Creating a Healthy and Sustainable Beverage Brand with Kun Yang
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Meet Kun Yang
Kun Yang is a recent dad and pharmacist-turned CPG entrepreneur. Kun grew up mostly in Canada but has spent his professional life in the US, where he now feels blessed to be building Pricklee Cactus Water with some incredible humans that want to make the world a better place.
Pricklee is on a mission to inspire people to be resilient like the cactus through health, happiness, and sustainability. Their refreshing cactus waters are made from the drought-tolerant prickly pear cactus and are packed with antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamin C, with 50% less sugar than coconut water. It's 100% refreshing, with 0% pricks.
Kun is passionate about brand building, CPG, leadership, founder stories, futurism, mental health, and wellness. He looks forward to connecting and learning from others that build businesses through conscious capitalism!
Episode Highlights
During this episode of The Food Means Business Podcast, we discuss:
The inspiration behind Pricklee, rooted in co-founder Mo Hasoun’s childhood memories of his grandmother's prickly pear cactus drink
The process of starting a beverage line and building a supportive team
The importance of simplifying brand messaging and aligning branding with product benefits
The significance of authenticity in creating a successful CPG brand
How an appearance on Shark Tank boosted Pricklee's social credibility and growth
Kun's focus on personal values and family time as a means to become a better leader
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00;00;00;06 - 00;00;24;19
Djenaba
You were listening to the Food Means Business podcast, which features the personal stories and secret ingredients behind what it's like to abandon your day job to start a food business. I'm joined now by Johnson Jones, former marketing executive turned entrepreneur and founder of food business incubator Hudson Kitchen. Join a community of fellow food, business owners and subject matter experts to learn and laugh with us as we explore a startup world that's a little more culinary and a lot less corporate these days.
00;00;24;19 - 00;00;29;03
Djenaba
Quan Welcome to the Food Means Business podcast. I'm so happy to have you here.
00;00;29;15 - 00;00;31;08
Kun Yang
It's such a pleasure to be here. It's another.
00;00;32;11 - 00;00;41;09
Djenaba
So I, I, this podcast is all about going from being an employee to actually launching a food business. So I'd love to hear your story.
00;00;42;23 - 00;01;03;14
Kun Yang
Yeah. I mean, I think you captured it right, right then and there. My co-founder and I, we both come from the health care industry. We're both pharmacists by training and met in Boston actually back in 2015. I think at first in the beginning of our relationship, I think we both really understood that we were entrepreneurs at heart. We both grew up as fresh Asian-Americans.
00;01;03;14 - 00;01;27;29
Kun Yang
That sort of blue collar mentality was something that was instilled in us from from childhood. And we were always just so inspired to kind of go into health care. It was something that we were always really passionate about. So as we started to embark on our careers and realize that this was something that we had a deep passion for this this journey of building quickly, it was one that allowed us to kind of bridge those two passions, one for entrepreneurship and two for health care.
00;01;28;20 - 00;01;46;03
Kun Yang
And how we actually started was, you know, the cactus in many ways found us and in our journey because my and my co-founder Mo grew up in Lebanon and he grew up just having cricket there all the time because his grandma would serve it to him and his siblings and all these different preparations and and they would fight over every last drop of water that you would make.
00;01;46;12 - 00;02;08;01
Kun Yang
So when we were living together, he stopped by a local market, grabbed some prickly pears there because he was like, wow, this is super nostalgic, brought it back home. And when we tried it, we were just blown away by just how delicious it tasted, how incredibly beautiful the liquid was. It was this beautiful, bright magenta color. We're blown away by that, both in traditional benefits of it, considering where it came from, health care.
00;02;08;13 - 00;02;31;18
Kun Yang
And over time, I think the symbol of the cactus being one of resilience, just really. So to represent our journey represents our our life story and became something that authentically we realized, expressed who we were, but also something that a lot of our consumers and people in our around us can all resonate with as well. So that's how we all started and that's how we got to where we are today.
00;02;32;03 - 00;02;43;20
Djenaba
Well, that's great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. So I'd love to get to get into the nitty gritty of everything. So again, how do you start a beverage company exactly.
00;02;43;20 - 00;03;08;13
Kun Yang
Yeah, we did not grow up in the CPG industry and I think that that has been both a blessing and a curse in many ways. I think anyone that grows into the CPG, food and beverage business realizes how competitive and how challenging it is. But I think not having that experience also allowed us to kind of just come in and really figure out where we fit and create without limitations and really innovate with our limitations.
00;03;09;08 - 00;03;30;29
Kun Yang
It all started out with as simple as probably how everyone, everyone straight starts out with a question on Google. You know, just how do you do this? And you'd be surprised the number of resources that that come up. But what started as one question became many more questions. And and that eventually turned into a business and really a business for us.
00;03;31;00 - 00;03;55;11
Kun Yang
It's just been an amalgamation of a lot of amazing human beings that have come into our world, opened up their networks, paid it forward with their experiences, share their knowledge to help us make as minimum mistakes as possible in that journey. And our process and our role in that is just to try to try to hold back our egos and and try to learn from them and accept that that feedback, as critical as it can be, and just continue to ask questions.
00;03;55;11 - 00;03;58;28
Kun Yang
And over time that that business has really kind of formed a lot of its own.
00;03;59;12 - 00;04;13;05
Djenaba
Yeah, I kind of share that with you in that I, you know, kind of came out, came from the outside of the food community, but I really feel like they welcomed me with open arms. It was quite amazing the number of people that stepped up to help. So it was really fantastic.
00;04;13;05 - 00;04;37;02
Kun Yang
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think something about food and beverage and and consumerism in the US there's really just no place like America in terms of consumer goods. There's just such an appetite for innovation, such a hunger for it, and such an appreciation for just new and exciting ingredients and products that it just enables for some of the most creative minds to create the most creative products.
00;04;37;02 - 00;04;55;24
Kun Yang
And and I think that to your point, it's just been such a welcoming industry because it's just something that I think on a human level, people just share so much enjoyment with and so much passion for that you tend to really, really just become so curious about what everyone else is making and you want to be a part of their stories and help them out as much as they can.
00;04;56;17 - 00;05;15;20
Djenaba
True. True. So you have so your product prickly is essentially cactus water. So talk about why cactus why I understand that, you know, you're co-founder, you know, kind of it was nostalgia for him. But like, why why did you decide to move forward with cactus water? How does it compare with other beverages that are on the market right now?
00;05;16;12 - 00;05;39;04
Kun Yang
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of things. There's the ingredient side of things. And then there's also the emotional side of things. So we can start with, I guess, the the low hanging fruit of the ingredients side of things. You know, obviously just being a product that has sustained itself in such a challenging environment, it's a pretty resilient product and an ingredient and it's super sustainable because it requires no water at all to grow.
00;05;39;15 - 00;05;59;25
Kun Yang
It's a perennial plant. It can be harvested every single year and doesn't require, again, much irrigation. The entire plant for the fruits of the roots can be used for food, cosmetics, other goods or even fuel. So just from an ESG perspective, that's already pretty, pretty awesome. From a health benefits perspective, it's really low in sugar, low in calories, but full of antioxidants, electrolytes and vitamin C.
00;05;59;25 - 00;06;21;06
Kun Yang
So it's got really kind of the mainstream benefits that all consumers are looking for. And most importantly, it just tastes delicious. So that in the day has been probably the most important. Learning is just if you're making any product in food and beverage, just focused on making sure that's a really, really incredible product to begin with. And from an emotional side, I think the journey for us has been one that we've really connected to the cactus.
00;06;21;06 - 00;06;58;09
Kun Yang
It's really represented this symbol of resilience. And for us that's turned into a mission of inspiring people to be resilient, like the cactus, by creating these delicious moments of happiness. It's something that we've realized over the last few years. A lot of people have persevered through some tough times and things aren't getting any easier, you know? And in our sort of responsibility from that, from an emotional and physical mental perspective, is to say, like any time a human being or consumer crosses into the paths of prickly experiences, the brand, we want to make sure that that's that's an experience that's both physically happy but also emotionally happy and also mentally happy.
00;06;58;09 - 00;07;15;25
Kun Yang
So we do a lot of work with mental health organizations, and we also ensure that all the products that we create from the packaging to the taste, the even the types of innovation that we think about are ones that induce a emotional benefit of happiness for consumers as well, because we believe that that's how we can inspire resilience in today's world.
00;07;16;11 - 00;07;29;03
Djenaba
So how are you able to educate the consumer on cactus water? Because people kind of know what coconut water is or they drink other types of still in sparkling flavored water. So can you talk a little about the education process?
00;07;29;11 - 00;07;44;29
Kun Yang
Yeah. Yeah, this is a really good question because when we first started, we didn't know, right, how to talk about this and we didn't know what to call it. Even when we first launched, we called it a super fruit water in our in our beta version of this product. You know, we were debating do we call the prickly pear water?
00;07;45;08 - 00;08;07;19
Kun Yang
We call it cactus water. We obviously, over time, the most important thing that we realized from a marketing and sales perspective is just how do we really simplify the message of what we're trying to communicate? Because a lot of a lot of consumers aren't looking as deeply as we are. Right. And certainly there's there's a lot of conversations to we had about cactus, because as as ubiquitous as it is, I mean, 99% of people on the planet know what a cactus is.
00;08;07;19 - 00;08;26;20
Kun Yang
Everyone does. Right. And so there's no explanation needed there. But I think a lot of people are curious about, well, like, how do you get a water from a cactus? Oh, I didn't even know they had fruit. So what are the benefits like we just talked about? So we just had to kind of find our way through those those questions by just producing an MVP, going out there and trying to just pressure test against real customers.
00;08;26;28 - 00;08;56;22
Kun Yang
What were they looking for? You know, what what did they want to take away from the education we provided them and what do they actually care about and and what we realized, most importantly, is that the biggest thing we to solve for was just taste, right? What is what is this taste like? And so you look at the brand transformation from our previous packaging to the new, you'll notice that the colors that really scream out the flavors, the images of the fruits themselves are cans that really kind of give consumers a feel for what this product is going to taste like.
00;08;57;13 - 00;09;15;20
Kun Yang
And then, of course, like the change of name from from a super fruit water to a cactus water to just make it immediately clear what this product is. And certainly when people ask more questions about how you get water from a cactus or what the benefits are, that information is all around on the back of our can, on our website and in person, and our communication.
00;09;15;29 - 00;09;24;18
Kun Yang
But we want to make it as clear as possible that this was a delicious, refreshing product for every every consumer to have at any time of the day.
00;09;24;18 - 00;09;31;24
Djenaba
So let's talk about fundraising. Can you just talk about a little bit how you were able to fund the business in the beginning and kind of what you're doing right now?
00;09;32;17 - 00;09;56;06
Kun Yang
Yeah, absolutely. So we we actually bootstrapped their business from the very, very beginning. It just was something that allowed us to really take our time to learn to test as much as possible and to become ready to get into growth mode. And so we bootstrapped for the first year and a half really where we were kind of in beta mode, trying to figure out the whole business, bringing an MVP product to market.
00;09;56;23 - 00;10;17;13
Kun Yang
We did our pre-seed round family and friends and this is all folks within our network. So not many folks in the CPG industry actually at first. And and that was really exciting for us because there was a lot of intention in that round to bring in and open up these types of opportunities to a lot of individuals that don't have access to this kind of deal flow.
00;10;18;02 - 00;10;40;19
Kun Yang
We wanted to kind of democratize that process to the people who had come from the same journeys as we had, which were, you know, coming up as first generation Americans without a lot of access to this kind of stuff. And then eventually getting into these professional degrees and occupations where they suddenly did have some liquid cash to invest but didn't have the access to the deal flow that that you may have been connected to if you had been in this industry longer.
00;10;40;19 - 00;11;09;03
Kun Yang
So that was something that we were really proud of in our first round, just really opening up that opportunity for for those types of individuals. And then as we actually just now opened up our seed round and we just started this round about three and a half weeks ago, it's been going really well and even in this macro and I think a lot of it was here really taking the first step into the CBD world and opening it up to really bringing in a lot of value from people that have built companies and have been in the CPG universe.
00;11;09;17 - 00;11;15;27
Kun Yang
And really that's really what the focus of this the second round is, is to is to really get some smart capital in as well.
00;11;16;11 - 00;11;31;06
Djenaba
So how are you going about finding it, finding these investors, but also selecting them? I have to imagine it's a two way street like you had to be interested in investing in your company, but they also have to be right for your company. What types of investors are you looking for right?
00;11;31;06 - 00;11;57;11
Kun Yang
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's different at every stage of the business. I think when you are still in that journey of not just creating a product but truly creating a brand, because we believe that at least in CPG, consumers buy brands and they have loyalty to brands. And I think that that's something that is very, very much a unique attribute to the CPG industry that you don't see everywhere else, at least in terms of success, the emphasis of brand on success.
00;11;57;20 - 00;12;30;16
Kun Yang
And so I think prior to that point of where you really have the best possible product brand promo strategy and playbooks developed, I think just making sure that you have cash flow to allow yourself to to learn that and develop that, that methodology out is important and it's not as important to necessarily get strategic capital because one, it's harder to do so when you're at that stage, first of all, and most of the people around you are probably not in that space to begin with.
00;12;30;16 - 00;12;52;03
Kun Yang
So so I think that in the beginning it's less important. But what is important is just focusing on making sure that you're at the starting line now, that you're kind of past that, you know, we are head into growth mode now where we anticipate knowing that our product is ready to just start scaling it, it becomes a lot more important that we're finding partners in our investors as well.
00;12;52;03 - 00;13;13;26
Kun Yang
So whether it's design partners, whether it's industry partners, whether it's individuals that come from very early stage VCs or family offices, high net worth individuals that have been parts of journeys in the past that can make some of these connections to distribution, to marketing, to other capabilities that maybe your team lacks. That has become a very, very big part of this round.
00;13;13;26 - 00;13;32;13
Kun Yang
And it's actually been one of the the most incredible experiences. And the seed round is just meeting some really, really interesting people that that can really come in and help your business grow and partnering up. And that's really kind of what we look at in this investment round is we're looking at partners. We're not just looking at investors.
00;13;32;17 - 00;13;49;25
Djenaba
Right. I think that's super important. So not too long ago, you guys were on Shark Tank. So can you talk a little bit about that, how that all came to be? And I think that's probably a goal for some people. That may be some of our listeners is to participate in a program like that. So if you could talk about that a little bit.
00;13;49;25 - 00;14;11;29
Kun Yang
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, they actually reached out to us the first week we launched, they saw a Facebook ad and this was back when, I guess DTC and e-commerce was still quote unquote infinitely scalable. And so there's a lot of activity and discovery that was happening on e-commerce. And so they reach out to us, they are still apply.
00;14;11;29 - 00;14;32;19
Kun Yang
And then we did have a long, long application process. There were there were just there were very, very professional team. And we met, you know, producers. They helped us really think about how we wanted to frame up this the pitch and and just prepare us for the whole Shark Tank experience. When we ended up on set, which was like many months later, we felt pretty good.
00;14;32;19 - 00;14;53;01
Kun Yang
And honestly, like the sharks were just extremely friendly, professional. They were they were just honestly just good human humans to kind of interact with from start to finish. You know, we were there for for longer than what was aired, obviously, but I think the intention and the the heart of the conversation was absolutely captured in the post-production process.
00;14;53;19 - 00;15;15;04
Kun Yang
And then finally, when we aired in on Mother's Day weekend and then Labor Day weekend, this was being like a 15 month process. So it was just like the longest kept secret I think we'd ever been a part of, ever in our entire lives. It was a really fun milestone, for sure. And and as I said to a lot of people, I mean, I think every every company tends to have like come in different formats.
00;15;15;04 - 00;15;38;10
Kun Yang
And ours has absolutely been Shark Tank. It's been a great process that's added a lot of social credibility to our brand for consumers or buyers, and certainly nothing that we will ever neglect. And I think it has been a great launching pad for parts of our of our business. But I think the timing was also good coming into this brand refresh, being ready to grow and having Shark Tank behind us.
00;15;38;10 - 00;15;41;15
Kun Yang
It only sets us up for further success as well.
00;15;41;29 - 00;16;09;19
Djenaba
I was really struck by it. You know, obviously, you know, you said you were there longer than that was shown on television. But on the what the one one at one point you were kind of defending, you know, you were, you know, kind of selling y y of sharks to make an investment. And you finally just said, we don't need your money, which I thought was that kind of struck me because I I'm always like, I think at some point you need to be willing to walk away if it's not the right opportunity.
00;16;09;28 - 00;16;30;19
Djenaba
And I think sometimes we get so caught up in the opportunity having all these opportunities, and maybe the opportunity might go away and I might not get another opportunity that people kind of make the wrong decision based on based on that fact. So I that really struck me as like something really awesome, actually. Yeah. And it made me pay attention.
00;16;31;17 - 00;16;49;03
Kun Yang
Yeah. I mean, it certainly isn't the thing that no, I mean, I think every company needs financing. I think, you know, for us it was really just we didn't it just, you know, certainly in heated negotiation, too, we just didn't want to have everything boil down to the fact that that was the only reason why we were there.
00;16;49;03 - 00;17;10;24
Kun Yang
You know, and essentially it comes back to the same thing. It's like you want the right partners on this journey because it's a really difficult one. And everyone that's part of your cap table, everyone that's part of this journey that has a seat at the table should be invested in your business. It shouldn't just be a way to just, you know, truly invested emotionally, not just from a cash standpoint.
00;17;10;24 - 00;17;28;11
Kun Yang
I mean, this is a different kind of adventure than most investments are, especially if you're part of this. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, that was really what I think our reaction to the whole thing was, was like, you know, this is all you you want from this. And that's not really the right fit for us, you know, but we want partners.
00;17;28;11 - 00;17;35;17
Kun Yang
And I think that through that process and that negotiation and we we really got a great partnership out of out of that as well.
00;17;36;02 - 00;17;46;15
Djenaba
That's great. So can you talk a little about lessons that you all have learned since launching the company and any type of advice you would give to someone that's wanting to leave their job and start a food business?
00;17;48;07 - 00;18;22;09
Kun Yang
Yeah, absolutely. So I think in terms of lessons learned from I guess I'll answer the business side first and then certainly advice to folks that are considering it. I think lessons learned on the business side is number one, I think you just really have to find authenticity in the product that you create. I think that's so, so, so important because it just shifts the perspective and how you look at this journey from one where you're trying to sell a product to one that you're expressing a brand that has values that are aligned to your own.
00;18;22;09 - 00;18;46;25
Kun Yang
And and for us, I mean, everything that we do starts with our mission of inspiring people to be resilient, like the cactus green, delicious moments of happiness. And that's something we always say in the beginning of every conversation investor call or buyer meeting or even a consumer conversation, because we want them to understand that that's actually how we think about everything that we do from marketing campaigns to how we design our cans to how we think about innovation.
00;18;46;25 - 00;19;15;16
Kun Yang
It all becomes our North Star. And without having that self-awareness of who you are to understand what your values are as a person, it's hard to then create a product that authentically represents you. And, you know, it's not to say that you can't be successful, that way, but I think it's a lot harder when you have to kind of think about every decision and from a logical standpoint, as opposed to think of every decision from like an authentic standpoint where you're just expressing your ideas and finding people that resonate with that.
00;19;15;16 - 00;19;43;27
Kun Yang
It just makes the whole journey a lot easier, a lot more thorough and fun, truly, because it doesn't it just feels like yourself. So that's, I think, our biggest lesson learned from the business side. And I think for for people that are thinking about starting food businesses, especially in this macro too, I think, you know, just really I think figuring out how you can build an MVP as soon as possible and and test it out in different formats.
00;19;43;27 - 00;20;05;06
Kun Yang
It doesn't have to be a situation where you leave your job on day one because you have this great idea, like take your time to really learn and understand that everyone's growth journey is different. You know, it took us a long time to get to what we like to call the starting point of growth, and we feel so much more prepared for it than if we had just jumped into it, you know, two years ago and just said, let's go figure this out on the fly.
00;20;05;06 - 00;20;24;17
Kun Yang
I think it's fine to take your time. It's okay that every journey is uniquely different. And when you feel like the the pressure to take you away from your day job, to really focus on this is is just overpowering. That probably is a signal of when you should consider that, but it certainly isn't always in the beginning.
00;20;24;27 - 00;20;32;15
Djenaba
Well, thank you. So we talked a lot about business. So what do you do to relax and have fun and kind of step away from the business?
00;20;33;13 - 00;21;09;07
Kun Yang
Yeah, um, well, I have a 15 month old now, and so family time is super, super important to me and my wife. And so a lot of a lot of that has been just what allows me to emotionally recharge, you know, and and learn how to just be a father in this process. Right. And what's really, really cool is, is actually finding that that having having kids, this has actually been an amazing thing because it's it's allowed me to to just think about what values I really care about from a parenting standpoint, what I want in part on my on my child and and instill in our family.
00;21;09;07 - 00;21;24;28
Kun Yang
And then through that, that's actually made us myself a better person in terms of being in the business as well. So they've gone hand in hand quite, quite well. But I just love spending family time as much as I can whenever I'm not working. That's been my way to recharge for sure.
00;21;25;03 - 00;21;37;06
Djenaba
That's great. I feel like having a family gives for me. I can speak that gave me some focus like. So I had to stop working at a certain time because I had to go, you know, I wanted to be there for bedtime and dinner times and those types of things.
00;21;37;22 - 00;21;55;03
Kun Yang
Yeah, it's such an important thing. It gives you focus and and truly I think it also to to that point going back to the story, is it really, I think makes you a better leader because it makes you a better human. It makes you you know, it really forces you to put other people ahead of you in every capacity.
00;21;55;03 - 00;22;09;05
Kun Yang
And so I think that's truly what leadership has to come down to. And and how do you be successful in that? I mean, it gives you an interesting skill set that maybe you didn't always have a chance to hone. That now becomes a critical one as you grow a business right?
00;22;09;05 - 00;22;25;10
Djenaba
That's true. So here at Hudson Kitchen, we have what I call the money bell. It's in the lobby of our facility. And some people, they ring it when they get a new retail partners or sometimes employees bring it when they get their paycheck. And so wondering, what are you celebrating? What can we how can we ring the bell for you?
00;22;26;09 - 00;22;48;25
Kun Yang
Yeah, well, very, very timely. We just opened up our seed round. And so we're super excited to be going, you know, hard into that that phase of our growth cycle. Now, 2023 is a huge, huge, huge year. We've already brought on some really strong notable investors. And so just yeah, finding great partners that want to come on this journey of building the greatest cactus company ever by inspiring people to be resilient.
00;22;48;25 - 00;22;58;07
Kun Yang
Like the cactus is what we're here for. So very exciting time in our journey and we're just extremely honored to be part of this podcast and also extremely excited about what 2023 has to bring.
00;22;58;07 - 00;23;04;02
Djenaba
Welcome and thank you so much for being with us. Please let our listeners know where they can find out about you and prickly.
00;23;05;00 - 00;23;13;18
Kun Yang
Yes, absolutely. So just follow us on TikTok and Instagram at drink prickly with two E's. Otherwise find us online at prickly dot com or Amazon.
00;23;14;11 - 00;23;32;21
Djenaba
That's great. Thank you. The Food Means Business podcast is produced by Hudson Kitchen. It's recorded and edited at the studio at Carney Point. Our theme song is by Damien de Sandys and I'm your host, Jennifer Johnson Jones. Find out more about Hudson Kitchen by visiting the Hudson Kitchen dot com or follow us on Instagram at the Hudson Kitchen.
00;23;33;06 - 00;23;39;12
Djenaba
Listen below and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time.