Cracking The Cramp Code with Filip Keuppens: The Science of Pickle Juice | Consumer Products Series

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Filip Keuppens Executive Vice President of the Picklejuice Company, which was founded in 2001 and specializes in providing an innovative, electrolyte-rich beverage designed to combat muscle cramps and promote hydration. Their unique product boasts 10 times the electrolytes of traditional sports drinks, offering a natural and effective solution for athletes and anyone prone to muscle cramps.

With a mission to provide hydration and cramp relief through science-based products, they become a leader in sports nutrition, expanding their reach globally and even recently embarking on a Canadian expansion. Under Philip’s leadership, the company has seen significant growth in recognition within the industry. Philip himself brings a wealth of experience from his previous roles at 20th Century Fox and Kraft Heinz, contributing strategic insights that have propelled the Picklejuice Company forward. His passion for innovation and commitment to sustainability have been instrumental in setting new standards in the industry. I’m Philip Coupins, Executive Vice President of the Picklejuice Company. Philip, I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Filip Keuppens: Hey, it’s that time of year. I’m here right before Christmas and there’s bugs going around and changing together. That’s right.

Filip Keuppens: I think I’m all right. So I apologize. The inspiration came from an NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys. It was the hottest game on record in September 2000. The surface temperature at the field was something like 112 degrees, and the Cowboys were favored to win but lost.

During the post-game interviews, the medical staff the Eagles was being interviewed and asked why their players weren’t cramping, weren’t cramping, but the Cowboys were. They said they were consuming pickle brine right out of the jar. So that prompted some really rudimentary studies from my predecessors and they essentially started packaging pickle brine thinking there was a market for that. There was a bit of a regionalized kind of local market expanding to about 300 doors between 2001 and 2015. Then in 2015, I had the opportunity to join the organization and we reformulated, changed our go-to-market strategy a bit, and since then have been named one of the fastest growing food and beverage companies in North America three out of the past six years. So we’ve gone from approximately 300 total doors to 15,000 domestic doors and distribution in the PAM Pacific based out of Australia. We just opened up Europe.

You mentioned the Canadian expansion recently, so we’ve kind of become this global brand in less than 10 years and 2025 is going to represent a very large growth step for us as well where we’ll be converting to kind of the next stage of our evolution when injecting a significant amount of cash into the business to let us scale at the rate that’s consistent with the demand.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so let’s go back to that Cowboys vs. Eagles game. What was it that led the Eagles to think that drinking pickle brine was going to be helpful in that kind of environment?

Filip Keuppens: Yeah, I think it’s part of the old folk remedy, right? People said, oh yeah, drink pickle brine and the assumption for years was that it was the sodium that helped prevent the muscle cramping and people just kind of operated under that assumption for a while as did the the pickle juice company to be completely transparent. But it was a study in 2010 led by Dr. Kevin Miller and BYU that discovered that muscle cramps are in fact a neurological issue rather than a physiological issue. So taking that information we identified exactly how to interact with the nerve receptors that cause muscle cramping using a proprietary grain of acetic acid.

That acetic acid prevents the signal that causes a cramp at the root rather than the physiological trigger. So we’ve had a study done through the University of Stirling with the UK National Swim team about a year or two ago and that had found 100% efficacy in 82 seconds. So now we’ve become the only product in the world that is scientifically proven to stop muscle cramps and it does it in an acute fashion. So it’s not just for athletes, it’s for people who get nighttime led cramps and things of that nature.

Anthony Codispoti: So it’s not the sodium or the electrolytes, there’s something, there’s a neurochemical process that takes place that’s actually shutting that cramp off? Sure.

Filip Keuppens: So a muscle cramp is a attempt of corrective action to a physiological trigger. So your brain is going, hey, something’s wrong there, let’s try to fix it. And if you get a muscle exercise induced cramping, it’s often preceded by sort of rapid fire twinging. That twinging is essentially your body trying to affect a massage from the inside out. The release signal can’t keep up with the corresponding engage signal to that muscle, right? So if you like flex your bicep, you have to release your tricep, picture that on a microbiological level. And the signal’s sending like engage release, engage release.

Eventually the release signal can’t keep up with the engage signal, you get a hyperengagement in the muscle and that’s what we call a muscle cramp or Charlie horse. What we do is we overwhelm that pathway with information, thus preventing that signal from getting through and it kind of resets it. And then after that, we flood the area with electrolytes to help prevent it from recurring.

Anthony Codispoti: When you say after that, but it’s all still like part of the same drink. It’s not like a two shot solution kind of a thing.

Filip Keuppens: No, no, the stages are based on the absorption, right? So the acetic acid goes to work as soon as it touches your esophageal receptors at the back of your throat, whereas the electrolytes need to take some time to absorb into your stream. So whereas the neural inhibitors go to work immediately, the absorption of the electrolytes takes a little bit longer.

Anthony Codispoti: So you reformulated it. How much pickle juice is still in it?

Filip Keuppens: Well, pickle juice is a trade name like Band-Aid, Xerox, Kleenex. So I would argue there’s a, it’s 100% pickle juice. There’s no pickle Brian in it though. It’s actually got nothing to do with pickles.

If you think about it, nobody’s out there really juicing pickles, right? So we just thought it was a clever name that spoke to the product, speaks to the flavor profile. Because it’s a whole new approach to functional products, we figured a relatively unantimidating name would be easier for the consumer to digest literally and figure out what to do with pun intended. And we joked that if we called it cramp stopper 9000, people would probably be a little more reluctant.

Anthony Codispoti: There is something fun about the pickle juice name. So does it still taste like pickle juice?

Filip Keuppens: It’s still, it tastes a little bit like pickle Brian. Yeah, but it’s a much less overwhelming version of it, I suppose.

Anthony Codispoti: And you said something just a second ago, a new approach to functional beverages. What do you mean by that?

Filip Keuppens: So there’s been a trend to functional food and beverage over the past decade, decade and a half or so, right? Everything’s better for you and does this and does that.

And this is the other thing. But nobody’s ever addressed this at a neurological and acutely functional level before until we came around and said, hey, instead of just removing things that are bad for you and putting things that are supposed to be good for you, let’s see if we can actually use naturally occurring ingredients. All our products are USA organic certified and have an acute effect on the human body using natural ingredients. So in addition to discovering this neural inhibition component of certain types of acetic acid, we’re doing some work with vasodilation, we’re doing some work with recovery, we’re doing some work with via two max and things like that. So it’s kind of an interesting new approach to the whole thing.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, I want to put a pin in sort of future product development because it sounds like there’s some exciting stuff going on there. But I want to learn a little bit more about the pickle juice product. So is this something that people only drink once they’ve got a muscle cramp or would they take it sort of proactively to preempt something like that?

Filip Keuppens: It’s a great question. And because you’re working from the occasion backwards, you kind of want it, it’ll stop the cramp for about 45 to 60 minutes. So you can take it before the predictive cramp activity, right? If say you’re participating in a team sport, that’s two 45 minute halves, you can take it at the beginning and then at halftime and you should be fine. NFL games, the same thing, they’ll take it prophylactically on the sidelines. But if you’re running a marathon, for instance, and you’re out there for three, four hours, taking at the beginning of the marathon isn’t going to help you two or three hours in.

So you need to take it within that, that window. I, for instance, like to do endurance cycling. So when I’m around mile 50, I start having some issues and that’s about two, three hours in. And I’ll start taking the pickle juice at that point.

And then again, every 40 to 45 minutes until I’m done with that exertion. So you can take it prophylactically, but only in a small window. It’s not like you would take a supplement with your vitamins every morning and expect results.

Anthony Codispoti: Is it the kind of thing where you can take too much of it, say that, you know, you’re participating in a, you know, three or four hour race or a marathon or something like that. And if you were taking it, you know, once every 45 minutes to an hour, like, are there negative side effects from too much?

Filip Keuppens: I mean, everybody’s different, but we, we haven’t found any, you know, toxicity components. A lot of people are concerned about the sodium levels, but I think that’s because a lot of people don’t understand the role of sodium in our diet, right? It all harkens back to this one study conducted in the 70s, which we found, which has been disproven 40 to 50 times, but and that study was sponsored by the sugar industry. So I think they were trying to divert some attention and fortunately we’ve become more educated over here.

Look over here. Exactly. So we’ve become a little more educated as consumers. And, you know, some people still think that sodium is bad for you until they realize that 62% of the electrolytes in the human body are sodium. And if you’re exerting the probability of losing sodium before anything else, because of its presence in your sweat and other things, it’s a lot higher than any other electrolyte that you might lose, whether it be potassium, magnesium, whatever. So I think with a better understanding of that and also knowing that you, the only thing that actually hydrates the human body is water, right? Everything else just helps that that water do its job or be retained or be processed in a way that is, is functional.

And I call electrolytes more like, they’re the communication and they’re the communication system, as well as the sort of absorption system for your body. And we’ve heard stories of people being electrolyte deficient, taking water, but that water gets flushed out and they’ll have dehydration issues despite consuming a lot of water. So you still need to drink a lot of water, but as long as you’re taking, taking in the right amount of water and your exertion measures are consistent with your intake, you should be fine. I’ve taken six in one day before and I had any problems.

Anthony Codispoti: Would this be something that replaces like a Gatorade intake for an athlete or would it be something that would be done in addition to?

Filip Keuppens: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s traditional sports strengths have kind of gotten away from being hyperfunctional and more into sort of commercial entities, if you will. So a lot of them now contain artificial colors and flavors. They contain sugar and other additives that are more designed for the consumption experience rather than functional experience. So if you’re exerting at a very high level, those additional sort of unnecessary and sometimes counter active ingredients can reduce the efficiency with which your body works. So in many ways this could be for depending on the situation could be not only a replacement, but but a wiser approach to traditional sports strengths, particularly if those sports drinks contain sugar and your your your your exertion is over a prolonged period of time.

A lot of people get that sugar crash, which can prevent completion of whatever it is that you’re doing. So I think in certain circumstances it certainly is a replacement for traditional sports drinks.

Anthony Codispoti: Are there athletes or sports teams that are using the product that you’re allowed to talk about?

Filip Keuppens: Sure, we’ve got about three quarters of the NFL purchasing the products we’ve got. We’re very big in World Rugby and Cricket because of our personal history. A lot of us here have a rugby background ourselves.

So that sort of gave us access to that space. So it’s being used by everybody from the South African Spring Box, New Zealand, all blacks to your local club teams in the US. And it’s being used by NCAA sports across the United States. I mean everything from your Pee Wee League all the way up to your ProLeague. Its presence in high level sports is a lot more common than people think. We have this thing we called a brag book, which is just photos of TV screens when we sort of spot pickle juice in the wild. And it’s a lot of fun to see your retail products being consumed in on the big stage. We saw Daniel Medvedev drinking it during the Australian Open final a couple of years ago. That was pretty cool.

Anthony Codispoti: So how would somebody spot it? Are people using, like I’m looking at your website here, which by the way is picklepower.com. And there’s this bright yellow top and the labeling is very colorful, bright yellow and green. Are people consuming it like out of an individual single serve bottle? Or is there like a big thermos that people are sort of dispensing in firms?

Filip Keuppens: No, when we see it used at the pro levels, it’s usually purchased by the athletic trainers and they’re putting it in kind of their kit bag. Or I had the pleasure of working with a very good athletic trainer in the rugby space a couple of weeks ago. He called it his ouch pouch. And I thought that was pretty great.

So when they run out of the field with their ouch pouch, if you will, they’ll pull it out. And one bottle is in fact one dose. So our studies are based on using 10 milliliters per 10 kgs of body weight. So a two and a half ounce bottle 75 milliliters will cover most endurance athletes.

Some NFL players or rugby players or just NBA players that are just big human beings might consider might take two and one dose. But we’ve seen really good results and really good efficacy numbers.

Anthony Codispoti: So you guys have achieved certifications like USD organic and OU kosher. These certifications I know from experience are not inexpensive to obtain. They take time to do. Why was this an important step for the company to take?

Filip Keuppens: Well, we figure if we’re trying to create hyper functional products in a healthy space and respond to the needs, the demands of the consumer base, which is to have less chemicals in our diet.

And you’re also creating a product that is brand new and has a really high level of functionality. So we wanted to really be transparent, but we also wanted to create consumer confidence in the product. As a matter of fact, as a funny anecdote, we were asked by the Australian national cricket team to provide a WADA certification letter, which is the World Anti-Doping Agency.

And so we sent this product to Informs Sports, which is a testing agency. But our products consider it a food, right? So they said, you know, this is like the same as sending us a banana, right?

We’re like, yeah, but so it’s kind of a great backhanded compliment. Right. Right. So it’s kind of a great backhanded compliment that they couldn’t they had a difficult time believing that something that’s USD organic and natural could be that functional and serve a purpose that frankly works better than any pharmaceutical product that’s ever been devised to treat that specific ailment.

Anthony Codispoti: That is a great story. And it kind of drives home kind of the amazing thing that you guys have accomplished because I know from past business experiences that, you know, not all ingredients are available in a certified organic format. And so to have, you know, WADA, the doping agency say, hey, this is sort of a weird thing for us to test because it’s a food.

Like, you know, I’m curious, sort of while we’re on anecdotes, are there any other specific stories of maybe your product being used in the wild that might be fun to share?

Filip Keuppens: Yeah, there’s a few. There’s a really neat one. And it’s just because the story associated with it is so cool. There is a tennis player, an American tennis player named Francis Tiafo, who is this really fantastic sort of regs to riches story. He grew up. He was a son of an immigrant. His father was a groundskeeper at a country club in the DC area. And he and his brother just kind of hung out there and picked up a tennis racket. And then Francis made his first ever quarterfinal at the Australian Open.

And I think it was on his 21st birthday. So this is, you couldn’t have scripted a better story. And he was so complimentary to our product, helping him get to that stage of the tournament. And then the tournament itself employed doctors and research scientists and like, how does this stuff work? We had no clue that this whole like study was going on that this was going on until after the fact, somebody was like, Hey, did you guys see this? We’re like, wow, that’s awesome. It was really neat. But unfortunately, Francis lost to a Raphael Naldal in the next round that everybody loses to Raphael.

Anthony Codispoti: No shame there. What is the connection to Australia? I’ve heard you mention the connection to Australian sports several times.

Filip Keuppens: Well, a couple of things. One, as I mentioned, we have a background in rugby. I played rugby, Blake, our direct, our sales and marketing director played rugby. We have other people that worked here throughout the past that played rugby.

So we kind of have access to that space because we know people at a very high level, we were able to get teams to kind of test and trial this early in that space. But a big thing too is there’s a lot of visibility coming out of markets that are not the US because they have less restrictions oftentimes from branding exclusivities, right? So in the United States, you have a lot of branding exclusivity by the large beverage manufacturers like Pepsi and Coke who own Gatorian and Powerade. And they’ll have like a branding exclusivity thing.

It doesn’t mean that the products that are being consumed out of their vessels, their branded vessels, if you will, are those products, right? The liability associated with that’s too high. But you can’t have any other brand on the sideline. So it’s more rare that you’d see anything that’s not part of that brand, branding, exclusivity contracts in US sport.

Now, you see it periodically with our product because it’s coming on as a treatment methodology from the athletic training staff rather than, you know, the general sideline staff or whatever. But in Australia, you don’t have these restrictions. The other thing is that there’s less of a confusion between pickle brine and pickle juice in a country that has no pickles.

Anthony Codispoti: So like they don’t have a pickle culture.

Filip Keuppens: They don’t have a pickle culture at all. As a matter of fact, most of them really dislike pickles.

Anthony Codispoti: I’ve been told that the only place you can find it

Filip Keuppens: well, I’ve been told that the only place you can find a pickle in Australia is on a cheeseburger McDonald’s, which they then remove. And I’ve been told that younger people, after a spirited night out, will say, we’ll go to McDonald’s and they’ll take the pickle chips off and throw them on a window and race them down the window. I’ve been told this anecdote. I haven’t participated, but needless to say, there’s not a huge pickle culture in Australia.

Anthony Codispoti: Do they like cucumbers? Is that a thing?

Filip Keuppens: I don’t know. We haven’t really approached that subject. All right. Well, something else that’s interesting about your company, Philip, is sustainability seems to be like it’s a big part of the company’s mission. You’ve got some eco-friendly packaging initiatives that you’ve brought out that, to my understanding, didn’t increase production cost.

Anthony Codispoti: I’m kind of curious to hear more about that and how you were able to find that balance.

Filip Keuppens: Yeah. I think it was a president into it years ago said something that really resonated with me and that was that companies are no longer what they claim to be. Companies are what people tell each other that they are. So we no longer control the narrative and we as product producers and whatever it is, branding people, we need to realize that we live in such a transparent, educated society that you need to be what you claim to be. You can’t just create this public image of your organization and expect to get away with it. Not that we would, but other companies have. And we’ve heard of huge scandals. The Volkswagen emission scandal comes to mind when you have an organization that big trying to get away with something, if you will.

So we said, look, we’re trying to treat people in a healthier way, which means that we need to ourselves act in a healthy way. And despite the fact that we use plastic because it’s the most efficient way to package our product, all that plastic is 100% recycled. All of our boxes are 100% recycled. So while we’re using very slow to degrade materials in some cases, we’re not creating new plastics. We’re actually working with companies that are recycling old and used plastics. And through a lot of innovations working with these companies, we’re able to keep those costs consistent with unrecycle products. And in many cases, we’ve been sort of on the forefront of those initiatives. And then you see the market catching up. And we just do that because we feel it’s the right thing to do. And if you’re going to do something on one end, you have to do it across the board. Otherwise, you’re really being dishonest about who you are.

Anthony Codispoti: So, Philip, as the executive vice president, you’ve been able to grow or play a part in growing the company to over $10 million in annual revenue. I’m kind of curious to hear about some of the key strategies that you’ve helped to put in place that have fueled this growth.

Filip Keuppens: Yeah. I guess necessity is the mother of all invention in some cases. And having historically worked with very large organizations and robust budgets and resources and teams to do stuff for you, that takes and moving to really an emerging company takes a bit of getting used to and a shift and a willingness to learn and adapt. So, we sort of had to develop this go-to-market strategy that takes elements from the traditional CPG models, the experiential model, and the mission-based models and really build from a grassroots up-and-out model instead of just like broad launching and mass penetration through forced awareness.

So, developing those unique models out of necessity and not having a marketing budget really to speak of. I mean, we don’t do any paid media. We don’t do any paid advertising. Everything we do is either through editorial content or through true collaborative partnerships with brand ambassadors.

None of them are paid. But we do work with them on building their brands. And we do believe in building non-transactional relationships with those people who are advocates because, again, going back to that transparency thing, that’s real. That’s somebody saying, I believe in this product and my access to the company can help you try it as well.

So, that kind of helps their credibility, helps our credibility, and we create these really nice partnerships and in turn get to work with some of the coolest people out there. I mean, there are very few people that are more centered and focused than ultra runners. They’re just an incredible class of people, endurance cyclists, same thing. People participating in sport at the highest level. You know, you really learn what singular focus and determination and perseverance looks like and you get to learn a lot from these people. That’s just really cool.

Anthony Codispoti: So, I’m hearing you say, hey, don’t have a marketing budget. We don’t do paid media, paid ads. Working with, I’m going to use the word influencers, people that are in the spaces that would be highly relevant to sort of broadcasting the message and the efficacy of your product. And that does sound like it can be a really effective strategy for that grassroots growth. But I also heard you say earlier in the interview that you guys went from 300 to 15,000 doors. So, that indicates to me a rather sophisticated distribution strategy too. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure.

Filip Keuppens: In 2015, we really didn’t have a distribution strategy per se. We weren’t really operating like a CPG company. There was no SRP in place. There was no distribution infrastructure in place. It was built more like a manufacturing company’s structure and culture. So, for a couple of years, we had to put in some basic CPG strategies, creating consistent SRP across the board, creating pricing models, getting our products accepted into traditional distribution channels for the retail industry. So, that really just came from practice and experience and CPG, frankly, knowing that was essential to getting our product out there, but not having the ability to deficit spend because, frankly, the revenue just wasn’t there and then the tools weren’t there. We couldn’t do things like pay for placement or anything like that. So, we really had to create a story that was based on the product’s functionality and really hyper target based on demographic need so we could get these early placement pieces, then take the data that was realized from that, like turns data and things like that, and sell purely on a data story, on a revenue story without the tools that a lot of other CPG companies have.

It’s traditional where you buy shelf space. Well, we couldn’t do that. So, we haven’t been able to do that. I think that strategy may shift in the near future, but as a result, we’ve also, all these doors we acquire organically and naturally and through meeting demand rather than prematurely purchasing space leads to some of the best per unit turns I’ve ever seen in my career. I mean, we’re seeing, you know, anywhere between 10 and 20 units turning per door per week at most of our retailers, which is a pretty high turn number in traditional CPG products, non-seasonal stuff.

Anthony Codispoti: So, you get into one of these doors. I guess I’m surprised and impressed that the turnover is high. In this case, we’re talking about good turnover, not like employee turnover. The product turnover is so high because you don’t have that marketing budget.

So, it’s not like, correct me if I’m wrong, there’s something I’m missing. How are you guys turning over so many products without sort of that big national marketing budget that’s driving people into the stores?

Filip Keuppens: It’s the bottom-up approach. So, what we’ll do is rather than focusing on creating broad line of awareness, we take this experiential approach model and hyper-target our users. Now, the cool thing is we have a product that’s acutely functional. So, you drink it, you have a cramp, and that cramp goes away immediately.

So, you can, you make a direct association with that experience on a holistic level. So, very simply, we said, okay, let’s find people where they’re cramping. And we partner with about 500 non-profit, what I call participatory endurance events.

So, you’ll see our product at like eight stations on big bike rides, like the 100,000, which is you and 10,000 of your closest friends riding your bicycle for 100 miles in Texas heat. None of my friends would do that.

Anthony Codispoti: Maybe your friends would, we’ve got different sets of friends.

Filip Keuppens: One out of 10,000 maybe. But, So you’ll find us activating at these events, but it’s not a general tasting experience. It’s a getting them when they need it. And they’re like, holy cow, this really works. And it’s not just athletes that cramp, right? We call that more of our credibility play, but a lot of our consumers are people who get nighttime blood cramps. And we joke that we’re engaging with the athletes because it’s kind of creepy to find a nighttime leg cramper and hand it to them when they need it. Because we probably get a lot of trouble.

And not a path we want to go down. But kidding aside, it’s also very difficult and expensive to reach the senior and boomer market, because they do rely more on traditional media and less on sort of viral media and viral awareness, if you will. So if we can get a handful of people talking on a running group about, hey, I use this to stop muscle cramps, that all of a sudden hits every user within that group. And then every user shares it with their other groups. So we can get this experience where we can get it in the hands of the right person who’s vocal online to spread that message. And then you get that validation through other people like, oh, yeah, I’ve heard that too. So that’s been very, very successful for us. And those opportunities, they kind of max out.

So being completely transparent, I think we’re going to have to be a little more open, if you will, to things that look more like traditional media without really going over the top and making people think that we’re trying to control our own narrative, which is a big key to our success as our transparency by not controlling our narrative.

Anthony Codispoti: Obviously, people can find the product online at picklepower.com. And you said you’re in 15,000 doors now. Are there popular chains that people might be able to pop into where they live and find this? Sure.

Filip Keuppens: They can find them in most of their grocery stores, Walmart, sporting goods stores like Academy, your local bike shop, some of your local run shops. So it’s pretty broad. But if you go to our website at picklepower.com, scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, and there’s a store locator there, you can kind of pop in your zip code. And all of that stuff is fed by Nielsen and IRRI based on retail scans. So as long as the retailer is reporting to Nielsen and IRRI, it’ll pop up in there.

Anthony Codispoti: Philip, tell us a little bit about your previous background in CPG. What did you do? How have these skill sets translated well for pickle juice? Sure.

Filip Keuppens: Well, I started off my career thinking I was going to be a professional skier. So that didn’t work. But I said, well, what am I going to do with myself? And I thought I’d go study hospitality management and then realize that the people who run the resorts do a lot of work and don’t get to enjoy them very much. So I quickly broaden my horizons and studied economics and got a graduate degree in business. And then I ended up working with Heinz and because of the hospitality connection and the food science connection. So I was in sales for Heinz for a couple of years until somebody came up to me and said, hey, how would you like to sell movies instead of catch up and make more money?

And I said, sure. And then the next company came across and said, hey, you’re pretty good at this. How would you like to do it for us and be responsible for our our club channel of trade and work on the on the mass team and this emerging company called Amazon?

If you want to work with them, that’d be cool. We’re like, sure. And then that was great. It was wonderful. It was like printing money back in those days. And then the industry ended overnight.

Right. So we went from doing about five billion dollars in in sales with one of the companies I worked with to almost zero when the shift went from physical media to digital media. But during that process, we were a pretty complex organization where we weren’t really salespeople, per se. We were more like analysts and and and projectors because the the decay curve on physical media, like a DVD, is 80 percent over four weeks.

And in order to get those big elaborate displays that you used to see like Best Buy and Walmart and Target and stuff, we gave the retailers 100 percent return privileges. Now, the reason I’m sharing all of this is because I got really good at business analytics and understanding consumer behavior and things like that, because it was such a big part of what we did earlier. So I applied that knowledge center into this emerging space and took a completely different approach than I think most emerging brands would take. And it allowed us to be have a lower barrier to entry from a price point perspective so that we could introduce the product at a price point that was attractive to the consumer and and figure out creative means and methods of building the awareness so that the supply and demand equilibrium point kind of met. We do feel that our to this day, our demand still exceeds our supply. And we know that because we do demographic analyses and we know that our consumer. We under index with seniors and boomers, and we know there’s a very strong use case there. And we also know that reaching them requires a larger commitment to traditional sort of media and brand building methodologies. So we think that we haven’t even tapped 30 percent of the market yet.

Anthony Codispoti: So you talked about your experience with selling physical media. And one of the strategies that you used was allowing retailers to be able to return any product that didn’t sell, right? Sort of takes away the risk profile for them. Did you or are you continuing to use the same strategy with pickle juice with your retailers? They have the ability to return if it doesn’t turn over?

Filip Keuppens: Well, with with with a consumable product, it’s it’s it’s a lot. The guaranteed sale model looks a little bit differently because you can’t you can’t reuse it, right? You don’t know what’s happened to it when it was out there. So but what we do have is. Any time we hear a negative experience, we view that as an opportunity to engage. With our customer base, right? Because if they care enough to contact you about. And a negative experience, it could be something something was damaged and in transit that we we can’t control or they’re the way they’re using it isn’t consistent with how it would be used. Sometimes you get people expecting pickle Brian and they’re like, I’m trying to Brian a chicken and it’s not working.

And you know, you you you see all sorts of stuff. But but if those people care enough to speak with their voices rather than just with their wallets, that’s an opportunity to create to to to create an ambassador for you. So we were very, very customer service centric. And we really believe in. You know, recruiting a cadre of advocates from our consumer base. And I think that approach has has helped us from the guaranteed perspective. Because again, these people are out there, even even the ones that are doing online, right, spending the word that the avid runners and cyclists and stuff, they’re doing their own research, right? So you got a one to one ratio versus team sports where you have a one to say 53 ratio with the NFL, right? And the athlete in that in that space who’s being given this product might not know what it is or or or how it works.

Just that their cramps gone and they can go back to playing. The endurance athlete or the the the engaged consumer becomes that advocate. So rather than just doing this like return privilege thing, we we just engage with that consumer and make sure that they they feel like they’re part of the process. They feel like they they have access to real human beings, not a phone tree. That just tells you we’ll dismiss anything you want to say and make you feel like you’ve been hurt. So yeah, we pick up our phones here.

Anthony Codispoti: So you guys are all about innovation, Philip. Any other products that have come out or things that are in the works that you can give voice to?

Filip Keuppens: Yeah, we had our first successful line extension at introducing a chilly lime pickle juice about a year and a half ago, and that’s going really, really well. And we’re looking at some stuff in the lab.

I’ve got some ideas that we’re looking at maybe a product that is aimed specifically at the boomer and senior night. Nighttime like cramping. Experience, if you will, we’re looking at some bastard dilation type stuff, we’re looking at some recovery stuff. We’re looking at a product that we feel might be able to increase the oxygenation levels of red red blood spells, thus increasing VO2 max.

Anthony Codispoti: So and this would pass the the WADA screening as well.

Filip Keuppens: Yeah, we only use 100 percent natural ingredients. What we do and a lot of it is it’s kind of simplifying things that already exist and just figuring out how to jam it in a package. Really, we know that nitrates help increase the oxygenation level of red blood cells, and we know that beetroot contains a ton of nitrates. The problem is you’d have to eat like two dozen beets to get the the results of this, your VO2 max results.

So we’re like, OK, well, how do we concentrate the nitrates of 24 beets and put in a bottle? And it sounds oversimplified, but that’s really where research starts. And then it’s going through the scientific process to see if it’s possible. So that’s that’s kind of the fun part with product development is is you’re not really limited by, especially if you’re using natural organic ingredients, you’re not really limited by anything other than your own creativity. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s part of the innovation process is you try things out and you stub your toe and you learn things along the way. So we already addressed you did early on about some of the misconceptions about sodium in products. I hear you talk about, you know, high nitrates, and I’m thinking, wow, from what I’ve heard that that’s bad for you, too. You speak to that point.

Filip Keuppens: I mean, that’s relative, I guess. You know, I think a lot of that stuff we’re looking we’re realizing now that a lot of the stuff we consume on a day to day basis is has less to do with the origin of the ingredient and more with what has been attached to it or how it’s been processed. So, you know, we’re learning now that things like yellow number five that has been proven to like alter the DNA and lab rats when given high doses of it. It’s so much of our food, right? Unnecessary things that just make it look neater or taste a certain way or replace a more expensive ingredient. And I think that we as manufacturers need to take on the responsibility of creating healthier products for people because the regulators don’t seem to be going down that path or not at a rate that those of us who are concerned about what is being put in the bodies of people is, you know, we feel that more needs to be done and quicker.

So we’re taking that task on ourselves. So when we look at things like nitrates, we’re really looking at, you know, where are these conceptions coming from? And is this factual science or is this a misconception? And we can’t really be bothered by misconceptions. And we take it on as our task to reeducate on misconceptions. We won’t make any claims that we can’t back with scientific research and evidence. I mean, we’ve heard so many anecdotal stories about our flagship product, pickle juice, helping different ailments, but we don’t claim those. We don’t go to market with those. Unless we can prove them definitively through research and studies.

Anthony Codispoti: And so that’ll be part of the process, obviously, that you go through as you’re investigating other product ideas like the nitrates one that we’re just talking about. Right.

Filip Keuppens: Yeah. Usually I’m the first lab rat.

Anthony Codispoti: And then after that, you should see Mary and the coal mine. If you make it out, then we’ll take the next step in the research.

Filip Keuppens: Though I can’t tell you a few of my staff have been leery when I come out of the lab, I’m like, I hand them out, you know, a beaker. And I’m like, hey, try this. They’re like, what is it? I’m not telling you. That’s something some folks have to get used to.

Anthony Codispoti: Right. When they see you walking out of the lab and you’re glowing electric green, like that, that’ll be the time to really be concerned.

Filip Keuppens: There is a page in my lab notebook that says by Benadryl. Just in case. No, no, no, that was a response to something.

Anthony Codispoti: You need it now. Yeah. So tell us about the expansion into Canada.

Filip Keuppens: Yeah. So we we were very fortunate to find, identify and partner with a group that was really experienced in launching new products in Canada. They launched Red Bull Body Armor and some some big buy and a bunch of really big brands. And they took an interest in pickle juice and we brought it to market.

And we went from zero to 1,100 doors in less than 12 months. So that’s pretty exciting. And the interesting thing there is because this group is so good at getting distribution that we that model looks a little more traditional.

So now we’re chasing the awareness a little bit because we are seeing that the the per-door turns are a little lower than we would have expected. So now we’re chasing that market with I trying to identify hyper consumers and and real brand ambassadors. You know, use the term influencer earlier and we don’t pay any of our brand ambassadors.

Usually what we do is we find people that are already vocal about the product and just formalize our relationship and because they’re true users. So now we’re finding that in markets like Europe and Canada. We we have to identify more of those and we’re actually really excited to to share that. We’re we’ve partnered with a really high profile professional cycling team called Turbo Velo. They’re one of the best track cycling teams in the world. They’ve got the number two ranked rider in the world, the Italian national champion, Canadian champion. And we’re going to be their title partner next year.

So you’re going to see a Turbo Velo presented by Picklejuice team. They’ve got about 17, 12 pro riders and 70 club level emerging riders that we’re really excited to be partnering with. And Ryan Chrissy, the sort of the founder, organizer and coach of that program has done an amazing job.

We’re just super excited to partner with with that team and with people like Ryan. So those are the kind of things that we’re doing now in those markets to make sure that aware that awareness is is being captured, but also in a in a true authentic way.

Anthony Codispoti: You kind of made reference to this in the early part of the interview about there maybe being some rather substantial growth even beyond the curve that you guys have seen coming up.

I kind of took that to mean that maybe there’s some outside money that’s going to get thrown on to be kind of fuel to the fire. Am I connecting the dots in the right way?

Filip Keuppens: We spent a lot of our resources building our manufacturing infrastructure. So in 2015, we opened a manufacturing plant and quickly outgrew it. We also had a catastrophic failure to one of the key components of the bottling equipment, which forced us to expand into a new facility.

A lot quicker than we were anticipating. So any reserve capital we had was dedicated to building stuff, if you will. What we’ve done is created a future proof facility that is currently operating in about 20 to 25 percent capacity. So we have our infrastructure built, our manufacturing built, and we’re now able to shift that sort of manufacturing centric mindset into a more traditional CPG space, which in turn relieves a lot of that cash flow to allow us to deficit spend a little bit into things like placement and building our sales team. We’ve added four heads in the last two months just on the sales and marketing side. So it’s more of a shift in strategy and resources.

Anthony Codispoti: And so these salespeople, are they primarily dedicated into getting more relationships with sort of the Walmarts and the Wyman’s and the Whole Foods of the World? Are they also selling into sports teams or are there non-traditional outlets? Yeah.

Filip Keuppens: We have everybody’s sort of segmented, I guess. We have a channel distribution manager, our channel growth manager for the grocery and independent retail side of things. Then we have a channel growth manager for our impulse and C store space.

Those are new positions. We have, you know, Kat Meyers, who handles what we call HPLR, high profile, low revenue sales. And that’s kind of the stuff like to NFL teams and things like that, which is a lot more, it’s more of a much more personal interaction. There’s a consultative component to it to make sure that they have access to our expertise as it comes to administering the product.

So those relationships are built by Kat and her efforts to, you know, we’re going to National Athletic Trainers Association’s conferences to teach athletic trainers on the new science of muscle cramping and how to prevent it. So we’re coming at that segment from an education component rather than a sales component. And then we have, you know, Michelle and Alec are also working on our industrial space, our emerging markets and things like that. So and then Maddie is managing a lot of our marketing initiatives or creating content and all that stuff. So and Blake’s doing a little bit of everything.

He’s been fantastic. So, you know, it really is a collaborative team effort when it comes to bringing the product to market. And, you know, nobody here will ever say it’s not my job. It’s we kind of feel it’s everybody’s job.

Right. And I’m working events on weekends, just like everybody else is. I, you know, I’m going to these trade shows just like everybody else is. I think it’s important for us to maintain a pulse on our consumers. So that that means everybody from the top all the way down to the newest employee will go work, work a marathon or an ultra marathon or a bike race. We went through 17 back in boxes at the Dallas Marathon last Sunday. And that’s what is that? That’s 85 gallons on course.

Anthony Codispoti: So how many servings is that?

Filip Keuppens: That is let’s see times 28. Two is five thousand four hundred and forty servings. My goodness, that’s quite a few. Yeah, we talked about. Well, I think we had some spillage because I think our engagement, our engagement rate was only about 35 to 40 percent. So, you know, but when you’re trying to pour it out in the hand, it’s right.

Anthony Codispoti: There’s stuff on the move. Yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure we got the dosage exactly right. It’s hard to gate somebody’s weight as they’re coming out. So we talked to, you know, kind of gave a shout out to several of your, you know, biz deaf people, sales, marketing. How many folks are on the manufacturing floor?

Filip Keuppens: We’ve got about we’ve got 23 total employees. Twelve of them are on the on the production line itself. And then they’re supported by an engineering team of Paul and Austin.

Then we have a distribution team that’s Brennan heads up where, you know, Gary works, runs our warehouse. And he’s been here as almost as long as I have. I’m actually not the most seasoned employee here. Pisan predated me by a few months and she works on our production floor. So we’re really, really proud of our culture, too. We haven’t had any voluntary turnover in, I’d say, about two and a half years. Wow.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. That was going to be kind of one of the questions I always love to, you know, ask people that are on this show is because most of the folks I talk to, it’s a tight labor market. It’s hard to find good people. It’s hard to hold on to good people. Sounds like you guys are doing a pretty good job holding on to them when the time does come to hire folks. So you’re finding it challenging to find them and, you know, bring them into the first place.

Filip Keuppens: Yes and no, I think it requires it requires patience and finding the right fit and hiring for the right reason. We’ve always hired for culture and ceiling more than experience. Historically, when it comes to people that are thought-based producers, we’re very, very much an empowering type of organization. We’re aware of the fact that, you know, people’s job satisfaction index isn’t, you know, while Maslowians to some degree, like it’s not driven by money usually.

It’s driven by feeling like you’re part of the process, feeling that the organization is working for everyone in it, not just one or two individuals at the top. So we try to take our culture very seriously here. We’re a very forgiving culture that’s also very demanding. So we will, we’re very accommodating to people’s needs. You know, I don’t think you’ll ever hear us not let somebody go take care of an ill family member or go to their kids’ school or something like that. But that sort of loyalty and dedication needs to flow both ways.

And we’re very protective of that culture, frankly. And because it’s easy to spoil, right? It’s easy for somebody to take advantage of that and then create some fracturing amongst peers if somebody feels like there’s someone not pulling their own weight or not contributing. So we spend a lot of time sort of reeducating people, not reeducating, I guess, reminding people of why we do certain things and why it’s important and that we need to all operate with the level of transparency, honesty and, and frankly, dedication and not treat people like commodities. It’s not that hard. You just have to be holistically mindset, mindset.

Anthony Codispoti: But we also go through a lot of applications.

Filip Keuppens: We went through over 500 applicants for each of our last two hires. And, and I think that most people would not have hired. Not most. A lot of organizations would not have hired the people we hired because we look for a certain mindset.

We look for a certain sort of culture value system and things like that. As long as they have enough experience to do the job and not sort of missteps so they can like you can plug and play them in as much as you need. That’s fine for us from an experience level. But the rest we’re really looking for potential upside ceiling. Culture, things of that nature.

Anthony Codispoti: Philip, I’m curious to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, either business or personal and what some lessons were that you learned going through that.

Filip Keuppens: What building a business with no budget is not enough for you, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti: Let’s go deep on that one. Or or or lots of us and lots of the listeners have been there before

Filip Keuppens: or having to create a whole new category that nobody believes in or naming yourself after something that you know is going to get complicated with anything else. We’ve had no challenges here at all. Anthony, it’s been smooth sailing. No, no, no, it’s it’s I mean, I remember one time I walked into the this is probably seven or eight years ago. I walked into one of the former partner’s office. So he’s retired since Steve Collette and he he was here since the beginning. He owned a pickle company and.

You know, I walked into his office and said, you know, it’s really fascinating. Every single week we resolve a problem that if not resolved properly would put this company under. So, you know, if you have. You know, a small company can’t. Can’t survive a recall, a lawsuit or anything, right?

Like you you’re sort of operating on knife’s edge all the time, especially if you’ve put capital investment into manufacturing facility. So. I think it requires and I’m fortunate enough that I get to talk about this at my own mother once in a while. It requires this true entrepreneurial mindset of. I know I’m going to work harder for less. And my motivation is to see if it can be done and to see if I can really make a difference. And I think really believing that and really living that lifestyle and making all the sacrifices that are required to get that going is is not just one hindrance.

It’s a it’s a lifestyle choice, right? I mean, I remember looking at this company and going, geez, these guys sold less than I made last year. So obviously I can’t make what I was making. So am I willing to live off of my savings for a few years in order to see if this thing works? Am I willing to trust my partners enough that I’m going to be part of this equation when it pays off? So there are so many constant risks and challenges and bets and having to back yourself and just grind it out that I think it’s a holistic thing, right?

I mean, we can all pick little. Events, isolated events, but realistically, when you want to start a business like this, you have to realize you’re going to come up against stuff that your peers are coming up against daily. And you have to figure out what it is. You just have to be honest with who you are and what you’re producing.

Find a true point of differentiation in the marketplace and have the great determination, patience, patience and ability to fail. And I think that’s it. But if you know, I can probably come up with a few specifics if you’d like.

Anthony Codispoti: Maybe do you have any advice for any entrepreneurs who have an idea for an innovative product, how to think about it and how to bring it to market?

Filip Keuppens: Yeah, and I would I would point them to a statistic in the restaurant industry that 80 percent of restaurants fail in the first five years. And oftentimes a good chef does not a good restaurant tour make. So most of us that are adept at producing products lack the business side of the equation. I’ve been lucky because I’ve been trade on the business side.

So that’s balanced my sort of creative skill set, I suppose. But know what your know your strengths and, more importantly, know your weaknesses and be honest with yourself about your weaknesses and find somebody else to help you overcome those. Don’t try to do it all yourself because you don’t know what you don’t know. You just have to try to identify it rather than figuring it out.

Anthony Codispoti: Philip, I just have one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everyone listening today, I know that you love today’s content. Please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Philip, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?

Filip Keuppens: There’s a contact us link on picklepower.com. You can call us at 972-755-0289. You can email me at info at picklepower.com. Like our phone number and our websites on every single bottle. So there’s about 20 million of those floating around every single year. So again, we don’t hide. We love feedback. I mean, post reviews on Amazon, post reviews on our site. If you have a thought, a response, anything that we’d love to hear it.

Anthony Codispoti: Very open to that communication. So last question for you, Philip, I’m kind of curious what you see the big changes coming to your space in the next couple of years. How do you see things unfolding?

Filip Keuppens: I think the way that consumers acquire products is going to change significantly. We, which means that for us who produce products, we’re going to see a less breadth and more depth in offerings. We’re already seeing smaller format retail like Aldi and Trader Joe’s having tremendous amount of success and the large format grocers struggling to keep up. They’re really having to differentiate themselves into an experience like Wegmans has done successfully, Kroger is doing with some success.

In order to maintain that breadth, large scale store atmosphere. So I think people who are producing products can no longer rely on single points of differentiation. They’re going to have to rely on being truly innovative, truly different and truly non-commoditized. Otherwise, the need to capture market share in commoditized products will force companies to make their margins so slim that they’ll eventually just merge into, because large companies have no choice but to grow through mergers and acquisitions, you’ll have less offerings forcing the depth. So figuring out a way to survive and truly differentiate in what’s becoming an increased, increasingly commoditized space will be critical for any brand.

Anthony Codispoti: Philip, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Filip Keuppens: Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed it and gave me some time to reflect too.

Anthony Codispoti: All right, folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.