Taste Radio

Back in the Big Apple for the third time in less than a month, the BevNET team rallied once more, this time to cover the 2016 Summer Fancy Food Show. Amid the vast halls of the Jacob Javits Center, the specialty food convention featured a broad and diverse range of beverage exhibitors at the event, including many based in metro New York. In this podcast, we examine how the Summer Fancy Food Show h...

After a whirlwind eight days in which BevNET produced three conferences, we've taken some much needed time to sit down and reflect. Beginning in Brooklyn, where BevNET sister sites Brewbound and Project NOSH held business conferences focused on the business of craft beer and natural packaged foods, the team traveled uptown to Manhattan for BevNET Live Summer 2016, a three-day event that attracted...

The following podcast features a captivating discussion with Fred Hart, the creative director at Interact, a Boulder-based branding and design firm. Hart offers his take on cutting edge design trends and spoke about a recent visit to Mexico City where he found inspiration for new methods of design and storytelling. He also shares an engrossing account of Interact's work and packaging and label ref...

In Episode 10 of the BevNET Podcast, we sit down with Justin Prochnow, a partner at Greenberg Traurig, to discuss current legal and regulatory issues affecting the beverage industry. We spoke with Prochnow, an expert in legal requirements for labeling, about changes to the Nutrition Facts panel, which were revealed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May. Prochnow also discussed the...

Beverage entrepreneurs hear it all the time: "how is your brand differentiated from what's currently available on the market?" It's often distributors, retailers and investors that are asking the question, and most brand owners answer with claims about enhanced flavor, function or health benefits as compared to competing brands. Sometimes, entrepreneurs will say that their brand is "creating a new...

We're just a few days away from BevNET Live Summer 2016, and with it the eleventh edition of the conference's signature beverage brand competition, the New Beverage Showdown. The competition will feature 15 early-stage entrepreneurs who will take the main stage to present their brands and business plans to a panel of expert judges for a chance at a $10,000 grand prize. In this podcast, we look bac...

The team had a chance to evaluate some products with beverage industry investor, advisor, board member and raconteur Ken Sadowsky when dropped by the BevNET Podcast studio for an interview recently. Sadowsky has had a front-row view of the growth of groundbreaking brands like Vitaminwater and Vita Coco, joined BevNET's Jeffrey Klineman and Jon Landis to talk about the strategic moves taken by succ...

In this edition of the BevNET Podcast, Chris Furnari, the editor of Brewbound, joins us to discuss his takeaways from the massive, 14,000-attendee Craft Brewers Conference and Brew Expo America, including some of the factors that are enabling massive growth in the craft beer category. We also discuss the increasing amount of merger and acquisition activity in the space, the prospect of 10,000 U.S....

In this edition of the BevNET Podcast, we discuss the swelling ranks of premium water brands and efforts by marketers to stand out from the pack. We also examine why a growing number of beverage entrepreneurs are bypassing co-packers and opting to build their own production facilities.

In this podcast, BevNET CEO John Craven interviews Doug Evans, the founder and CEO of Juicero, a new high-tech countertop juicing machine. Recorded in Calabasas, Calif., Evans discusses the development of Juicero, its introduction to the market and how it fits into the expanding landscape for cold-pressed juice. He also responds to criticism about the unit's price tag ($700) and talks about his lo...

Every week we receive samples of new drinks sent to us from a wide variety of beverage companies, ranging from Red Bull to upstart cold-pressed juice shops. Most of the products are loaded into a cooler in the front of the office and available to everyone. While some drinks fly off the shelf, others sit around for weeks on end. In this podcast, we discuss why this happens and attempt to delineate...

In this edition of the BevNET podcast, BevNET CEO John Craven sits down with Alex Matthews, the co-founder and CEO of Juice Served Here, a fast-growing cold-pressed juice chain based in Los Angeles. Founded in 2013, Juice Served Here launched 11 new locations in 2015 and plans to add three more this summer. As quickly as the company is expanding, Matthews and Juice Served Here executives recently...

Discussing a growing trend in repurposing food waste, the pitfalls of cause-based marketing, a surging nut milk category and sugar as "public enemy number one."