In this episode, I have a conversation with the CEO of Liquid Death, a canned water and beverage company. I take issue with their misleading slogan, Death to Plastic, and the fact that their cans are lined with plastic, not only that they sell packets of drink mixes also lined in plastic. There are alternatives to plastic that are readily available and low-cost which are glass and stainless steel.
00:12:23.760When you burn off aluminum cans, the plastic is fried,
00:12:27.440and it breaks down into plastic particulates, carbon dioxide, and water vapor, which is captured by filters in these facilities,
00:12:33.340and those filters create massive landfill waste.
00:12:35.900So this idea that—this is another issue I take with what you're saying.
00:12:38.880You've done numerous interviews where you say infinitely recyclable, which is not correct, okay?
00:12:43.680About 2% of your cans are still plastic.
00:12:46.020I fully accept and recognize it's still better than a plastic PET water bottle, substantially cheaper.
00:12:52.640You can get it for a fraction of a cent per ounce in a plastic water bottle.
00:12:56.980But again, my point is you are using these—this is called assumptive reasoning in marketing and manipulation—to convince people that you are doing something—that you are not doing something you are, in fact, actually doing.
00:13:07.400You burn the cans down to melt—I think it's 700 Celsius or higher—and the plastic fries off into pollutants, which are captured by filters, and those filters are waste product, and the filters have to exist because you're burning plastic.
00:14:49.680The aluminum can be, but the can itself can't because it contains chemicals you have to burn off.
00:14:53.320The can can be infinitely turned from a used can into a new can over and over and over and over.
00:15:02.920You cannot take a liquid death can, burn off the plastic and melt it down, and convert that into another liquid death can because you will need new plastic to line the inside.
00:15:29.32099% of the can is infinitely recyclable.
00:15:32.0600% of a plastic bottle is infinitely recyclable.
00:15:36.2000% of a glass bottle is basically infinitely recyclable.
00:15:39.920I also disagree with that because I have glass bottles that we reuse all the time and have arguably recycled.
00:15:45.500I understand the point you're making about sending a glass bottle to a facility to melt it down.
00:15:49.420But I look at—let's address the comparison that you've brought up over and over again because, once again, we're pitting this as if it's, you know, cans versus bottles.
00:15:59.160But as far as I can tell, there is no metric showing that canned water has displaced plastic PET water bottles in any significant way.
00:16:07.760In fact, plastic water bottle consumption is higher than it's ever been and growing exponentially, especially in the third world.
00:16:13.400So when the argument is made that we are better than plastic, but when you look at the net product of liquid death still produces more plastic on top of existing plastic, I don't see how this actually is an argument.
00:16:25.440So if you look at the top 10 plastic bottled water brands right now, since liquid death has been around over the last six years—and look, liquid death is still a small brand.
00:16:40.220But we're on the start to at least have people think about alternatives to plastic bottles.
00:16:44.500Like, yes, we're—you know, if you look at the publicly available scan sales data of all our categories, in which, by the way, still water is less than 15% of our revenue now.
00:16:55.440Mostly what we have are healthy soda, healthy low-calorie iced tea, and then we're launching sort of healthy, better-for-you energy drinks going into next year.
00:17:05.020So if you just look at still water, it's becoming a smaller, smaller part of our revenue.
00:17:09.720But if you look at the top 10 plastic bottled water companies over the last six years, all of them are declining in sales except for smart water.
00:17:19.360Smart water is the one brand that is up in sales.
00:17:21.380However, smart water has moved a lot of their bottles to aluminum.
00:17:26.020If you go in an airport right now, almost all the smart water that they're doing, they're putting in aluminum cans.
00:18:45.680There's another company that wants to license our name so that they can create Death Dust.
00:18:52.220And now what we're trying to look at is what packages are available that are a better option than what's currently there.
00:19:02.020With that stuff, there's not a lot of great options right now.
00:19:04.720So the original thing for Death Dust, the thinking, just so you see how we're thinking, was that what we did find was because most of those packets are used by people who are like pouring them into reusable water bottles and going to the gym and using these things.
00:19:19.640So you can make the argument that by using a packet, it's like 98% less plastic material than a plastic bottle if you're buying a Gatorade, that people kind of making their own sort of sports drinks.
00:19:32.120You're kind of eliminating the need for someone to buy a plastic bottle so that if someone's not buying a Gatorade and they're making their own Gatorade, you can argue that it's less plastic consumption that's happening.
00:19:42.860And then hopefully as technology moves along and packaging moves along, that there are better formats that can be used for these things, given that there's such a new category that out of the gate, it's not the most ideal solution.
00:19:55.660But the minute there was something better that you could migrate over to it.
00:19:58.860And that was kind of the thinking that we had going into it.
00:20:21.780They own that exact shape and modeling of the bottle.
00:20:25.520You're not going to wash that out in a facility and then it goes and then all of a sudden your Sprite is in somebody's old used Coke bottle.
00:20:33.380Europe actually has a better recycling system for glass.
00:20:37.700And the reason that is, is because they don't have a mixed recycling plan.
00:20:41.440They have very specific glass containers, metal containers, plastic containers.
00:20:46.000But, but, but why does recycling of glass matter?
00:20:47.840Because if you're talking about sustainability of something that, a material that doesn't have to be created from new always, that you can have material that's created new, gets reused over and over and over again.
00:21:04.400You're not constantly having to create new.
00:21:06.640And that's part of what sustainability can be.
00:21:09.100But I look at it like, you know, calories per bottle, right?
00:21:12.760So if the argument is that recycling is good because it requires less energy to recycle a glass bottle versus produce a new one, I suppose there's an argument there.
00:21:21.780But the reason why they don't recycle glass is because it's actually not correct.
00:21:25.320It costs more to recycle the bottle than to produce a new one from scratch.
00:21:28.160Considering that glass bottles are rocks, and when they sit in landfills, it's a landfill full of rocks, I don't really have a great concern about that.
00:21:36.540But I would actually make the argument that, you know, from my personal experience, we stopped buying the Saratoga Springs glass water bottles.
00:21:46.300I'm familiar with the study that perhaps, according to this one study, there may be a couple, there's more microplastics in the bottle because of the cap.
00:21:55.720There's cork, there's silicone, things like that.
00:21:58.260But in my experience and what I've encountered, the argument that people are going to not buy a plastic water bottle because liquid death is an alternative, I think also presupposes that people will choose not to buy a glass product with less plastic because they see liquid death as a cheaper alternative, which in fact just increases total plastic consumption worldwide.
00:22:17.780Yeah, but you're really going out on a limb to assume that millions and millions of people are making the same exact assumption that you are.
00:22:29.500No, I'm making a balanced assumption that there's no data to suggest a person has foregone buying a plastic bottle in favor of liquid death when the inverse could equally be true, that they chose not to buy a glass bottle in favor of liquid death, which has more plastic.
00:22:46.220There's more plastic in a glass bottle than in a liquid death can.
00:22:50.140In every single glass bottle, even with a cork cap and with a paper sticker?
00:22:54.900Show me one bottle that exists in a retailer anywhere in this country that is not alcohol that you're charging $15 a bottle for that has a cork in it.
00:23:35.640So I can go, I can go to Walmart right now.
00:23:37.440And for 0.8 of a cents, a point, there's like not even a single cent per ounce, I can get water from a plastic bottle.
00:23:45.440Liquid death, I found at the lowest, eight cents per ounce and the highest 17 cents per ounce.
00:23:51.360So let's talk about the beverage business then.
00:23:53.640So you can talk about how we get the pricing.
00:23:55.400Because I think people are really confused about how pricing ends up on the shelf where it is.
00:23:59.920And that was part of my post to you to understand that.
00:24:02.520Because even in the early days of liquid death, when I had the idea, I want to make this beverage company, there are so many costs that I never even realized existed until you actually get into it.
00:24:12.840So there's two ways you can sell a beverage to somebody.
00:24:16.040You can ship it direct to them from your warehouse and sell it on your website, which is kind of what it seemed like you were doing with the gag product, right?
00:24:57.280Beer distributors, because of the alcohol laws in the U.S., alcohol manufacturers are only allowed to own 20% of their distribution network.
00:25:07.820You can't produce the booze and also sell the booze to retail.
00:25:11.400So there's about 400 independent Anheuser-Busch distributors.
00:25:15.900Anheuser-Busch corporate only owns 20 of them.
00:25:17.960So for those other 300-plus distributors, they're all individual family-owned distributors around the country.
00:25:24.520You can go to them one by one and say, hey, will you distribute my product?
00:25:30.620And most of them say, unless you have massive chain authorizations in Walmart or 7-Eleven or Albertsons, we don't want to deal with your product.
00:25:41.160So it took Liquid Death a lot of time to do that.
00:25:43.500So once you build out that network, we've got about 300 Anheuser-Busch and some Miller Core, some non-alc distributors around.
00:25:50.780They want a 30% profit margin to sell your product to the store.
00:25:56.740So me, let's say I can make a 12-pack of Liquid Death water for, call it, $5 is my cost.
00:26:06.240By the time you have the can, the filling, the carton, shipping from the bottler to your own warehouse, then also the cost of shipping from your warehouse to the distributor.
00:27:16.060So the beverage game in general is very capital intensive because as a small company, you will never get anywhere close to the cost benefit of a Coca-Cola who own most of the products on the shelves that you see.
00:27:29.620Are you allowed to disclose the profit margins for liquid death?
00:27:34.220I can't give an exact number, but I can say we're around 40% gross margin right now.
00:27:38.480The public estimate is $333 million in sales last year.
00:28:21.220So is the argument, I suppose, that you don't want to disclose your products contain plastic or that as it pertains to using glass bottles, you could not find a way to reduce the label or maybe even use no label?
00:28:36.920So since the post the other day, and this is something we've been talking about for a little while.
00:28:43.600It's not like we're like, hey, this is something that we're in a room.
00:28:48.000How do we manipulate the public and get them to buy?
00:28:53.840Death to plastic is a marketing tagline, right?
00:28:56.620Like, marketing taglines at the high level like that, they're not claims.
00:29:03.720We're not saying our product contains 0% plastic.
00:29:08.120Death to plastic is like, just do it or gives you wings.
00:29:11.540It's a short form to get people to then look deeper into the brand of like, oh, what is this?
00:29:17.680And then if you actually go to our website or you read on the can or you look into it, there's more info of what it is.
00:29:23.560And now I agree, at this point, because of all the other concerns about plastic, we should absolutely update our line to death to plastic bottles.
00:29:33.580And we should have on our site, and we actually, if you go to our site now, I had my team update, hey, let's just change the logo now, death to plastic bottles.
00:29:43.120Let's actually talk through everything that we talked through.
00:29:45.980Hey, yes, they do contain a plastic liner.
00:29:57.520And we're not trying to do this to deceive people.
00:30:00.680Again, it's always hard for companies in a lot of areas where companies are so close to their own products, where it's like we live and breathe every day all the details of liquid death.
00:30:11.940And what we might assume is something that is easily assumed might not be the case, and then we learn and we adapt.
00:30:19.740And I think that's what you have to do.
00:30:21.420I did notice this, too, because I pulled up your website and saw that you do have this section now, which talks about plastic liners, which I believe you put up yesterday.
00:30:31.780As soon as we had this conversation and I saw some of the traction on there, again, this is something we've been talking about.
00:30:38.860I'm like, guys, we've been talking about this for a while.
00:30:42.060One, it should have been updated earlier.
00:30:44.140I was like, guys, why isn't this updated?
00:30:45.660Why didn't you do it years ago when all these articles came out and the videos of the plastic bag and the liquid death bottle were going viral back then?
00:30:53.400It didn't matter or, you know, I look at it like here comes a guy with millions of followers posting on X.
00:31:00.100I have this issue and you see all it's like over a thousand comments are made, hundreds of retweets, and then you update it.
00:31:05.980But all the information I'm talking about, I've actually discussed privately or not even privately.
00:31:10.300I've gone without naming liquid death out of respect for mutual and, you know, individuals, mutual colleagues that we have.
00:31:17.060So I've actually done shows where I've talked about the issue of can liners without naming liquid death.
00:31:24.080But there's articles from three years ago talking about how you guys line your product with plastic and don't disclose that.
00:31:35.160It's like, well, one, we didn't believe that based on because, look, we don't just make decisions in a vacuum of three people sitting in a boardroom.
00:31:43.680Like we look at shitloads of survey data.
00:31:46.340Like we have people, we're surveying liquid death drinkers to find out what is it?
00:31:52.020And what we identified was the fraction of people, of all the liquid death customers, the fraction of people that would be in this camp of, oh, I thought I was buying something that had no plastic in it and how dare you deceive me was so small.
00:32:07.220And even now, it's a very small number of people.
00:32:10.720But, hey, sometimes you do have to cater to.
00:32:35.340How many people are buying a liquid death or how many people do you think are buying a Red Bull saying, I believe this product is going to give me wings?
00:32:43.600Fascinating, because that wasn't the FTC's argument.
00:32:45.800The argument was that Red Bull's statement misled the public into thinking that it provided more of an enhancement than any caffeinated beverage.
00:32:51.720The statement Red Bull gives you wings did not trick people into thinking they would grow wings.
00:32:55.940People believed Red Bull was an energy drink.
00:32:57.720And then they found out it was a standard caffeinated soda.
00:33:02.080So when you say to me, we knew death to plastic was a marketing slogan and our products contained plastic, and there was a portion of people who genuinely believed it was plastic free, sounds like you've just admitted to an FTC violation.
00:33:16.860You're completely wrong, because death to plastic is not a claim.
00:33:34.420And we have, if you look at any ad that Liquid Death has made, Recycled Plastic Surgery Center, the most recent thing we did with Whitney Cummings, the whole thing is about recyclability.
00:33:43.700It's about putting plastic in your body, which microplastics do when they leach into your food product.
00:33:50.480I thought that was pretty funny, because I like Whitney Cummings, and you did this commercial where they're jamming plastic in their body.
00:33:55.240And I was like, kind of like when you consume plastic-lined food products with microplastics leaching into them, right?
00:34:01.080Look, look, I'm going to say it again.
00:34:23.540I would not have bought liquid death as a plastic alternative had I known my food product was aligned with plastic, because it defeated the purpose of purchasing it.
00:34:30.160And I stopped buying my Saratoga Springs, thinking this didn't have plastic in it.
00:35:25.240I take issue with the marketing campaign, which insinuates you don't use plastic and you're actively working against it,
00:35:31.480when, in fact, you are contributing to the production and consumption of plastic.
00:35:36.020It may, it's absolutely better than plastic bottles, but there's no data showing a comparison between liquid death consumption and a decline in PET bottle use.
00:35:44.320In fact, exponential increase across the board.
00:35:46.300So when I look at your cans, can for can, liquid death produces the same amount of plastic as every other canned soft drink manufacturer, and you're growing.
00:35:54.980And now you're getting away from water and you're going into standard soft drinks, which typically are in aluminum cans because of pressurization.
00:36:00.820They're not going to work in these thin PET bottles.
00:36:02.560You are the same as every other company, but you have this thin veneer of we're environmentally friendly for some reason or better, despite the fact, if you put on these cans, these cans do contain plastic.
00:36:45.040So just the cap alone is six times the amount of plastic material as what is in a can.
00:36:50.500And then if you have any plastic on the label of the plastic bottle, which a lot of them have, that's another couple grams.
00:36:58.040So you're talking on average, and you go ahead, chat, GPT, AI, whatever the fuck, a plastic bottle, they estimate, has five to six grams of plastic used in a plastic, in a glass bottle, which is 10 times that of an aluminum can.
00:37:16.280So you could make the argument that that's what I'm getting at is, yes, there is no perfect thing.
00:37:24.880And when it comes to plastic, that's the bigger thing.
00:37:27.440Let's just say you made a glass bottle that somehow uses no plastic whatsoever.
00:37:32.360If you're talking about microplastics, water in the bottling facility is touching plastic all over it.
00:37:41.420There is no way to get away from plastic in the modern industrial society, unfortunately.
00:37:46.640Water is passing through plastic tubes.
00:37:48.840There's plastic nozzles on the bottle fillers that the water goes through in the facility.
00:37:53.640So we live in a world dominated by plastic, so there is no way to get away from any risk of microplastics, regardless of what the container is.
00:39:53.280I think you're more likely to pull people from glass bottles, like Topo Chico, for instance, is going to have substantially less—or Mineragua, for instance—less plastic than yours, based on what I just looked up.
00:40:07.400I've got 8.4 cents per ounce at my local Walmart for glass bottle Mineragua with a single-use pop cap.
00:40:13.700So I can get—it's funny, Mineragua's not even marketing that they're anti-plastic, and there's less plastic in it.
00:40:19.820Now, to be fair, maybe the label has a certain degree of plastic, but we could mitigate that.
00:40:23.480We could do a paper label or something else.
00:40:24.880So, ultimately, what it comes down to is I'm willing to accept that you didn't really think about it all that much.
00:40:32.120You didn't—the microplastic thing is only new in the past several years.
00:40:35.100But there's still a few factors that I think matter.
00:40:37.420One is you could have always gone with glass and single-use pop caps, which has less plastic than the can.
00:40:42.960You could have disclosed on your site, on the can, this product still does contain plastic, which I think is important.
00:40:49.140And on top of that, I genuinely just think that liquid death is overall a contributor to the market, not a displacer for the market.
00:40:59.180So consumption of single-use plastic is only going up.
00:41:02.420I take issue with the phrase infinite recyclability because that misleads people into thinking this can is pure aluminum, and the whole thing can be reused as it can.
00:41:22.960If I took this can of liquid death after it was done, melted it down into aluminum, could that aluminum, just in and of itself, be reformed into another can of any size?
00:41:49.380If I took this liquid death can, finished it, melted it down to aluminum, reshaped it into a can, it would not be capable of holding your beverage because it would react with it.
00:41:58.600Yes, but you're talking about the word infinite.
00:42:03.700Infinite. What do you mean by the word infinite? Let's get—let's start there.
00:42:06.800Okay. A liquid death can—I'm not saying aluminum.
00:42:10.480A liquid death can is not infinitely recyclable because of the portion of it which is plastic, ink, or otherwise.
00:42:17.220The ink, by all means, whatever, however it's colored.
00:42:20.900We can throw that out the window because it is what it is.
00:42:23.180But the plastic has to be reproduced, not to mention when it's burned off, the plastic will emit carbon, water vapor, and plastic particulates, which are soaked into a filter.
00:42:33.600It is tons better than plastic bottles, certainly not better than Topo Chico or any other single-use pop cap on a glass bottle.
00:42:39.980So it is not infinitely recyclable. That is a marketing term.
00:42:44.080And when you actually look into it, every confirmation is infinitely recyclable as a marketing term used to make it seem like it is.
00:42:50.540Now, if you said the aluminum in our cans can be recycled infinitely because it's a metal, that would be a fair statement.
00:42:57.100And by all means, make that distinction, I suppose.
00:43:00.580Once again, my point is all of these factors line up and show us an avalanche, which says to me, I don't believe that you guys were unaware of the impact.
00:43:08.600In fact, you said to me just a moment ago, you knew a portion of your consumer base thought this was plastic-free, and you did not put on the can that it was, in fact, containing plastic.
00:43:18.080Even if that percentage is 2% or 1%, it shows that you are willing to say that portion of our consumer base is okay to lie to or mislead.
00:43:28.620It's lying by omission. It's misleading them into thinking death to plastic doesn't actually mean us because we're producing more single-use plastic.
00:43:35.220We have tons of info on our site that is always talking about recyclability of plastic versus aluminum.
00:43:43.720We're never claiming that these are healthier to drink from in any way.
00:43:47.960We're never claiming anywhere actual claims of like 0% plastic.
00:43:53.840Death to plastic is a rallying cry. It is not a claim.
00:43:57.160Let me ask you. I get it. I get it. And I don't mean to cut you off, but just because I hear your point and I duly noted.
00:44:05.320So one other question I have, it says on this can, we donate a portion of the profits from every can sold to help kill plastic pollution.
00:44:12.600I checked your site. Do you want to explain?
00:44:15.580I don't know if you're allowed to tell us what portion of the profits actually goes towards fighting plastic pollution.
00:44:20.260Well, in the early days of liquid death, it was, we had a specific number.
00:44:25.780We had, uh, it was like five cents a can was what we, what we donated in the very early days as the business.
00:44:33.060Well, actually it was the original thing was 5% of the profits we were donating.
00:44:38.820Your, your, your site in 2021 says 10%.
00:46:16.460Currently it just says we don't need a portion.
00:46:18.520So here, here's, here's another issue in my argument that I think this is a marketing ploy for you guys.
00:46:23.560Uh, I looked into these non-profits and I was shocked to find that, uh, relative to the size of your company and your sales, these are microscopic non-profits.
00:46:36.380Um, uh, you know, I don't want to just, uh, disparage them in any meaningful way, but I'm just surprised to find, I mean, is, is, is liquid death the principal contributor to these non-profits?
00:46:46.340Or do you give them like a check for a hundred grand every year?
00:46:50.700Well, five gyres is the biggest non-profit we could find that is solely dedicated to helping with plastic pollution and plastic.
00:47:00.500So, so, so, yeah, I mean, how much, how much money do you give them?
00:47:05.640I mean, we can't disclose exactly what it is, but we are probably their biggest, if, if not their biggest, one of their biggest contributors.
00:47:13.980So according to their 990, uh, for the year of 2023, they brought in $1.2 million.
00:47:20.760To be fair, I know that you guys have, uh, seen exponential growth over the past couple of years, but, and I, and I'm not trying to immediately just go totally dark and negative.
00:47:29.540Cause I think it's good that you guys are doing this, but it seemed, it seemed low to be honest, um, that their total, uh, contributions for the year is 1.2.
00:47:48.740It just seems small for, you know, the, the latest reporting period.
00:47:52.780Again, I'm not trying to disparage the fact that you actually do this, but I look at it and like, to be, if it's,
00:47:59.280I looked at what they do, they do like cleanups and things like this.
00:48:02.580They advocate, they say that principally they're, what they do is science.
00:48:06.080And so it seems like most of the financing is going to, uh, paying individuals who probably aren't getting a full salary to be completely honest.
00:48:11.560I think it's respectable because most nonprofits I think are scams, but they have a big team.
00:48:15.240And at the rate of revenue that they bring in, these people are really, they seem to be really doing the work, but it does seem to be relatively low, especially considering the size of the company.
00:48:24.380Uh, I will photo, I will totally give, I think the estimates for total sales for liquid death in the ending fiscal year, 2023 was like less than half of where it is now.
00:48:33.500So, uh, factoring in retail sales, don't, uh, account for your total sales.
00:49:27.760But now we realize there's enough people who do want to buy full cases of big cans for a couple hero skews and flavors next year.
00:49:35.060We're going to re-release some of the big cans.
00:49:36.800So just, um, because I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to be so dark on this one because I think it's good that you're doing this.
00:49:42.180But am I wrong about my interpretation that the nonprofit only brought in 1.2 in total contributions and you guys are generating, you know, I don't know, I don't know, tens of millions of dollars.
00:49:52.920Is it, it, it comes off immediately again, I'm trying to be careful because I don't want to be too mean.
00:49:57.640I actually respect this, but it does come off like you're contributing very little.
00:50:01.420It's a lot relative to the nonprofit, but 1.2 million for a nonprofit is actually on one of the, is one of the smallest nonprofits, you know, in the industry.
00:50:10.540Sure. And, and the reality is there's not a lot of nonprofits dedicated to plastic pollution.
00:50:16.400They're the biggest one that there is.
00:50:18.260Second, the other thing you have to keep in mind is yes, liquid death sold 300 million cans.
00:50:23.820We are still not yet a profitable company because as much as it caught, like we're still operating, like we said, on a 40, 40 margin that took us forever to get there.
00:50:34.280Big reason for that was during COVID ocean shipping costs went up five X.
00:50:38.520We used to produce our product in Austria because there literally was not a single co-packer in the United States who could put spring water in aluminum cans did not exist in 2018.
00:50:49.980So we, you know, in 2022, we moved our whole supply chain to the U S you know, it ate our margins.
00:50:55.840But what that shows is like most beverage companies, the game is stacked against you with Coke and Pepsi to start a new brand.
00:51:02.980And the most, most new beverage companies, what you have to do is you start a company, you have to price your product where Coke and Pepsi prices it.
00:51:12.640Even though you don't have the economies of scale, you can't just say, oh, we're going to be an $8 can of water next to $1.79 smart water, because that's what we need to make a profit.
00:51:23.300No, you have to price for Coke prices, lose money for years, raise capital, and then eventually you get to enough scale where your costs come down enough where, hey, you're actually maybe able to generate a profit.
00:51:37.520And for example, the company, uh, body armor, they're like the Gatorade type product that got bought by Coke for 5 billion.
00:51:45.400I think two years ago, they had to get to almost 600 million in revenue before they were actually generating profit.
00:51:53.580So even though we're a company that's not even making money, we are still donating.
00:51:58.800So yes, that's why we're not donating these massive amounts.
00:52:01.860Now, as we get bigger and we have more profit and become a bigger company, we could continue to donate more.
00:52:07.300Are you planning to sell liquid death?
00:52:11.580Our excitement is as a company, because we're a multi-category brand and because the kind of marketing we do could never survive in the Coca-Cola corporate structure or Pepsi corporate structure.
00:52:24.780Any of the stuff we do would die in a focus group or would get killed by, you know, somebody in that system.
00:52:31.300That's not the kind of marketing they make.
00:52:33.000So yes, maybe one day someone could come to us and say, hey, liquid death taken enough of our market share.
00:52:39.860But for us, we're more excited about the potential of one day becoming a public company like Celsius or Monster or Vitacoco, where we still kind of control our own destiny.
00:52:49.000No one can tell us how to market and we can, uh, you know, continue to drive company value.
00:52:53.700And entertaining, uh, the possibility that a sale could come at some point.
00:52:58.760Have you guys taken any actions which could benefit you in a sale of the company and, uh, specifically for the reason of maybe this will make us more, uh, appetizing to someone to buy us out?
00:53:09.400I mean, I mean, yes, I mean, we work with a ton of smart people.
00:53:15.780We have a board of people that understand M&A and people who have been a part of other brands, sold brands, been a part of the Coke and Pepsis who have bought other brands.
00:53:24.080So we have a pretty good hold on what it needs to look like if you are going to get acquired by someone.
00:53:29.620But again, most beverage companies are built to sell as they call it.
00:53:34.060They're like, Hey, we're going to start this thing.
00:54:03.840One of my favorite people on the planet and skaters who put together the liquid death skate team.
00:54:07.500Just unfortunately, after six years, uh, you know, we just realized like, Hey, we, it just doesn't fit in like into our strategy.
00:54:14.020And, you know, we, we just can't do it anymore.
00:54:16.140And I, as much as I love Richie, I know that there wasn't many other sponsors.
00:54:19.840He hadn't hit him really hard that, Hey, we can't keep paying you that couple of hundred bucks a month anymore.
00:54:24.940Yeah. I don't think that was the issue for Richie.
00:54:26.420I think it felt more like you stabbed him in the back.
00:54:29.300And, uh, my understanding is that the entire skate team is now gone.
00:54:33.980And, uh, you know, when, when, when Richie first told me to buy this stuff and I did, and then shortly after found out there was plastic in it and got pissed.
00:54:42.440Cause I thought, you know, the marketing was misleading.
00:54:44.400I said for Richie's sake, to be polite, I'm not going to start a public spat, uh, with liquid death.
00:54:50.980But then you went and asked the whole skate team.
00:54:53.240And I said, I don't got to hold my tongue on this anymore for Richie, not to, you know, I don't want to speak to his business, but I mean, the, the, the, the, the things this guy did for you was really, it was really amazing.
00:55:04.200Um, he would always make sure he had a can of a liquid death in every video we're, we're producing to make sure it was on camera and everything else.
00:55:10.620And for 500 bucks a month, you cut him off.
00:55:13.000And he's been with you since the beginning.
00:55:15.020You really couldn't afford 500 bucks a month.
00:55:17.180I mean, Corey Duffel and the rest of the team, is it, you're, you're doing really that bad.