer they make
25:16
Speaker 1: is super high quality. Do they make a non alcoholic beer?
25:19
Speaker 1: Not yet. I know they're working on it yet though,
25:21
Speaker 1: and that would be kind of a dream to have
25:23
Speaker 1: them come into the category. Do you think the Athletic
25:26
Speaker 1: Brewing Company is going to ever make anything other than
25:30
Speaker 1: non alcoholic beer as a product. We do. So we
25:33
Speaker 1: launched on our e commerce platform last year our daypack
25:38
Speaker 1: hopped Sparkling Waters, and so that's going after a different
25:42
Speaker 1: daytime occasion where so beer maybe, like beer isn't something
25:47
Speaker 1: people have any day everywhere. We wanted something people can
25:51
Speaker 1: drink all throughout the day, reach people in a different
25:53
Speaker 1: aisle of the grocery store and the sparkling water aisle,
25:56
Speaker 1: And so that's our first emerging brand on the Athletic
26:00
Speaker 1: platform name essentially, so we sit sparkling water that tastes
26:05
Speaker 1: a little bit like beer. I'm sorry that I haven't tried.
26:07
Speaker 1: It sounds weird. Frankly, it's sounds weird. I'm gonna be honest,
26:10
Speaker 1: but I'm interested. It's very lightly fruited, lightly hot, so
26:15
Speaker 1: it almost has like a bit of like a juniper
26:17
Speaker 1: overtone to like the light fruitiness. Do you think you're
26:21
Speaker 1: gonna run Athletic forever or do you think you'll do
26:24
Speaker 1: something else? At some point, I didn't have a ton
26:26
Speaker 1: of ideas and chose one like this is my idea
26:29
Speaker 1: and my mission and the impact I want to have,
26:31
Speaker 1: and I can't see myself ever being able to turn
26:33
Speaker 1: it off. Bill Shufelt is the founder and CEO of
26:39
Speaker 1: Athletic Brewing. Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo, engineered
26:44
Speaker 1: by Amanda kay Wong, and edited by Robert Smith. I'm
26:47
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein, and I would love to know who else
26:50
Speaker 1: you think we should book for the show. You can
26:53
Speaker 1: email us at problem at pushkin dot fm. It's problem
26:57
Speaker 1: at Pushkin dot fm, or you can find me on Twitter.
27:01
Speaker 1: I'm at Jacob Goldstein. We'll be back next week with
27:04
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.