Building on post-NAMA momentum, Launch Hydrate delivers fresh revenue for convenience services operators

It uses real fruit juice and vegetable juice for flavoring. And it has performance elements such as more electrolytes than your traditional isotonic, all five essential electrolytes. So not just sodium, like a lot of the isotonic products out there, but it has potassium and calcium and magnesium as well. Probably the most novel thing about it is that it utilizes a natural nootropic called Cognizin, which has been clinically shown to improve focus, reaction time, and general cognitive health.

Josh Rosenberg: One thing I want to add about Perfect Game. We didn’t bring it to Perfect Game. Perfect Game came to us and one of our founding partners, who’s a serial beverage entrepreneur. He sold tea brand to Nestle. He just recently, actually, his second major brand, and he’s got a laundry list of successful non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverage brands that he’s put to market that you see on your shelves every day. One of our partners, David Smith. I’ve got 30 years of experience between Coca-Cola and launching brands, building brands, being an operator… he has as well.

They [Perfect Game] came to us and said, “We don’t like what we see in the market. Our parents, our consumers, don’t like what they bring and what we sell in our concessions. We need a better product. We want you to build it for us.” They’re actually in ownership with us in this brand. They’re invested. In return, they gave us concession rights, and they said, “Build us a brand that matters, a better-for-you product.” And we built it for Perfect Game. We didn’t have a clue what we were going to do with it beyond that. And here we are two years later, selling it across the country with every Perfect Game venue. Just last year, we had an Arizona Diamondbacks Stadium controlling the entire venue on every digital board. Think about that for a startup.

And now this year, we’re rolling it out across the workplace, the convenience services channel, where we’re being introduced through Vistar. We just captured one of the big three, where we’re going to launch with 1600 micro markets. And we have up to 10 USG partners. And we’re launching a USG program. We expect to go win big. And now this brand’s got momentum. And we’ll be a seven-figure brand in under three years with momentum behind us. This is something that clean-label, better-for-you product. It’s the trend of today’s consumer.

We know we’ve got a great brand. Consumers at the taste test, they walk up, they say, “Where’s your fruit punch?” It’s right there. But it’s clear. That’s because it doesn’t have additives. You’ve grown up used to seeing that red dye, but it looks like it’s a clear beverage or a slightly tinted beverage because of the fruit juices. And then they try it, and they buy it. And once we have them, we have them hooked. The trial turns into consumption. The consumption turns into velocity. And our operators, once they have it, they stick with us, and they expand it.

Thirty years of doing this, Bob, the number of brands that I saw come and go at Coca-Cola, I can’t be more excited about a brand because I’ve seen them succeed. I put brands out at Coca-Cola. It was my job to build brands in this channel for 18, well, 10 of my 18 years. I led it nationally. I had a lot of failures. I had a lot of successes, some successes. I put this one right up there with it.

Bob Tullio: In your words, Dillon, why do you think this is going to resonate in the workplace?

Dillon Houstoun: Yeah, I think it’s the same reason we’re seeing it resonate within the youth-sports community. It’s clean label, no artificial dyes or colors, lower sugar, but still real sugar, and then the performance element. Got a time sensitivity within the workplace. You can drink one of them and get the same hydration component as drinking five Gatorades, as well as the cognitive enhancement.

Bob Tullio: Wow, that’s fantastic. And it tastes good?

Dillon Houstoun: And it tastes delicious, yes.

Bob Tullio: OK, good. That’s good too.

Dillon Houstoun: On the taste point, I would say is that it tastes good with a younger audience, which is more critical of taste than an older audience. If you can succeed with 9- and 10-year-olds from a taste perspective, it overperforms on taste from some of the other performance-minded products that are out there.

Bob Tullio: Because they tend to be pickier by taste, huh?

Dillon Houstoun: Exactly.

Bob Tullio: That’s great. What are the top flavors?

Dillon Houstoun: Strawberry Lemon, probably the most unique of our flavor profiles. It’s got like a good amount of sweet balance up front with a lemon sort of kick sour on the on the back end. Super refreshing outperforms the other three SKUs, followed by fruit punch, which is behind strawberry lemon, then tropical. And then lastly, orange.

Bob Tullio: Dillon, tell us about the NAMA Show itself. How did that work out for Launch Hydrate?

Dillon Houstoun: Yeah, the NAMA Show went really well. We did the sponsored sampling, where we handed out product one of the days. Got really good exposure from that as well as some wonderful feedback. Really helped drive, I think, traffic to our booth as well as when people got there, they were already familiar with the product.

Bob Tullio: So, there’s a lot of operator interest after the show?

Dillon Houstoun: Yeah, a lot of operator interest after the show. You know, we’ve got probably a lead list in the hundreds. After the show, we are finalizing our onboarding process with Vistar, which will be done this month, and sending product to all of — opening up all of their DCs, which will really enable us to follow up on that lead list. We plan on doing that quite aggressively.

Bob Tullio: That’s great. So, distribution is now covered. That was obviously very important. Talk to us about the new product coming out in September.

Dillon Houstoun: Yeah, we’ve taken our ready-to-drink product, which has been in the market now for about 18 months, and have been working on developing a made-to-drink stick-pack version of it.