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Marcos Salazar shared thisI'm excited to share the stage next week with Bill Shufelt, Co-Founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Co. for a wide-ranging discussions on the state of the adult non-alcohol beverage category. Laura Willoughby MBE and the team at Club Soda have brought together an amazing group of speakers to share the latest knowledge and insights about the category. Get your ticket for the London No, Low & Mid-Strength Summit London on 6–7 October 2026 here: https://lnkd.in/ger9AcqZ And feel free to reach out if you will be there so we can meet up!
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Marcos Salazar shared thisAre you looking for a job in the adult non-alcohol space? Check out all the great roles curated by the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA): 📍 Social Media Lead, Curious Elixirs (Remote, NY/NJ/CT) - https://lnkd.in/gXEmdDCc 📍 Associate Counsel, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, Milford, CT) - https://lnkd.in/dPZHjYkY 📍 Production Brewer, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, Milford, CT) - https://lnkd.in/gESbs6RK 📍 Social Media Intern, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, San Diego, CA) - https://lnkd.in/gac2AxUX 📍 Benefits Manager, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, San Diego, CA) - https://lnkd.in/gUyHWDsX 📍 National Account Director, Mingle Mocktails (Remote, USA) - https://lnkd.in/dA_WbPtV
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Marcos Salazar shared thisExcited to announce that I'll be moderating a panel at the Drinks With Benefits Summit on "Winning the Retail Game" in NYC on Wednesday, Sept 16! On the panel will be Meeta Gournay from Three Spirit, Aqxyl Storms from Minus Moonshine, and Nicholas Pelis from Spirited Away. It is going to be a great discussion and you can register at https://lnkd.in/gRgw4Q5g Use the following discount code for 15% off = DWBINDUSTRY CC The Daily Pour Amanda Paul-Garnier
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Marcos Salazar shared thisGrowth for CPG brands often starts upstream of the consumer, not downstream. But a lot of founders I chat with want to start with the consumer first: what people will buy, why they'll come back, how to get in front of them faster. Those are questions that need to be answered. But they are not all the questions that need to be answered. The brands that I have seen building real, lasting velocity spend just as much time on questions related to the partners standing between them and their consumer: > The co-packer filling the cans > The wholesaler getting them into a truck > The retailer deciding whether the product is worth the shelf space Each one has its own incentives, and its own reasons to go the extra mile for a brand, or not. I saw this clearly talking with Jamie Fay, Founder and CEO of RationAle Brewing. RationAle doesn't treat its wholesalers as a pass-through. When product ages past its freshest window on a shelf, the team buys it back themselves rather than let a stale can represent the brand. They pitch retailers with category data instead of a sales pitch. They talk about their brewing partner as an extension of their own team, sharing risk in both directions. None of that is cheap. None of it happens overnight. But it's how a brand earns shelf presence that lasts past a single order cycle, and how growth happens without asking any one relationship to carry all the weight. That's the difference between a brand that survives one order and one that keeps getting reordered. You can read the full story of how RationAle built these partnerships, with its brewing team, its wholesalers, and its retail partners, into a growth strategy, in the Insights section on the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA) website.
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Marcos Salazar shared thisAre you looking for a job in the adult non-alcohol space? Check out all the great roles from Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA) Members: 📍 Benefits Manager, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, San Diego, CA) - https://lnkd.in/gUyHWDsX 📍 National Account Director, Mingle Mocktails (Remote, USA) - https://lnkd.in/dA_WbPtV 📍 Regional Sales Manager, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, Denver, CO) - https://lnkd.in/dvGvkjaA 📍 Content Creator Intern, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, San Diego, CA) - https://lnkd.in/dmi_HgwS 📍 Compliance Manager, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, Milford, CT) - https://lnkd.in/dWM7pDDT 📍 Associate Counsel, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, Milford, CT) - https://lnkd.in/dPZHjYkY 📍 Financial Analyst, Athletic Brewing Co. (On-site, Milford, CT) - https://lnkd.in/gVArjVCj
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Marcos Salazar shared thisLawrence Bremer tasted over 100 wines before he bottled a single one. That was only half the work. Before he ever launched St. Buena Vida, Bremer decided to fly to the largest wine fair in the world and tasted his way through them, narrowing the field down to six wines worth testing further. Then he ran all six through the dealcoholization process himself, because there was no way to know in advance which one would actually hold up. "You really don't know until you actually dealcoholize it," he told me. Only one of the six survived it the way he needed it to, and that became the base for his debut NA wine. That could have been the finish line. But Bremer didn't treat it that way. The technology that would let the wine keep its aroma once the alcohol came out wasn't available in the country where the wine was made, so he shipped the finished wine to Germany to further develop the wine. Bremer treated both the grape and the process like they mattered equally. It's also why his wine is showing up on wine lists that don't typically make room for NA wine: the Four Seasons and restaurants with Wine Spectator Grand Award-winning lists. Check out the full story of how Bremer got both decisions right, and how it landed his wine on those menus, is in the ANBA Insights section on the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA) website. Are there any parts of the startup process where you went the extra mile to ensure that your product stood out?
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Marcos Salazar posted thisOne of the things that scares me about most about the rapid growth of AI is the potential loss of people's professional identity. It's been something I've been thinking about with respect to fellow founders (I'll be writing more about that later), but it came up this past weekend with a friend who is feeling a bit of an existential crisis right now. Not burned out, not fed up - he just doesn't really understand his role anymore, or how he can best contribute to the company he works for. AI is doing a lot more of the work now, not just in his position, but a lot of positions across the org. Underneath that, something he didn't say outright but was clearly there: he's scared he could get fired at any time because he's not making the kind of contribution he used to make. I'm writing this because there's a great article this week in Psychology Today that puts a name to exactly this. Most people build a significant part of their identity on our job title, or on being the person who's good at a specific thing. That falls apart fast the moment something else gets better at the thing than you are. The article is by Tchiki Davis, Ph.D. called The Psychological Crisis of AI-Driven Identity Loss if you want to take a look - interesting read! Has anyone shared things like this with you lately?
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Marcos Salazar posted thisI'm hearing a similar thing about AI from beverage / CPG founders I've connected with recently. AI was supposed to buy us time. Instead, it's creating more work. We all know that AI can do amazing things and take care of tasks and projects much quicker than it would if we were not using it. I myself am integrating AI into everything we do at the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA). But I'm starting to see this "more work" thing creep into my own flow. The tools that were supposed to clear space on my calendar get filled with more things I finally have the bandwidth to work on. I get super excited about projects that have been on the back burner that I can finally get to. But in the end, it's creating more things to do, with more responsibilities, to more people. This same thing was recently highlighted in a Bloomberg article by Rebecca Torrence and Natasha Mascarenhas who spent time with more than a dozen founders and found the same pattern at a much more extreme scale. One founder they profiled, Matt Van Horn, runs six AI agents at once, all day, and hasn't turned his laptop off in months. He keeps it open at his kids' soccer practice, which made me sad for him: missing his kid's best game because the laptop stayed open. One agent stays on just to babysit the rest while he sleeps. He told the reporters he's producing something like 100 times more output than before AI, and that he's never worked harder in his life. Most of us aren't running six agents around the clock. But the same math applies at any scale. AI doesn't shrink work for us. It actually expands what's possible, and then it expands what's expected. The challenge then becomes not about being more productive but rather, managing abundance. We're at the very beginning of figuring out where all these boundaries need to go, not just for a balanced/integrated life, but to avoid burnout altogether. Question to you - has AI started creating more work for you instead of freeing up time❓
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Marcos Salazar shared thisWhen I am talking to small brand's about getting into retail, one bottleneck that often comes up a number that has nothing to do with the product: 150,000. That's roughly how many cans a brand has traditionally needed to order before offset printing becomes economical - four truckloads, paid for before a single can sells. It has nothing to do with whether a product is good and everything to do with printing math. I recently learned about a fix for this at the end of a webinar Fast Track Packaging Inc. ran for Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA) members a few weeks back. Michael Bedrosian, COO and Director of Sales there, mentioned his team has spent the past two years building a direct-to-can digital printing process. No plate costs. A brand can order a few hundred cans if that's genuinely all they need. One brand he described started with a first order of 30,000 cans. Last year, that same brand ordered in the hundreds of millions. That range is the part that stuck with me. The order minimum functions as more than a packaging detail. It decides who gets a real chance to try something new. → Test a flavor before committing to it → Run a small batch tied to a single event → Adjust a formula mid-year without starting over None of that was realistic under older models. Learn more about how Fast Track Packaging built this and see if it is a possible solution for your brand in the Insights section on the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association (ANBA) website. Has this ever been an issue for you in terms of growth?
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Marcos Salazar liked thisMarcos Salazar liked thisPrediction time: The question “Do you drink?” is going to all but disappear in the years ahead. Do I drink what? Language does a great job of explaining culture. "Do you drink?" might as well mean "Are you joining us?" or at its worst "Do you have fun?" Alcohol has been an on/off switch in social contexts forever. You either drank or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, you sipped your club soda to death and tried to hide it. If you wanted something more interesting or flavorful that wasn’t originally crafted for kids accompanying their parents to dinner, too bad. That was the "tax" on not drinking. It's over. Mature consumer categories give people choice. Lots of it. As an investor in consumer for years, I’ve often been in awe of just how much moisturizer, lip gloss, protein powder etc. is out there. And yet when it comes to alcohol-free adult beverage, we’re still hard-pressed to find genuinely great choices at retail or in bars and restaurants. That’s changing rapidly. Social beverage is only now beginning to develop the depth and variety that almost every other mature consumer category already has. We often point to health and wellness as a key driver of declining alcohol consumption, but it’s far from the only one. Inclusivity and choice, in all their forms, have gained ground across consumer culture. Why should drinking be any different? Drink whatever you want. Thanks to whomever brought this up the other week at Drinks With Benefits, please make yourself known! #AdultNonAlcoholic #NonAlcoholic #BeverageIndustry #ConsumerInvesting
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Marcos Salazar liked thisMarcos Salazar liked thisIf you're wondering what The Hospitality Show (Nov 2-4 in Miami 🌴) is all about, check out my recent podcast with Suite Spot to discuss the upcoming event and what attendees can look forward to this year. From our Miami Nights Party to an amazing speaker line-up, you don't want to miss it! 🤩 Click the links below to catch the full episode. Spotify: https://lnkd.in/ePaEU8mk Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eTCBaSxT YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eWDEy6Kb
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Marcos Salazar liked thisMarcos Salazar liked thisBig moment for Recess and the relaxation beverage category! Walmart’s new “Mood & Mind” set gives this emerging category a dedicated home, with Recess Mood singles and 4pks featured in more than 1,000 stores. What excites me most is making these products easier to discover during an everyday shopping trip. Giving shoppers a clear place to find beverages that fit the moments they want to relax and unwind is an important step toward building an everyday habit. I believe there’s a significant opportunity to grow the beverage aisle around this occasion, and I’m excited for Recess to help lead that work. Proud of the Recess team for bringing this to life, and grateful to our partners at Walmart for recognizing the opportunity and helping move the category forward. https://lnkd.in/gwf-bjZBRecess Leads Walmart’s New “Mood & Mind” Set as Relaxation Beverages Go MassRecess Leads Walmart’s New “Mood & Mind” Set as Relaxation Beverages Go Mass
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Marcos Salazar liked thisMarcos Salazar liked thisYour support inbox = your cheapest consumer research. All The Bitter co-founder Ian Blessing still answers the contact form, email, Instagram DMs, and the phone himself. One call started as a question about a late order. Before hanging up, the customer mentioned why she buys: she has a liver condition, and she wants the gut-friendly botanicals. The same channel has influenced product decisions. After the Meyer lemon verbena release, customers kept asking for more lemon (most of them didn't know what lemon verbena was). The next batch had double the lemon peel. Scan data records the sale but not the reason. A customer on the phone will often tell you without being asked. More in our latest Dry Atlas piece, linked below.
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Marcos Salazar liked thisMarcos Salazar liked thisRoots Premium Spirits - Roots Divino 0% alc Divino NA vermouth will be part of a select group of leading No & Low brands at this year’s Embassy Bar at BCB 2026 Bar Convent Berlin Curated by Camille Vidal — global mindful drinking expert, founder of @lamaisonwellness and BCB’s No & Low Expert — the Embassy Bar will be hosted by one of the industry’s most progressive pioneers, FOCO - Barcelona. Inspired by the idea of bringing people from different backgrounds together, FOCO has become a global meeting point for bartenders, innovators and educators — making them the perfect hosts for a celebration of No & Low cocktails. Expect original No & Low serves, great conversations, serious fun and a first-hand taste of one of the industry’s most exciting trends. 📍 Berlin📅 12–14 October 2026 See you at the Embassy Bar! #finestroots #backtotheroots #rootsdivino
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Marcos Salazar liked thisMarcos Salazar liked thisWhat is wrong with the pricing on this non-alcoholic cocktail? 2 oz non-alcoholic tequila alternative: $1.66 3 oz persimmon juice: $2.50 1 oz grapefruit soda: $0.10 Fennel and simple syrup: ~$0.18 Total cost: $4.44. Menu price: $14. (Numbers via Alexandria Sands in Axios, "Is it just juice? Why NA drinks cost $10+": https://lnkd.in/gidF6QMP) Here's the problem: At a standard 20% beverage cost, a drink that costs $4.44 to make should sell for about $22. Change that to a 25% cost and it's still $18. Even priced like food, at roughly 30%, it lands closer to $15. At $14, this drink is running nearly 32% cost. Now, you might say $18 or $22 is too much for a non-alcoholic drink. But research suggests guests will pay premium, near-cocktail prices for non-alcoholic cocktails when the execution and presentation deliver. This is exactly why we need structured non-alcoholic programs built by professionals who understand more than how to make a drink. They understand the market. I wouldn't call this out if it were not such a common mistake. When we undervalue non-alcoholic cocktails, we tell guests they're just not as good. Worse than that, we lose money. #nonalcoholic #beverageindustry #barbusiness
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Marcos Salazar liked thisMarcos Salazar liked thisWith a 100% approval rating, a killer jump shot, and the heart of a runner, we'd like to call attention to the amazing spirit of... Rahn. Jesse Rahn. Whether it's drafting up the next big distribution deal or just keeping the rest of the team relaxed with his soothing guitar riffs, Jesse is absolutely one-of-a-kind. As Head of Sales over here at The Free Spirits Company, his attentive, friendly demeanor rests staunchly on years of dedication and experience within the beverage industry. Having been a buyer as well as a VP of National Accounts, Jesse approaches partnerships and the nuanced conversations they entail with lived-in experience from both sides of the table. When we initially approached Jesse back in 2022 to join the budding world of NA spirits, we knew the type of skills (guitar included) he'd bring along. But we didn't know that what came with him as a package deal was a lot of heart, the worst traveling luck of anyone we've met (seriously, ask him), and the best partner we can offer to our partners. Cheers to you, Jesse Rahn, and to many more years of making big moves both on and off the court.
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The Angel Nest Podcast
Cindy Cook, Board Chair of New York Angels, joins The Angel Nest Podcast for a special conversation with NYA founder David S. Rose. Cindy shares how angel investing has evolved—from deal structures and due diligence to how today’s founders are preparing for investment—and what it takes to sustain a thriving angel community in a changing venture landscape. To listen to the full episode - https://lnkd.in/eW-CXKJM
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Elizabeth Oldfield
I’m grateful to Perspectiva Team for rerunning an essay of mine on their substack which has become my most quoted: “Friendship is My Theory of Change” “Can you think of a time you have changed your mind, on something big? On religion, or politics, questions of identity, climate change, or anything with political and personal implications? Think back. I’m sure ideas and arguments were not irrelevant, but who delivered them? Who introduced you to them? Someone you respected and liked, maybe even hoped to become like? Were you, in fact, friends, or closer, with someone who thought differently? I thought so. The idea that in the marketplace of ideas the right ones will thrive through some kind of mechanistic exchange is patent nonsense. It is not how people work. If we actually paid attention to why people believe what they believe we would see the huge, glaring, completely obvious mechanism. Relationships. As Sarah Stein Lubrano says: “It is people who change one’s…views, and for the most part, it is specifically the people we like, respect, and even love.”
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Laurel Carpenter
Confession: I help clients clarify their brand positioning. But my own was vague. When anyone asked who I work with, I said "purpose-led founders" for years. It felt true, but as one coach pointed out to me: what does that even mean? I've been on a quest to answer that question — and in my recent conversation with Kate Lewis on her podcast The Resilient Entrepreneur, I talked about where that quest has taken me. We covered: 🌟 How I landed on the "Quiet Activist" as my ideal client profile — and why a LinkedIn post about it got more engagement than anything I'd written in five years of posting 🌟 The lesson I learned from a client project that fell apart (hint: it involved two consultants with competing agendas and a client caught in the middle) 🌟 Why "swim upstream and target startups" is advice that sounds good, but doesn't work if you don't have the connections to back it up 🌟 How surviving the pandemic required a pivot that I'm still proud of As someone who often interviews other people's clients as part of my process, it's a little strange to be the one answering the questions for once. But it was probably good for me. P.S. If you consider yourself a quiet activist — someone who left corporate or nonprofit life to build something better — I'd love to hear from you. I'm doing market research and would love to hear your thoughts. Also, many thanks to Kate for such a fun, engaging and real conversation. If you haven't found The Resilient Entrepreneur yet, check it out.👇
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