How Mooala Built A Multi-Million Dollar Brand By Keeping It Simple

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "How Mooala Built A Multi-Million Dollar Brand By Keeping It Simple"

Podcast: Taste Radio
Host: Ray Lateef (BevNET Inc.)
Guest: Jeff Richards, Founder & CEO of Mooala
Date: June 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Jeff Richards’ journey building Mooala, a plant-based milk brand recognized for its organic ingredients, unique banana milk SKU, and disciplined approach to retail and branding. The conversation dives into how simplicity, transparency, and an obsessive focus on execution set Mooala apart in a rapidly evolving plant-based beverage market. Key topics include branding, innovation pitfalls, retail execution, pricing, and fundraising—all explored with candor and practical examples from Mooala’s story.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Founding Story & Early Differentiation

• Origins in Plant-Based Milk: Jeff leveraged industry trends—particularly the meteoric rise of almond milk by Silk and Blue Diamond—to spot a market entry point.
  • [04:44] “I saw the opportunity as there's basically four quadrants in those initial days of flavor... No one was really leaning into real ingredients.” — Jeff Richards
• Ingredient-led Differentiation: Inspired by Deep Eddy Vodka’s real ingredient approach, Mooala prioritized using real ingredients (like bananas and honey)—uncommon among established players.
• Banana Milk Innovation: Developed pre-oat milk trend, banana milk served as an allergen-free, kid-friendly, and truly differentiated plant-based milk.
  • [07:00] “The banana milk has always been really important to us just as a differentiator. But in those early days, banana milk was a thing before oat milk was a thing.” — Jeff Richards
  • [07:56] Memorable moment: Endless banana puree experiments in the kitchen, blended all over the ceiling.

2. Brand Positioning, Packaging & Consumer Communication

• Navigating Consumer Education: Early on, many consumers incorrectly equated “plant-based” with “organic.” Mooala faced a gradual shift as organic became a major purchase driver.
  • [09:58] “Oh, it's plant based, that means it's already organic... plant based was already such an incremental improvement to people from a dairy milk that like, oh, I have to think about organic now as well.” — Jeff Richards
• Iterative Packaging Strategy: Mooala evolved its packaging from farm-fresh and organic-focused, to kid-friendly, back to a strong organic-forward message as consumer trends shifted.
  • [11:14] “We tried a couple different pivots... and then all of a sudden the consumer started to care about organic and we had a little bit of a hangover from looking a little bit more like a family friendly kids brand to where... we need to communicate our flavor strategy and our ingredient strategy because that's core.” — Jeff Richards
• Keep it Simple: Emphasis on clear, concise front-of-pack messaging now wins over both consumers and buyers.
  • [13:29] “What is winning currently is leaning into the things that are most important to your brand and letting those lead on package because you can't say everything on the front all at once.” — Jeff Richards

3. Retail Distribution Strategy

• Landing Early Accounts: Mooala achieved early wins getting into retailers like H-E-B, Whole Foods, Costco, and Wegmans, often before even fully realizing their significance.
  • [16:11] “I did not know what Wegmans was when we got in... like, wait a minute, wait a minute.” — Jeff Richards
• Scaling Nationally: Success in one region (Texas/Southwest) set the stage for expansion into the Northeast and eventually most U.S. states.
• EDLP (Everyday Low Price) & Limited Promotion: Certain retailers—like Wegmans—offer little in-store trial or promotional support, forcing Mooala to rely heavily on packaging appeal and targeted digital marketing.
  • [17:40] “Wegmans has what's called EDLP... you can't do promotions. There's no ads... it's pure competition. You've got your product on shelf and it's the price that it is.” — Jeff Richards
• The Pain of Discontinuation & Small Wins: H-E-B discontinued Mooala early on, unaware the brand was local—a painful but ultimately rectified setback.

4. Pricing Philosophy & Affordability

• Affordable Organic as a Value Prop: Mooala aims to convert conventional plant-based milk drinkers to organic without creating a price barrier.
  • [20:21] “We don't want to be at an unattainable price point... we want to drive customers that are buying non organic almond milk... into organic and not have it be a leap of faith on the price side...” — Jeff Richards
• Price Evolution: Early pricing for Mooala was significantly higher than mainstream brands due to costly cold-chain logistics, especially shipping from California to the Northeast.

5. Innovation and ‘Staying Simple’

• The Trouble with ‘Weird’ Innovations: Early market rewarded plant-based novelties, but lasting success now hinges on relatable, adjacent, and trusted flavors rather than “out there” concepts.
  • [25:39] “If you're not adjacent to something the consumer recognizes, it's not really getting a shot on shelf.” — Jeff Richards
• Keto Milk Miss: Mooala’s brief foray into keto was poorly timed with falling category interest—an example of chasing a fleeting trend vs. staying mission-driven.

6. Fundraising & Financial Strategy

• Challenges of Perishable, Premium Products: Initial Mooala SKUs had short shelf lives and high distribution costs, necessitating early and substantial fundraising.
• Risk of Raising Too Early: Jeff counsels that brands should demonstrate velocity and retail wins before raising—emphasizing caution and responsibility with other people’s money.
  • [28:14] “You can very quickly convince yourself that with more money, I can make this brand successful... That's a dangerous thing to do, is be like, I'm not sure this is working, but I'm this far in my reputation's on the line that I got to keep going...” — Jeff Richards

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• [04:44] “No one was really leaning into real ingredients... well, why isn't anybody doing that with almond milk?” – Jeff Richards
• [09:58] “There was confusion among consumers as to plant based and organic being two distinct attributes.” – Host
• [11:14] “We had a little bit of a hangover from looking a little bit more like a family friendly kids brand to where we're like, no, we need to focus on having organic on the package.” – Jeff Richards
• [17:40] “You're kind of... hope the package is pretty enough, hope people buy it. And we were lucky that it worked out in those early days.” – Jeff Richards
• [20:21] “We don't want to be at an unattainable price point for consumers... and not have it be a leap of faith on the price side or price prohibitive.” – Jeff Richards
• [25:39] “If you're not adjacent to something the consumer recognizes, it's not really getting a shot on shelf because the consumer has proven to be kind of not willing to try the out there stuff.” – Jeff Richards
• [28:14] “Keeping up appearances is a big temptation that you're successful and the short term pleasure of raising a lot of money... is very tempting versus being patient and more in the background and making your business work...” – Jeff Richards
• [31:36] “The 10 year anniversary of [Mooala] was 37 days ago... My history with BevNET goes back to watching Beverage School because that's all I had.” – Jeff Richards

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:04 | Introduction to Jeff Richards & Mooala's competitive context | | 04:44 | Identifying differentiation via real ingredients | | 06:25 | The genesis and consumer importance of banana milk | | 09:58 | Consumer confusion: “plant-based” vs “organic” | | 11:14 | Brand pivots: packaging/positioning evolution | | 13:29 | Clear, less-is-more packaging wins over consumers | | 14:59 | Distribution lessons, regional expansion, key account anecdotes | | 17:40 | How shelf presence and packaging drove trial without promo budgets | | 20:21 | Pricing strategy: making organic attainable | | 25:14 | Trend chasing: the rise and fall of “weird” plant milk innovations | | 26:54 | Fundraising, risk, and unit economics lessons | | 31:36 | Full-circle reflection on Mooala’s growth and influence of BevNET |

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Conclusion

This episode provides a candid, insightful look at what it takes to build a sustainable CPG brand in a crowded, hype-driven category. Jeff Richards credits Mooala's growth to simple but real ingredients, a willingness to adapt branding and packaging, and the savvy to avoid both innovation for its own sake and fundraising before true market validation. His journey offers hard-earned lessons for entrepreneurs wrestling with retail, pricing, or the temptations of chasing the next big trend.

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Transcript

[Jeff Richards]

Foreign.

[Ray Lateef]

Hello, friends, I'm Ray Lateef and you're tuned in to Taste Radio, the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. What if the secret to winning in CPG wasn't chasing the next trend, but staying focused on simple ingredients, a clear brand promise and flawless execution? In this episode, Jeff Richards, the founder and CEO of plant based milk brand Moala, explains how a commitment to organic sourcing, clear positioning and a disciplined retail strategy help transform a scrappy startup into one of the category's fastest growing companies. Even as the plant based industry around it raced to reinvent itself. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I am honored to be

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

sitting down with Jeff Richards, who is

[Ray Lateef]

the founder and CEO of Moala. Jeff, it's great to see you.

[Jeff Richards]

Ray. Thanks for having me on.

[Ray Lateef]

Thanks so much for being with us

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

in this makeshift studio in our Austin Airbnb.

[Ray Lateef]

We're hours away from our Taste Radio

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Austin meetup and you so graciously came down from the Dallas here to Austin.

[Ray Lateef]

Do you come down? Is it, is it a north south thing? East, west?

[Jeff Richards]

I don't know, it's north south. Okay, so straight down I35. It's about a three hour trip. And today I've wound up in the lions den here at HQ for the BevNet.

[Ray Lateef]

Folks, this is BevNet HQ, the temporary

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

HQ as it is. But I hope you like our digs. It's kind of nice over here, isn't it?

[Jeff Richards]

I love them and it is rare you get to be this close and personal with people in their living space.

[Ray Lateef]

So there's a day bed to my

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

left, which is kind of crazy.

[Ray Lateef]

But you know what? It's working.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

It's working.

[Ray Lateef]

King, you've been in the lion's den before with us.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah.

[Ray Lateef]

Do you remember this? I'm going to pull this up right now. BevNET Live Summer 2017. This is when you first or we first met you.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

This is your appearance in the new Beverage Showdown semifinals. This was nine years ago.

[Jeff Richards]

Oh, yeah, we got beat by Rise.

[Ray Lateef]

Well, you know what?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I don't. I wouldn't say you got beat because here you are on stage, a young Turk, as it were, and talking about Moal.

[Ray Lateef]

I remember your presence and your composure.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You were so good, so good on stage and look at you go.

[Jeff Richards]

That's awesome. I have the shirt. I considered wearing it to come full circle, but it's interesting what happens when you turn 40 and some things don't fit the way they used to. But I remember that Was a nerve wracking day.

[Ray Lateef]

Was it?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You didn't seem nervous.

[Jeff Richards]

Oh, man. That was unlike this discussion. That one was pretty well rehearsed. So I practiced the heck out of. Out of that one. Because you only had what, like 60 seconds to.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So for the semifinals, we only give you two minutes.

[Jeff Richards]

Okay.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

And then for the final round, we give you five.

[Ray Lateef]

Okay.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

But two minutes is 120 seconds. It's not a lot of time. Yeah, yeah. And we only give you the ability to show one slide too. So if you have any other key details about the market or things you want to do, you can't really share them. You just got to. You got to wet the palette as best you can.

[Jeff Richards]

That's right. Yeah, yeah, I remember. It was so fast. I'm usually one of my flaws is that if I'm preparing for a presentation or something, I don't make copious notes. I just kind of go ad hoc. But that one, 120 seconds, I remember, I wrote. I wrote down exactly what the script was because people would get dinged. And that was it. You guys gong? It's strict. Gong. You get gong.

[Ray Lateef]

I wish we.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

We dinged people. That'd be nicer. Yeah. But instead we have someone in the back smacking a big piece of steel.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah.

[Ray Lateef]

You were in private equity before you got into this crazy CPG business.

[Jeff Richards]

Yep.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, that's. That's a nice transition.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah. I would say private equity is generous. I was on the investment banking side.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jeff Richards]

On the leverage finance side. So a lot of kind of private debt for private equity buyouts. And I didn't know it, it wasn't this way at the time. But private debt would become very sexy the moment I left. Like, private debt is the hottest thing in the finance world right now, and it's becoming less hot as there's a bubble forming.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

But, well, plant based milk was pretty Damn Hot in 2017, and you were striking while the iron was hot. And Moala, I think, was differentiated in so many different ways, especially because you had a banana milk and you still have a banana milk. And I think it's one of your most iconic or most well known SKUs. That is, it was always the big question of, okay, small brands are doing interesting differentiated things in plant based milk. But there's so many established players out there, so many well financed players out there. Where did you see you could make a real impact? Where did you see that you could stand out with a brand like Moala

[Jeff Richards]

in the early days, separate from the founder story, you know, when I Decided that almond milk was the right place to be. That decision was driven by Silk and Blue diamond, basically creating a billion dollar category overnight by putting almond milk in the fridge. In displacing soy milk sales and making plant based milk a thing that was actually, you know, consumers can wrap their brains around almond milk. Soy milk was always a little bit of a, kind of a polarizing thing. But the consumer really latched on to almond milk when they launched the category and it became this billion dollar business. But I saw the opportunity as there's basically four quadrants in those initial days of flavor, it was sweetened, unsweetened, vanilla flavored or plain. And all the sales were split across those four categories. And no one was really leaning into real ingredients. And by meaning nobody, I meant those two brands. And so I was like, well, you know, I was an investor, very small, meaningless investor in Deep Eddy Vodka, which was launched in Austin. And they had great success using real ingredients in their vodka. So it was sweet tea vodka with real tea. And grapefruit vodka was their home run, but they use real grapefruit. And I was like, well, why isn't anybody doing that with almond milk? There's a homemade element to it that you can incorporate as opposed to just being kind of an industrialized commercial product. And so that was really the idea is, can we bring the real ingredient part of this into the almond milk space? That's going to create differentiation. And the founder fallacy is if I can just get 5% of that billion dollar market, I'll be pretty happy. So that was certainly the idea at the beginning.

[Ray Lateef]

Banana milk.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Going back to banana milk, I think was the product that really sets you apart. In my mind, I hadn't seen anything like this. And I thought there could be a lot of interest and demand among consumers of all ages for a product like this because it has a nutritional or it would seem to have a nutritional benefit that other plant based milks don't have. And this is something you were working on in your kitchen at home, I imagine.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You feel like that was something that could be a product that would help to identify Mala as a challenger brand.

[Jeff Richards]

Sure, yeah. The banana milk has always been really important to us just as a differentiator. But in those early days, banana milk was a thing before oat milk was a thing. So we were making banana milk before Oatly came stateside and started ripping the world apart on the plant based milk side. And the goal was to find for banana milk. I went through a number of different product formulations. Trying to figure out what the answer was. But I wanted an allergen free milk. Again, this is pre oat milk and so it was almond allergen. Soy is an allergen. Dairy, you know, milk is an allergen. And I had started moving out of a lactose intolerance issue that I have. And then I realized, well, being nut free and dairy free would be a pretty great selling point for families. And so banana is what popped into my brain. And yeah, literally in my kitchen, blending bananas, being like, how do I not make this banana water, you know, was a challenge. But yeah, it's, it's basically the same recipe it's been for, for 10 years.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So how much banana puree do you still have on your ceiling?

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, yeah, lots of, lots of lids off the blender when you're jamming through iterations, for sure.

[Ray Lateef]

Hey, Mike. Cold Brew was having another moment with consumers. And High Brew is turning heads with bold innovation. Super exciting, Ray. There's new ready to drink nitro flavors like blueberry and Mexican chocol that are hitting the shelves at Sprouts and Target later this summer. And this fall they're dropping three regenerative organic certified multi serves in 48 ounce bottles. Big size, bigger mission. Part of their higher standard. You can find High Brew at sprouts, H E B Wegmans, Raley's and more Hybru's everywhere. The action is grab yours at high brew coffee.com cold brew for those who do.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I want to go back to what you talked about in terms of your ingredients and transparency and organic. I think these are all things that really do differentiate Moala from other brands on the market. The intentionality of how you communicate what you're about and the hierarchy of needs for consumers of yours.

[Ray Lateef]

Is it as simple as this is

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

who we are, this is what we're about and try our products or you know, what helped unlock the value that Moala was offering to consumers? What really gave them confidence that this is going to be a brand for them and their families.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, CPG is a weird world and you need so many different things to go right and make sense and come together at the same time for the consumer to demand the product. And, you know, you can push the product on customers as much you want, you can tell them about it, you can scream at them and. But if they're ultimately not demanding the product, then you know, you've got a problem. And so we've been, you know, since day one, we were really early to organic and the consumer didn't care. It was good enough to be plant based. And everybody's like, well, this isn't that just organic? The understanding in the early days of what organic was wasn't in our favor.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

There was confusion among consumers as to plant based and organic being two distinct attributes.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, I think the general perception was, oh, it's plant based, that means it's already organic. It was so early that plant based was already such an incremental improvement to people from a dairy milk that like, oh, I have to think about organic now as well. Like, so just I think one step too far for the consumer who was just finding plant based milk for the first time, like, oh, it also needs to be organic, was a little bit of a just. It took education, it took time. And so only until about really three years ago, organic just wasn't a core component of the plant based milk market. And given how early we were to the category, we were great at picking up distribution. I always say, if you could put one thing on my tombstone, it would be that Jeff earned distribution he didn't deserve, and he held on to distribution he didn't deserve. And so we kind of went through a couple different phases with the brand. If you look at our initial packaging, it was a very farm fresh flavor forward, organic forward package. And we got this great distribution but the velocities weren't there. And so we tried a couple different pivots, one of which was taking the brand in a much more kid friendly direction and de emphasized organic. And then all of a sudden the consumer started to care about organic and we had a little bit of a hangover from looking a little bit more like a family friendly kids brand to where we're like, no, we need to focus on having organic on the package. We need to communicate our flavor strategy and our ingredient strategy because that's core. In our DNA, we've always used awesome ingredients like bananas, honey, real vanilla beans. And that wasn't being communicated on the label. And so I think simplifying and say we're organic, this is what we use, this is where it comes from, made the consumer more willing to try it and take it off the shelf. And then it's always tasted great. And so when we were actually getting people to try the product because it looks pretty and resonates with the consumer, that has proved to be one of our most important changes is communicating that simplicity in the organic part of, of the brand.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

When you realize something is off, do you feel like you need to make that change quickly or do you have to Be cautious and pretty thoughtful about how you're going to roll out those changes.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, I would say we've embraced a strategy of incrementality. You know, Adam Batchelor, who's our president and coo, brings a little bit more of a dynamic look at things where I'm kind of like a. If it's 90% there, let's move on. I've had to develop that just as a through the founding days and just like at some point you gotta call things done and move on. And it's been really good to have different voices in the room to where we have focused on different from what my strategy has been historically. Just making things a little bit better. Always making things a little bit better. Making things a little bit better. And so specifically with label, when organic became more important, we made organic a little bit bigger. It was before the final state that we're in today. But we think it's important to make sure you're continuing to improve. Even if you got a product that at one point you thought was good enough, taking another look at it and making sure you're updating and keeping things fresh and never settling is really important to us. The category has evolved in which there's a push for more simplistic packaging. The category used to be full of just words. Right. To my point earlier, it was this brand of almond milk. There's a lot of words to potentially communicate on the package. When you're talking about plant based milk

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

and we've seen it, there's a lot of complicated messaging, particularly within the plant based milk category, which is strange because you want less. As a consumer, speaking for myself, if I see less on, on the front of pack, I feel like I'm getting more.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, in a weird way, absolutely.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jeff Richards]

That seems to be the, the way of the world currently. And so you have to pick what you're going to communicate. You can communicate unsweetened, sweetened, vanilla, chocolate, almond milk, oat milk. And on top of that, is it organic? What is your brand name? How much is in container? Or you can have a picture on there. So I think we see this when we were working on French packaging for the Canadian market. It's like, dude, this is just a paragraph on the front. So many descriptors. And so I think you just have to pick and choose. Like everything can't be big and it's all seems equally important to the customer. And so everything can't be big and important. But I think what is winning currently is leaning into the things that are Most important to your brand and letting those lead on package because you can't say everything on the front all at once.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And I think retail buyers want to see something that is differentiated as well, whether it's a brand like Moala that has a flavor skew like banana or an almond milk that has four ingredients. And I think that probably helped unlock a lot of the distribution that you said you hadn't earned, but really you did and gotten retail buyers excited about putting your brand on shelf. But making that jump from regional distribution to national distribution seems like a pretty straightforward process. But is anything but. How do you go about taking your brand or how did you go about taking Moala from where we are now in the Southwest to one that could be sold anywhere in the United States?

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, the distribution part has been funny. So we initially made our products in Southern California and all of the distribution. So initially we got into H E B, the Whole Foods Central Market and Costco. All that in Texas or the Southwest. And with perishable distribution and with expensive products like organic all and milk, it needs to work pretty fast and work meaning, like you need to get some momentum because it's expensive and you need to raise money. It's really hard not to raise money when you're doing a perishable product. And so after that initial phase of distribution, where we at least prove that in Texas we were going to earn distribution, the next wave was the Northeast. And so we were shipping product from SoCal by train because it was a little bit cheaper. Even though it took two weeks up

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

to the Northeast in refrigerated cars.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, it was. And it took a long time, but you'd save, you know, a grand on or whatever on. On the shipment by going by rail. And so, you know, I had to learn the Northeast market pretty quick. This is how naive I was in 2016, 2017. I did not know what Wegmans was when we got in. I didn't know what it was. And like, wait a minute, wait a

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

minute, wait a minute.

[Ray Lateef]

You said when we got in.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So you got into a retail chain and you didn't know what the retail chain was.

[Jeff Richards]

Wegmans was interested in authorized banana milk. And I got emailed by unify to get set up in Wegmans.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

And I see.

[Jeff Richards]

I'm sure I'd heard the name. I should know. Like that's the HEB of the Northeast.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Jeff Richards]

It's like, you should know what Wegmans is. So we had to pretty quickly figure out a number of things. Most of all the cost component of it. But once Wegmans moved then all of a sudden the northeast was unlocked. And then from there it's been, you know, we're in every state except maybe North Dakota. I think getting that name brand it really helped to get like Heb on board early. It really helped get Wegmans on board early. Man, Costco was super early. Same with, with Whole Foods and so you have enough of those logos, you know on a, on a deck and plant based milk was so hot that it was never easy. But getting those early wins with the big names gave that scarcity it girl sor feeling when we would pitch to retailers.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

But even if you get into those stores, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to sell in those stores. And especially again for a brand that didn't, I'm making this assumption but probably didn't have a lot of marketing dollars, didn't have a lot of money to go spend on brokers and merchandisers to help your brand stand out on shelf. So how do you make sure that you're driving trial and awareness at a place like Wegmans where probably at the time they had 150 stores or maybe 300 stores, something like that. Right around 100, 100 stores. Obviously you're not traveling up there and spending two weeks at a time selling the products. So how do you get the retail buyers not just interested in selling your brand but helping them turn while on shelf?

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, it's hard. So Wegmans has what's called EDLP strategy which means everyday low price. And so they expect you to put all of your, your funding into providing them with the best possible everyday price. So you can't do promotions. There's no ads at the time there was not online advertising. So you're kind of, it is pure competition. You've got your product on shelf and it's the price that it is. You don't get a lot of in store trial. And so certainly social media, I mean this is back when you could do very specific targeting, you know, with Facebook and Instagram that you can't do anymore, you know, by demographic, by age and down to putting a geofence around independent stores. So that was a lot of what we did just to get the word out there. But honestly it was just kind of like a hope the package is pretty enough, hope people buy it. And we were lucky that it worked out in those early days. Part of just the joys of starting a brand is it's not going to work everywhere. I mean we would get discontinued out of places. H E B wasn't aware that we were local and small and within 3 months on shelf we got discontinued out of HEB. Talk about a gut punch when your brand is your home market year old. And then we connected with the buyer and he's like, I didn't realize you were. He was, I think he was new to the desk. He's like, I didn't realize you were local news. So he put us back in. It's like things like that that are just so gut wrenching for a brand, it's tough. You can't promote the way you want to, you can't market the way you want to. There is certainly this element of like, man. I just hope it works on shelf and I hope that what we executed on the packaging side is pretty enough to drive trial and I hope the flavor is good enough that they come back and buy it. Especially in dairy, it's hard. You don't get secondary displays. You can't go put a pallet of milk on the floor to grab people's attention. You got your slot on the shelf and you compete.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

This is why I wanted to spend so much time on your communication and marketing strategy as it relates to your label and design strategy. Because I think, and it feels like Moala does sell itself a lot through its packaging. Pretty packaging aside, though, I think the other big part of it is what we talked about earlier in terms of ingredients and transparency and the organic factor as well. These are all things that resonate with modern consumers. Price is another part of it though. We talked about some of the biggest brands in the industry and they can discount on price. They can give an everyday low price that's just beating you by a number of dollars, I imagine. How do you think about pricing strategy and how have you adjusted price to meet more consumers and to reach those households that can't necessarily afford the eight dollar price point that a lot of brands will start out at, especially in this space.

[Jeff Richards]

Pricing's always been interesting. The thesis behind Muala, when we started it was affordable organic and it still is. We don't want to be at an unattainable price point for consumers. We want to drive customers that are buying non organic almond milk or plant based milk or whatever into organic and not have it be a leap of faith on the price side or price prohibitive.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

What was the initial price of moala? Say a 48 ounce bottle of your almond or banana milk?

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, well, when we were manufacturing in SoCal and shipping to the Northeast, it was probably 699.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jeff Richards]

Which today sounds right. I mean, we're talking 2017, but back in 2017, that was crazy.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, that's true.

[Jeff Richards]

It was pretty crazy high. And so, yeah, adjusted for inflation, that would probably be like a $10, you know, price point or something today. Meanwhile, back then pre Covid, you're talking a half gallon of silk or blue diamond, you know, had a two dollar. It was two dollars and something.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Jeff Richards]

That's just wild.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Jeff Richards]

But the super premium brands that were in the space were 7.99, you know, and so though it's expensive, the pitch to retailers would be we're more affordable and the organic will help convert consumers that are buying this less expensive product into this upsell. And, you know, that's kind of been part of the pitch for a better part of 10 years.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

When you walk into that room and start talking to a retail buyer, does the analytical matter more than the potential of what you can do? If you're pulling from data research, market research firms, does that make a bigger impact in the retail buyer's eyes than the potential for this to bring incremental value to their stores?

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, it depended on how good the data was, you know, like.

[Ray Lateef]

Well, I mean, did they scrutinize the data? Do they scrutinize where it's sourced from?

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, I would say meetings are interesting in that you can make data look good. You know, you guys are right in the heat of this with brands pitching for stories or whatever, but you can make data look good if you spend enough time cutting it the way you want to. Right. And so, you know, nine out of ten meetings a buyer has, the brand they're talking to is doing amazing in the brand's eyes and wants to talk about all the positive things. So for us, it was always about and continues to be about pitching the potential. But also, especially now, Muala has quietly become, no matter how you look at it past four weeks, 12, 24, 52 weeks, the number one growing Velocity brand by a very large margin in plant based milk. And so that's a different story than when you have zero distribution in the Southeast and you're talking about bringing incrementality and they don't care how you're doing in SoCal or in Texas, it's like, well, what about my market? And so, no, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But like, if you've got good numbers, you show the good numbers. That's just the easiest way to go with it. And if you don't then you lean more into what the hopes and dreams could be and avoid the numbers.

[Ray Lateef]

I think it's also about how you

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

interpret the data you mentioned. Okay, yeah, this is doing killer business in SoCal, but what does that mean for Miami, right? I mean, how does, how do the two relate?

[Jeff Richards]

The way we innovated early on is much different than the way we innovate today. You know, we launched a keto milk item in 2020 in the boredom of

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

COVID when you and a million other brands.

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're talking about degrees of innovation, keto milk is out there. That's like for a brand that had organic almond milk and organic banana milk, it was a trend play. And keto milk died. I should say keto died. Like the month we launched keto Milk, it was just the worst timing ever. But a well documented situation in the industry is what's next? What do you have next that's coming? What's going to shock us? What's going to awe us? And you know, you guys make a living on that, right? And so there was that pressure, but the pressure was to be like, really, what is the next out there thing? It was like, oh, it was almond milk, then it was oat milk. Oat milk is the next thing. And then it was like, what's coming next? And the answer is nothing's really come next. Right. You've had other things kind of swell and fall. You've had almonds swell and fall, you've had soy and coconut. But what we've seen is like that kind of appetite for tremendous change type innovation within plant based milk is no longer there on the retail side. You know, you asked about how we got distribution so early. If you had something that had the word milk after it. And it was different, it was getting a shot in stores, you know, for probably the better part of six or seven years. It just, that was the way it was. The more different weird it was, the more excited people were to put it in. And the reality is with banana milk being an exception, the weird stuff doesn't work. I mean, I go back to soy milk as the example. Soy milk has always struggled because it has a name problem. It has a, you know, there's a negative connotation with soy. So it's the same situation with, I'm not going to call it any other bases specifically, but like grass milk, that's neat. But does that sound good?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jeff Richards]

And so I think a lot of what is launched, a lot of things that did launch and die, I mean there's tons of brands entering and leaving this space every year and the weird stuff is not getting trusted as much anymore. And so if you're not adjacent to something that the consumer recognizes, it's not really getting a shot on shelf because the consumer has proven to be kind of not willing to try the out there stuff.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I think it's not just the consumer, I think it's the buyer, the distributor, the investor. There's only so far you can go with innovation and if you go too far, people are going to get confused or it's going to take a lot of consumer education or it's going to take trial after trial to trial before people actually get it. And so I think when you said yeah, you can be really weird but that's not going to move the needle for you is very true. And I think that's true for any category, not just plant based milk. I think every entrepreneur I've ever spoken with has said that they love to create things, they love innovation, they love to come up with new ideas for their brands. I've only heard from maybe two that said they love fundraising, they love raising money, which especially for an early stage entrepreneur is the most daunting part of the business. But Moala has raised quite a bit of money. Your seed round was $5 million.

[Jeff Richards]

Oh, I have to even go back and look. Yeah, it's like it's been a while but yeah, I mean I think the seed round, when you add in all the different little convertible notes and things that we did is probably, yeah, five million bucks it sounds right.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I mean it's pretty significant. And you've again raised several million more since. How do you know how much money you need to raise? How do you know when to raise money? How do you ask for money?

[Jeff Richards]

Yeah, I would do a lot of things differently if I could start over, that's for sure. Like what I lived in. You know, I say that it's an easy thing to say, but I lived in a world where you could not get shelf stable today. It's easy to launch, relatively easy. Launch a plant based float brand. Nothing's easy. Don't do it. Plant based milk is hard. Don't enter the space. But everything was perishable. It had like 120 day shelf life max at the beginning, which is just financial suicide. It was expensive packaging, it had to be kept cold. I was trying my darndest to get Tetra Pack co packers to make my product, but they were too busy. The market was so new and so hot. We were Just too small and insignificant to get time on anybody's calendar. And so the reality was I was either not going to launch Moala or I was going to launch it in a very expensive packaging. Coming out of California, keeping it cold and having things expire, almost guaranteed to expire, given the short shelf life. And so that decision meant I was going to raise money. It was too expensive, especially we got all those retailers on the east coast. You know, we were losing money on every bottle we sold. And it's like, either we do that or we don't start the brand. I wasn't confident bringing in other people's money until I knew that we were going to be capable of getting on shelf with retailers. That mattered. And so, I mean, I, I incubated Moala for five or six years. It started in 2011, was when I first formed the LLC. And it was kind of in research mode and proof of concept mode for five or six years. And so I think if you're able to win in a retailer meeting, you're able to get on shelf and you're able to show some semblance of life, of velocity, then that's probably the right time to think about raising money. Otherwise, it just depends on your risk appetite, man. The sooner you bring in money, the sooner you're burning relationships, the sooner you're accountable to somebody else. And that's why I think I was talking about high margin categories. It's like the longer you can control your destiny, the better off you are burning your resources. I've got a hundred friends and family in my cap table. Would I recommend that to someone else? Depends on your risk appetite. I put all my financial and personal eggs in one basket and that's costly. That's quite an investment. And so even if you're taking other people's money and it's not yours, you're still investing your relationships and your reputation, right? And so you can very quickly convince yourself that with more money, I can make this brand successful. It's not right now, the velocities aren't there right now, but I just need to raise some money and then it'll be successful. You spend so much time and energy on your brand that you become convinced that it's worth pursuing. And not talking about Mueller specifically, but I think many founders go through an inflection point where they're not sure their brand is working, but they're going to go raise money anyway. That's a dangerous thing to do, is be like, I'm not sure this is working, but I'm this far in my reputation's on the line that I got to keep going. And lying and lying is the wrong word. But I think keeping up appearances is a big temptation that you're successful and the short term pleasure of raising a lot of money and being validated is very tempting versus being patient and more in the background and making your business work on a unit economics, velocity and distribution standpoint before you start layering in a lot of relationship driven risk. It was fun when money was easy and plant based was all the rage, you know, from 2016 to 2020. And then we had a the great reckoning of plant based that we've experienced and then to be where we are now, where we're really finally connecting, organic had to be important. The products always tasted amazing and now we're connecting with brand messaging for the first time at a price that works and that's a blast, man. Like finally we have all these different things lining up and we're not guaranteed tomorrow. But man, I'm having a blast right now and so at some point am I going to have to help monetize? Yeah. Can I just enjoy what I'm doing for a little bit also? Yeah, I'd like that. So.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, I mean that's the most important part of being an entrepreneur is enjoying the journey and being happy being your own boss. Even if you are beholden to investors or whomever you're an employees who are relying on you and their families are relying on you to make sure that this engine keeps going. So I think that enjoying the moment and enjoying the process is such a big part of it and the fact that you're having a blast makes it that much better. We're really coming full circle here because I'm still thinking back to 2017 and seeing you on stage and bright eyed and bushy tailed and excited about the future of the brand and getting to a place right now where you are for all intents and purposes successful. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic.

[Jeff Richards]

I appreciate that. And coming full circle and, and being here talking with you guys today is. Is awesome. The 10 year anniversary of well was 37 days ago and so it's hard to believe but yeah, it's been beverage school. My history with bed goes back to watching beverage school because that's all I had. Yeah, building your beverage empire was a book on selling energy drinks in the sea stores and that's the closest thing I got to an education on how to sell almond milk into grocery retail. Except for beverage school. So appreciate the work. You guys always do.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I am really, really happy to hear that because if we can be a small part of your success and the fact that consumers are getting better products on shelf because of beverage, cool. I think we did our job and I'm really happy to hear that.

[Jeff Richards]

Nailed it.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, Jeff, this has been great. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks for coming down from Dallas and making this trip to Austin. I am just thrilled for you and your team. I'm really, really excited to stay in touch and see where this all goes.

[Jeff Richards]

Awesome. Likewise. Thanks, Ray.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Thank you.

[Ray Lateef]

That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Kratchi, our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smerlinsky, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcast app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is Bevnett Tastradio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to askteradio.com on behalf of the entire, entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time.