Jimmy DeCicco - Cutting Costs by 80% While Scaling into 70,000+ Doors

On this episode, we’re joined by Jimmy DeCicco, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Super Coffee, the RTD coffee brand started by Jimmy and his two brothers that went from a dorm-room blend to 70,000+ doors and a $50M+ run rate.

A former captain of the Colgate football team, Jimmy unpacks what they got wrong when they tried to go “big-league” too soon, and the profit-first reboot that followed. We dive into how the team executed a 65→15 SKU rationalization and an 80% cost reset, plus Super Coffee’s “neighborhood by neighborhood” approach. 

We also cover exec team shake-ups, how a seasoned CMO sharpened positioning, and the systems that actually drive velocity.

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Episode Highlights:

🏈 From Colgate captain to CPG operator
🧪 Early R&D: cracking protein + coffee + zero added sugar,
🏭 Co-packers
🧃 Brand evolution: early cues from Honest Tea
🎯 Identity-building
🚚 Distributor partnerships: what “true partnership” looks like
🗺️ “Neighborhood by neighborhood” approach
🏟️ Thinking they were “big-league ready” everywhere at a $25M run rate
 📊 The 80/20 reality: doubling down on hero SKUs and hero doors
 🛒 Big-box takeaways: Target, Walmart, Albertsons
 ⛽ C-store strategy
 ✂️ SKU rationalization
 💸 Cutting costs by 80%
 🧭 Bringing in a seasoned CEO,
 🔭 Trends Jimmy is tracking

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Table of Contents:

00:40:23 - Intro and origin story
02:14:01 - Captain of the Colgate football team to captain of Super Coffee
05:39:24 - The early days of R&D and formulation
08:19:15 - Copackers and scaling up
11:51:13 - The evolution of the brand (initial influence from Honest Tea)
13:53:12 - Recommendations for building a brand identity
16:03:13 - An invaluable contribution from Super Coffee’s seasoned CMO
16:49:24 - Building a true partnership with your distributor
19:10:24 - A “neighborhood by neighborhood” approach
21:33:23 - Thinking they were ready for the “big leagues”
22:52:08 - The 80/20 rule is real
23:46:19 - Target, Walmart, Albertsons, etc.
25:53:21 - C-stores
29:04:10 - SKU rationalization (65 SKUs to 15 SKUs)
32:37:21 - Cutting costs by 80%
35:17:01 - Bringing in a seasoned CEO, and back again
37:52:23 - Trends Jimmy is tracking

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Links:

Super Coffee – https://www.drinksupercoffee.com
Follow Jimmy on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-decicco/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/
Check out https://www.kitprint.co/ for CPG production design support.

Transcript

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today we're speaking with Jimmy Desico co founder Executive Chairman of Super Coffee joining us from Austin for those of you that don't know Super Coffee is an RTD coffee brand launched by Jimmy and his two brothers right out of undergrad that's has since grown into a multi hundred million dollar brand so really excited to get into it so yeah Jimmy just for the the listeners probably a fairly small group in the CPG world that aren't that familiar with Super Coffee maybe just give us a quick lay of the land in terms of origin story why behind the brand core products you guys offer and you guys are found in so many places but maybe just one or two places people can get their hands on them and then we'll go from there yeah man uh great to be here Adam I appreciate you brother so Super Coffee where it's a bottle of coffee with zero sugar and and 10 grams of protein in our core lineup and I started it with my two younger brothers 10 years ago we celebrated our 10th birthday in June of 2025 and we were tired athletes you know we all played sports in college and we didn't want to drink a Starbucks Frappuccino that had 46 grams of sugar and 300 calories so started brewing coffee for ourselves it was actually my youngest brother's idea and he started brewing coffee for himself and his teammates and his classmates and he called us up me and Jake and said guys I'm dropping out of school to start a coffee company and we're like what the hell are you talking about man like this is this is crazy stay stay in school you know he was a full scholarship basketball player and that was that's how we got started and we didn't know much about bottled coffee or beverages we just knew that if you're selling something for $3 a bottle you needed to sell a lot of bottles to make money so we were really focused on sales in the early years and I think that LED to a good foundation of like sales execution and distribution execution and like building a a brand intentionally in a region before expanding nationally in a bit broader yeah yeah we're getting good at that ground game is seems to be a really important step that really moves the needle sounds like it's definitely a family of uh athletes I know you're the quarterback captain of the team at Colgate which I can resonate with I played in a D3 conference up in the Pacific Northwest uh definitely know the game I mean I think uh you know D1 even Ivy League is a little different than Division 3 but I can resonate to a certain extent how do you feel like leading leading a football team especially as a quarterback which is I feel like there's so many parallels there between running a company to you like how do you feel like that set you up for success as you as you built and LED the Super Coffee team yeah man um I think sports was a huge part of our identity growing up and I was a quarterback in high school and I got recruited to play quarterback at Colgate and when I got there they're like hey man you you run the ball better than you throw it we're gonna we're gonna stick you in the backfield so I ended up playing just about every position on offense a couple games of quarterback but mostly running back and wide receiver but yeah captain of the team my senior year which was a huge honor and I think being an athlete especially in a team sport you realize that you all need to be moving in the right direction to achieve a common goal you know in a game like football there is no one player who's going to change the game you know all 11 guys on the field need to do their job and I think that is a crucial lesson in business as well nobody's gonna be a hero you know people to to to do their jobs and do their responsibilities and and make sure you're aligned on what that goal is and have the humility to lead from the front lines I think is is super important you know like I was always the first guy to practice I was always the when my dad dropped me off at my first Pop Warner practice when I was 8 years old he said be the first guy to the water cooler I was like what do you mean like I I it in the whole idea of just like hustling on and off the field and and that really set a mentality for us me and my brothers from a young age and when that translated into business it's like we were never afraid to stock the shelves and pour the samples and show up at the factory early you know and and I think our team as we grew our team really respected that that we were out there with them you know I got dinner with my brother Jake last night the company's 10 years old

he got on a flight at 5: 3:57

00am on Sunday flew to Arizona he visited six Sam's Clubs and did two demos that day at the Sam's Clubs and was home for dinner back in Austin that night crazy and it's like you really just do it for a decade you know it's just part of who you are there's no ego there's no no job that's that's beneath us and I think we owe that to to sports yeah just with the confidence you gain and that experience of of leading a team and at a pretty high level I know it was your your brother's idea that kind of where it was born out of but do you do you think you and and your brothers also cause they all sound like they're all athletes you guys feel like you would have been less likely to have launched a company straight out of school and said hey we're gonna do this if you guys hadn't had that confidence of having a lot of success and and leading teams in the sports world yeah probably less likely you know I I think sports was all we knew so we leaned into it and as a result our our grades probably suffered you know we weren't we didn't really have a lot of technical skills or interests outside of of sports you know so I I think we were fine students but we weren't we weren't like the head of the class and anything you know we didn't really have any any gifts in the classroom so I think sports taught us how to work hard and and how like really that grit that's required to hang in there longer than others you know there's a lot like we've been doing this for 10 years and and it's clear to me that this takes it truly takes a decade you know and I think people get discouraged after six months or after 12 months of hustling and working hard they get burned out you know and I think sports allows you to like get comfortable with that sort of pain and discomfort uh so yeah it it was a really great precursor or like prerequisite for for getting in the business yeah totally yep let's roll on back to those early days when you were in that initial R&D formulation stage I think that true original formulation you mentioned I think is what I read came out of your brother's dorm room he was blending coffee protein MCT oil together I think I'm curious once you guys decided you're gonna actually build a brand what are those like next few steps look like in terms of from the formulation sample iterating the formulation to the point where you felt like you had the first version that you felt good about bringing to market and what were those kind of key variables you guys played around with yeah um this was tricky because the first version we brought to market wasn't very good you know it didn't taste good it was clumpy you know the protein separated from the coffee you have like a very acidic coffee and a very basic protein so like we couldn't get that natural product to to sort of hold as a consistent solution that was tricky and and I think what we did a good job of is like not waiting until it was perfect you know like we went and we sold what we made and it wasn't great the packaging was kind of wrinkly like it it was just you looked at it today you'd be like it didn't belong in the store you know and and I think launching something before you're ready or launching something that's imperfect is a great lesson here look it pays to be thoughtful and it pays to like do the work first but for us like you're never gonna be ready you know it's never gonna be perfect and and I think Mike Tyson's quote is super relevant here where everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face you know and like you put your product on the shelf and you think you have this idea of your head in your head of like how it's going to do and how how great it is and then you get feedback from customers and all of that changes so the the thing about bringing a food and beverage product to market is you can always iterate you know you can always improve and from factory to factory like as you switch from a culinary kitchen to a contract manufacturer to a bigger facility there may be different processing requirements there may be different cooking temperatures you know there may be different pasteurization methods that all require different ingredients different food science different sweeteners and for us it always we always stayed true to our core which was zero sugar low protein or sorry zero sugar adequate protein so like 10 grams we just launched a 25 gram version of protein and healthy fats we add MCT oil and then things have changed along the way emulsifiers our sweetener system has changed several times but it has always been sugar free you know so I I think another thing that happens in 10 years is the flavor technology the flavor technology gets a lot better and you know that the packaging gets a lot better you know those shrink those shrink wraps look a lot more high def today than they did 10 years ago so you can always improve and always iterate yep on the core thing yeah yeah you touch on that a bit I know you spent those like first year or two on a small bottling line I think it was like the back of a Domino Sugar factory I read if that was correct and then yeah shifted to a smaller copacker in Maryland and then eventually to bigger facilities parts of that transition of going from yeah all the way up from you know Maryland to that to that bigger co packer yeah I think the big changes for us in in Maryland we were an HPP product which is high pressure processing and basically it was what cold press juices go through you know it's like you have a refrigerated shelf life it's 60 to 90 days product expires super quickly and that was the first that was the smallest place that would take us and all of these big contract manufacturing facilities have minimum run sizes that are that that could bankrupt a small company you know like we weren't in a position to put 50,000 or a hundred thousand dollars into a production run when we didn't even have a store to sell us yet you know so we we took what we could get and it was this guy who had a line in the back of a Domino Sugar factory we showed up we made the product we got into one store and we poured samples until we were the best seller in that store and then we took that data to the store down the street did the same exact thing you know we poured samples until we became the best selling bottle of coffee in the entire neighborhood you know and before long it was 20 stores then 50 stores then 100 stores and once you're selling to 100 stores you then have the volume and the velocity to move up to a new a new facility and thankfully we graduated from a 90 day shelf life to an 18 month shelf life and that was a process learning what changes needed to be made how to how to balance the pH in the product for it to be shelf stable and withstand the heat you know protein was getting cooked and denatured at certain temperatures so I think that is it it it was a great lesson and and thankfully we we navigated our way to several different co packers and and each time was an upgrade and and you sort of rely on their food safety and their their labs to to really make a product like a a sort of food like that they're truly chemists you know that are are making our recipe shelf stable at scale how did you guys go about finding your co packer and our co packers as you guys evolve from one to the next and from a evaluation due diligence process how did you really know who the right one was yeah so like I said in the early days you sort of take what you can get you know you work with whoever's willing to give you an opportunity and and you make do and for us that meant being refrigerated and and perishable within 90 days you know and then from there you scale and and as you get traction and as you start to really prove that you have product market fit advisors start to reach out you know people start to recognize it and then you notice things too like when you're spending all day in a grocery store you understand what brands are shelf stable you understand what brands are selling well and then you can kind of trace that back to a certain facility whether you're looking at the a little barcode that that is printed inkjetted on to to these you could start to see different products that are coming from the same factory just based on those those codes whether it's the shape of the bottle you can start to recognize what products are are produced in the same factory with a little bit of detective work you can figure out where these places are and and what their requirements are and we met an advisor who ultimately introduced us to a factory that made a lot of products for Nestle and that was how we networked into our contract manufacturer that we're still with to this day so a partner that's been with us for over 8 years now and it's been a a very fruitful fruitful relationship that's great that's awesome and find those of building at least the the V1 of the the brand identity and and visual identity what were some of the key variables that were top of mind for you guys when you building out yeah included in the brief when with whoever you're working with actually get it designed yeah it's a good question I think in the early days we aired on the side of being a very natural organic product you know and and that comes out in sort of the the typeface the callouts you know made with natural ingredients organic coffee zero sugar right and we were heavily influenced by Seth Goldman at Honest Tea he wrote a book called mission in a bottle Honest tea was like a a natural tea that was a healthy alternative to Snapple and Arizona and all the big guys so we wanted to be the the the coffee version of that which was like Whole Foods Farmers Market that kind of vibe and I think what we realized is to to get build a business at scale you really need to appeal to to people in all channels and all sort of walks of life and all different geographies so not just Whole Foods not just farmers markets like how do we win at Walmart how do we win in gas stations how do we win at 7 and sent from that point the brand shifted from this natural brand to more of an everyday performance brand with the main call outs zero sugar 10 grams of protein right like this tastes like a Starbucks Frappuccino with none of the bad stuff and some functional stuff added to it because the the reality to this day 10 years after we started in exchange for health and functional benefits right like it needs to taste good it needs to be convenient it needs to be affordable and if it if you're just giving somebody something that's good for them or functional but it doesn't taste good you're not gonna appeal to the amount of people that you need to to build a brand at scale in beverage yep totally yep I'm totally on the same page on that front food brand here in the next few months I'm about to kick off brand packaging design or maybe just one or two three things you tell me to keep top of mind or things to watch out for that might trip me up along the way so I think that generally speaking and like having a very really cool brand position and a brand that resonates with consumers and a product that tastes great are table stakes in 2025 you know like you have to have a cool brand that is a badge in hand a symbol that means something for for the people who are buying it and as you're as you're building out branding I think it's important to look at the competitive set but more importantly it's important to look at what's important to you because as the founder the brand is going to be an extension of who you are as an individual so how do you dress what do you which media do you consume what do you stand for as a human being and I think for my brothers and I as as three college athletes and in our young 20s and late teens was honestly launching as a natural product to appeal to Whole Foods was too far away from who we were as individuals we almost built a brand that was like that we didn't resonate with you know a brand that didn't really mean anything to us and as the brand grew up it slowly evolved more into this performance coffee you know this like better for you to drink this as a pre workout kind of thing we got into the fitness community kind of back to our roots but as a result we never really found our point of view or our voice in a way that was like clearly defined you know Black Rifle coffee they clearly know who they are and who they're talking to really liquid death they have a very clear point of view and a voice and a tone for the world Super Coffee was like it's performance coffee it's also this weird positive energy feel good thing you know it's better for you it's got protein I don't know if I drink this before workout or after and I think that confusion I mean certainly if you don't know who you are or what you're saying your customers aren't gonna know either so I think really defining that point of view and understanding like are other people saying this already because there can't be a me too like it it's not you should not be a copycat like you need to have a unique point of view in a world where there's a ton of noise and distraction to to begin with yeah yeah it seems like that's it's kind of that saying is like try to be if you try to be something for everyone you risk being nothing for anyone it's yeah we had an awesome CMO named Tori Hannah she spent 18 years at under armour before she joined us and she was like the first thing she said to us was she's like guys we can do anything like there's there's really if we set our minds to it there's nothing we can't do as a team but we can't do everything you know we can't be in pods and grounds and energy drinks and creamers and bottled coffee you know like we let's stick to one thing and do it better than everybody else rather than trying to do all of these things that sort of make sense and are adjacent to to what we stand for but it was a great reminder of like focus really matters yeah yeah you thought you mentioned having a great brand great product is kind of a stable state at this point ground game execution is really what can really differentiate a brand in market and I'm curious from a a distributor standpoint I think you guys started working with UNFI and then at some point you're working with Abinbev I'm curious from from your perspective how can a brand truly partner with their distributor to really maximize success and actually you know build a real partnership there yeah so I think the mistake a lot of food and beverage entrepreneurs make is that once you sign with a distributor that that distributor is gonna execute and and get your product in stores on time and full all the time in theory like that's what a distributor's job is you know and that's what they you agree to in the contract but in reality like you're working with human beings you know some of them are lazy some of them are distracted they have a million other priorities on their plate in the beer distribution world where Super Coffee came from their incentives are on what sells and they sell a ton of Bud Light they sell a ton of Mick Ultra right so like those reps are gonna focus on their top brands they're not gonna focus on some dinky coffee company that's like trying to take share from from Starbucks start like the coffee category is like 10% the entire category of bottled coffee is like 10% of Bud Light sales you know so like we were a very meaningless sliver for a lot of these sales reps so I think what we did a good job of to compensate for that is like this mentality of we need to do the distributor's job for them and if they do anything above and beyond for that that's just icing on the cake and as a result we built a massive team we had 160 full time people we were in stores every single day you know we called it the the 35 and 500 Club you have to visit 35 stores a week and sell 500 cases of coffee each week and there were incentives that we'd run for our team you know and and the team was out there getting selling in displays placing shippers placing fridges communicating the orders to the distributor the distributor if we were lucky would drop it off on time in the back and then our team would need to show up again and go build that display right so I think a lot of brands are like oh I'm with UNFI now or I just signed on with a DSD distributor like Big Geyser or or polar and and I'm good if you open polar in New England you better be prepared to hire five full time people you know like that's just what's required if you want to build a brand that becomes an outlier and not just an average brand that is like third and fourth velocity quarto third and fourth quarto velocity yep yeah in terms of actually launching and growing in retail I think from what I know from what I read you focused on or still focus on this kind of neighborhood by neighborhood approach meaning going super deep in a concentrated area really focus on driving velocity before expanding to a new region which for every operator investor I speak with is is really like the right approach it's like really focusing on velocity versus expanding distribution as fast as possible I'm just curious like how did you maybe just a matter of how much budget you had or what not maybe it's an easy answer but how did you know like that was the way to go that that early on yeah and that again goes back to Seth Goldman's influence on us he talks about this in mission on a bottle we've had some great advisors along the way another guy we really respect is Ken Kurtz he was the president of Bai sold that business to Dr Pepper for 1.7 billion and Seth Seth's philosophy was inch wide mile deep you know like we're gonna cover a neighborhood and then we're gonna win various points of distribution within the walls of the grocery store we might have our home shelf but let's get into the self checkout lane you know let's get let's build a a display on the floor back in the dairy section let's get cold space wherever we can get it right that's those are the types of moves when you're an early brand with a with a low a small marketing budget those are the types of moves that really influence velocity and if you have a product that people like and you know that 40 to 50% of them are repeat purchasing that's where you should spend your time effort and energy and that's what we did for the first four years uh I would say until 25 million in sales from from DC all the way up to Boston we were the number one bottled coffee in Wegmans 100 store chain in the northeast and we made up 40% of the category which is crazy like we were selling more super coffee than Starbucks was selling in those stores because of this in store execution we didn't have a national team everything we had was concentrated in the northeast we had a few distributors up there um Wegmans was a great chain because the footprint was small enough where like we could go visit all of the stores granted you're driving a few hours between each of them so that's really where we concentrated and the key to that is saying no to other opportunities that come along in 2017 we were dominating Wegmans and Ralph's called us the the grocery chain in Southern California and said hey we want to put you in 300 stores and we're like guys we can't do that you know like we thank you so much we're flattered but we don't have the money we don't have the brand awareness we don't have the resources to do this yet now I think the mistake we made was when we got to 25 million in sales we said we're ready for the big leagues you know and then we launched in Publix in Florida we launched in H E B in Texas we launched in Meijer in the Midwest and then shortly after that we were chain wide in Walmart Target 7 11 you name it national accounts and the brand wasn't ready for that yet you know like we were we were killing it in the northeast but nobody knew us in the Midwest nobody knew us in Texas so I I I think it really takes a long time to build that community and build that regional following before you're ready to expand and then when you expand hopefully you have some tailwinds from all the effort you put in in other regions but you still gotta build that region the right way like I think we got a little sloppy and it wasn't sloppy it was just like we didn't have the resources to do what we did at Wegmans we couldn't do that at HEB in Texas you know we couldn't do that in 12 Publix down in in Florida especially in the middle of Covid so I I I think we got too far too fast Whole Foods is a good example if Whole Foods comes to a small brand and says hey I want to put you guys in 500 stores it's a big bet for us you can say to them we're not ready for 500 but we'd happily do one 50 in our home market in our home territory you know and and let us support you let us prove this out before we expand because the 80 20 rule is very real in this industry you know like 80% of your revenue is gonna come from your top 20% of stores and like the everything else beyond that 20% brings down the average you know like there's some Walmart's in the country that sell one bottle of super coffee a month you know and that's just because they're in the middle of nowhere people don't really buy a lot of bottle coffee there and that one bottle a month brings down our average across the nation man it really feels like being able to having that patience and and being able to be confident and saying OK I really want to do this but I gotta tell this retailer no right now it feels like that's hear that so often it's kind of the key is like you say yes too early and you get on the shelf and then lots of not there you get kicked off the shelf like getting back on the shelf again is like gonna be much harder and really focusing on yeah building a brand in this space totally totally let's talk about say Target Albertsons Group Walmart or like the key differences between those three just in terms of how you work with them on a daily basis how to win on shelf like getting you start in Whole Foods maybe you start in Arrowine you know and then you go regional to HEB and Wegmans and Publix and then you get into target which is a bit more progressive and innovative and things like that but now Walmart is they're innovative you know they they want to try new things and they want to be a place where brands can come at an early early spot you know they're building out a full modern soda set so I I think you want to go where people want you you know where where your buyers are supportive of you a lot of brands are are pests to these buyers and we were certainly guilty of that of like hey we're super coffee we're killing it over here you should take us in your stores why haven't you taken us yet like what's wrong with you and and I think that persistence is 1 it rubs a buyer the wrong way because they're under so much pressure from so many brands and 2 if you don't have support from your buyer but you relentlessly push your way into a store you're not going to be set up for success you know I always say like if if all super coffee gets is two two facings on the shelf and on the planogram in between Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts we are going to fail we're gonna lose that game every day of the week you know Starbucks has branded refrigerators at every checkout lane you know and and if that's who we're being measured against we don't want those two facings you know like conversely if what would happen with Wegmans we built up such a velocity and such a rapport with our buyers that Wegmans collaborates with H E B in Texas and Publix in Florida and Meijer in the Midwest four regional chains that don't compete with each other over territory and I share like similar vibes similar customers similar innovative mindsets and when H E B said to Wegmans what are you seeing that's working they said super coffee so H E B comes to us and says hey we wanna try you guys like let's go let's run the same playbook that's the type of support that you want like you don't wanna have to push your way in you want them to reach out to you yeah within the past year or two what's what have you found is kind of unique about this channel and the key to winning in this channel that's maybe different than others great question man so see most bottled coffee sales across the category happen in convenience stores it's an impulsive grab and go play you know and and uh it's in C stores it's a lot of java monster which is like a morning energy play Starbucks Frappuccino is actually treated like a a midday indulgence like an afternoon treat it's not really an energy pick me up nor should it be it's 50 grams of sugar you know like that's a it's gonna put you in a coma but we launch the mistake we made in C stores is we went too far too fast you know we opened up a national distribution network with Bud Budweiser and Anheuser Busch that those guys make money by expanding their drops expanding the products they drop at each location so it's great to bring them a Walmart authorization 40 five hundred stores across the country or 17 Target locations some some of these guys only have two or three Walmart's in their territory meanwhile they're going up and down the street to independent convenience stores and liquor stores and gas stations and grocery stores so they want to sell you everywhere whether or not you're ready for it you know like it doesn't help them for you to say guys please don't please don't put us there so once we opened up that network we went we went from like 10,000 stores to 50,000 stores in a year and we put our our best selling products from grocery stores into the gas stations and convenience stores you know and these were our core bottled coffees 10 grams of protein 12 ounces zero sugar and only 70 calories and what we didn't realize is that was a that was for the grocery shopper who's 80% female she cares about her calories she cares about having a little bit of protein she wants that pick me up the guy who shops convenience stores wants full flavor full energy you know he wants 300 mg of caffeine he doesn't care if there's sugar in it he's he's just there to get woken up on his way to the job site on his way to work so our bottled coffees did not turn quickly in the convenience stores so the innovation that we had there or the realization was we need a channel strategy you know we need different products for different need states different occasions different customers and that LED to the launch of Super Coffee Extra which is our 15 ounce can of bottled coffee uses real milk for a creamy flavor you know 200 mg of caffeine B vitamins guarana other energy um providing ingredients and that was a much better solution for that channel than the bottled coffees but the the cost there is when you launch a chain or a channel that doesn't work you're stuck with slow moving inventory you sort of get a tainted Mark on your on your resume from the from the retailers it's like what I tried you guys and it didn't work why would I try you again typically people don't take innovation until they see the first thing working so that was a hard hole for us to dig out of for a couple years as we had to prove velocities on the new products shifting gears a bit you talked about product sets different areas might be related to this but I think in 2023 24 you guys went through a pretty big skew rationalization process I think you cut out I think I read you cut out 20 30 skews or so Richard the data points you were focused on that help you decide which ones to cut yeah so we expanded too far too fast from really 2018 through 2021 and this was an era it was a zero interest rate environment investors were rewarding growth over profitability you know I I looked back today we raised $100 million in 2021 in our Series C and the email that I sent to those investors was nice to meet you we are burning cash to grow quickly and they're like great where do we where do we send the funds you know and and it was all the decisions we made back then were to to grow faster than everybody else so the two cheapest ways to grow are adding new doors and adding new products you know if you're selling two products in 100 doors and now all of a sudden you're selling four products in 100 doors you could double your revenue but that doesn't really tell me anything about the health of your brand growing velocity in those doors is the hard thing and that's like the core health of the business and the community and repeat purchase rates right like that's the hard thing to do during Covid we we we had an insight like people were no longer on the go they weren't they weren't shopping at convenience stores nearly as much so they were drinking coffee at home pods had a nice resurgence ground coffee had a nice resurgence so like how do we make these things super we launched super coffee pods and K cups that had antioxidants and immune boosting ingredients and vitamins and it it was a great product so that was that was doing well uh we got into energy drinks in 2022 high velocity category you know it was ripping compared to bottled coffee sales creamer we had a bunch of flavors our 12 ounce bottled coffees we we had an insight that people wanted novelty they wanted new flavors to try especially Gen Z so we launched things like Blueberry Muffin and Caramel Waffle and and Strawberry Glazed Donut and like these delicious flavors that had fun packaging and fun marketing but when these sit on the shelf next to your core mocha vanilla caramel hazelnut it begins to cannibalize each other you know where where where we went wrong with that innovation was they should have been limited time only get them while they last you know introduction into the brand because trial was great but they didn't become a repeat everyday item for most people so for every bottle of cinnamon roll sold that was one bottle of mocha that wasn't sold and that was an interesting insight that we had too many flavors of the core line and it was starting to cannibalize velocities and all of these things cost money to produce my brothers and I often had this debate frequently and it was what's more valuable a brand that does 250 million in sales with one product or a brand that does 2 hundred and fifty million sales with five product lines doing $50 million each the answer certainly the one product brand is just a very difficult thing to do so got back to the core you know I think we took our eye off the ball for a couple years and now we're rebuilding that trust with our distributors and our retailers saying we know how to innovate we know how to deliver good products and now we're putting we're being very selective with what products we choose to support you know we're putting our wood behind very few arrows and rebuilding the brand the right way and I think that that was the transformation that that saved the company you know because that I joke today that we've been bootstrap since 2022 you know like we've we've raised a ton of money we've raised nearly $200 million up until that point but since then we realized this investment capital is no way to run a business for the long term so let's make the the painful decisions we need to make today to ensure the business can be profitable and sustainable on its own yeah I believe that this kind of skew rationalization process was part of a larger cost reduction process and correct me if I'm wrong but I think I read you got cut costs in like and I've had to go through similar process in the past and it's one of the most painful things I've ever gone through and like 80% is is crazy the hardest decisions you had to make and you know yeah man so I wish I could tell you it was like one clear decision we all aligned behind it and we're resolute and just acted swiftly and it wasn't the case I mean over the course of a couple years we reduced the team from 160 full time employees down to 22 people today so a massive reduction many of those folks were our friends you know many of those folks have been with us for years we reduced our skews from 65 different skews to down to 15 today so another painful reset and reduction and as a result our revenue fell from nearly 100 million in retail sales down to 50 million today you know our revenue got cut in half as we cut our costs by 80% but when we were doing 100 million we were losing $30 million a year you know to do that to support the sales team and the marketing efforts required to to build all these product lines and now today we're we'll have two or three million in EBITA on a 50 million dollar revenue business so it's a much better business arguably but it was like every quarter we were cutting 20 heads you know every quarter we did a a a 10 person layoff a 20 person layoff you know and at a certain point the team was just like look this is getting exhausting you know and and frankly we don't trust you guys anymore you told us this was gonna be the last time and and that was a a really hard thing to to live through but we got through it you know and and we've had some great advisors and and executives and board members along the way to kind of help us in that process and remember I mean it was there's no switch that was flipped here like we we raised this money at a 500 million dollar evaluation and our goal was to get it to over a billion and instead we had to go the other way you know so like changing that mentality of like hey you just let our Series C we owe you this growth like why how can you expect us to fire 100 people right now you know like let's let's do this slowly so we don't kill all of our growth and you you hear it all the time it's like it's better to do one decisive move one full chop go deeper than you need to go and get to that sustainability quicker rather than like killing the culture hurting the PNL chipping away each quarter so that again slow painful process we Learned more in those two and a half three years of transformation than we did in the six prior years of growth yeah yeah CBG operator takeover as CEO I think within the past like year or two that it was the right time what was that journey or process like and how have your how's your role changed since yeah man great question so we hired a CEO in 2022 about a year after we closed our Series C and uh he was an early investor in Super Coffee it's seasoned exec from Pepsi Co great mentor to us great leader great advisor and the board that was a board LED decision of like brothers you're doing a great job with culture you're doing a great job with the brand now we need somebody who's made these difficult decisions and and like actually driven change before um so I was always like chief fundraiser head of investor relations head of community that kind of thing Tyler our CEO came in and he LED the real strategy shifts to rationalizing some skews optimizing the portfolio reducing operating expenses and I I'll say like it was great to cut all of those things but as a result revenue fell sort of precipitously and there wasn't really a plan to revive it you know how are we going to maintain trust with these distributors and maintain support from our distributors while we take so much away from them um and it wasn't until may of 2024 when my brother Jordan the the guy who was brewing the stuff in his dorm room took over as CEO so he's been the CEO for the last 15 months call it that's what got us back to growth and that's what got the culture that that sort of revitalized the culture and and reintroduce this energy of yes we can you know let's go build again let's believe in positive energy like let's let's take this thing optimistically and I think everything happened sequentially as as it should have in terms of like I don't know if we would have made those difficult decisions without Tyler and I think I don't I'm certain that we would not be growing again without Jordan you know like there's there's no nobody you can hire that's gonna have the same passion and vision and energy as the founder you know Jordan is so committed to this my brother Jake I told you was doing demos two days ago all all across the country like you're not gonna hire an executive that's gonna do that certainly at the the little paychecks that these guys are making right and now today I'm I'm executive chairman supporting these guys from the board level really just making sure that we're we're positioning the business for long term success yep that's great you've been in the CBG space for a while any particular brands or just trends in the space that you can kind of tracking anything that's peaked your interest got you excited yeah man look we're from we're building an energy business you know and and energy drinks separate from bottled coffee have had a huge explosion over the last 10 years you know starting with Bang and then Celsius and now we've seen Alani New and Bloom and C4 and ghost right like all of these functional performance energy drinks are are really taken off and as Americans are tired they're looking for better for you they're looking for energy I think the tides are shifting a little bit now where people want to relax they want to lower their cortisol levels they want to disconnect from their screens and and and want to be able to shut it down at the end of the day so ingredients like L theanine and ashwagandha and magnesium are starting to show up in products more and more and the trend I've been watching especially as alcohol consumption decreases too because you're you're now seeing these like non alc cocktails canned cocktails things like can euphoric and Gia and Hyo emerging in in replacement of like that afternoon drink or that early evening drink so I think that there's going to be this wave of functional relaxation beverages the tricky thing is caffeine is so habit forming it's like it's almost like nicotine in that in that perspective I don't think these relaxing ingredients have that same effect and they certainly don't have the same feel or euphoria as alcohol or THC or CBD be curious to see how big this category gets and how sticky it becomes but I definitely think that this wave of functional relaxation is next totally I'm on the same page well yeah Jamie this has been awesome really appreciate the time what's um what's the best place for people to follow along with you you got a lot of great insights yeah man I I'm probably most active on on LinkedIn so connect with me Jimmy De Sicco you know always posting stuff about the founder journey I'm on the the VC side now I work with Anthos Capital they are Super Coffee's largest investor first investor in our Series A um so we invest in consumer brands so it's cool to have been on the founder side for for nine years raising money and now I get to a lot of exposure to amazing founders building businesses and and a lot of trends I posted are tips for founders who are raising you know tips for investors who are trying to communicate with founders who I see a lot of investors who haven't built businesses before and and as a result there's a disconnect for that or there's a lack of empathy for what that founder might be feeling so I think I have a I bring a unique point of view to some of these LinkedIn conversations totally awesome man appreciate the time this has been great I think that's the pod Adam even if it's in in range like what just curious how did you actually make it happen you and your brothers brought in a pretty seasoned uh how did you guys come to that conclusion last question for you Jimmy any um I can resonate with that well yeah what were some of the most challenging that little kitchen in the back of Domino thinking back to those early days of was I'm planning on launching a new CPG I think that's a good dose of reality having that patience feels like it's such an important thing what have you found I think Walmart used to be the last stop for a brand I think C stores have become a big focus for you guys different product sets work tell me about that process and kind of what were the yeah that's super clear by roughly 80% in in a year and a half or so and what were some of like