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Max Rivest | Wize Coffee Leaf Iced Tea
76 Plays5 months ago
It’s time to talk iced tea! This beverage category is not new, but it's flying off the shelves and hotter than ever—much like the Earth's temperature these days. In this episode of Aisle 42, I chat with Max Rivest, co-founder of Wize Coffee Leaf Iced Tea—one of the brands close to our hearts here at Ethical Food Group.
Max is a passionate advocate for sustainable practices, and their efforts to support off-season coffee farmers are truly inspiring. He shares their journey to creating delicious, low-sugar, fruit-flavored sparkling iced teas from upcycled coffee leaves that everyone can enjoy. We even discuss the joys of a low-caffeine lifestyle.
To learn more about Wize Coffee Leaf Iced Tea go to: https://drinkwize.com/
To learn more about the team behind the Aisle 42 podcast go to: https://www.ethicalfoodgroup.com/podcast
Here’s a summary of this interview:
Vision for Future Grocery Stores: Max envisions future grocery stores with minimal plastic use, sustainably made and sourced products, and a balance of self-checkout and human interaction.
Personal Journey: Max's journey began in 2013 after a caffeine overdose while studying in France, leading him to seek healthier beverage alternatives.
Founding Wise Coffee Leaf Iced Tea: Inspired by the antioxidant-rich coffee leaf, Max and his co-founder started Wise Coffee Leaf Iced Tea to create a unique, healthy iced tea from upcycled coffee leaves.
Sustainability and Social Impact: The company provides off-season work for coffee farmers, creating over 140,000 hours of employment and helping to reduce the nomadic lifestyle caused by seasonal work in the coffee industry.
Product Evolution: Initially launched as a flat iced tea, Wise Coffee Leaf Iced Tea transitioned to a sparkling iced tea in 2020, offering flavors like mango, raspberry, and apple.
Health Focus: The iced teas contain low sugar (four grams per can) and avoid artificial sweeteners, appealing to health-conscious consumers, including diabetics.
Consumer Demographics: The most vocal consumers are females in their late 20s and early 30s, while the primary buyers are typically moms in their late 30s and early 40s looking for healthy family beverages.
Market Expansion: Wise Coffee Leaf Iced Tea is available in various retail locations, including Save-On-Foods, Whole Foods, and gas stations like Canco, with a growing presence in food service venues.
Unique Selling Point: The beverage is praised for its smooth, balanced flavor, making it a popular choice for those seeking a refreshing, non-alcoholic option without excessive sweetness or bitterness.
Future Aspirations: Max hopes to see the coffee leaf become a recognized and valued product in the tea industry, with potential for creating terroir-based, varietal-specific teas that benefit both consumers and farmers.
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Transcript
Introduction to Iced Tea and Sustainability
00:00:00
Speaker
This is aisle 42.
00:00:07
Speaker
It's time to talk iced tea. This beverage category is not new, but it's flying off the shelves and hotter than ever, much like the Earth's temperature these days. Womp womp womp.
Meeting Max Rivest: Wise Coffee Leaf Ice Tea
00:00:18
Speaker
In this episode of IL-42, I chat with Max Rivest, co-founder of Wise Coffee Leaf Ice Tea, one of the brands that's close to our hearts here at Ethical Food Group. Max is a passionate advocate for sustainable practices, and their efforts to support off-season coffee farmers is truly inspiring. He shares their journey for creating delicious, low-sugar, fruit-flavored sparkling iced teas from upcycled coffee leaves that everyone can enjoy. We even discussed the joys of a low-caffeine lifestyle, though I still have a ways to go on that front. So let's get to it. Here's Max
Imagining Sustainable Grocery Stores
00:00:52
Speaker
from Wise.
00:00:55
Speaker
Max, we know each other through our work at EFG and we've been around each other a lot, but actually haven't had a lot of time to connect. So I'm glad we're able to chat. And so in classic aisle 42 fashion, want to welcome you to the podcast with the big question. And that's if you were to imagine the perfect grocery store of the future, what would it look like? Oh, perfect story of the future. I mean, as little plastic as possible is probably the first thing I would think of. And, you know, ideally everything is is sustainably made, sourced, and hopefully distributed as well.
00:01:31
Speaker
like minimal you know carbon footprint would be fantastic. Actually, part of me wants to touch on like the self checkout thing because I have a feeling like the future is kind of forcing us to do that right now, even though I i don't really like it personally as a shopper. I find
Sustainable Practices and Humanity's Future
00:01:46
Speaker
and sometimes it's convenient because you're like, okay, I just got a quick thing in and out boom. But like, I really don't like how it's taking the the human aspect out of the retail experience when it comes to grocery. because I don't know, like it's always nice to speak with someone who's there who's like trying to help you out and or whatever, right? A lot of people, they don't really care too much, but I feel like Grocers for the Future would still have people actually at the till or maybe a ratio of that. I'm not sure if it's you know all or nothing, but yeah, ideally, it's you know low carbon footprint and sustainably made goods because you know realistically, we got to change as as a society, as a species, because otherwise, we're going to
00:02:26
Speaker
We're going to take ourselves off this planet. It's
The Birth of Wise Iced Tea: From Coffee Overdose to Innovation
00:02:29
Speaker
not like the planet's going to die. We're the ones that are going to just basically force ourselves out if the you know if we keep keep up this you know unsustainability in terms of our industry as a whole. What an apocalyptic ending to that one. That's awesome. That's the reality of things. like That's why we're doing ethical food and sustainable food because we're looking at what does the future look like and if we don't change, it's pretty ugly. so It certainly is. yeah and I know it guides us all. so It's so great to see your product and we'll kind of jump into it in a second, but I just want to say that the your product has gone through an evolution.
00:03:07
Speaker
Over these last few months or the last year and so when we when we get there it'll be but fun to talk into the details but for now i bet your listeners would love to know what it is that you actually make so can you give us the reader's digest version on what is why is coffee leaf iced tea. For sure. So it all started in 2013. I actually overdosed on coffee. I was studying in France. We all doing my master's finals for first semester. I guess I should say 2012, but then it started really 2013. I had an overdose on coffee doing master's playing semi-pro hockey on the weekends and traveling around and doing a design contract for a client in Vancouver at the same time.
00:03:51
Speaker
And basically just like drinking seven coffees a day, working myself to the bone. And in the past, I had tried you know energy drinks, I tried all sorts of different alternatives, this and that. I always found that everything was just so high sugar. like I stopped drinking ice tea in high school or sorry in university because I realized it was so much sugar and that's what made me go to coffee. eventually a few years later, you know, still drinking coffee. I went to the very far end of that spectrum and it, you know, kind of destroyed me internally. And so I went to the doctor, he's like, you had an acute caffeine overdose, you got to get off coffee, try something else, try drinking tea. And I was like, I like iced tea, but it's literally syrup in today's world. That's what it is, especially if it's a, you know, a grab and go. And so one thing led to another, we had an entrepreneurship project that was starting in our and master's in France.
00:04:42
Speaker
And going through some news newsletters I follow, ah I found this really interesting study about the coffee leaf and how it's super rich in antioxidants, how it's been consumed for hundreds of years. And essentially, my friend and I, who eventually became my co-founder, we thought it was a really interesting basically like a like natural product potential or or basically a raw material to create something that would be really special from a a caffeine perspective because it was lightly caffeinated. And
Benefits for Coffee Farmers: Off-Season Work
00:05:11
Speaker
we were just, you know, i had some curiosity around it. So started doing a bit more research. We realized that in the coffee industry, you can only harvest the bean for three months of the year, typically like November to March ish, depending on elevation.
00:05:25
Speaker
And the rest of the year, basically the eight or nine months, the rest of the year, people are unemployed. You know, about 90 percent of the people are looking for work. So they have to migrate and move their families. And the kids are taken out of school, put into other schools, and then they come back again for the season in the fall. So it's extremely disruptive to grow up in a coffee community as a kid because you're literally always traveling. It's it's like it's practically nomadic. I wouldn't say it is specifically like by definition, but it practically is in a lot of cases. So kids drop out at age 11. I'm getting a little bit in the weeds here, but this kind of all it all it all becomes the purpose of this product.
00:06:04
Speaker
So we said, Hey, well, if the remaining staff in the off season, they're actually pruning the leaves to aerate the plant and just kind of do some basic maintenance on the plants. Why don't we take some of those prunings and see if we can use it to make tea out of it. And in the past and, uh, you know, 300 years ago, Ethiopians, Indonesians drinking it. And we found that a lot of the articles written back in the 1700s, 1800s about this, they basically said that they just sun dried the leaf and then smashed up and brew it. And so we had a hunch because we're in France, my co-founder being French and growing up in the cradle of red wine and cognac and all these fermented beverages. We're like, well, if you look at the regular tea plant that is processed and manipulated so many different ways to create green tea, black tea, et cetera, matcha, for example,
00:06:55
Speaker
why don't we take that methodology and apply it to a different leaf altogether, being the coffee leaf instead. So it's like applying a technology to a a new raw material. it's It's very much like kind of, it's not a cut and paste, but it was kind of, we thought it would be like. So in 2013, the summer, we went to Nicaragua. We started backpacking around coffee farms, just trying to find farmers who would want to work with us. We spent a night with one of the guys there who was like ah a local champion for a bunch of small cooperative farms. He kind of gave us all the dirt behind the scenes of the coffee industry and and thought our project was interesting. So we traded a ball a ball of rum for a big bag of coffee leaves. And then we made our very first batch in Nicaragua. And this was like pretty much just around Halloween in 2013.
00:07:43
Speaker
And to be honest, when we had first made it, we had no idea what it was going to taste like. We just literally had no indication at all. And so we were there with this spoon, you know, about to taste this, our hands are just shaking. We're like,
Product Evolution: From Teabags to Cans
00:07:54
Speaker
it's been basically 10 months working on this. We didn't go for jobs right out of business school we like totally pursued this idea on running on my credit card and as soon as we tasted it we're like oh my god it's actually so smooth like it's not bitter at all or grassy like green tea even though it has a lot of like the green tea kind of black tea notes were like wow this is like better than both of those combined and it's just so smooth that you you wouldn't expect it from a tea because tea is typically bitter or has some tannins in it
00:08:27
Speaker
So for us, we were like, okay, that's the hook. like We just realized this has legs. And yeah, that was back in 2013. 2014, we spent a year with um you know regulatory bodies, CFIA in Canada, trying to get approval for the product. They were so confused as to like, is it coffee or tea? And they didn't know how to classify us. So it was basically just a phone carousel. but Long story short, they finally got together and said, yes, okay, it's fine. Yeah, and then we launched in teabags primarily into retail. We grew quite a bit into Canada in the US, up to about 1200 stores. We then realized that we didn't have really enough resources to maintain the type of growth.
00:09:04
Speaker
And over years of doing events and tastings with friends, we were like, well, the iced tea that we make is actually really good. like It's lights out amazing. And it's more relatable to 99% of the people. So why don't we start thinking about doing iced tea? And instead of like waiting until later, let's start doing it now. So that was pretty much 2019. We transitioned all of the business. We updated a bunch of the branding, which we I guess for you said we might touch on, and launched the iced tea in 2020. Since 2020, it went from one gram of sugar flat iced tea to now four grams of sugar and sparkling.
00:09:42
Speaker
And the main reasons for that was honestly, it just sold better. Like it tastes better with just a touch more sugar. And four grams is really like it's 10% of a, of a nasty, like it's still so minimal. It's only 20 calories. So you're not really worried about your calorie count too much. And we don't have to use TVA because the leaf is so smooth and the tea that it makes, it's like, it doesn't have that bitterness. So you have to fight with sugar and fight with flavor like the other major ice tea brands out there. And so we get away with it because the coffee leaf just tastes really, really nice and pleasant. And it's a nice platform to work with for flavor because it's very, it's it's just very balanced flavor overall. So and yeah, now it's a sparkling iced tea, four grams of sugar. We have mango, raspberry, and apple.
00:10:30
Speaker
and mango is kind of like the gateway drug we like to call it because everyone tries that first because it's like the sexiest flavor and then eventually people find their staple whether it's mango or raspberry or apple my personal favorite is apple it tastes like like a cider but better and just I don't know, super clean and crisp. It's kind of like having like a sparkling apple juice when you were a kid in a sense, but it's actually really healthy and not just a bunch of sugar. So in a long winded way, that's that's exactly what we do. We take the coffee leaf, upcycle it in the off season, and we create these amazing sparkling iced teas with it.
00:11:06
Speaker
That's awesome. And you probably
Empowering Farmers and Ethical Business
00:11:07
Speaker
covered like nine tenths of my questions. No, it's so good. I love it. And just to be clear, you just said mango is the sexy flavor. So I'm expecting to see that on a tagline or a T-shirt at some time really soon there, Max. That's awesome. Yeah, you know I was first introduced to your product when it was a like a flat water, still water iced tea and it was beautiful and I loved the flavor and I loved the approach to caffeine. But when it went sparkling, it it just really popped. It really sort of felt like
00:11:39
Speaker
this is where this product should be and and i don't want to put this on your brand i don't mean to be so prescriptive but i find for myself. It is the perfect early afternoon beverage i really just like a midday squares kind of rocks that sort of their youre right positioning with their product and their chocolate and their treats. I feel like you guys, your that my favorite consumption occasion for your teas is just, it's that early afternoon where I would normally go get that guilty, like guilt-ridden extra cup of coffee, because I am a bit of a caffeine guy. So interesting to hear you ah you went through a, you went a little too too far with caffeine, but you know, i'm a I'm a guy that two, three espressos a day is pretty normal for me, but that ends at around 11 or maybe a little earlier. And then if I want something refreshing early afternoon, it's it's really there. and
00:12:31
Speaker
Now, I hear you're around mango. I agree. That is the gateway fruit. But the raspberry is delicious. And the apple, as much as I love it, I feel like I had too many apples growing up. It was because I'm a BC boy and I was just constantly surrounded by BC apples. I feel like, for me, it's the raspberry and mango. but Nonetheless, all the flavors are really beautifully done. I want to go back to the work with the farmers and the coffee leaf farmers. And in the efforts to have an ethical brand, a sustainable brand, the aspiration of providing off-season work for farmers that, you know, have to really ah uproot their lives and their families to sort of keep paying the bills and to keep their kids in school, kind of sounds like it almost kind of landed in your lap and you sort of tripped over it a little bit.
00:13:17
Speaker
But it must be really remarkable to be able to have an impact like this on family farmers you know halfway around the world. Yeah, I mean, in the last four years, just counting the ice tea, we've created over 140,000 hours of off-season work. And you know every summer, it'll it'll range from 50 workers to 125. So if you were to average out, ah you'd have to do some quick math. But essentially, 140,000 hours of off-season work, that would not have happened otherwise. And so I think the big thing for us is I've had the opportunity to travel a lot of Latin America. And ah in the summers, i would I would take whatever money I'd saved up and go do a trip down to Costa Rica, Nicaragua. you know I went to Chile ah with school ah back in university days to do some tourism consulting.
00:14:09
Speaker
and I've traveled Mexico within like a camper with my folks growing up quite a bit and you know call we want but it felt like a way to give back in a sense where Coca-Cola is not giving back to whatever lab is creating their flavor. You know what I mean? like They're not really using a whole ton of natural ingredients, like I can assume. I obviously don't know because it's like a secret recipe. They don't patent it. But I can't imagine that they're you know giving back a whole ton to their supply chain. So the way I see it, and going back to your question of like what is the ideal grocery store or the grocery store of the future,
00:14:47
Speaker
You know, everyone in this supply chain should be winning and also they should be winning sustainably. Not in the sense of, oh, they're just making a ton of money. Like that's great. That doesn't necessarily mean winning, but something where they can sustainably make a business out of what they already have and they don't have to completely diversify. They don't have to completely change crops every couple of years or whatever just to survive. And we've seen it in coffee before where right now coffee is really difficult to make a living in. It has been for the last 20 years. 30 years even. and so When the prices fluctuate so much on a global and on the global index, farmers just literally burn their crops because they can't even afford to go harvest the coffee because they know that at the end of the day, if they sell per pound, they're going to actually just lose money because they had to spend so much on labor and they have so little revenue from it. so they actually and We've seen this in Nicaragua, they actually burn their crops and they just basically like strip it all for cattle.
00:15:45
Speaker
and like The cattle and in Central America is not even good good quality cattle. like I'm plant-based anyways. I don't eat beef, but when I see these cows, I'm like, yo, that is not a beefy cow, man. That is like skin and bones. and so It's not like they're pumping out wagyu beef instead. right so It's really bad for the environment because you know obviously it increases methane emissions and also they're just literally just destroying this biodiverse landscape for a pretty hardcore and like animal agriculture. and so When we see the coffee industry really struggling and we have this fairly elegant solution with the coffee leaf being like, hey, the solution is literally right here. like You're stepping over it.
00:16:30
Speaker
you know Our idea is like, well, why don't we go make something of this, prove that it works, and then basically just tell the world. like you know This is a solution that is not only tasty and healthy, sustainable for consumers, but also for the actual supply chain. It's a boon in the off season when there's very little income and they actually go through seasonal hunger as well. So for us being able to give back, like it's been one of the main drivers. If I were to say, uh, Arno, my co-founder and I, if, if we were like money motivated people, we would have stopped doing this business like seven years ago or eight years ago, right? It would just, if you want to go and make money, like go sell real estate, whatever, you know, go like worked 50 hours, you know, a day and and wall street or something. That's not what we're like. And so for us, it was more about doing something that um has lasting impact.
00:17:22
Speaker
and that also empowers farmers to do something for themselves versus like always having this like white savior thing where like hey we're gonna come down and like build a well and it's like cool but if it breaks or they like it doesn't some technology thing that you bring in doesn't work a year from now who's gonna fix it who has the money to fix it it doesn't really go anywhere for us it's like hey like these are the tools and And like, let's go make some tea. And if you want to get creative with it, you can actually process it differently. You can make all sorts of different batches. You can do it different ways. We've done a huge variety of ways that actually yields different flavors. And so it's cool. Like when you look at
00:18:00
Speaker
The established tea world, you know, in Japan, for example, you have these matcha masters, right, that are just like these little farms where this like tea master is just an absolute legend. And he puts a stamp on the product because they make it and it's it's their flavor like they really make it. Similar thing in the wine industry where you have the bottles that are actually, you know, bottled in the castle on those vineyards. It's their wine. It's it's their final product. They control the final flavor. Whereas in coffee, the beans get shipped unroasted to all the other brands around the world that do the final roasting, and then they capture most of the value. Whereas green coffee is very much a commodity, and it's almost 99% labor. There's not a whole lot that goes into... There is, but it doesn't add that much value if you do a honey wash versus a this versus a that. At the end of the day, a lot of it is just green coffee. It's very commoditized.
00:18:54
Speaker
so I know there's a lot of details but this is what makes it so cool and that's why we're passionate about it, is that by giving them the tools to actually produce tea and get creative with it, they can capture that value and they can add you know that cache to their farm where it's like, hey, we make this our way and you can taste it and it's like nothing else in the world. So for us,
Consumer Demographics and Health Trends
00:19:16
Speaker
we see the future of Coffee Leaf itself you know going way beyond us and actually developing into that really complex, interesting terroir-based, varietal-based type of ah you know product selection that you that you get right now in the traditional tea world.
00:19:34
Speaker
I love it. And if it if the end product is delicious and a lot of people want to buy it, it just grows with scale and just good things can happen. When you think of the ideal consumer, and I know you're probably guys are always focused on growing the business and attracting those people. What kind of feedback are you getting? Who exactly are the types of people that are really enjoying your iced teas? Are most like vocal consumer not necessarily the one that buys the most, but the most vocal consumer are like, I would say, I'd say females in like late twenties, early thirties, but then the people that buy the most products are buying for the household. And it's, it's typically
00:20:19
Speaker
millennial moms or like moms early 40s with young families and um it makes sense because you know the product is enjoyed by literally people of all ages and and from a marketing perspective you know in the beginning that was actually really hard because it's like okay who do we focus on like you know this is getting good reviews from kind of everybody like in every all walks of life and you know a lot of age ranges our demographic pie is like quite split evenly but there are some hot spots And I'd say typically speaking, our best consumer is essentially a ah mom that's like probably late thirties, early forties that has a couple of kids and they want to set up healthy habits. They don't want the kid drinking a bunch of crap all the time. They don't want the kid drinking energy drinks with like, you know, 150 milligrams of caffeine or more in the States drinks with like 200 plus milligrams of caffeine. And so.
00:21:13
Speaker
We're seeing a lot of good traction with that type of consumer, conscious consumers that you know are they want to try to help good movements and actually put you know vote with their dollars and supporting local. like Why would we keep giving money to Coke and Pepsi all the time? when you know the the big like i think coke is I think I saw it yesterday actually on LinkedIn. Coke ah puts 10% of the branded plastic into the environment globally. Like 10% of our plastic waste is is just from Coca-Cola. And they won a Cans Lion award last week for like this
00:21:50
Speaker
a recycling campaign. And it's like, sure, they're probably I get it, they're trying to be better. But like man, you've got to really look at yourself and be like, really? So you know when you see that and people starting to really get wind of it and there's a lot more awareness today about different supply chain issues and the downstream effects of all these choices we've made as a society, you know We're seeing those customers come through and they're buying it, save on foods and you know buying our products instead of Coke or Pepsi. The number one drink that we're replacing in terms of category is actually sugary sodas. Number two being sweet iced tea and then number three being essentially iced coffee or energy drinks. and so It's interesting to see that we're actually replacing sugary sodas as number one.
00:22:40
Speaker
I will add a bit of an asterisk that I feel like, generally speaking, consumers are moving away from that. And iced tea is hot right now. I just saw some recent news on the the growth of iced tea is is skyrocketing. so the Now, my all my American friends, they've been drinking versions of iced tea you know for a long time. But you're right, there's a lot more caffeine in a lot of those beverages, a lot more sugar. and a lot more of them so i think that you guys have a interesting niche but as a category people are loving iced tea so it's cool that you're in the space with some great flavors it's more and i was describing it to a friend the other day where i said i felt like why is iced tea is some it's softer i think i said softer i i don't think i said elegant maybe i thought elegant in my head it's not elegant but it just it's a softer
00:23:28
Speaker
beverage and it's really easy to drink, but yet you don't feel like you're going to c chug it. Um, so you can actually still
Artificial Sweeteners and Health Concerns
00:23:34
Speaker
enjoy it. And for those that are enjoying sort of a bit more of the non-alk kind of vibe, it's very s sippable and you kind of feel like you're, you know, you can hold onto it for the can for like a half an hour and still really enjoy it over that span of time. So I think it's, it's perfectly balanced. And I do think for youngers, you know, the youngers, what am I making up words now? Sorry, children. you know, they're so used to their sugary beverage or something that, you know, a lot of parents might not realize is full of caffeine. If it has a little bit of caffeine like your beverage has, that's fine. It's totally fine. My daughter's game, you know, she tried um prime for the first time about six months, four months ago. And she just like, at first, she's like, wow, it tastes amazing. By the third sip, she sets it down. She's like, I can't do it, dad. I can't drink it. I'm like, yeah, that doesn't surprise me.
00:24:22
Speaker
I actually let her do it on purpose. I really, I was hoping that's where this was going to go, but it was a risk that I took. It's kind of like that. um Oh man, what was that show? It might be the Simpsons or something where like they forced their kid to like smoke a whole pack of cigarettes in an hour or something just so they'll never smoke again. Um, anyways, totally different thing. No, like the funny thing about consumer behavior and flavor is when we do demos, people really enjoy the taste but in the very first sips a lot of times they're like oh it's really light and you're like yeah because it's meant to be consumed as a whole drink not like you know you have one sip and it blows your mouth off with flavor and then you go by it because it tastes amazing on the first sip for us it's like no like this is actually like a sensible design for a beverage like you're not you're not trying to
00:25:13
Speaker
Like literally just throw napalm on the palate all the time with like, you know, North American food in general and and beverage is like so over flavored, over salted, over sweetened, et cetera. For us, it's like, no, like this is the beverage of today and the future. It's sustainably flavored in the sense of that you can actually really enjoy it. And by the time you're done the can, you're like, oh, man, that was perfect. And, you know, a few hours later, I'm actually game to have another one, you know, like I'll i'll have another one in the afternoon or if I'm going out with friends, I don't want to have a beer. or I don't want to have a cocktail. I'll have this instead. And I've never said that about a Gatorade. I've never had a second Gatorade. It's like after you get through that first one, you're like, Oh, I think I just drank some Gatorade. You know, I can feel it in your gut. Yeah. And like things like prime and like Gatorade zero, for example, lots of the zero beverages that are flavored and you know, Diet Coke, et cetera. They're relying on so, on so many artificial sweeteners and alternative sweeteners, sugar, alcohols, et cetera. And a lot of them really upset the gut.
00:26:13
Speaker
And there's a lot of conversation right now happening in our industry about how artificial sweeteners, sorry, I shouldn't say artificial because they're not all artificial. Some are, some aren't like Stevia is not artificial. It's a leaf, but it is essentially a a sugar alcohol. and um That's a whole other topic, but people are basically realizing that we've all like fallen for this like silver bullet of you know stevia or aspartame or erythritol or monk fruit that these things are the silver bullet for having a healthy sweetener or a zero-calorie sweetener. But realistically, you're kind of tricking your brain and you're telling the brain that it's getting a bunch of calories and getting a bunch of ah like sweet you know sugars and carbohydrates, but your body actually never gets it.
00:26:58
Speaker
and so In the end, your body like you know at the end of the day when you go home, your body is craving real sugar and your sweet tooth is just like raging because you're just constantly teasing it and never actually satisfying it. I'm in a few groups on Facebook for diabetes because one of my family members is essentially diabetic now. And I've just been kind of like absorbing a lot more information about this. And you know also our product is relatable to diabetics and we have a lot of diabetic fans because they like our product because it doesn't have stevia and it is low calorie and it is low sugar. But i'm I'm seeing more and more people ill being like, oh man, like I am so tired of this crap, whatever. There's like a keto ice cream, ah you know you picked it up and like every scoop is like 30 grams of erythritol or something. And it's just like, man, This isn't even food. like It's just completely insane. and Also, there's more studies coming out of Europe showing that a whole variety of these alternative sweeteners are actually still spiking insulin. They're still inciting insulin responses. and They're also heavily affecting the gut microbes and your gut flora in general. so It's disrupting a lot of digestion for people.
00:28:09
Speaker
It is also still affecting insulin on some degree. I'd have to look up the
Market Growth and Accessibility
00:28:13
Speaker
study to see precisely how much, but it's not a silver bullet. And in our case, we told ourselves, you know we'll never use artificial sweeteners or alternative sweeteners because RT is literally handcrafted and it does have a mild pleasant taste, if we put stevia, erythritol, monk fruit, etc., all of a sudden our tea is going to taste like every other low-calorie diet drink out there, and you lose all of the hard work that goes into actually making the tea itself. So when you look at things like, you know, prime or whatever, they're so aggressively flavored.
00:28:50
Speaker
that, you know, you get like your daughter, you get through like a quarter or a half of the bottle and you're like, Oh man, I'm like 150% like satisfied. I don't need any more of this for the rest of the day. Whereas with our beverage, you know, we try to shoot for that, that like 98% satisfied by the end of the can. That way you're like, Oh man, that was perfect, but I'm not like over the top. I can't do another one. So it's interesting to see where things are going to go, especially with ICT now, now getting more traction. It's kind of the original health drink. Like, why do people ever sleep on it? You know, at least for a while. And you're also seeing companies like Nestle actually launched Neste subtly sweet, and they're using five grams of sugar, very similar to our four grams. However, they do back sweeten it with Stevia as well to try to bolster it the the sweetness a little bit.
00:29:39
Speaker
In another category, to show that we're on the right track, you know and also to show that the industry is growing, is the new Straighten Arrows alcoholic iced teas they've launched. They're in the 12-ounce sleek cans just like us, and they also have four grams of sugar. and So, and they're not using alternative sweeteners as far as I can tell. I'd have to confirm that, but it seems like iced tea is having like a little bit of a renaissance right now because it's finally come back down to earth and like met consumers where we, where we're at. And we're looking for low sugar ah alternatives that don't taste like the, um, unsweet iced tea of the past in the U S that literally tastes like dirt. And so now there's like you new varieties, new versions of it. So I'm glad to see that it's happening because it, uh, We honestly, for a long time, we've kind of felt like we're out on the space on our own here. So it's nice to see that big companies are actually getting involved in doing it right. So good. Where can people learn more and find out where to find your iced teas?
00:30:36
Speaker
For sure, drinkwise dot.com, that's wise with a Z, like it's spelled here. And in terms of like stores, if you're out in the West Coast, check out Savon Foods, Stong's, Bilo, IGA, Fresh Street Market. There's a whole plethora. If you just go drinkwise dot.com, there's the store locator, you can find that. Out East in Ontario can get a Whole Foods, Nutris Emporium, McEwen's, and a handful of other independents there as well. and been seeing you in more and more gas stations and food service kiosks. And I feel like you're starting to pop up under more and more places, which is great. Yes, I should mention those locations. It's funny cause a lot of it's kind of new to me. So I'm still forgetting to mention those cause we've been in the grocery world for so long, but in terms of food service and in gas stations, you can actually find us at tractor foods. You're one of our best clients and and the food there is fantastic. Highly recommend as well as
00:31:32
Speaker
Field and Social has some some of our products as well. And the Kanko gas stations are, it's our biggest gas inconvenience chain. They have about 170 locations, give or take, mostly in BC and a little bit across the prairie. So if you're at a Kanko, If you're a near one or you're getting gas, honestly go in there because of all the gas stations I have really been in and like now that I know them internally and I'm seeing their strategy and how they want to totally modernize their food, their product selection, like I am so happy to see it happening. like Regardless, even if they didn't bring our product in, I'm just like so happy to see that they actually want to have healthy options.
00:32:11
Speaker
So if you're near Canco, go check it out. Like give them some respect because they're also local. They're not Chevron, you know, some giant company. They're actually
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:32:19
Speaker
local and they're trying to make the gas station experience way better and not something that's like stuck in the seventies. That's awesome. Max, thanks for everything that you do and to Arno as well and and all you guys that are making this magic happen. I'm glad that our office fridge is stocked with it. And I'm so glad that the Ethical Food Group family and PS and Co and ZGM that we're all one big happy family together to to work together to bring this to market and to help it grow. And obviously seeing these farmers thrive as well is a beautiful part of the story. So thanks for everything that you do. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
00:32:55
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of IL-42. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Max. Next time you're at the grocery store or a gas station, grab a can of wise coffee leaf iced tea, and I always reach for the mango one first. From all of us here, Ethical Food Group, thank you for sharing your star ratings, your reviews, and our passion to fix the broken food system, starting with our next trip to the grocery store. Okay, that's it for me. I'm Corwin Hebert, and I'll see you in the future.
00:33:32
Speaker
you