The Breeze With Beverage Digest
The Breeze With Beverage Digest
Episode 24: Inside Beverage M&A From Multibillion-Dollar Acquisitions to Capital Infusions (Plus: Fermented Mare's Milk?)
Beverage Digest Editor & Publisher Duane Stanford and industry expert & regular podcast contributor John Sicher are joined by Ross Colbert - Managing Director of food & beverage investment banking for Carter Morse & Goodrich. They discuss M&A strategy, acquisitions, and changing business models for 2025 and beyond.
This is the Breeze with Beverage Digest. I'm your host, dwayne Stanford, the editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. The Breeze is where we bring you into the kinds of industry conversations we have every day at Beverage Digest. We dissect what's happening, connect the dots and ask the most important question what does this mean? I'm joined, as always, by my friend and co-host, john Sitcher. Many of you know him as a former editor of Beverage Digest. John has since consulted for companies ranging from Coca-Cola to Pure Circle John. How are you, dwayne, good to be here again? Pure Circle John. How are you, dwayne, good to be here again? So you know, atlanta is known as Hotlanta and we've got some heat today, but from what I'm reading my gosh, I think you're in some kind of record heat there in New York City.
Speaker 2:It's 102 here. Yesterday On my Apple Watch it said it's 95 right now. It is really hot up here.
Speaker 1:How are you coping with that? Do you just stay inside the whole time or drink tons of beverages, lots of sports drinks?
Speaker 2:One of the challenges for this podcast Wayne is going to be to record it. I had to turn the air conditioner off, so I hope brevity is the soul of wit today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I appreciate your commitment to the sound quality of this podcast. That's great. So you know. I read something really interesting last week, by the way, beer Business Daily. They talked about and this caught me really by surprise, but they actually talked about the fact that extreme heat actually hurts beer sales, which, of course, for beverage people. That's a bit counterintuitive, I mean, I almost, I mean it's hard to believe, right.
Speaker 2:You know, I've heard that, I've heard when it gets so hot, people basically don't go out as much. They go to stores less often. I've never been sure of all the reasoning for it, but I've heard that in the area of carbonated soft drinks that when it's hot it's great, when it's terribly hot, it's not so great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess when you're that hot and you're feeling dehydrated, you turn to water right and you don't want to dehydrate yourself with beer or something like that, but it looks like we're in danger of that in the East right now, if you pull up to a convenience store store to fill up your gas station, it's 102 degrees outside.
Speaker 2:Maybe you don't go in and pick up a drink. You get back in your air-conditioned car.
Speaker 1:I have to say that would be hard for me to get out of the car. I like the air conditioning. So you know we've got a little something different for the audience today. We've invited M&A expert Ross Colbert to join us and we're going to discuss what he's seeing in today's deal market Now. Ross is well known in the food and beverage M&A space. He's currently a managing director at Carter Morrison Goodrich. There he leads the food and beverage investment banking practice. This is a gig he just started. Recently he spent time at Capstone Partners, kpmg, robobank all in investment banking, ross. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, dwayne, pleasure to be here. Great to see you and great to see John Cisher as well.
Speaker 2:Ross, good to see you again.
Speaker 1:So you know, I've always found it interesting, looking back at your background, the fact that you were actually on the board of a spring water company. I mean that must be kind of an interesting background, give you some interesting perspective. Being in Beverage M&A.
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually, yes, the company was public at the time a little small cap company called El Dorado Spring Water out in Boulder, colorado, and I met the founders back in must have been the mid 80s. We became good friends and business colleagues and eventually was invited to join the board and I really enjoyed that. I was there 10 years on the board. I enjoyed it. I always felt like I was learning something new just the dynamics of being more on the operating side than on certainly doing just M&A. But it was fun being on a public company because you deal with some other issues that you might not certainly in a privately held business. Eventually took it private and today it's a very successful private bottled water company and we're still friends, which is the best part of all. That's good. That's good.
Speaker 1:And so was there anything from that time, you know, being on the operating side, the other side of the fence, anything you learned about the beverage business that you're dealing with, some fixed costs of reporting and compliance at a time when you know being public is not.
Speaker 3:You know it's not so fun sometimes when you have shareholder issues and disclosure requirements. And it's great when things are going well, but when you know you're having a tough year, being public is not so much fun. I've learned that. It's leave that for the big players.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I'm also thinking okay, you've done M&A globally. I know you've got a history around the globe. You've probably seen, tasted, experienced lots of different beverages. What's the weirdest or the strangest thing you've ever tried in terms of a beverage?
Speaker 3:Great question, I think immediately. What comes to mind is I've spent some time in Mongolia. In Mongolia, and as recently as just last year I was there on a horse track and there the traditional beverage of choice is fermented mare's milk. It's called Arag and it's a very well-known beverage choice across Mongolia. You know Central Asia and you know it's a function of you know herding culture and not having refrigeration at your disposal. So their celebratory drink is warm body temperature mare's milk, wow. And they let it ferment a little so it gets a little fizzy and the taste I would characterize it as milky vodka with a little bit of fizz.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right, you're kind of winning me over now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that doesn't beat your curiosity. So, Ross, did you drink much of it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess I did from what I can remember. But it's not something I look forward to, to be honest, that's great.
Speaker 1:Do you know what the ABV of it was? I mean, is it pretty potent stuff?
Speaker 3:I think it varies from horse to horse. Really, you never know what you're going to get.
Speaker 1:That's great, John. You ever tried that before?
Speaker 2:No, and I think I would have passed on that one, Dwayne.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so fun. So let's talk about M&A here. Obviously we've got you on to kind of dig into this and it's a pretty interesting times, I would say. I saw some recent numbers showed food and beverage deals are apparently at the lowest count in almost a decade. And you know, while that's going on and I'm interested in the extent to which you're seeing is, if that's true, We've seen, you know, a lot of beverage activity in M&A this year. You've got PepsiCo buying poppy, Celsius bought a lot of new private equity firm, picked up Spindrift. Let's start out by just kind of 10,000 foot view. What are you seeing from the belly of the beast these days in terms of what's happening on the ground with M&A?
Speaker 3:Sure. Well, I think high level view you would say 2021 was sort of the high watermark over the past decade for M&A activity and it was clearly a function of pent up demand for M&A during 2020 and COVID right. So when I look back over, you know, the last four or five years, you'd have to say you'd have to look back to 2019 to kind of benchmark what was the normal beverage transaction data. That shows to be about just under 250, called 247 transactions back in 2019. But that dropped to 180 in 2023. So that's as sharp a fall as we've seen over the last decade. The good news is that in 2024, that recovered up to about 219 transactions and I would say now, looking out for 2025, I think we're going to come in at somewhere around 225 beverage transactions. Now that data is sourced from PitchBook. Now that data is sourced from PitchBook, so I feel it's as reliable as any data out there.
Speaker 3:When I looked at it this morning and we're slightly below we're about 5% under where we were this time last year. But I also feel like the second half of 2025 is going to be more active than the first half. We lost a lot of momentum in February and March and April over the last four months as a result of, frankly, trade policy, geopolitical issues still dealing with supply chain issues as well and inflation, and I think I'm the eternal optimist, as you have to be in M&A optimist as you have to be in M&A. But I do think the second half of the year is setting up to be more favorable. I think we're starting to see some stabilization in the economy and interest rates. We're starting to see more private equity get back into the market in 2025. They were on the sidelines in 2023. That's largely why transactions were as soft as they were back then and we started to see private equity get back in the market the second half of last year and that's picked up. So I think that bodes well.
Speaker 1:And that's a function of what Like. Why did they move away and come back in?
Speaker 3:Stability and interest rates primarily. I mean that's the biggest driver, Obviously.
Speaker 2:Ross, let me ask you a question. I mean Dwayne mentioned the Pepsi poppy deal and the Alani New Deal. Are there areas right now of the non-alcoholic beverage business where people see particular value categories? Are there areas that are attracting interest?
Speaker 3:right now? Yes, without a doubt, and I think it's functional right now. That's been the biggest tailwind for non-alcoholic beverages and you can you know that really started with Celsius last year with the acquisition by Pepsi. Then Alana Nui followed on that during this year, poppy, obviously playing right into that probiotic functional space, right into that probiotic functional space. So I think it's created a lot of interest in the entire breadth of functional beverages today and you're seeing, maybe not always the big M&A deal, but there's been a lot more growth capital going into these functional categories which will eventually lead to more M&A as well.
Speaker 3:For functional, I think it's interesting, like when I look at 2024 versus 2025, last year there was a lot of alcohol transactions being done. I would say it was roughly about 80% of M&A in 2024 was alcohol driven either beer, wine or spirits and frankly, a lot of it was capital capital just to enable the company to meet its demands and, in some cases, pay down debt and try and avoid tripping over covenants. So there was a capital call for alcohol. That's been, that was and it continues today. I mean, frankly, the category is still in need of more capital to stabilize some of these businesses. It's you know. So at the same time, non-alcohol certainly all the headlines on the growth in non-alcohol beer has really created investor interest in the whole low or no alcohol space and some of that's going to functional, some of it's going to hydration and some of that capital is going into more traditional soft drink categories like juice or tea or coffee.
Speaker 1:You're saying anything where there's a perception that this could be an alcohol alternative, they're getting some of this capital too. It doesn't even have to be something that's a non-alcohol version of beer just something that's functional and a replacement.
Speaker 3:That's right and I think if you step back and look, what do the headlines say? I mean, I'm just looking at Diageo, perrineau, constellation, brown, forman, all corporates, large corporates look undergoing divestitures of underperforming divisions, categories or brands and I mean that to me is a key indicator that it's really a buyer's market today in alcohol.
Speaker 2:Do you think we could see that in the non-alcoholic space? Do you think the big guys Coke, pepsico, kdp could adopt that kind of approach that the alcoholic companies are?
Speaker 3:I think they're doing. I mean, if you look at valuations of the non-alcoholic, large cap non-alcoholic players versus the large cap alcohol players, you can see the valuation multiples are consistently higher right now for the non-alcohol players and I think that probably protects a lot of the non-alcohol guys from having to make a divestiture.
Speaker 1:You know there was a period, you know, heading into COVID and even after COVID, a lot of you know capital investment flowing into upstart brands and brands that were really looking for really fast growth didn't necessarily need to be profitable. You saw, you know, two years ago. You saw that start to change where investors were really looking for profitability. And you know, could you keep, you know, your expenses in check, et cetera, and pull that lever? Where are we on that, on that pendulum now? Would you say?
Speaker 3:I think that's been a significant change in the way business owners have to look at their you know, a multiple of investing in companies based on a value driven by multiple of revenue. Today investors want to see latest 12-month EBITDA and you know funding losses is not. Not. You know it's no longer as easy as it once was, you know, a couple of years ago. So I think investor appetites have changed and valuation metrics have normalized. I would say you know what. The kind of values that companies were getting during COVID were not sustainable, not in this interest rate environment.
Speaker 1:And so what's the upshot of that? What is that going to do in terms of, you know, either entrepreneurs getting into these spaces, whatever.
Speaker 3:Dwayne, what it does is it extends the hold period for investors, because the potential buyer that investors are looking for if they're in an investment today and they're considering liquidity over the next year or two, they have to start thinking about. I need trailing EBITDA to support that valuation or the valuation I'm looking for, and the timing of that often requires holding on to the business for maybe a couple of years longer and reaching those milestones when you get there and it takes more capital and it takes a little more time.
Speaker 1:Does it reduce the flow of capital into these segments because of that longer horizon? I don't or just kind of self-select different types of investors.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's definitely changed the whole kind of sequence of A round, b round, you know, getting out of a venture mode to growth capital or private equity, and private equity hold period being typically a couple of years and maybe, you know, two to three to four years, years, and maybe two to three to four years, and then a sale process to a strategic.
Speaker 3:And what we're seeing today is that whole period for sponsors, for private equity firms, has become a little bit longer and there's still a lot of capital available and on the sidelines. But I think investors are being more deliberate about where they put that capital and they're also spending a little more time early in the process to really scrutinize the target, get to know them over a period of time, slow the clock down on due diligence so they get to see the company's performance through different seasons, through different growth trajectories, while they decide when to jump in and make an investment or acquire let's take a quick break from the conversation so I can tell the audience about a brand new product the Keurig Dr Pepper System Map Book.
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Speaker 2:Ross. Let's shift a little bit to the bigger companies Right now Coke and PepsiCo and KDP. They've done some diversification but still their main businesses today are carbonated soft drinks which are not growing. They've done some deals Coke in recent years has done Body, armor and Costa and Fairlife. Certainly Fairlife has worked out well. Pepsi bought Poppy. Do you see the big companies using M&A in the years to come more aggressively to diversify and get into categories or businesses which will provide them with greater growth?
Speaker 3:Yes, I think there'll always be that element. But I think we've seen sort of a change from, you know, four or five years ago, when Coke and Pepsi were both you know this is pre-COVID very, very focused on using their own venture capital, in-house venture capital funds, to make those picks. I think you know we've seen that that hasn't really delivered on expectations. So they both Coke and Pepsi, and have pulled kind of unwound those. But I think I think they'll use M&A more strategically, perhaps not quite as often, but when it's a category that they they know they need to be in and they can, they can through gain an early mover advantage, they'll do it.
Speaker 2:Why do you think these companies have such great marketing ability? They have such great resources? Why is it so hard for them and maybe it's true in other industries, too, that you cover, and other industries, too, that you cover why is it hard for Coke and Pepsi to organically innovate, to start their own brands, as opposed to acquiring brands? Do?
Speaker 3:you have any insight on that, ross. Well, I think that what makes Coke and Pepsi sort of successful and function smoothly is scale, and oftentimes these smaller emerging brands just don't have that, can't really deliver the scale that a Coke or Pepsi or KDP requires to really optimize the go-to-market strategy. And I think that's where there's been some hard lessons learned with not being able, you know, picking an emerging brand that you know when you realize you start to scale that there are supply chain issues that they haven't sort of solved for, sort of solved for, or there's management issues. I mean, sometimes management teams aren't really. They don't really scale as well as you think they will.
Speaker 3:It's a different game and I think that's where trying to take something small and, you know, fit it into the massive size that both Coke and Pepsi and Katie's distribution system, it doesn't always work well and I think it's tricky. To. The other thing and it's stating the obvious is these management teams that are so often successful in growth stage, they tend to fall apart over time in the success of early stage brands and trying to keep that culture alive while you're integrated into a large matrix organization doesn't always work either.
Speaker 1:One of the solutions to that has been the VEB model or invest toy model. Invest now while they're smaller, set up a deal where you can buy it later. Assuming you get the scale and trajectory that you're looking for, would you say that's worked or not? I mean, have we had enough time to know whether that's the right model and is it a successful model for these big strategics?
Speaker 3:I think it works generally speaking. I mean big strategics I think it works generally speaking. I mean every one of those opportunities has its own sort of set of challenges. But I think fundamentally where M&A is going to work well for the bigger players is filling portfolio gaps. Right, I mean it's there. It's about you know they look across their portfolio, established brands to determine where are they under indexed. They look at the universe of what are the brands out there that can you know. We think we can bridge that gap and sometimes it I mean I think that has worked more often than not.
Speaker 3:I think where it's trickier, I think, is when it's more about an innovation brand that's a new category, and Coke and Pepsi trying to jump on a new category that really hasn't established itself or proven itself. And we saw that with the kombucha right. I mean there was a period of time pre-COVID where kombucha was sort of the hot category that everybody wanted to be in and gosh, I mean you think about VEB had Honest Tea and it would have seemed like a slam dunk to just, you know, move Honest Tea into your kombucha brand.
Speaker 1:And cold pressed juice. I mean their suja investment. Yeah, Some of these cold-pressed juice, I mean they're suja investment yeah, some of these categories just aren't scalable.
Speaker 2:I think you're so right about culture though, Ross. I mean I started covering these big companies back in 1995. And then, after I sold Beverage Digest, I consolidated some companies and it's so much about culture and I don't want to focus on any of the three big companies. But you walk in the door of the three big beverage companies and there's just huge, palpable excitement around the marketing and what they're doing for their big brands. But then you wonder where's the excitement about the smaller brands? Conversely, I consulted Body Armor for a while before it was sold to Coke, and you walked into Body Armor and there was that huge excitement on this brand they were building, albeit still small. It's so much about culture. I mean, are there any great big CPG companies like Coke or PepsiCo that have basically been able to create cultures where little brands can grow well and they can create as much excitement around those as they do their big flagship brands?
Speaker 3:yeah it's, it's not so easy and and and off the top of my head, john, I can't think of one that that.
Speaker 1:So why do they keep doing it? Why do they keep doing these deals? I mean, there must be something within the ecosystem of the whole thing that still makes sense, whether it's, I don't know, taking out competition, you know milking it for cash while it is a hot sector. I mean, from an investment banking point of view, how do investment bankers continue to work with these, with these, talk these companies into doing these?
Speaker 3:if we kind of see the kind of results we do long term, there must be a reason yeah, I think the fundamental driver is growth and in the growth story, because that's what drives uh careholder interests, that's what drives um, you know, earnings, it's what drives uh valuation, uh, on the stock price and um growth is comes at a huge cost, right? I mean, this is this is why any of the large cap players um are continually on the hunt for that next shiny new toy that can stimulate the discussion and the research analysts, and if it's reflected in a higher valuation than stock price, then it's done its job. But it's that relentless pursuit of growth that I think trips up a lot of big companies who kind of feel like oh you know, we got this figured out.
Speaker 2:Ross, what about bigger deals? You know, back when Coke tried to buy Dr Pepper and was barred by antitrust, pepsi tried to buy 7-Up and they got it, but not in the US because of 7-Up. When Pepsi bought Gatorade, I think there was a tie vote at the FTC which means they could do it and they had to spin off their existing small sports drink. Has the antitrust climate changed? I mean, could there be much larger acquisitions today in the beverage space without running afoul of the antitrust laws as these companies did decades ago?
Speaker 3:Yes, I think that under call it, trump 2.0 didn't didn't appear to be willing to engage in, and I think I think that's a positive for For larger M&A opportunities which we could see, because I think I think this shift doesn't happen overnight, but it's clearly between where we were a year ago and the pushback that the FTC was giving on large deals in the consumer space. That has definitely seen a shift and we've seen some remedy solutions take place in CPG just in the last six, nine months that suggest there's a new sheriff in town and there's a willingness to consider how to resolve an antitrust issue. You're at a time now where large corporates now where large corporates, some of those large corporate spirit players you know have looked at remedy sales so that they can accommodate an acquisition. I think that's indicative of kind of the changing and, I trust, climate.
Speaker 1:I want to ask you about Poppy, because that's been an incredible story over the last five years. I mean we had a brand like Celsius, that sort of, for a lot of people kind of came out of nowhere, huge success, but I mean it was a 20-year overnight success story. Poppy really is, I mean, fairly much a overnight success story. Poppy really is, I mean, fairly much a overnight success story. I mean they made their you know big pivot around COVID, launched in earnest, you know, coming at, you know in during COVID with the Poppy format. Now they've got, you know, almost a $2 billion takeout by you know one of the biggest non-alcoholic beverage companies in the world, pepsico.
Speaker 1:I mean that's been an incredible story. Give us just a quick view of how you think. What was it? Was it the culture? Was it also just that sort of emerging functional category that hit all the right sweet spots? What exactly did they do right? And then I'm also interested in your view of Olipop, whether this sets the table for them to be taken out or if this sort of makes it harder for them to be taken out.
Speaker 3:No doubt Poppy has been an amazing unicorn Gross story, you know. Going back John knows this If you looked at historically what the what the path to becoming a unicorn has been in beverages, if you went back and looked at snapple in arizona and so be and some of those other you know 20 years ago, I could show you that it takes seven's, I think a function of primarily the influencer marketing strategy that they were early adopters with and I think that, combined with social media, just really elevated Poppy's recognition. It created massive trial and I think it was an accelerator to their growth story and you can't argue with that. I mean it was brilliantly executed, perfect timing, tapping, know an audience that was predisposed to. You know a viral influencer campaign and the product back. You know that early mover advantage was huge and I think it's a a great lesson and that you know soda like marketing. I mean that's yeah, yeah right. Rohan oza as well, who's been around the block on some of this.
Speaker 1:oh yeah, no, he a great lesson, and the soda-like marketing. I mean that's kind of nice. Yeah right, rohan Oza as well, who's been around the block on some of this stuff.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, no. At a time where, coming out of COVID, everybody was thinking I need a healthier lifestyle, I need to take control of my dietary needs, my refreshment needs, and it all worked.
Speaker 1:And what does this mean for Olipop now needs?
Speaker 3:And it all worked. And what does this mean for Olipop now? I think Olipop certainly is also in the right place at the right time. I think the challenge is they have to, you know, they have to identify them, build a moat around them that reinforces that they're a little bit different, that their consumer may be a different demographic, perhaps a bit older and maybe not quite as prone to influencer marketing. It might be a different, you know, a different strategy, but but I I love their. How authentic the brand is. It resonates extremely well with their core uh, you know drinker and uh, they've got a, got a very passionate, loyal following, and they seem to be leaning into the science a lot more.
Speaker 1:Do you think that matters?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think I, I think it's that's right. It's more efficacy and less less sort of slash than than uh, than poppy. Um different, slightly different marketing campaigns, of course, because I think the consumers are different.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about bottlers for a minute. Watching the Coke and Pepsi bottling systems over the last couple of decades has been fascinating, and for a large part of that they had similar ownership patterns. So let's focus on Pepsi. For a large part of that, they had similar ownership patterns. So back, let's focus on Pepsi for a minute. Coke basically decided they bought the North American business of CC and refranchised it. That's done and things look like they're going pretty well. Pepsico bought PBG and Pepsi Americas and they now have a very, very big company on bottling system. I'm not going to ask you whether or not you think that PepsiCo will spin off its company on bottling system.
Speaker 1:What I'm interested in— Go ahead, ask him.
Speaker 2:Okay, include that in the question. But anyway, my question is would it be possible, given investor sentiment, growth dynamics, for PepsiCo to do another PBG type transaction, like they did, I think, in 1999, where they spun off PBG as a separate public company then run by Craig Weatherup? Could they basically, under the market conditions you see today and investor interests you see today, could PepsiCo do a similar transaction, if they wanted to, with their company-owned bottling Great?
Speaker 3:question, look, I think, is it's a game changer and it has been a game changer for Coke. They have, you know, extended their leadership in the CSD category and their performance, I think, really speaks for itself. You look at the valuations today the Coca-Cola company trades at 21 times EBITDA. Pepsi trades at 13.2 times EBITDA Huge difference. I think it's been a pivotal year. You know, you guys reported it, dwayne Pepsi first time in 40 years Pepsi wasn't number to PepsiCo that they need to fix their soft drink business and I think the valuations reflect that. I think when you talk to their bottlers, the sentiment that you hear at the bottler level also reflects that. And you know. The question is you know, could they do it right now or would they do it now? Today? It feels to me like they're far more committed to food and snacks than they have been recently on their beverage portfolio.
Speaker 2:But is a PBG type transaction possible in today's investor markets as you see it, Ross?
Speaker 3:I think it's doable. I think if they wanted to really make that strategic change, they could do it Because inherently I think the system is there for it. It's about finding the right leadership team. It's about initiating changes that are going to take it doesn't happen overnight to go out and re-franchise that size of an operation. I wouldn't say never, but I think it would be a challenge, but I think it would be a challenge.
Speaker 1:So, ross, before we wrap up here, I've got to ask you about this emerging THC beverage space. I mean it's been incredible what's happening. I mean you have mainline convenience retailers putting these THC drinks into the stores. You've got a lot of regulatory murkiness. You have states trying to get a handle on how to regulate this stuff. I mean there's loopholes at play. I think, at the end of the day, consumers clearly are interested in this segment. I do not think it's going away Now it's. You know, how do you create a playing field where people can scale and feel comfortable and maybe strategics can get involved? What's your take on all of that? How are you advising your clients when it comes to that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks. Look, I have been a skeptic for some time about CBD and THC broadly speaking, but also, you know, certainly in beverages, and I have to say I'm starting to second guess my skepticism. Over the last year I've seen many more, much more frequency of consumption. I'm seeing much more availability in the immediate consumption channel and the feedback I've been getting from distributors and when I say distributors, non-alcoholic distributors, you know, call it the white system, call it, you know the KDP, you know Snapple system has slowed and matured it.
Speaker 3:You know you can't today afford not to at least you know um, be looking at that category cbd or thc beverages as a growth opportunity. A lot of the beer distributors who, who you know are, are really getting uh squeezed, uh in terms of uh have made room in their portfolios for distribution of these products and the feedback I get from them is very positive and I think we have to pay close attention to it and I think if I were a distributor I'd be, I would be looking to, you know, try a handful of brands to see a learn more about the category, what works and what doesn't, who's best positioned to be a front runner? Because it's still early days, but you can't afford to miss on a category that could be as big as it may be.
Speaker 1:That's a great place to end Ross Colbert. He leads the food and beverage investment banking practice for Carter, morse and Goodrich. Thanks so much for joining us. It was really fun.
Speaker 2:Ross, good to see you, Kevin. Great to see you both.
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