As Honest co-founder Seth Goldman races to get his new ready-to-drink tea to market in the aftermath of Coca-Cola’s decision to discontinue Honest tea, there is one thing he is sure of for now. He won’t try to build a direct-store delivery network like the one constructed for Honest. Instead, Goldman and his partners, including Honest co-founder Barry Nalebuff, will stick to the warehouse-delivered grocery and natural food channels. “Honest Tea did build a DSD network and I don’t see us trying to do the same thing here,” Goldman told BD in an interview. “That’s a bear, doing that nationally.” Goldman team includes another of his business partners, chef Spike Mendelsohn, who in recent years joined Goldman to start mushroom jerky maker Eat the Change and meatless burger chain PLNT Burger. Using Eat the Change, Goldman, Mendelsohn, and Nalebuff are racing to get a glass-bottled tea product to market before other brands grab the shelf space that will be vacated by Honest Tea by the end of the year. While Goldman expects to reach out to some of Honest’s former DSD partners “that make sense,” he sees plenty of runway in the natural channel and with warehouse delivery. Goldman said building out a national DSD network for Honest was “brutal,” which is why the 2008 minority investment and 2011 full acquisition by Coca-Cola made sense. “We couldn’t get the full national map assembled with us,” he recalled.

NEW BRAND DETAILS. Goldman said he and his partners have set a “super aggressive” launch date that will remain internal for now. “We’re comfortable saying we’ll be in the market by October,” he said. While the name and branding has been decided, he is keeping it a secret for now. The tea will be organic, fair trade certified, and low- to no-calorie. Unlike Honest Tea, the new tea won’t use any cane sugar. A core formulation principle of Eat the Change is not using sugar in recipes, Goldman said. Sweeteners could include organic ingredients such as honey. Having a chef involved in the formulations will also bring new flavor variations, Goldman said.

LEANING INTO FUTURE. Asked whether brands like Honest Tea will ever find a long-term place within large mainstream DSD-driven companies like Coca-Cola, Goldman was not pessimistic. “It’s up to them,” he said. “I am confident they can be.” He went on: “Coke had a brand that was leaning into the future where consumers are headed,” he said. “They were in a situation where they had to choose whether to go with what’s selling now or where we want to take consumers. They chose to go with where they are now.” Unlike many entrepreneurs that sell their brands to large companies, Goldman remained close to the brand and Coca- Cola for eight years after the company was acquired. He left Honest, where at the time he was TeaEO Emeritus, in 2018 to found PLNT Burger and Eat the Change. Looking back at other brands acquired by Coca-Cola and then discontinued, such as Odwalla and Zico, Goldman drew this conclusion: “It’s safe to say that if a founder isn’t there, they aren’t good at building health-oriented brands.”