Fabian Geyrhalter:
Welcome to the show, Tate.

Tate Huffard:
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I’m excited to have you. This is episode 99, which in itself is already a special occasion. I know you gave me a hard time that you’re not on 100, but we got to slowly ease into that. As an intro, let me quote, Food and Beverage Insider, which they awkwardly abbreviated to FBI as their favicon on the website, but that’s a different story. So Food and Beverage Insider, here’s what they wrote about your company not long ago, I think it was a month ago or so, they said for Best Day Brewing, which launched in 2022, the goal is to source premium natural ingredients, including barley, hops, water, and yeast for top-notch craft beer. Not only do the brewers manage to pull off full body tasty beers, but they keep them low calorie, low sugar, and low carb. The beers crafted in High Sea IPA, Kolsch and they forgot the C in there, how American, and West Coast IPA are also enhanced with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory polyphenols.

So a quite impressive statement coming from the industry publication. It makes me wonder though, last year, the non-alcoholic beer market was already pretty busy. Even a few years prior when you must have started most probably like 3, 4, 5 years before it actually launched, right? It was already busy. And then you coupled that with you coming from a totally different industry. What made you say one day, you know what the world needs, my alcohol free beer brand? What was your motivation in getting into this market, which I’m sure posed all kinds of challenges?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah, it’s a great question, and I’d imagine you get a similar answer from any sort of founder that you talked to where on the surface it seems like, oh, this just started yesterday. But the journey really began a long time ago. And that’s the same with my story. The whole reason for Best Day, the reason why we decided to go at this market really started in 2015, but I would even argue it started over a decade ago. And so my background not being in Food and Bev, I started in the world of finance in New York, coming right out of college and pretty quickly realized that wasn’t going to be my life’s path. New York is fun, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for. And same with the world of finance. There’s a future there, especially I come from the Northeast where a lot of people, they end up on Wall Street, whether they like it or not. There’s just this gravitational pull from Wall Street.

So in that year out of college, I had friends who came out to Northern California and they were doing a similar thing out here where they’re working their tails off. But the work life balance out here was totally different. And I had never been to California. And one day in New York, I just decided, today’s the day. This is my last day in New York. And I moved out to
Northern California and just went hook, line and sinker on the lifestyle out here. I got a surfboard, I went skiing, I bought a mountain bike, I got into trail running, and I just couldn’t get enough of it. And the other thing that fascinated me was the intersection of the drinking culture. There’s tons of great craft beer out here, and I was just enthralled by it. And I was particularly fascinated by that intersection of the drinking culture with this outdoor lifestyle.

So at the time, in your twenties, you can do it all right, you can go to work, you can party at night, you can drink as many beers as you want, and you can wake up and go surfing, and somehow you do it all. And I found when I rounded the corner into my thirties, that calculus started to change and it was almost like this running joke that I would go out for beers with my surfing buddies and we would all be like, “Yo, 6:00 AM paddle out. Let’s go first light, get out there at Ocean Beach and then we’ll get to work,” and 6:00 AM would show up the next day and no one would be there. And it just kind of forced this question of, all right, what matters at this point in my life? My job is getting way more intense. I want to feel good, and I actually want to paddle out at 6:00 AM.

And so that started me just not drinking during the week. That was step one. And I was drinking kombucha. I was drinking sparkling waters. And there are a lot of great products out there, but they’re not at all like drinking a beer. And I was noticing this void. And because there is a ritual to it, which matters a lot, and whether that ritual is coming home at six or seven at night after a day of work and cracking open a beer, I mean, it’s just going to the fridge, opening it up, cracking open a beer, that whole thing, and then sitting down and separating time. It matters. And the beer is a big portion of that whole equation. That the same could be said if you go out to dinner and there’s a reason why you have a wine list and there’s a reason why you have a food and beverage manager who crafts a section of a menu because it’s a journey and it’s part of that experience, and there’s something different between that and just a commoditized product, whether it’s water or a Coke or Pepsi product, they’re not sexy, right?

And there’s something about going on that journey, and I was really missing that especially during the week when I wasn’t trying to drink. And this is the thing where I’m sure everyone you talk to has that moment when the light bulb goes off. And for me, my father-in-law is from Minneapolis, and when he would come out here to come over for dinner, he would bring over a six pack of O’Doul’s. He’s an O’Doul’s drinker, and he would drink one, and the other five would sit in my fridge. And the light bulb moment for me was going to the fridge, opening it up and seeing the O’Doul’s next to the craft beer that I love drinking.

And the craft beer has 4%, 6%, 9% alcohol. And each one of those has a very distinct use case for when you’re going to drink it in your life. And I just had that moment where I was like, well shit, if we could make the same great tasting craft beer and have no alcohol in it, that would be my Monday to Friday beer. And by the way, there’s no reason why I wouldn’t drink it on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday morning. I mean, you could drink these things all day. And your question about me not having a background in Food and Bev, and it’s specifically in beer, I view that as the biggest blessing of all, right? Because had I had a background, had I ever brewed a beer in my life, had I had a background in beer, you probably wouldn’t have looked at that. And-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I mean, look, why did it take so long for a Heineken Zero to even taste good? Right? Because that’s been around forever, right?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I mean, under different brand names, I think.

Tate Huffard:
Sure.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
But I mean, let’s talk about this. What is the difference in technique when brewing alcohol-free? What are those challenges? Because your hazy IPA really surprised me. I mean, it’s super flavorful. What’s the process like and how come it took the industry so long to create even decent, and in your case, great alcohol-free beer? Is it simply because there was no demand back then and now there’s demand which justifies the R&D?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah, I think that’s it. I mean, the simplistic answer is demand, right? Because non-alcoholic beer has served a purpose for a long time in this category. When people basically fall out of the drinking market, they go to those old school brands and they’re there as almost like a catchall, right?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Tate Huffard:
And that’s the only purpose. That 0.3% of the total beer market has been stagnant forever. And even when I started getting curious about it in 2016, the technology was not readily available.
Fabian Geyrhalter:
So let’s talk about this. What do you have to go through? Because as a consumer, all we see is a label, and we are like, “oh, alcohol-free.” It’s the same thing with decaffeinated espresso. You wonder what gives, how do you actually do this? So how do you brew alcohol-free?

Tate Huffard:
Great question. So there’re more or less three main ways to make non-alcoholic beer. One, you can just take a beer, raise the temperature on that beer, and it will cook off the alcohol. I wouldn’t recommend drinking those beers. The second way is what’s called the arrested fermentation, where you never actually let a beer ferment. And the third way is to actually make a full beer and then use more or less two different types of technology to extract the alcohol. So you can use vacuum distillation or you can use reverse osmosis.

And it sounds simple. It’s not as simple as just taking beer A, put it through a process and outcomes beer A less alcohol. There’s a lot of magic that happens both in the pre-production and post-production, but essentially those are the different options that you have. And for us, and for me in particular, when this whole thing got started as a beer drinker, the only way that you’re going to end up with a beer that tastes like a beer but has no alcohol is if you start like a beer, if you start with a beer. And so that third bucket of using technology, the latest and greatest technology, was really the game changer for us. And again, I started knocking on doors in 2016. We didn’t start the company until 2022, and it took a long time to get the beers to where they are today. But that line in the sand was really clear from day one that this is not worth doing unless it tastes like a great beer. The world does not need another O’Doul’s. And-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Tate Huffard:
Oh.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Go ahead.

Tate Huffard:
No, I was just going to say, and in order to go after the opportunity as I saw it, which is not converting a bunch of O’Doul’s drinkers to drink Best Day, but instead to fundamentally change the drinking behavior of everyone in the country. And it starts with an ambitious goal like that. And the only way that you’re going to get to do that is not by either having a bunch of people go sober or convert a bunch of O’Doul’s drinkers. You have to convince people to adapt this into their drinking habits. And the only way that they’re going to do that is if it tastes like a great beer.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely. And I just started that, I mean, literally months ago, after a mountain bike ride, usually that’s the thing, you come home and you’re like, here it is.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Your reward, right?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You crack open a cold one and you’re just like, “I deserve this. Right?” And that’s always what comes to mind. I deserve this. Right? This was great.

Tate Huffard:
You earned earned it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, you earned it. And I just recently started doing alcohol free beer afterwards, and it’s just amazing because it’s not like this is the end of that effort. It’s like, no, there can be any other effort afterwards, which is exactly kind of the philosophy that you are trying to-

Tate Huffard:
I love how you say that. Yeah, we’ve always thought about that like beer has been a period at the end of a sentence, right?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You even said it on your website, right?

Tate Huffard:
And now it’s a comma, and now it’s like, what else can we go do?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Exactly.

Tate Huffard:
That was fun.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Exactly. Yeah. And that’s kind of like that thing, oh, it’s happy hour, it’s Friday, five o’clock, and it’s kind of like the end, but it’s literally the end. Then you can’t drive, then you can’t operate. Then it’s kind of like the end. It’s like, does that make sense? Maybe not. Right? So interestingly, when you said before that, and I heard that previously too, and I always think it’s fascinating to talk deeper into that, you coming not from F&B, you coming from a different background, you were running operations at American Giant, which is an essentials and sportswear brand after your finance gigs, how has that shaped how you approach this business and how you run Best Day Brewing?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah. Well, pretty fundamentally I would say, because I think in startups, a lot of times you get these founders who are, for better or for worse, know-it-alls, right? Not only do they have the vision for the brand, but they know exactly how every part of the business should support that vision. I do not, because I have no credibility. I’ve never brewed a beer, never started a company, even though I’ve worked for startups for the better part of my career. But I think coming at this, not from the standpoint of this is decades of in-depth insider knowledge from a food and beverage background, it’s not that at all, right? It’s the exact opposite where I came at it with that naivete of just saying, “Hey, this would solve a problem in my life, first and foremost.” Now let’s figure out how to build a really cool company on top of that.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And you’re passionate about it, and that’s it, right? Like, here’s a problem. I want to fix it. I’ve got no idea where to start, how to do it, but guess what? I want to do it and I’m driven. And so I’m going to go ahead and do it. And that naivete is going to do one or two things. Either it’s going to bite you in your behind and you’re going to fall over flat like most startups do. Or in your case, you’re just determined, you just keep pushing.

Tate Huffard:
Well, and for me, that has meant surround this business with people who are really smart and who have done it, and who also look at it with the same curiosity and passion and excitement that I do. But they’re subject matter experts in their own fields. And that really has been, whether you look at the brand or the sales strategy or the product itself, or the marketing plan and the marketing execution, it’s all on the team. And for me, I brought this brand to life solo, and within three weeks we were building out a team, because as soon as we got this out in the market, and that was the height of the pandemic, not exactly a perfect time to launch a brand, let alone a perfect time to tell your wife that you’re-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Launch an alcohol free.

Tate Huffard:
…quitting your job. And I had just had my second kid, and we had just bought our house, and it’s a terrifying leap. But remember at that point, I’d been at this for the better part of six years, and we had been seeing the market build, we had been seeing the shift in consumer trends. The product had been getting better. The brand itself was coming to life in a way that when I had that aha moment, when I opened up the fridge, the brand itself, it popped into my head just as the concept of the beer, because it was all based on the lifestyle that I was trying to live out here.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
There’s so much you just said that we need to dive deeper into.

Tate Huffard:
Let’s do it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, let’s do it. Right. That’s what we are here for. So many things were thrown into your way. So first of all, the production always takes much longer. You want to perfect it, but the minute that you perfect it, I’m sure one other brewery comes up with their alcohol free where you’re like, “oh, they’re actually quite good. We got to up our game.” I’m sure you must have continuously kept pushing yourself to have really that quality that you needed to have. On the one hand, how do you do that? At what point do you say this is it? Must be really difficult.

Tate Huffard:
I think the short answer to that is never. We are always working on our beers. We are always, especially because technology is such an integral part of this beer, the way that we’re making it, technology will get better and we will push the envelope there. We will also push the envelope on ingredients and techniques. So I hope, I don’t think we’re doing our job as a company if we say, “oh, we’re done. That’s it. Best Day will never get better.”

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh yeah, I’m sure.

Tate Huffard:
And I think that is the really exciting part about being in a category that is growing and growing quickly because you’re getting so many fresh eyeballs on the space, and you’re getting so many new customers, and it’s on us to push the envelope on
this category. It’s on us to listen to our customers, to meet them, whether it’s at a concert or after a half marathon or at a coworking space. Everyone is coming at, there’s so many different entry points in this category, and everyone is coming at it with that level of excitement. And it’s on us to keep pushing the envelope and to deliver products that are, I don’t know, the profanity policy on this podcast, but we call it the “Oh, fuck” moment.
And it is that moment when someone cracks open a Best Day and they taste it for the first time, and they say, “Oh fuck, that’s different. That tastes like a real beer.” And then, you can let them indoctrinate it into their lifestyle.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Totally.

Tate Huffard:
And it’s just such a powerful I thing to have as a startup. I would argue, if you don’t have that as a startup, good luck. I hate to say it, but-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, that’s what it’s about.

Tate Huffard:
You need that energy, you need that excitement, and you need that lightning in a bottle. And for us, when someone experiences the brand and the product, it’s pretty magical to see what happens on the other end of it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Totally. Absolutely. And this is a podcast about branding, and we’re going to jump into it shortly, but that idea of people building amazing brands, it doesn’t matter if it’s a crap product. I mean, the product needs to be something that just is like, “Whoa, wait a minute, what?” Like, something needs to happen. And I talked to Chris Boyd of Monday Gin a while ago. He was the only other guest with an alcohol-free spirit on the show. And back then, it seems like the industry is still small enough, the alcohol free portion of the industry, that it’s more like everyone’s kind of part of that movement. It’s not so much enemies and competitors, it’s kind of like frenemies. It’s everyone watches out for each other.

Tate Huffard:
It’s the rising tide.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, exactly.

Tate Huffard:
It’s the rising tide.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And that’s still the case you feel? Like, how does it feel, because, I mean, you’ve got Athletic Brewing, which is very much the similar, it’s go-getters, it’s athletics, it’s very much your lifestyle, and it’s similar in a lot of things, but do you see the industry as becoming more competitive in that sense? Or is it a positive competitive where everyone just watches each other and everyone keeps pushing and goes around for, “Hey, we have the same mission here, all of us.”

Tate Huffard:
Yeah, I listen, I think competition is good. And if you’re a customer, you’re thinking competition is good too. It’s just going to lead to better products. It is, right? I mean, you could look at the NA category, St. Pauli Girl, Clausthaler, Becks, O’Doul’s. I think there’s a reason why those products weren’t in this race to the top. There was just no real excitement, no competition. The customer wasn’t asking for anything new. And now we’re in a different stage. This is something totally different. And to the extent that brands are putting out great products and resetting the bar in the market, I love it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Awesome.

Tate Huffard:
That’s a great challenge, like challenge accepted for us. And I hope that we are the ones who are setting the bar higher and higher. But I think the way that the industry is coming at this right now, I think you’ve got a lot of innovation that’s happening at the craft level. I love that. And I think customers, they’re just bringing a new life to this category that’s necessary in order to really move the needle. And then you’ve got Heineken 0.0, You mentioned before, right? They’re going to spend more money on Heineken 0.0 than they are on Heineken.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Which by the way, it tastes night and day from 10 years ago. Even Heineken Zero does.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah. If you watch the Premier League or Super Bowl or F1, you’re seeing Heineken zero there. And that’s bringing a lot of attention to this category. And within that, I like our chances on competing and-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Interesting. I like that-

Tate Huffard:
Resonating with the customer.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I like that way of seeing a new category. If you look at, it’s hard not to compare it with the second generation or third generation of coffee, when suddenly I had the founder of Intelligentsia and it’s like suddenly Intelligentsia is here. And that changed everything. And then Pete’s comes and buys Intelligentsia, and suddenly you see micro coffee places right and left, all craft, craft, craft everywhere. And that too, at some point, customers will just decide on what day do they engage with which kind of product, right?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
There are days where I want to go to a very specific coffee place because it’s just the best. And some days you drive by and you just go to a regular shop. So I think it’s the same in your industry, which is super interesting. Switching over to your passion and you talk about biking and hiking and trail running and how you really got sucked into, which in my mind is the best lifestyle is Northern California.

I’m in Southern California. I’ve been here for decades now. I come from Austria, which is not a bad place either, but Northern California, that’s where my heart is. It’s unbelievable. The beauty of nature up there is just insane.

Tate Huffard:
It is.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And so the idea that you really embodied this, and that was a big reason that actually got you to want to launch this beer brand, is that you want to engage with nature and sports and activities, and you want that to be on the forefront. As I was scrolling through your entire Instagram feed last night, that most probably started in 2021 or something. Is it you and your friends and your family that that’s doing all the surfing and biking and running? I mean, there are a bunch of pictures in there where I’m like, “Wait, is that Tate? Is that actually him?” I mean, is it fed by you or is it all different?

Tate Huffard:
Depending on the vintage of the picture, it could very well be me and my family. But there’s, like you said this, I am not carving out a unique lifestyle here. And even though that the Northern California lifestyle was the thing that kicked this whole thing into gear, you could make the same kind of argument for someone living in Texas or the Midwest or the Northeast or the Southeast. It’s more of an ethos, for me, that ethos happens to be surfing and mountain biking and this outdoor lifestyle, but the same ethos of I appreciate great beer, but I don’t want it to slow me down.
I want get more out of it. I want more out of life. I want more out of my beer. That same ethos could apply anywhere. And if you actually look, when we were doing our can design, we were talking about that section of the can, right off the front where everyone basically has the same three sentences of these are handcrafted and quality ingredients and all those things are true, but it doesn’t really get at that ethos. And for us, if you look at the side of the can, there’s this-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You know I did.

Tate Huffard:
There’s this laundry list of people, and it starts with Brewed for Doers, the doing of whatever it is in your life that you like. So then we get into the surfers, climbers, early risers, free divers, chefs, gardeners, dancers, oyster farmers, dreamers, painters, and it just goes on and on.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Tate, I’ll stop you right there because I counted it yesterday. I think it is 43 personas that you have there.

Tate Huffard:
I had a lot of fun with that one.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And you had skiers and you even had, I believe, snowshoers or something like that, but you didn’t have snowboarders. And so I feel like maybe this is not the beer for me, because if I fit into the ellipsis at the end, the three dots, I’m just not sure.

Tate Huffard:
Well, you might have to wait for another beer.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I might have to go for another brand. But in all seriousness with when you said that the name is an ethos, the idea of Best Day Yet, on your site, here’s what you say on your site, “It’s a belief in the celebration of now and an ever optimistic perspective of the future. With this in mind, we crafted our non-alcoholic craft beers to toast those moments when everything clicks into place, in our best day yet adventure these beers are a comma and not a period,” which we discussed prior.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
“We believe in and not or, so here’s to parking lot beers, trailhead beers, studio beers, workshop beers, and back porch beers, and to raising a glass to wherever doers share a Best Day.” Do you recall the moment, because you said before it’s like opening the fridge and boom, there’s the design and it’s so important, that brand portion. Do you recall the moment where you or someone on your team derived the name and the initial reaction to it? How did the name come about? It’s usually a pretty important moment in the founder’s story.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah. Well, even before the name was the slogan, Best Day Yet. And that is something that my wife and I have actually had, between us as just our ethos as long as we’ve been married, and it’s kind of been in my life even longer than that. It was one of those things that I heard at a wedding and I was like, “Whoa, that fits. I like that.” And that’s a pretty cool perspective on life because there’s something distinct about best day yet as opposed to that was the best day ever. There’s a finality to that I don’t like. And whereas best day yet, it’s implied that things are just going to get better. And so I just am one of those optimistic types, for better or for worse. But I was thinking about this brand and the way that it was back in 2016, starting to think about non-alcoholic beer and why do I need this?

And how am I going to convince my surfing buddies, let alone everyone else in the country, that they need this in their life too. And so the brand needed to do that. Obviously the product, it wasn’t worth doing, like I said before, unless the product was there, but you kind of assume that that’s going to happen or else we’re not going to start the company. But once that happens, how do you tell that story to a lot of people? And that optimism, I think stands in such contrast to what alcohol does. And again, we don’t come at this from the angle of sobriety.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Tate Huffard:
I’m a drinker. I drink beer, I drink spirits, I drink wine, but I know when I do that, I’m making a sacrifice.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And it’s like dessert. You don’t need dessert all the time.

Tate Huffard:
Well, yeah, and the sacrifice, like we said, is it comes in the form of a hangover, which you really feel, right. And I always laugh that if there’s anything that’s going to drive people to this category, it’s a one or a two year old, because good luck having a hangover with a bunch of those little guys. I happen to have three of them.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So that’s just as much of an inspiration. But the name really sends out that perfect vibe. It’s almost the promise to oneself, which I really like. Right.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s interesting. When I had one of those best day yet moments, it was that perfect moment where I was biking at the beach all day, and then I drove up to the mountain and I went night skiing, night snowboarding. So not my beer, but you know what I mean. I went night skiing and it started to snow that evening. And then when I used my windshield wipers, it was a mixture of snow and sand that was on my windshield. And I’m like, you know what? Best day yet. It’s that kind of moment.

Tate Huffard:
Are you ready to star in our commercial man?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Tate Huffard:
That’s awesome. That’s cool. And that’s it, right? So you know exactly what that’s about.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Tate Huffard:
That’s the moment, right? And whether it’s that moment or if you’re a woodworker or if you’re a musician, everyone’s got that thing where it’s like, “Oh yeah, that was it. That was my best day yet.”

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And that idea that if you surround yourself with a brand that is constantly in your fridge and you see it and it’s got a happy sunshine in it and a very modern happy design, and it’s as best day yet, you just constantly reminded to just to keep enjoying, keep pushing, keep doing, right? So it’s really great.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Let’s talk a little bit about the design of Best Day, the design of your site, the variety pack, and even to a certain extent, the label itself, they all seem to steer a little bit female. Was that intentional? Are you trying to attract a more female audience or overarchingly how did the brand design come together? Because it really is very different.

Tate Huffard:
Well, I think from the get go, our approach has been intentionally to do everything different than how non-alcoholic beer has been done in the past. When you think about any of those brands, they all kind of mesh together. They’re all in those green bottles, and they have not exciting brand, and the product is even worse. And as a result, they’ve been kind of relegated to this dark, dingy corner of the beer section. And so, in thinking about the brand and the product, we want to do everything different. And you look at the design of the packaging. It’s got color first and foremost, those colors are meant to be different. They’re meant to inspire, they’re meant to catch your eye, as does that sun icon. And there’s something just in, you look at the packaging and it’s like, “Oh, that’s cool. I got to try that.”

Fabian Geyrhalter:
But it’s so simple Tate, that it’s almost like not a brand, which is awesome. There’s something about it looks so… and I can see you, people who are listening can’t, but I see the Marin Headlands painting behind you. I forgot who does that is, I forgot his name, but-

Tate Huffard:
Schwab?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, Michael Schwab. That’s right. That kind of simplistic, two, three colors, very simplicity to the max. You can do simple and it doesn’t call anything home, or you do simple and you do it so well. It’s just really interesting. And I think with your label, it is so simple that in the beginning you look at it and you’re like, wait, that’s it? And then you start to realize that it’s actually a celebration of that simplicity, which is a really great thing because you will remember it every time you go to the store.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah. No, that’s great. And I’m glad you see it that way because that’s exactly our intention. And I am sure you’ve seen all the craft beer labels. I mean, they’ve gotten kind of ridiculous. A lot of them, you can’t even tell what you’re drinking. You can’t even tell what the brand is. And so we wanted to distill things down to let color do a lot of the work, let that icon be noticeable, recognizable, consistent. And with the Brewed For Doers, that laundry list, we wanted that to come out. We wanted people to see that.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, it’s like one third of your can. One third of the can, if you would talk to any professional F&B specialized design firm, they would be like, “One third of the can that’s real estate. That’s so important. You need to say A, B, C, D,” right? But that’s not coming from the background than you saying, “No, screw that, because that doesn’t bring anything to the table.” Telling them that it’s crafted in the most pure blah, blah, blah, and here and there. But it’s like, do you see yourself in this brand? Right?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
If you’re this person, you do. And I think it was a really interesting thing to do. After having had to go through this strange ride of branding a company, and not only a company, but a consumer product, CPG, it’s a food and beverage product. It’s going to be in the store. It’s like the biggest thing you can possibly brand is something that’s going to have shelf appeal when it comes to branding. How has that journey changed your viewpoint on branding? Or what does branding mean to you after you had to either suffer through it or celebrate it or be part of that journey?

Tate Huffard:
Great question. You spend so much time on that can and a can is ultimately the thing that the customer’s going to buy, which is why you spend a lot of time there. But a brand, and this brand in particular, to me, you need the soul. And not all of that can come through in the can. And so one of the things that we’ve been really working on over the last 14 months or so is expanding the brand to, even if you look at the side of the variety pack, that came about because we worked with this amazing artist who’s a surfer in the South of France. Does it get any better than that? And he saw our brand even, and just the ethos and the whole thing surrounding it. And he was like, I got that. Let’s make this thing come to life.
And it came to life in the form of these great pieces of art. And going back to the point that I said before about doing everything intentionally different from the old guard brands, we are now creating something that we’ve taken from the deepest, darkest corners of the beer aisle. And now our mission is to have you put this on your wall. This is a brand that has such intention and such care that you’re willing to frame it and put it on your wall. And the same could be said for a bar or your living room, or anywhere in between. And that’s our goal.
So if you have that as a goal, it doesn’t stop with the can, and it forces us to think about what are the other ways that this brand comes to life? And it’s a very fun challenge. And I think I find it particularly inspiring and fun because I don’t have, as you mentioned, I don’t have a background of brand. So for me it’s like, how do you take this thing that’s been in my head, knocking around and how do we see how it’s interacting with customers? How do we listen to customers? How do we work with artists and bring this thing to life? And I’ll tell you, it has been one of the most fantastic parts of my whole journey. Seeing this thing come to life been really amazing,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Seeing the brand, Best Day Yet.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah, that’s it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s awesome. That’s great. I ask every founder the same question, and we are coming to the very end of our time together, but my listeners already expect this question, if you could take your brand, and we talked so much about the ethos, and even when you talked about how exciting it is to build that brand out with amazing illustrations and everything comes back to your ethos. I mean, this is literally a brand that’s built on that belief. If you could put it through a funnel, and out comes one word, it’s like one word that can describe Best Day Yet as Best Day Brewing, Best Day Yet, the entire company, what would it be?

Tate Huffard:
I go back to optimistic.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Funny. That’s what I would’ve said. I would’ve said optimism.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah. And whether you’re talking about the optimism that a beer without alcohol should taste great, you shouldn’t settle for something that is just handed to you because it’s an afterthought. That in itself requires a lot of optimism. And the optimism is the thing that has kept us going for six years just to get to the starting line.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So now that people see you, this is the beginning of the brand, you’re like, “Nope, we already went through the worst.” Yeah. You got to stay optimistic.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah. And I mean, any founder will understand that, that you need that mixture of craziness and optimism to see through the ups and downs and to take something from nothing and go after your wildest ambitions. If you don’t have that, you’re missing an important arrow in your quiver.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I told you in the beginning that I’m running a product startup next to this, and I don’t have any investors yet, so I’m just pouring lots of money into it, and it’s crazy and it’s completely nuts. And every day there’s just this insane thing happening where I’m like, “What? This can only happen to me.” No, it happens to every entrepreneur. But at some point I felt like this is so insane that I’m doing this, that I’m going to start writing a book about it. Because if everything fails, at least I have a book at the end. So that’s the optimism. It’s like you got to try to get something out of it. Right. So it’s like funny. So I’m writing a book about the journey.

Tate Huffard:
I love it. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
What are you excited about for the Best Day brand in the next six or so months?

Tate Huffard:
We’re excited about a lot of things. We’re excited about new products that we have coming out that, again, I think are just going to be really pushing the envelope of this category. We’re excited to be rolling out into more territories. If we’re not in your state already, we will be soon. And we’re excited about just meeting more customers in the moment. That’s the thing. The cans and hands for us is the ever giving-

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Cans and hands. I like that.

Tate Huffard:
That’s it. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You’re coining industry terms by now, I’m sure. That’s funny. Well, listen, where can people find Best Day Yet? Is it easiest to just go online, go to the site?

Tate Huffard:
Yeah. I mean, that’s the beautiful thing about non-alcoholic beer. You can order it online. We’re in most Whole Foods. We’re in Target. Total Wine, BevMo! out here.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Awesome.

Tate Huffard:
But we’re trying to expand as rapidly as possible.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Tate, this was so nice, so refreshing. Thank you so much for spending so much time with us today during your busy Friday, I’m sure. And sharing your journey and your thoughts on branding was really cool. Really appreciate it.

Tate Huffard:
Yeah, really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.