Introducing a New Product by Reframing Its Name With Jarrett McGovern, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of RISE Brewing Co.
Jarrett McGovern is the Chief Creative Officer and Co-founder of RISE Brewing Co., which started in the kitchen of his Manhattan Apartment. Founded in 2014, Jarrett’s mission was to create the best-tasting organic products on the planet and make them available to everyone. The brand has grown into a thriving company, and its beverages, including all-organic nitro cold brew coffee, tea, and organic oat milk, can be found in major grocery chains. RISE has been recognized in publications, including People, The New York Times, and Forbes, and has won many awards since its inception.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Jarrett McGovern details why he and his two childhood friends started RISE Brewing Co.
Why the brand struggled to get its products on store shelves after it launched
How the use of nitrogen benefits those who enjoy iced coffee
Jarrett describes RISE’s culture of experimentation and innovation
How Jarrett envisions RISE expanding beyond coffee within 10 years
The three worst pieces of advice Jarrett has ever received
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Iced coffees and cold brews have been popular items sought by coffee drinkers for many years. Nowadays, these beverages aren’t just available at coffee shops — they can also be found in cans at grocery stores. At RISE Brewing Company, nitrogen has replaced ice as the means of making the cold brew cold and keeping it that way. With all the nitrogen-infused cold brews already in stores, how can RISE’s nitro cold brew compete for shelf space?
After perfecting the art of nitro cold brew, Jarrett McGovern eventually made RISE’s products available in stores, including Kroger, Safeway, and Whole Foods. The difference between nitrogen-infused and nitro cold brew is that bacteria can’t grow due to a lack of oxygen, and the nitrogen makes it taste frothy and creamy. Jarrett says it was important to rename his product from nitrogen-infused cold brew to nitro cold brew to clarify the distinction. By reframing the name and maintaining an adaptive and innovative mindset, RISE ultimately succeeded in the challenging task of making its products available on store shelves.
On this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni sits down with Jarrett McGovern, the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of RISE Brewing Co., to discuss the marketing and product placement of its Nitro Cold Brew Coffee. Jarrett talks about the humble beginnings of RISE, the struggle to get the brand on store shelves, the importance of flexibility and willingness to innovate and expand a product, and his vision for RISE over the next decade.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
This is From Persona to Personal podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. Off Madison Ave creates meaningful moments of brand trust and influences how people interact and engage with brands. The science behind their approach taps into your audience's motivations and desires. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock all of your brand's potential. Now, let's get started with the show.
Roger Hurni 0:35
Hello, everyone, I am Roger Hurni. I'm the host of From Persona to Personal where I get to speak with top leaders changing customer behavior so they can propel their brands forward. Before we get to today's guest This episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave we use behavioral science to create meaningful moments of brand trust, which influences how people interact and engage with companies. Our behavioral approach taps into your audience's motivation and prompts them to shift behavior. If you're not shifting your audience's behaviors, you truly can't unlock all of your brand's potential. These proven behavioral models and methods are the strategic foundation for your brand's success at OffMadisonAve.com to learn more. Now without further ado, I have with me Jarrett McGovern. He is the co founder and chief creative officer at RISE Brewing Co. Jarrett has some very humble beginnings in his partner started RISE Brewing in his Manhattan apartment’s kitchen with a mission to create the best tasting organic products on the planet. And to make them available for all to share. No small feat, I might say RISE Brewing has really grown into a great thriving company, and their products can be found in major grocery chains. Jarrett, welcome to the show.
Jarrett McGovern 1:46
Good to be here. Roger. Thanks for having us on here.
Roger Hurni 1:49
Oh, no problem. Don't mess anything up. Any clarifications?
Jarrett McGovern 1:52
No, I think you nailed it.
Roger Hurni 1:55
Okay. All right. Well, you know, I've been known to mess up a lot. So I appreciate that. Why don't we start by getting a good understanding of sort of the inception behind the idea behind RISE Brewing? It's not like everyone needs no coffee, or maybe they did.
Jarrett McGovern 2:10
Yeah, you know, I'll start by saying Mark Twain said if I had more time, I would have made my speech shorter. So unfortunately, I have somewhat a long version of the inception. But I'll do my best to, to keep it short. We basically, me and my two childhood best friends, Grant Gajewski, Justin Weinstein, we woke up every morning drinking coffee. And we realized that at the time, there wasn't a lot of great options for coffee out there. It was Starbucks Frappuccino, it was Java Monster Energy, neither of those tastes like coffee. And they you know, are loaded with sugar and chemicals and fat and all that kind of stuff and dairy, which I didn't even drink. And to me, I was working in a water filtration company at the time. And one of our r&d guys said, you have to use our water filter to make a cup of coffee or tea at home. You know, water. Even in New York City, everybody says it's so great, which it is, but a lot of bacteria and stuff can get in the pipes. And then also the government has to put chlorine in the water, you know, to make sure that it kills any kind of small bacteria. So taking that out was extremely important. You don't want to be drinking chlorine water. I personally like all my drinks cold. So I used to go to Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Sixth Street and first avenue I get a way too big iced coffee, I'd put it on my refrigerator. And I'd have probably like 60 ounces, a double Big Gulp, if you will. Dunkin Donuts sit in my refrigerator. And I would just kind of like pour that out as I would go through my day, you know, and probably last me like two days. It'd be watered down. And it wouldn't taste that great at that point in time. But you know, it was all my only option. So I looked around to find a homebrew system and found something called a Tati created by Todd Simpson. The reason he created it is in the 60s, he was in Guatemala and he noticed that a lot of people had stomach issues, ulcers and whatnot. So he realized that if you brew coffee cold, the coffee does not release acidity. So it's really good for your stomach. And if it doesn't have acidity, it tastes naturally sweet and not not bitter and sour. So we started cold brewing with a toddy. You could make about four cups every 24 hours, we realized we had to do more than that, or we wouldn't be sitting here on a podcast with you talking about our business of four cups of coffee a day. So we said how can we how can we expand this operation? So we looked into Kagame and we looked into homebrew systems. We saw people nitro and root beer and saying, you know, kind of how the nitrogen celebrated the root beer float aspect of of a brew and didn't have to add ice cream. So he said, Okay, well our cold brew that we're using all organic beans, which are amazing. We're brewing it cold. It tastes naturally sweet without having to add sugar. If we could add nitrogen to it and put it in a keg, we might have something and it might taste almost like a latte without adding any creamer sugar. So we went to Brooklyn homebrew picked up some CAG equipment, we went to Liberty gas picked up a huge tank of nitrogen, not nitrous nitrogen, but took that all back in the subway keg equipment, nitrogen tank back to my apartment. And we literally looked on YouTube to figure out kind of what the ratios were to brew at scale, to put it into a 5.16 gallon keg. And we clean the keg, like we do now same kegging cleaning equipment, and literally the first time we ever brewed it. We cold brewed the night before, put all the cold brew in the keg. It was all cold. And then we injected nitrogen into the out portion of the keg, which is the long straw. We night showed it. And at that time, a beer brewer in front of ours told us that you had to agitate the keg to make sure that that nitrogen would really meet with the coffee. So he sat on my grandmother's old rocking chair in New York City until about two or 3am in the morning listening to Grateful Dead and Bob Marley and Rob turns rocking the keg back and forth. And then at one point in time, we're like, Okay, let's see what we got. And we poured it out. And there was this absolutely beautiful cascade. And the taste was incredible. The the nitrogen made it tastes frothy and creamy. The cold brew was sweet, the coffee was cold. And we knew we had something at that point in time. And without, you know, to speed up the story a little bit and get into more questions. Our biggest thing after that was we knew we had something we all had our own jobs, we basically quit our jobs and said, We have to figure out how to continue to brew more of this scale the operation and share this with with the world. And we started walking around New York City with a little mini keg in our hands and introducing bars, restaurants. And whoever would kind of let us in. We introduced them to nitro coffee.
Roger Hurni 7:21
So I think it's a it's a fascinating story. And the whole call old coffee thing reminds me when I was a kid in the 70s My dad would go to restaurants you know, I'm like, you know, loving your 12 years old. And he would always order a hot cup of coffee and a glass of ice. And people thought it was so weird. Pouring the hot coffee over the ice and storing it to get it cold and just cold coffee just wasn't wasn't a thing. And so over the years, eventually cold brew sort of took hold, but when you introduce the nitrogen, was that odd for people?
Jarrett McGovern 8:00
100%. And I think we're kind of two peas in a pod to be honest. My I remember my dad everywhere we went no matter what it was, he would ask for a big cup of ice he still does to this day, at any restaurant. And in Europe, that was a more more of a task, then that other places because I don't think there was quite as much ice or people coming in and asking for ice for every drink they had. But yeah, I think for us, nitrogen was something that was brand new. And it worked in many ways. For us, it was not only something that was good for the flavor profile in terms of the creaminess, it was also wildly visually appealing as well, like, you know, you'd have a cascade pouring in a cup like a Guinness, and it would be eye catching. And so the first restaurants that we started selling that they would tell us Yeah, we go through about five or six cups of iced coffee a month. But when they would see two or three people at the restaurant, you know, and then the waiter or waitress would be walking around with a cascading cup that looked like a Guinness, but then they found out it was coffee at 9:10am that really hit and then everybody wanted to try it. And then once they tried it, they loved it. So it was very visually appealing. I think one of the biggest things with nitrogen too, that really kept us true to the mission, besides both those facts is it was a great way to preserve the flavor of our coffee. You know, like the early days that I used to cold brew, you know, four or five cups of coffee and try different beans out. Coffee goes bad really quickly. It gets oxidized very quickly. It's like a banana or an avocado. If you leave it out, it changes color and it tastes differently. You know, they taste a little bit sweeter funkier coffee, especially when your coal burning, you're not killing the bacteria that's on the beans. So the bacteria and the oxygen grows really quick and actually gets moldy within like a few days. So nitrogen was something that actually really helped us as an organic preservative 80% of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. So what the actual visual Enos of the Cascade is, is when nitrogen hits the bottom of a cup, whether it's in a Guinness, or a riser coffee or beer, those bubbles are trying to get back home. And they're trying to go all the way up the cop and trying to get back in the atmosphere. But the beauty of what Nitrogen does, as a preservative is bacteria can't grow, there's no oxygen. So we brew our kegs and our coffee and our cans with nitrogen, and then we infuse them with nitrogen before we put the lid on the cans, and the nitrogen comes straight from the tank for the keg. So there's almost zero oxygen in our process, so bacteria can't grow. And I think for us as a preservative, you know, when we first started to grow, my co founder Grant was like, let's borrow my garage. So we started brewing in his garage. And if we could only have a day or two to, you know, to, for our coffee to stay good, we would have been able to expand, but with nitrogen, we literally could stock up his garage with you know, 2030 kegs. And if it was in the summertime, we'd have to put ice on him to keep them cold. If it was in the winter, we'd actually have to put blankets on it. So that didn't freeze. So it was quite an operation year one of trying to control the temperature. But the nitrogen made it so that we had a shelf life in our early testings of like five, six months, which was huge. Everyone would go through their CAG within a week. So when we first launched, I think I briefly touched about the nitrogen at a restaurant and how that was a visually appealing thing for people. There is that was the restaurant called Colony, which was the first place we ever launched rice. And at colony, there was a drink called Coffee and Cigarettes. And they would make this drink with Mezcal and orange peel, and, and rise. And there was a lady there that that would go to the bar and love the drink. And she asked the bartender, Brian, she said, Brian, can I get this coffee at my office? And Brian's like, oh, I don't know. Let me ask the guys at that current time. We didn't have a name. We had raised zero money. We were literally buying coffee beans at cafes, and brewing and cleaning kegs. You know, me, Justin and grant. And so naturally, we didn't have a business plan. Naturally, we said yes, of course, office coffee. We do this all the time. So we literally looked into like how you serve beer remotely in a kegerator like kind of like a fraternity or whatever, you know, and we got a kegerator. And most graders are set up for carbonation co2, so we just change that up, changed up the tubes and the faucet. And we've made a kegerator and nitro kegerator. And add in the financial district and office of about 350 people by our blender and Bell. Literally in the rain. Can't make it up. We assembled a kegerator outside the office in the financial district double parked. And we took it up to the to the office and we put in the first nitro coffee Kegerator in New York City and possibly the world and any office. And as soon as that happened, New York City culture, especially at that time, pre COVID. All everybody wanted to have all these different office perks. So whenever people would go to a meeting at BB Linder and Bell, they would come back and say that coffee is amazing. And how can I get that in my office. And we quickly grew that business from two restaurants and one office to about 300 offices. And you know, now we're in over 20,000 locations with our cans. But the office business was something that gave us a routine. We knew that we had to pick up kegs every Tuesday and drop them off every Thursday. And it got it so that we figured out how to start brewing in bulk and buying in bulk. And it really helped us expand our operations. And it was really a great marketing tool to I mean, we were in Facebook, Google, Twitter, ESPN, NBA, Live Nation, CIA, you name it, we had our tap handle in there. And it was a really good way to kind of expand what nitro coffee was and kind of teach New York City what we were doing.
Roger Hurni 14:29
I mean, those are those are great beginnings. And it was obviously a lot of sweat. A lot of grassroots efforts. You eventually got them into cans. Was it difficult getting the product on those first few store shelves? Or did they see the success of the the office business and say oh, yeah, no problem. How difficult was it to get onto those first few shells?
Jarrett McGovern 14:53
It wasn't easy. It was extremely difficult actually. And what we did early on after we brewed the first couple kegs, and after our friends and family were like this is incredible. We wanted to see if we could expand it before. You know, we decided to quit our jobs because just making kegs didn't seem like it was going to be the process. We knew we had to get it in an are ready to drink form. And we knew that that was really where the whitespace was because the only ready to drink coffee at that time, as I said, was Starbucks and Starbucks Frappuccino, which wasn't really appealing to us. And Java monster so we can get about two months after we've made the first batch. Almost certainly the first cans of nitro coffee, we actually didn't launch it for another two years after that. But we wanted to see if we could do it. We called up. You know, literally hundreds of breweries. Every brewery in New York, every brewery in Brooklyn, every every brewery in Connecticut, every single one said no. And at least three quarters of the breweries in Pennsylvania. And one said yes. And so we we went to a place called a Wisco to get some nitrogen gas and Connecticut put a huge tank and nitrogen gas in the back of grants. My co founder grants pickup truck, and we drove for five hours out to Danville, Pennsylvania, which for anybody who knows Danville, when you pull in it says, home of Qwerty typewriter, it's where they created the QWERT. Why for for like, you know, typing, I guess uncirculated to fame. Yeah. And in addition to the first product, plug, nitro cans. So we went in there, we literally took like, basically hockey equipment to because we didn't know what to expect, a lot of cans did explode. The bark is louder than the bite. Generally, it's super loud, but not not a lot of shrapnel or anything. So you don't have to be too worried. But we were literally pouring with it with a spoon reaching down about a foot into a nitrogen tank that looks a little bit more like an atomic bomb. And pulling out nitrogen like with you know, it's like steam or whatever steam coming up, smoke coming up, never it's actually called. And we would put it into a can after report it with out of a keg of a nitro coffee. And then we would just, you know, slam a lid on top of the can using something called a Dixie seamer, which is what you do with your candidate one can at a time and many blew up, I think we only had about four or five cans that we could actually take home with us. But that was a super early day. And when we came home, we got to a can of Guinness, and we got a can of arised we actually it was over New Year's. So we had a New Year's party with me, Justin grant, and then three of our other friends and we opened up the cans of Guinness, we opened up the CANS arise, and we poured them and the Cascade was exactly the same. And we knew at that point in time, we definitely had something. And everybody in that room either became a co founder of that company or our first investors because they knew he had something to tasted great. It was something that we all wanted to see on shelves, and it was something that we were creating, and we hadn't seen anybody ever create before. So long story to your question. But let me get I'll get to it. So after we built the business with CAGs, and you know, we raise money, got our name out, part of our business plan was always cans. So then we eventually launched cans, we opened up a cafe in New York City, in the Lower East Side on 85. Stanton Street. And so the first place we sold our cans was out of our cafe. And then the second place we sold our cans was in the offices that were in the third place we sold our cans were nearby adjacent bodega was where people had, you know, but on their way to work, they come by our cafe, they still eat, I can't. None of that wood is a successful Strategy. But it's the first way to launch and figure it all out, figure out what kind of nutritional facts have to be on there. What kind of regulations have to be on there since we're organic, and all that kind of stuff. And so eventually, we got our big opportunity to pitch to Whole Foods. And that was somewhat early on to your point. And one thing they told us is we have a lot of cold brew on shelves. And that's something that many people told us and we said we're not just cold brew or Nitro Cold Brew. And there's a big difference. And we think it's another a totally separate category. They somewhat agreed, but they weren't fully sold. So we didn't actually get in the door originally at Whole Foods until a couple months later. And what we decided to do is it was summertime and everybody's heard of an Arnold Palmer iced tea and coffee. So we decided to make the first nitro coffee Arnold Palmer. The kind of company name for it was called the Nitro Palmer but we did our cold brew coffee and lemonade in a cafe. And we set up our little pop up cafe at 85 Stan Street, which was basically four feet wide and 10 feet deep, really, really small spot, set it up like a lemonade stand, and we started selling lemonade coffee. It went over way better than we thought. I'm not gonna say that our lines were as long as the crow not forever anybody who lived in New York at that time. But they were good, you know, IP we sold out. And so then Facebook asked for it on draft. So we went on draft and Facebook with a nitro Palmer for a little bit, we expanded the line to a blood orange coffee, which was incredible, because we didn't need to add sugar, you need to add sugar to lemonade to make it taste like lemonade, you know, as opposed to lemon water. So long story, sorry, I'll wrap it up here. Whole Foods caught wind of our lemonade cans and our blood orange cans that we were selling at the cafe. And they asked for some samples. So we gave them samples and they said we'd love to launch your eyes at Whole Foods in the Northeast. But we don't want to launch your black coffee. We want to watch the watch the blood orange and the lemonade. And we're like, okay, so there's a lot of different stories. Yeah.
Roger Hurni 21:13
I think there's a bit of a burying lead they hear going on. It made us a great origin story. But blame one of infusing off be with blood orange or let me meeting I had not heard of anyone else doing that. Is that is that a product expansion Strategy to constantly be experimenting like that.
Jarrett McGovern 21:35
I think that's part of who we are, is constantly experimenting, innovating. You know, Steve Jobs said, innovation is easy for us. We just create products our engineers want to use and innovations somewhat easy for us to we create and brew products that we want to drink. And when it was summertime, we wanted to have something that was caffeinated and refreshing. And so for us and cold and so for best or cold. So for us, it was somewhat of a natural next move. And I think there will be more in the pipeline one day of the more refreshing rise line. It was so new, that, you know, it was hard to, to, for people to you know, for customer acquisition for people to sample for people who want to bring it off the shelf. Like I heard a great quote one time if you're early, and you're right, you're wrong. So that was that was kind of what we were, however, we ended up that got us into Whole Foods. And you know, once we got in there, we were selling very well and the buyers at Whole Foods, I loved the product. But the consumers didn't you know, they didn't they weren't reaching for it. There wasn't a lot of people going into Whole Foods saying, hey, I really need something with, you know, blood orange and coffee, or I really need something with you know, a Arnold Palmer bowl with coffee instead of iced tea. So eventually our black coffee got in there. Here's the interesting thing to your point. One of the biggest things to trending on tick tock. Now, and certainly last year was kids mixing orange juice with coffee and saying how it remarkably tastes great. And I know you go to Italy quite a bit. And one of the things that people drink in Italy all the time is a glass of orange juice or blood orange juice with their coffee. So it is somewhat of a natural fit. And but once again, I think we're too early but we might reintroduce it at some point. All right. So
Roger Hurni 23:33
you got things on Shakeology and 20,000 locations. I mean, it's things are going well more than DC rise in 10 years.
Jarrett McGovern 23:46
So, you know for us when we realized that the blood orange and lemonade wasn't selling, but we were lucky enough that the black was selling very well. We started innovating with more traditional coffee flavors, lattes. And when we were looking at how to make up what the best milk was for a latte, we always knew we want it to be organic. Everything we do is organic. But we you know we weren't dairy drinker. So we wanted to make the best dairy free latte. And we looked at every milk coconut milk, almond milk, cashew milk. Not milks are great, but you have to add sugar to make them taste sweet. And people are used to the natural sugars that are in regular milk. So literally someone who's at our cafe daily lived above our cafe was the copywriter for Oatly. And he said to us he's like Hey guys, like we're I've got this Oat Milk company that's coming from Europe and I'm working with them. I'm doing all the copyright for what they call the boring side. You got to try it. So we did and we were blown away. I know you know my co founder Grant had been to Europe not too long before and had also remarked on how oat milk was something that was trending in in some of the major cafes there. And so when we tasted it, it was incredible. It had the natural sweetness of milk. It had the creaminess of milk, but yet it's dairy free. So we started trying to figure out once again, going back to the lab at home, how can we make our own home mill homemade oatmeal, which is basically just oats, water, salt, and some sort of oil. And so we made our own oat milk. And then we found a way to kind of make our own oat milk lattes. As we did that, we made the old milk latte and that quickly, you know, after it launched became a big success. For us. It was the People Magazine, you know, beverage of the year, because it was dairy free and aligned with a lot of our core values, dairy free and organic, we started getting a lot of press with vegetarian news groups. PETA, still to this day, as they're going against Starbucks. And they're upcharge for dairy free milk, but not charging for dairy milk, they give out a free oat milk latte, and all the places they go to. Once we did that, we said there's not a lot of organic oat milk out there. You know, coli is great, but it's not organic. The milk that we're making for our lattes is organic. So a very natural next product line for us was to create our own oat milk, which was basically the same old milk we were putting into the coffee, but we just put it into a Tetra pack. So that was a big part of our expansion. It still is, it's now a big part of our business. We have a barista version old milk, we have a regular old milk of vanilla, and a chocolate and we're looking into more fat food service with that, in addition to being your own barista at home, and possibly different sizes,
Roger Hurni 26:55
so say five for what, again, 10 years from now, you will be on coffee, it sounds like it seems like you just want to keep expanding to different kinds of product lines as long as they fit inside those core values.
Jarrett McGovern 27:07
100 That's exactly right. Our mission is to brew the best tasting beverages using the highest quality ingredients we can source and everything that we're going to make is going to taste great, and it's going to be organic, it's going to be good for you. And it's not gonna have any stuff that is, you know, the bad stuff. And I think when you have that kind of mission of great taste with high quality, organic ingredients, I think you can go a lot of places you know, we can go back into more of an energy place we could go into a sleep place, you know, we can go into something that is alcoholic and we do have a lot of alcohol collaborations. We haven't done any our own. But we do use our coffee concentrate for things like organic ice creams, organic granola bars, organic espresso martinis, we have two of those one with Cisco brewers one with moonlight barista. And I think we can go a lot of places with that mission. I think that's where the world is going. Things that people drink or eat every day. You want to be organic, you don't want to be putting bad chemicals, harmful chemicals into your body on a daily basis. You want to make sure that if you do do that, as Mr. Miyagi said wax on wax off, if you are putting some harmful stuff in your body. That's okay, everybody does it. But then try and get back on track the next day and make the things that are part of your regular routine. Organic.
Roger Hurni 28:38
Yeah, that's I tell my wife all the time. Yeah, I eat a lot of chocolate but it's nearly all organic. So I'm gonna qualify that as being good for me in some guy obviously gone very well and and your past significant challenges of a start up and you're on the shelves. So what's the what's the biggest challenge facing you now?
Jarrett McGovern 29:03
I think the biggest challenge facing us and all businesses right now is financial climate. Now people are not investing as much in kind of growth companies. And they're looking more towards companies that are profitable, tack AI. And I think that profitability for us and sourcing the highest quality ingredients we can, while also competing with places like Starbucks, and you know, Dunkin Donuts and places that don't source the highest quality ingredients, but yet having to compete with them on price is not the easiest way to grow a profitable business, but we're taking every step possible to do that. And we're getting really close to, to to having that to achieving that goal. So I think you know, when you see after COVID, the rates of shipping and all sorts of injuries. Audience, even the Russian Ukraine wars made sunflower oil, which is what we use, you know, our oats, what we use go up in price, if we do have to deal with a lot of commodities, we have to do a deal with a lot of things that are outside of our control. But, you know, we're staying true to our mission, our message and our mission. And we're figuring out how to get that done. And I'm proud of our team for for taking all the steps that we have taken in the last two years to get there. And, you know, to be honest, for surviving COVID. Not every business was able to do that. So we have survived. We're thriving right now. And we're just getting started and having a lot of fun doing it.
Roger Hurni 30:42
Yeah, well, I mean, I learned that from our Ra. C suite. In the food and beverage space in particular that Logistics is still a pretty big challenge. There's just a lot of geopolitical issues affecting it. So you've been really gracious with your time, I only have one more question that I just like to ask I wrap up every show with this. Because I think what you don't do says as much about us what you do and what people will, will tell you to do stuff. Oftentimes they you have to roll your eyes round. So what's the worst advice you've ever gotten that you ignored?
Jarrett McGovern 31:24
Oh, wow, that's a good one. Um, I would say the worst advice I ever got that we ignored is twofold. The first one was this products great. But you've done so much to to be organic and unhealthy sounding. Ditch the word Nitro. And we decided that not only were we not going to ditch it, but we were going to celebrate the word nitro because there was a misconception before nitro coffee was a category, that the word nitro was something that you put in the back of a race car to go faster. And it's and you know, that's not the case. The second one is, when we first started out, everybody told us to go deep and narrow. And you hear that quite a bit. And a lot of smart people have said that, and a lot of smart people have been right. Doing it that way. But you know, we were attacking this at a totally different angle. And we had to do it our way. And I think going deep and narrow has a lot of fruits to it. However, you know, it's not for everyone. And so literally one of our first kegs shipments. As we were brewing kegs, we shipped a pallet of kegs to a buddy of ours who had a show on Netflix, and we shipped the powder keg to Los Angeles to the Warner Brothers lot as one of our first big sales, and what that taught us how to do was a work with shippers before we were even ready for it. So then all of a sudden, now we've had a head start once we are ready for it, we know how the shipping game works, to palletizing, you know, and how we're going to get in and out. So when we eventually move into our first brewery, what are the steps that we're going to have to make, you know, how are we going to have to have big trucks coming in and out as we're preparing? Three was, you know, shipping, refrigerated stuff, how how profitable or not profitable is that. And so we started figuring out all that stuff in Los Angeles. And it worked because we were doing high volume there. So then the next place that we ship to is Nashville, and we're literally in like five or 10 locations in New York City. We haven't even started we're drilling down in a garage in Connecticut, we haven't started selling in Connecticut yet. And we're shipping to Nashville in Los Angeles. So we're going very much against deep and narrow. But when we went to Nashville, it didn't take you know, the kegs sat there, business growth was slow, and it wasn't profitable. So I think as Kenny Rogers said, You got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. My dad says Roger winners and cut your losers. And for us, we realized that Nashville wasn't working. So we weren't going to pursue that and keep trying to fit that puzzle piece in there. Because we were losing money in Nashville. We're making money in Los Angeles. So deep and narrow is important. And after we expanded to Los Angeles, we continued to grow Los Angeles, and we never left Los Angeles from literally the first early days. And once we were ready to start selling our cans, in grocery stores in Los Angeles, many, many, many people already knew about us. So we had a lot of success, you know, in the early days at Erawan, and Whole Foods there. But yeah, I think everybody attacks things in a different way. There's a lot of smart people that give you a lot of advice, but you have to believe in yourself and you've got to do what feels right to you and When you have good partners, which we did in Los Angeles, you know, it makes it a whole lot easier to expand and you learn a lot by by putting yourself in uncomfortable positions.
Roger Hurni 35:11
And I, I loved the first part about the Nitro and leaning into it as opposed to walking away from it. A lot of the work I do as a behavioral strategist and in marketing is reframing and without realizing it, to lean into reframing the perceptions of Nitro, I think that keeps you ahead of the competition by by embracing that, and I think you did a really a really great job there. It's been a wonderful conversation. I'm really, really glad to hear about all of that. For everyone. I've been speaking with Jarrett McGovern. He is the co founder and chief creative officer at RISE Brewing Co. Jarrett, where can people learn more about you and rice brewing?
Jarrett McGovern 35:55
Yeah, well, I first off, Roger, thank you so much for having us on. It's been absolutely awesome. And for all those listening, thank you so much for listening. And if you've made it this far, you can find out more about us on risebrewing co.com. And then you can also follow us on Instagram and Tiktok at RISE Brewing Co as well. And there's a bunch of information there and you can order some products on our website and get them shipped directly to you.
Roger Hurni 36:27
Wonderful wonderful. Thank you again, everyone. I'm Roger Hurni, the host of From Persona to Personal, we'll catch you next time.
Outro 36:35
Thanks for listening to From Persona to Personal, the podcast that takes a closer look into how organizations personalize their marketing. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
