Ready To Drink Podcast

Send us Fan Mail "I wake up every day and I don't know what to say." That's Joe Gerrity , Founder & CEO of Crescent Canna  - talking about a hemp beverage industry that could legally cease to exist by November 12, without a single vote in Congress. Not a hearing. Not a debate. Not a vote. A definition change buried in unrelated legislation and an entire category with jobs,...

Send us Fan Mail Komal Devjani, Co-Founder at Revya AI, joins the show to break down the back office problem most CPG and beverage founders never look at until it costs them real money: deductions. Revya builds automated deduction recovery and trade spend planning tools for CPG brands, from emerging labels to companies doing over $100 million a year. In this episode Komal explains what a deduction...

Send us Fan Mail Emily Griffen, Co-Founder and CEO of Brewt's, on how the brand actually started: Bloody Mary mix made at pool parties in LA, a hundred cases bottled in her parents' garage in Grand Rapids, a self-made label, a Vistaprint banner, and a sold-out trade show that led to a distributor deal twenty days later. Full episode with Emily Griffen and Courtney Clark on the Ready To D...

Send us Fan Mail Jason Neri is the founder of Northern Courage and Accord Stone Irish Whiskey. He spent two decades moving through wine, beer and spirits before launching his own blended Irish whiskey, a brand built on transparency, slow proofing and a refusal to add caramel coloring. In this episode Jason breaks down why he built Accord Stone to pull bourbon and scotch drinkers into the Irish whi...

Send us Fan Mail Emily Griffen, Co-Founder and CEO of Brewt's, and Courtney Clark, VP of Sales at Brewt's, join Nate Fochtman on the Ready To Drink Podcast for a conversation that covers what it actually takes to build a premium mixer brand from scratch inside one of the most overlooked and misunderstood sections in grocery retail. Emily started Brewt's in 2016 out of an apartment i...

Send us Fan Mail Dwayne Carson is the Founder & Principal at Carson Consulting and one of the few people working the hemp beverage issue from inside Washington every single day. He sits three blocks from the Capitol. He spent more than a decade on Capitol Hill, moved through healthcare, then spent years at the wholesale level of wine and spirits before turning his full attention to the federal...

Send us Fan Mail Three craft beer veterans explain why hemp derived THC beverages are the most important shift hospitality has seen since the craft beer boom, and why a federal ban could gut the industry by the end of the year. In this episode of the Ready To Drink Podcast, Nate Fochtman sits down with Chris Frosaker, founder of Hi-Wire Brewing and owner of Joyful Noise Listening Lounge, and Andre...

Send us Fan Mail Nate Fochtman sits down with Joe Garrity, Co-Founder and CEO, and Joshua Katzenstein, Chief Revenue Officer of Crescent Canna and Crescent 9 THC Seltzer - one of the fastest-growing hemp beverage brands in the country, now sold in 20 states. What started as a scrappy CBD startup in New Orleans in 2019 became a brewery, a 40-person operation, and the number one brand in Nielsen dat...

Send us Fan Mail Alexander Choi, Co-Founder and CEO of Perfectly Dosed, joins Nate Fochtman on the Ready To Drink Podcast to break down the ingredient infrastructure powering the hemp beverage industry. From a class project at the University of Chicago to supplying emulsions for hundreds of breweries across the US, Choi walks through the full origin story of Perfectly Dosed, the science of cannabi...

Send us Fan Mail Shauna Barnes is the founding partner of Barnes Beverage Group, a full-service national law firm built exclusively for the beverage industry. She started in craft beer, built the legal department at Dogfish Head during its fastest growth years, and now runs a 15-person firm alongside her husband Brandon helping brands navigate formation, distribution agreements, labeling, trademar...

Send us Fan Mail Ben Zumsteg is the founder and CEO of Disco Fizz , a sparkling functional non-alcoholic beverage built for the dance floor. A first-time CPG founder with 15 years of brand strategy experience behind him - working with clients like L'Oreal, Ralph Lauren and Four Seasons - Ben stopped drinking on New Year's Day 2023 and spotted a gap nobody was filling: the LGBTQ+ communit...

Send us Fan Mail Nate Fochtman sits down with Madicyn Marinaro, Executive Director and Principal Researcher of the Cannabis Council for Advertising Transparency (CCAT), for a raw and unscripted conversation on one of the most underreported forces shaping the cannabis and hemp beverage industry: structural disinformation. Madicyn breaks down how Reefer Madness-era propaganda built the algorithmic a...

Send us Fan Mail Madicyn Marinaro, Executive Director and Principal Researcher at the Cannabis Council for Advertising Transparency (CCAT), breaks down one of the most overlooked structural problems in cannabis policy: the research funding gap. Nearly 75% of $1 billion in cannabis research funding goes toward studying harm, not benefit and when benefit research is attempted, federal law restricts...

Send us Fan Mail Jay Ashton is the CEO and co-founder of Last Rep, an athletic recovery cocktail (ARC) built for the gym crowd, the run club, the jiu-jitsu mat and everywhere else people are moving their bodies and trying to do it right. Last Rep is not a get-high-in-a-can product. It is six calories, zero sugar, CBG, ashwagandha, L-theanine, electrolytes and a clean ingredient profile designed to...

Send us Fan Mail Leigh Gall is the co-founder of Cannabis Beverage Certification and host of The Enlightened Buzz on YouTube, the leading education channel for THC beverages. She came up at Boston Beer, spent years in national accounts and distributor training, got sober, and then helped build the first professional certification program for hemp infusion in the beverage industry. This is her stor...

Send us Fan Mail Performance coach, Cannabis Beverage Certified co-founder,and Women in Hemp co-leader Leigh Gall joins Ready To Drink Podcast host Nate Fochtman to talk about what actually keeps founders moving in a market this hard to build in.  Passion. Intention. Conviction.  Leigh's work sits at the intersection of behavioral science, Traumatic Intelligence, and beverage industry leaders...

Send us Fan Mail Mike Waskewich spent 23 years in the Army, retired as a Sergeant Major and then built two things the adult beverage industry didn't know it needed: The Bar Book, a Spotify-style flavor matching app for spirits, beer, cocktails, NA and THC beverages and CRAFT, a nonprofit coalition connecting veteran-owned beverage brands with buyers, distributors and content creators across t...

Send us Fan Mail The drink doesn't make the memory. The moment does. Retired U.S. Army Sergeant Major and The Bar Book co-founder Mike Waskewich Jr drops something worth sitting with in our upcoming episode - your favorite beverage isn't about what's in the glass. It's about who's around it. Full episode dropping soon. Check out TheBarBook.app & SupportCraft.org (A nat...

Send us Fan Mail Chris Fontes , founder of High Spirits , breaks down why the hemp beverage space is still a team sport and why operators who treat it like a competition are hurting everyone, including themselves. Right now the category is still fighting to survive. That changes everything about how you have to show up. Ready To Drink | B2B media for the adult beverage industry Check out DrinkHigh...

Send us Fan Mail The 2008 housing crash didn't end JR Heaps' career - it started one. JR was doing historic restoration and timber frame design-build work when his boss pulled him aside and basically said: the projects are drying up, you might want to chase that beer thing. So he did. He built his own version of the Brutus 10 homebrew system - pumps, temperature controllers, a 10-gallon...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Ready To Drink Podcast , Nate Fochtman sits down with Kristin and Eric Rogers, the husband-and-wife founders who built, sold, and recently bought back their cannabis beverage empire, LEVIA . Transitioning from careers as "recovering marketers" for massive blue-chip brands like AT&T and Home Depot, the duo discusses the grit required to move fro...

Send us Fan Mail In this Quick Sips from tomorrow's episode of the Ready To Drink Podcast , LEVIA co-founders Eric and Kristin Rogers share the incredible "boomerang" story of their brand. From spotting a gap in the market for zero-sugar, zero-calorie cannabis seltzers in 2017 to a major acquisition by Ayr Wellness and their recent move to buy the brand back - this is a masterclass...

Send us Fan Mail Pete Olander, founder of Happie Beverages, sits down to discuss the massive gap between what the people want and what politicians are doing. With an 84% approval rating for THC beverages among adults, the data is clear - the "cannabis-curious" market is becoming the mainstream market. Pete breaks down why he’s staying the course despite the political noise and why the fu...

Send us Fan Mail It’s not just about what’s in the glass, it’s about how you feel the next morning. Dylan & Brandon, Co-founders of Goodmellow sits down with the Ready To Drink Podcast to discuss the evolving culture of hemp beverages. From coffee shops to late-night hangouts, the experience of social drinking is changing. It’s no longer about "large doses" of alcohol; it’s about int...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Ready To Drink Podcast, Nate sits down with Jack Peat, the entrepreneurial force behind Abstrax Tech and Abstrax Hops. Jack shares his journey from selling weed at 15 to running a massive swimming pool automation business (including a wild story about a billionaire at the Ritz Carlton) and finally co-founding one of the most advanced terpene and flavor extra...