Food Chained

3:11 – The difficulties of cultural heritage
Kayla shared that it was a challenge growing up Afro-Latina. Launching Agua Bonita was a way for her to explore her Hispanic heritage.

“I can relate to that a lot. I'm Afro-Latina so black and Hispanic, and my Spanish is not the best. My partner, his name is Juan. And my in-laws, they live in Mexico. So when I interact with his family and stuff like that I feel like I'm very much confronted with my Americanized version of myself, because he's first-generation and there's just a little bit of that difference culturally, even though we're all in the same group to anyone else. So I totally get it. I totally get the whole identity crisis that can come with it. I think in a way launching Agua Bonita was a way to double down into my identity.”

4:35 – Why imitation isn’t that great
Copying someone else’s ideas isn’t flattering to them. It’s taking their hard work and passing it off as your own.

“When it comes to the whole idea of imitation is the highest form of flattery, I really, really feel like, fuck that. That's actually just annoying. I don't think that there is really any flattery in being copied. So I'll start off with that. And I will say independently, I guess, recently we went through this situation where last year a big industry pitch competition, which we won, I presented Agua Bonita. And we ran an ad campaign last year around this whole ‘Real AF’ play on words as fuck, and aguas frescas. And we got a lot of publicity last year. We were on the Today Show. We were on Forbes. We just got a lot of real national attention. And so I would say if anyone who had been introduced to our brand didn’t know that we were running that kind of campaign, I feel like it would be almost impossible. And then yeah, fast forward a year. And one of the biggest beverage companies in the world launched Aguas Frescas under one of their brands.”

5:55 – The difference between competition and copying
There will always be other businesses in a similar line of work to you. But Agua Bonita didn’t just have competitors, they had a competitor use the same ad campaign.

“I knew that there was always going to be other aguas frescas to compete with. And actually there already are entrants into the category who I really admire their founders and what they're doing with their products. There's Bawi out in Texas and there's Soda Frescos out in Colorado. So, I understand there's going to be competition. But what I got really fired up about this, and this was Minute Maid aguas frescas, is that they ran an ad campaign around this play on AF as well. And I had pitched in front of the same team at Coca Cola that was responsible for pushing this product out. So is it possible that it's just a huge coincidence that after a year from seeing our product and our marketing campaign, that they are running something very similar? It is possible. It's possibly a coincidence, but I say that in the spirit that anything is possible.”

9:13 – Compete in pitch competitions
Kayla recommends entering pitch competitions because they can be a great way to get your brand name out there.

“But I will say though, when it comes to at least Bev Net and the pitch competition there, I would still encourage people to pursue the competition. I think that it was really great for us personally. Professionally it was one of the competitions that I really, really wanted to win. Last year I won every competition that I entered, but Bev Net was a personal one for me, just because I had spent so much time as a beverage professional watching the showdown and hoping like, ‘Oh one day I hope that I have a brand that is good enough to contend in this.’ And so to win it was very just full circle. And the folks at Bev Net have been very supportive. So I would still say it's still worthwhile pursuing, but also, yeah. Be cautious because when people know about your business, then that gives them the opportunity to possibly copy some things.”

13:03 – Don’t give up
When you’re working on a totally new idea, it can be discouraging if your first try doesn’t succeed. But if you keep attempting new things, eventually you’ll hit on a solution.

“My co-founder is a huge fan of Spindrift, and yeah, I think for us obviously with Aguas Frescas I really wanted to capture the authentic level of fruit, which is why we use 50 percent of fruit juice, which is very technically difficult to pull off in cans. But yeah, I will say I've even gotten to talk to the founder of Spindrift before. And he told me about some of the struggles that they had in the first five years, they weren't even shelf-stable for the first five years. And it was because they were using real fruit juice and more fruit juice than what the industry was used to. And so that was a big encouragement to us to just keep on going even though we were going through a lot of trials to really get to the fruit juice content that we were hoping to get and did eventually achieve.”

13:59 – Tickling customers’ taste buds
Agua Bonita just launched a new hibiscus flavor, which is the culmination of a lot of their hard work as a growing company.

“We just launched Agua de Jamaica, which is hibiscus. So I know hibiscus is super trending right now, and there's a lot of hype around it, which is very well deserved. But when it comes to aguas frescas, hibiscus is actually like an OG. And so it has been one of our very highly requested flavors. And so we were so excited to put it out into the world. Pre-orders are live on our site right now. They are shipping end of this month. End of May. And we're just excited. It's cool to even see these cans come out because the cans themselves are a collaboration with new team members that have joined us since we've started. And so it's just a testament to like, ‘Okay, this is another milestone that we're getting to check off the list.’ And producing this means we have a team behind us and, you know, we have people that are wanting this and there's demand for it and stuff like that. So it's really exciting.”

17:32 – Never stop learning
Running a startup means you’re always learning new things. But it also gives you the opportunity to pivot and adjust quickly.

“We’re still learning things right now, too. And that's how you learn though. You’ve got to do it and then figure it out from there. So we have some revisions coming up to our formulations with our drinks. And so we'll be rolling those out pretty soon, but you have to listen to the market. And the only way to listen to the voice of the market is for them to be able to try it and to get feedback and stuff like that. So I feel like that's the other thing that is a blessing and a curse with startups is that you're able to learn and move quickly and make the pivots that you need to. But also because you're a startup you're having to learn and make pivots and adjust where you can. And it's all expensive at every single turn.”

18:36 – Pitching your product
If you want to build an audience, first that audience has to understand what your product is, which has been a unique challenge for Agua Bonita.

“The California and Texas buyers really understand what aguas frescas are just because of the makeup of the communities there. Other buyers are maybe not so familiar, but I will say one really good thing to come out of this whole fiasco is that Minute Maid is now starting to educate buyers on what aguas frescas are. And so that helps us too, to be able to go into a conversation where maybe some context has already been had. But yeah, sometimes people just don't know. They think that we are like Spindrift, and we have to like tell them it's really 10 times Spindrift. Spindrift, the largest fruit content that theirs has I think is like 5 to 8 percent. But most of the skews are in between 3 to 5 percent of fruit juice or fruit. And ours are closer to 30 to 60 percent in some, so it's a really, really big difference.”

22:34 – Cold is sold
Cold, ready-to-drink beverages are a great way to get new customers to try your product. But it’s also ideal to have a shelf-stable option so buyers can take the product home.

“Cold is sold as people in the industry say. So, yeah, we are in the cold sets, because we want people to just be able to pick up a can and try it and just drive that trial, especially when you're trying something new that maybe they are not familiar with aguas frescas. So we like to live in the cold set, but our cans are shelf-stable. So there are a few retailers that you will see us in later this summer and later this year, that you'll find those actually in four packs, but it'll be just on a dry shelf. And then you can pick up all four flavors and go home and put them in your fridge and try it at your convenience. So we can play on both sides.”