Ready To Drink Podcast
The Ready To Drink Podcast is built for founders, operators and leaders navigating the next era of beverage. These are honest conversations with the people doing the work, building brands that last in a crowded and regulated marketplace.
Hosted by twenty-two year adult beverage industry veteran Nate Fochtman, the show pulls back the curtain on what actually drives growth - distribution strategy, regulatory navigation, sales velocity, and consumer trust.
Episodes
61 episodes
AB Bottle Co owner Tony Piccini on why hemp THC beverages are the American dream, not a loophole.
Tony Piccini has run AB Bottle Co in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina for six years. THC beverages now make up 35 percent of his sales. That is not a side hustle. That is a pillar of his business.This industry is worth billions of dollars,...
The Post Pandemic Wine Market: Jim Silver on Succession Planning and the Bifurcation of Wine
Wine is bifurcating. Massive scale on one end, tiny profitable producers on the other. The middle is getting pressed out. Jim Silver, author of The Post Pandemic Wine Market and former Chief Sales Officer at Wine Direct Fulfillment, breaks down...
Quick Sips: "I wake up every day and I don't know what to say." | Joe Gerrity, Founder & CEO - Crescent Canna
"I wake up every day and I don't know what to say."That's Joe Gerrity, Founder & CEO of Crescent Canna - talking about a hem...
Trade Spends, Deductions and Drink Entrepreneurship with Komal Devjani, Co-Founder of Revya AI
Komal Devjani, Co-Founder at Revya AI, joins the show to break down the back office problem most CPG and beverage founders never look at until it costs them real money: deductions.Revya builds automated deduction recovery and trade spen...
Quick Sips: She sold out her first trade show in two days. Signed a distributor in twenty. This is how Brewt's started, in a garage in Grand Rapids.
Emily Griffen, Co-Founder and CEO of Brewt's, on how the brand actually started: Bloody Mary mix made at pool parties in LA, a hundred cases bottled in her parents' garage in Grand Rapids, a self-made label, a Vistaprint banner, and a sold-out ...
Building Accord Stone Irish Whiskey From Scratch: Jason Neri on Slow Proofing, Transparency and Surviving the Beverage Alcohol Grind
Jason Neri is the founder of Northern Courage and Accord Stone Irish Whiskey. He spent two decades moving through wine, beer and spirits before launching his own blended Irish whiskey, a brand built on transparency, slow proofing and a refusal ...
From Bloody Marys in a Garage to 2,400 Stores: Brewt's Mixers on Building a Beverage Brand Without Outside Capital
Emily Griffen, Co-Founder and CEO of Brewt's, and Courtney Clark, VP of Sales at Brewt's, join Nate Fochtman on the Ready To Drink Podcast for a conversation that covers what it actually takes to build a premium mixer brand from scratch inside ...
The Real Hemp Story from DC | Dwayne Carson, Founder & Principal of Carson Consulting
Dwayne Carson is the Founder & Principal at Carson Consulting and one of the few people working the hemp beverage issue from inside Washington every single day. He sits three blocks from the Capitol. He spent more than a decade on Capitol H...
Hemp THC Beverages & Saving Asheville, North Carolina | Regulate Don't Ruin NC
Three craft beer veterans explain why hemp derived THC beverages are the most important shift hospitality has seen since the craft beer boom, and why a federal ban could gut the industry by the end of the year.In this episode of the Rea...
Crescent 9 Built Something From Nothing, Now The Government Wants To Take It Away
Nate Fochtman sits down with Joe Garrity, Co-Founder and CEO, and Joshua Katzenstein, Chief Revenue Officer of Crescent Canna and Crescent 9 THC Seltzer - one of the fastest-growing hemp beverage brands in the country, now sold in 20 states.
How Hemp Beverage Emulsions Work and Why Regulation Is the Real Product | Alexander Choi, Perfectly Dosed
Alexander Choi, Co-Founder and CEO of Perfectly Dosed, joins Nate Fochtman on the Ready To Drink Podcast to break down the ingredient infrastructure powering the hemp beverage industry. From a class project at the University of Chicago to suppl...
The Beverage Lawyer Who Won't Sugarcoat It | Shauna Barnes of Barnes Beverage Group
Shauna Barnes is the founding partner of Barnes Beverage Group, a full-service national law firm built exclusively for the beverage industry. She started in craft beer, built the legal department at Dogfish Head during its fastest growth years,...
Building Disco Fizz for the LGBTQ+ & Beyond with Ben Zumsteg
Ben Zumsteg is the founder and CEO of Disco Fizz, a sparkling functional non-alcoholic beverage built for the dance floor. A first-time CPG founder with 15 years of brand strategy experience behind hi...
Cannabis Disinformation, Hemp Advertising Suppression and the Fight to Normalize the Plant | Madicyn Marinaro, CCAT
Nate Fochtman sits down with Madicyn Marinaro, Executive Director and Principal Researcher of the Cannabis Council for Advertising Transparency (CCAT), for a raw and unscripted conversation on one of the most underreported forces shaping the ca...
Quick Sips: Cannabis Research Is Rigged - 75% of $1 Billion Studies Risk, Not Benefits
Madicyn Marinaro, Executive Director and Principal Researcher at the Cannabis Council for Advertising Transparency (CCAT), breaks down one of the most overlooked structural problems in cannabis policy: the research funding gap.Nearly 75%...
Hemp, Recovery and the Fitness Channel Nobody Is Talking About | Jay Ashton, Last Rep
Jay Ashton is the CEO and co-founder of Last Rep, an athletic recovery cocktail (ARC) built for the gym crowd, the run club, the jiu-jitsu mat and everywhere else people are moving their bodies and trying to do it right. Last Rep is not a get-h...
Cannabis Beverage Certification, Sober Founders and the Hemp Beverage Revolution | Leigh Gall
Leigh Gall is the co-founder of Cannabis Beverage Certification and host of The Enlightened Buzz on YouTube, the leading education channel for THC beverages. She came up at Boston Beer, spent years in national accounts and distributor training,...
Quick Sips: Don't Apologize for Your Passion
Performance coach, Cannabis Beverage Certified co-founder,and Women in Hemp co-leader Leigh Gall joins Ready To Drink Podcast host Nate Fochtman to talk about what actually keeps founders moving in a market this hard to build in. Pa...
Founder & Sergeant Major Mike Waskewich (Ret.) on Flavor Matching, the Adult Beverage Ecosystem and Building What the Industry Was Missing
Mike Waskewich spent 23 years in the Army, retired as a Sergeant Major and then built two things the adult beverage industry didn't know it needed: The Bar Book, a Spotify-style flavor matching app for spirits, beer, cocktails, NA and THC bever...
Quick Sips: The drink doesn't make the memory. The moment does.
The drink doesn't make the memory. The moment does.Retired U.S. Army Sergeant Major and The Bar Book co-founder Mike Waskewich Jr drops something worth sitting with in our upcoming episode - your favorite beverage isn't about what's in t...
Quick Sips: The Hemp Industry Can't Afford to Fight Itself Right Now | Chris Fontes | High Spirits
Chris Fontes, founder of High Spirits, breaks down why the hemp beverage space is still a team sport and why operators who treat it like a competition are hurting everyone, including themselves.Right now the category is sti...
Quick Sips: His boss told him the work was drying up, so he built a brewery instead. | JR Heaps | South County Brewery
The 2008 housing crash didn't end JR Heaps' career - it started one.JR was doing historic restoration and timber frame design-build work when his boss pulled him aside and basically said: the projects are drying up, you might want to cha...
The LEVIA Story with Kristin & Eric Rogers
In this episode of the Ready To Drink Podcast, Nate Fochtman sits down with Kristin and Eric Rogers, the husband-and-wife founders who built, sold, and recently bought back their cannabis beverage empire, LEVIA. Transitioning from...
Quick Sips: From "Crazy Idea" to Big Acquisition (and Buying it Back)
In this Quick Sips from tomorrow's episode of the Ready To Drink Podcast, LEVIA co-founders Eric and Kristin Rogers share the incredible "boomerang" story of their brand.From spotting a gap in the market for zero-sugar, zero-calor...