Bill Moses, CEO at Flying Embers | $200 Million Dollar Exit to Pepsi & Disrupting The Entire Alcohol Industry

Hey everyone, Scott here. Thanks again for tuning into another episode of the success story podcast. Today I'm sitting down with Bill Moses who is the founder and CEO of Flying Embers. This is not his first rodeo. He built out Kavita that he sold to Pepsi for $220 million. He's in the alcohol business that drinks biz. He's an incredibly smart man and he's going to walk us through what he did with his first company that successfully exited as well as his second company that he's building up right now. Also a huge shout out to the sponsor of today's episode Mint Mobile. If you want a special offer from Mint, you're going to have to listen to at least a halfway point in this episode because they cooked up something a little bit special for everybody that's tuning into the success story podcast. Go further ado, let's get right into it. All right, thanks again for joining me. Today I'm sitting down with Bill Moses who is the founder and CEO of Flying Embers. A better for you alcohol platform. This includes Hardcam Bucha, Seltzer's Beers. He is a global leader in the beverage industry, a veteran and a visionary in the growing field of health brewing and we're going to understand what that is but he is very focused on allowing you to drink a little bit but still feel good about yourself. Now, Bill is not new to the beverage industry. He has scaled the Flying Embers brand to over 100 plus distributors across Canada and the US. He's also the co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Cavita, a non-alcoholic fermented beverage which became an international leading brand with thousands of retail locations to transform the functional beverage space and was acquired in 2016 by PepsiCo for reported $250 million. This is not Bill's first rodeo so Bill, thanks so much for joining. Very excited to understand your journey, your successes, a little bit about what health brewing even means and just to understand how you got to where you are today. So thank you. Sure, yeah, so yeah, so I think what people are looking for today are beverages across all formats and all categories that really do something for you, really have something that's beneficial to you. So what I did, what we're doing here is creating an alcohol platform across different categories that really when you drink it, you really have some benefits that make you feel good about drinking and those benefits could range anywhere from having probiotics in them, having probiotics in them, having some sort of unique hero ingredient like Rishi mushroom or some sort of quote unquote adapted gin which is very much on trend that basically has a halo around that about being better for you. So we're fermenting all these different lines with all these different unique bacterias and all these different unique hero ingredients that are better for you so that ultimately you can enjoy your beverage of choice and still have something a value in it. And help me understand who starts a beverage into a beverage business and things not only am I going to try and figure out how to build a brand and sell alcohol or sell to or whatever it is but also I'm going to figure out how to safely incorporate health ingredients maybe go into a market that is emerging but isn't solidified yet and these are all this in a lot of variables and business is not easy right so. No yeah I mean look I mean look there's a there's a lot of threads that have to go through the Ivan Edel to really hit your mark in any new business whether technology or consumer packaged goods and in in particular beverages there's 350 new beverages that that start every year when 16s and those sort of odds are up a lot of people so it really takes experience with that background noises. Yeah no I'm sorry I'm this is this is working from home is that there's a really a motorbike going down my street this is our new reality. Just anyway so what's the take to it yeah really so go back to it takes you know it takes a lot of many threads to go through the Ivan Edel to make any anything any new business work and I think as I was saying you know um um it says you got it you got something good there I'm just going to kind of lost my tripod um um no so it takes a lot it takes a lot to make it takes a lot to make any business really excel to work right right um but you are you are ignoring you're going against a grain you're you're you're you're trying all these different things it's because you're experienced maybe it's because you sort of excel theness in this area before um why is it okay let's let's say like why is this important to you right and walk this and not just launching another liquor brand or another alcohol brand or the beer brand why is that important yeah you know it the reason I'm doing what I'm doing now that's important to me is um is really to is really to um provide an offering to consumers that is not ordinary so it's got to be extra ordinary um and something really could have something distinguishable about it that really makes it part of current trends and right now trending in the consumer package good food and beverage or foods and foods and drinks that are really better for you so yeah I really wanted to land there in a way that would differentiate us make us stand out and appeal to the millennials and to others that are really focused on these sorts of things that are really important to them and what we wrap around that product that product mission is our purpose and purpose is also that we we give um you know one percent of our revenues to first responders since flying numbers the name originated from uh at the time the greatest the biggest North American fire in 2017 the brand was birthed out so our purpose is to get back to the firefighters so you take a unique product you take something that is really on trend that appeals to the millennials that that's growing and you wrap purpose around it and those are some of the threads that you need to pull through the eye of the needle to create a product that really resonates with consumers and then your business once you have that then you have the business of execution which is another whole journey now you you've obviously uh figured and crossed some of these hurdles already in your past roles in life so what help me you know we we've sort of jumped right into um into flying numbers I want to understand you and your background and even how you grew the first or perhaps not the first business but um when we speak about uh we're speaking about Kavita was that the first thing you did at a university what's your it's your professional so uh I uh I came out of college and I did a exchange you know during college my junior I was over in the south of France and I lived with a garage wine maker and I got a little experience of what it looked like to ferment beverages came back to the U.S. graduated at the University of Virginia went in and and I really just went to New York uh and was looking for a job and I ended up uh getting into the management training program of a company called Bear Stearns which was a investment and I learned uh uh I learned the capital markets I learned business I learned how to capitalize and enterprise so one part of my work experience was understanding how to raise money how to how to manage delusion how to put together a board of directors and how all those important components of putting together the financial plan uh came together so I did that on Wall Street I worked as a investment banker and ended up leaving that after 12 years of looking and living in New York City to starting uh different companies including a joint venture with in China uh uh and you know in you know 30 years ago with the Chinese Academy of Sciences we actually started the first computerized airline reservation system in the PRC long time ago um did so I had a many many different iterations of my career that really built my toolkit my toolkit of finance my toolkit of operational experience my toolkit of marketing experience and so you know it really afforded me an opportunity to have a running start um at my at my life stage in going into beverages so all that kind of accumulated into into that and of course I also then you know before I got into Kavita I had my own certified organic winery which was the first at the time in California um back in 2000 and so there I learned to ferment I learned to understand about marketing and alcohol products uh and at that time a better for you alcohol probably anyway you wrapped that all together and that and you sprinkle a little bit of hard work and commitment and you know here you are so it's no it's um it's an interesting story I just like understanding because everybody's path to entrepreneurship is so different like do something like you got all you got all the formal training and then you pivoted a little bit later in life compared to somebody who's right out of you know university and they just learned by failing again and again and again like this so you know it's just interesting I find and and you know part of this podcast is speaking about you know what you're doing and what flyenbers is but I also like to like pull out some of those like this is this is one way to do it but it's not the only way this is another way to do it right um so where is so so walk me through where flying embers is right now what have you brought it to where do you want to take it sure um so you know I think uh you know I really brought it to a place where we built a national platform we've got distribution all across the US now the distribution network is built we now you know we put different product lines into the pipeline uh both into retail and interact direct to consumer and we really begin to curate and cultivate which are sellers and which aren't and then begin to apply marketing and sales behind that to build out nationwide and then really get the consumer to be aware of it and then to pull it off shelf so that's really where we are right now do you do you find that um because you mentioned before that there's so many different products that go to market every year is it particularly difficult to launch an alcohol brand again some of the the most established because I don't see a kind of of new alcohol brands what's much taking the gel yeah no you know the non-alcohol world there are a lot less barrier sanctuary for orange uh but when you get into beverages you have alcohol you're really you're really you really have to go through what's called a three tier system where you have to go to a distributor that has an alcohol license that then can go to a referral and out you can go right to right to a district right to a retailer and you don't have to go through so many distributors some of these distributors are old legacy families that have owned it multi-generational yeah sort of gatekeeper you know you can go and kneel in front of them and kiss their pinky ring for you through their date and then and so now so now flying embers is actually so so walk me through like the the the customer you mentioned before and you touched a little bit on the target customer that that individual who wants to be healthy but still wants to drink um what's that market like is that a growing market what would that how would we know what that market is because you know I mean I mean it's so so there's a couple analogues out there that we could book to um you know when you look at hard sellers which went from zero to I think it's going to be a three billion dollar four billion dollar category this may be larger uh you know it's growth has been explosive and that is that's the first that's like that's like version 1.0 of better for you and what's better for you in a hard seltzer well one you don't have all these calories you have sugar and very little carbs and there's no glue so right away that's sort of the beginning of and also you look at like the the micro ultra lights uh that are again low calories low carbs so the first version iteration of better for you is just making sure you're taking the bad out of it I want to consider bad too much sugar people are concerned about the carbohydrates and take you know they don't want to drink those they want to eat carbs and and then of course gluten some people have a problem with gluten and whatnot so you take all that out and that's an offering where I want to go with it is not only version 1.0 but version 2.0 which is you not only take out what's good but you ferment in there what's better for you and those are those hero ingredients and other sorts of bacteria that that that is actually better for you and beneficial so at the end of the day that's uh that's where I want to play and and some of those some of those ingredients um so it makes sense to take it the bad for you ingredients that makes a ton of sense for me because it's like down to very I guess superficial things like you know you don't want to I think you might be you don't want to drink your carbs you want to eat them and I think that everyone's sort of uh acclimate that those kinds of drinks but what are the better for you ingredients that people should be consuming that perhaps are not and this is like a great way to get it into them so what are some of those hero ingredients? Oh yeah sure I mean I think uh there's many of them so you know there's there's different kinds of bacteria that make up fermented beverages that are that are that are more distinguishable and and and better than others so that's the first thing so some of those bacteria some of those different forms of bacteria so all fermented drinks all malt you know all beers are fermented with some sort of bacteria in yeast so if you use kind of bacteria in a certain kind of yeast it's just it's just better for you uh so we use a bacillus coagulin which is the bacteria in ours which is really really good for your for yourself we use um you know in some of our uh drinks we have um uh you know some sort of adaptogens called Rishi and Lion's Bane so they're mushrooms mushroom bay so mushrooms right now are very entrant and they're very they're being proven to be very much better for you um is it like mental or physical like uh the benefits physiological um okay you know adaptogens are are known the and these are these fall into the category but adaptogens and they really uh really go to where your oxidized stresses on the cellular and really uh helps prevent oxidized stress in your cellular level all right we're gonna pause for a quick second we're gonna thank the sponsor of today's show mint mobile what is mint mobile mint mobile is disrupting the cell phone industry the telecom industry is not a fun one i'm from canada the prices are outrageous but we're even talking about in the states where you are paying an exorbitant amount of money for your cell phone bill with the brand name suppliers that you know that you feel you can't get away from so what is mint mobile well mint mobile is providing the same quality service um i'm using it right now they're providing uh data at the speeds that rival any big telco name they have the coverage that rivals any big telco name and then some but the question is why are they so cheap because they only sell online they only sell their service 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talk text 5G high speed data ship to your door mint mobile dot com slash success story i've never spoken about a product on this show that disrupts the telco industry the way that mint mobile is currently disrupting all right let's get back to our enter what i am curious about just on more of a commercial side you grew your first company kavita which was it was probiotics but it was it was it was what's the what's the proper terminology for it you said for fermented beverage fermented beverage when you grew that have you noticed that the industry has matured is it easier to build a business based on health drinks or are we still somewhat later and adopting this trend no i think you're trying to still still very much on a steep incline i mean when i started kavita we we started with uh with a sparkling probiotic drink that was a fermented beverage then we went to an apple cider vinegar drink we ever all know that apple cider vinegar if you drink it could be better then we went to a non-alcoholic kombucha beverage all non-alcohol and at the time we were like we were one of the early folks and there was a one two brands that were out there and what we did was we decided to go and spend money to go national really quickly in shelf space so you know i think one part of the lesson is to be we first could be great to be early is essential so we weren't first but we were early and and the guys who go first oftentimes spend a lot of money they oftentimes could be the number one leading brand but they're but oftentimes the learnings and the challenges you get being first you could be so um as it relates to that first company you're one of the first early pioneers um and we learned a lot and we really grabbed chair quickly when chair was available to be captured when the retailers and the consumers were saying hey we want more of this but there wasn't a lot of offerings so getting there first making sure you're you know you're early enough so that you could build your brand before it gets crowded that's smart yeah so you so that's also another really really interesting point how do you how do you spot those trends so that you're early enough on that you can get on board but you're not you know you're not too late you know there's really in food and food and beverage you know there's there's a couple of ways that you do if you shop at the natural roaster of whole foods or the sprouts or whatever might be in your local co-op when you go in there the people that read labels that do the research that are really considered early adopters show up there and begin to buy stuff off shelf that you begin to see what's really trending and if in one category you see that this particular cow is selling a lot then in in this category you know that cacao is a is a particular or goji or chia or whatever might be is all of a sudden something that's beginning to get on trend so really have to have visibility into areas and for shoppers go and do early shopping and then have an insight around oh with this trend I'm seeing I could puzzle something together to make a product that's new innovative different but yet leverages what's currently becoming on trend with your war doing ingredients and that sort of is how you do it how I do it and you mentioned one other thing that I thought was interesting um with kavita you said you started with one beverage and you I'm not sure if you added or you pivoted but how do you know or how do you deal as as you're working into the fast movie environment when to pivot when to double down when to add a new product line what what drove those decisions so innovations critical in any in any business even in all businesses so in beverages you know you launch with we launched with three skews in our kavita primary line we went to six skews we went to nine skews and one the nine different discrete offerings we started realizing some were working some work we'd we'd innovate change from push some we would get to a place where innovation was exhausted with that particular line but we did notice that in other fermented kinds of beverages there was opportunity so we went from a a probiotic fermented line to an apple cider vinegar so we were watching that apple center people were taking shots of the apple cider vinegar yeah and that's what are they and then all of a sudden we can make a beverage that's not as tart but just as much that so then we were like let's keep innovating let's keep taking more share uh and so then that's when we didn't pivot but incrementally added that line then finally we added the kombucha line the not all kombucha line which ended up becoming one of the biggest for us which was our third again by seeing what was trending out there and what was going on and yeah and I'm and I'm also just I guess one more more business questions there's so many lessons to be learned in successfully scaling now two times and and probably more based on some of your past successes uh businesses and emerging markets so I'm just very curious because like you're like we're speaking about drink and beverage but these these are lessons that can be applicable to a lot of people that are trying to build in emerging markets or trending markets are there a specific marketing and sales tactics that you've used in an emerging market that perhaps are a little bit different or is it the exact same? Well you know I think it's really important that in any new trending product uh across any category that you really get influencers to be early adopters to endorse the product so that you can have credibility something that um is very important to to me in my world and how I how I built brand um and um and and sales and that would be in marketing um marketing what you have to it's a DTC world so you know you really need to be super sharp and savvy on your direct to consumer uh sort of play um and then I think how it tails front you know you you have to understand that when you're growing uh you have a you have a large selling organization um that you've got a forward spend in order to ensure that you could you know continue to drive growth by having selling personnel out there but you don't want a forward spend too much too soon on a sales organization where it's overly burdensome and your burn rate your cash flow gets impaired because you've got too many sales people representing too much of the country or two different channels prematurely so the learning there is you've got a forward spend you've got a plan on growth you've got to spend a grow but if you over spend a grow on sales you oftentimes will find yourself in a situation where you're not uh you're not getting uh you're not very capital efficient and at the end of the day any entrepreneur wants to make sure that for every dollar they bring in or they bring it in revenue they get as far as they can with it before they have take on more capital which will glue their equity that um and mention that that position is forward spending what oftentimes relates to sales and it's very good advice um very and I just I'm pretty sure that that motorbike from before is just doing laughs around the blocks so I think it's like after work hours and somebody's like enjoying the summer weather so I apologize um but okay so I want to I want to ask uh like some a few business life insight questions but before I move on um was there anything that's happening in your world with flying embers um that you wanted to you you want to bring up it's really exciting or do we cover most of what you're working on now well I mean no I think I think the most important right now uh during this podcast you know California's burning you know we have bars everywhere and so and so for us you know the it's just really important for us to support and we do in many ways the first responders uh we we give back to them for mental health people don't realize the amount of mental health challenges they have when they're when they're putting themselves in harm's way and their family has so that's something we support we do a lot of different things for them and that's that's it that's really what you know makes everything just feel like it's a little bit more worthy than selling a great product yeah no I appreciate that um okay uh so I guess a little bit of rapid fire um and you may have touched on some of these before but I like to go over them again biggest challenge in growing business think of one thing that you had to overcome there was monumentally difficult and how did you overcome that well yeah so um so so I think the you know I think the biggest thing that I had to overcome was to innovate a manufacturing a method of manufacturing that would give us intellectual property so that we could develop a product that was so unique and different that enabled us to have a competitive advantage so you know specifically how do I how did we make a shelf stable beverage that was never pasteurized so well right now consumers when things are pasteurized they're like and it's all killed instead it's not really you know for those that are really into this better for you space so so we have to innovate a method of manufacturing we can make a brew and not have to pasteurize it and yet it still be stable enough so that we could chip it around the country and it could end up on the floors and case stacks or displays in a way that that wasn't an issue for for quality standards that was really the biggest thing that challenged that I had to overcome to to be where I am today um and and the other the other question that I really like to bring out where do you as CEO and serial entrepreneur where do you go to stay on top of things where do you go to learn it could be in relation to your business or it could just be professional growth yeah no I mean listen I mean in every in every industry you have trade shows um have thought leaders that are some someone you look up to or hear and stand in communication with the rags the industry and trade rags is absolutely vital when I worked on Wall Street the Wall Street Journal everything was was once you know something you had to read for me every day there are several different journals and rags I read the trade shows you gotta go to you gotta shake hands you gotta meet people network to talk community ask questions that's it that's good easy easy simple simple you know common sense is in common so no it's very good advice um what's uh what's one thing in the better for you space that you're investigating that is it mainstream yet that you're interested in there's a great question um well there's uh you know there's just there's an idea around these uh you know wine spritzer so gotten very popular and there's an opportunity to make wines and one of the great things about traditional red wine is it got it's got uh resveratrol in it and it's got also polyphenols in it these are like the things that make red wine like really really good really better for you and so but at that never really translated in any sort of you know wine spritzer so I'm I'm really looking at how to make a wine spritzer with all the punch better for you punch and that's really flavorful uh that you get out of a heavy big you know bottle yeah but in the light format so that's one thing I'm looking to do very cool and that's just is that just like r and d like this is like leading edge stuff and nobody else does this right okay so here all right oh it's a lot of we have uh we we invest a lot in and r and d uh i think it's really important um one lesson that you would tell your younger self boy that's great um my younger self would be you know i think really uh find uh you know so i've had a journey uh professional career and it would probably be fine really your bliss find what you really really love to do oftentimes we end up doing things because you know opportunity um need of making money and I think I think ultimately really being well being aware and in touch with what what you really resonate with what really turns you on and find a way to get to that space sooner rather than later and for many it's it's a long journey and some never get there and some get there too late so I would sit really on identify what that is if you can and do everything you can to get there sooner in life that's what I tell my younger self and then uh the the last question and then I'll get some um some info from you where people can go to check out the the flying embers where you can go check out the website your social um what does what a success mean for you yeah you know you know there's you know I am I am a competitive person so success is winning success is really for me superlative execution so in this game of business entrepreneurship no matter what it is you've got to execute on a plan if you execute on a plan you're gonna you're gonna win you're gonna succeed and so that execution of plan is what really is what really I think is how I would define myself as successful and that'll result in more people buying the product more money coming in maybe eventually someone would come to me whatever but all that comes down to the chess game the the crafting of the x of the plans to execute it that's for me that I think that's so I like that I love every time I ask that question there's another answer and they're all great like all these answers are great but that's a really that's a very fun answer I think I think that we think the same way um because I also I really enjoy it you know it's it's the it's it's the game it's it's like the the pursuit of the pursuit of the next and figuring it out and and connecting the dog like it's a lot of fun like business is a lot of fun and when it comes together that's even more fun it's cute and it's not and everything that goes into getting right is this is it you know for me yeah okay uh most importantly where do people go by flying embers uh where do people connect to you online where uh where can they go well yeah well you know flyinembers.com obviously uh you can come to we're in uh we're in publics we're in heirs teeter we're in whole foods we're in wagmens we're in vans we're in sprouts we're in uh Albertsons we're in uh we're in a lot we're in total wine we're in Bevmo so all these places you can find us I think probably the the best national footprint would probably be whole foods right now um but thanks