Okay, there we go. All right, we're going to start with our next discussion here. Okay, there we go. All right, we're going to start with our next discussion here. It's my pleasure to introduce Zevia for our next discussion. Zevia is a producer of zero-calorie, naturally sweetened, plant-based beverages. The company is executing on a robust growth strategy focused on enhanced distribution, channel expansion, and improving brand awareness. Zevia's initiatives are expected to drive accelerating sales growth through 2025, which will be enhanced by materially stronger margins to support an improving EBITDA trajectory. Zevia is only in the early innings given its growth opportunity. We're joined by Zevia CEO Amy Taylor and CFO Girish Satya to discuss Zevia's strategies and outlook. Thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us. Let's see. You've navigated an up and down last couple of years, I guess I would say. How are you feeling about the momentum in the business so far in 2025 and as you kind of look out for the balance of the year? You know, we're feeling really good about it. We're heads down and focused on execution, and hopefully folks are starting to see that. I think one thing I'll note is just things have wildly changed in and around our category. In the last conversation, I think I was pointing to that, and then nearer in in carbonated soft drinks, there's been a lot of kind of newcomers into the better-for-you beverage space. The way I'll summarize the impact of that for us is that we see the category tailwinds really supporting our opportunity. I'll put a couple of things together for you. Category tailwinds are starting to change the way retailers are merchandising our product and other fast-growing better-for-you products that are really exciting both for the consumer, for the retailer, and for us. Secondly, based upon the productivity initiatives that we have been driving, which I'm sure we'll talk about today, we've been able to unlock the ability to invest more in marketing. We are simultaneously improving gross margins and investing in promotional levels and in brand marketing that have been very supportive of growth. We are driving product innovation at a faster clip with an unlock around taste that we can talk about later today, one of which is Strawberry Lemon Burst sitting up here with me now. We are seeing green shoots in the business at retail as a result of those things. Between investing in marketing, driving product innovation, and really seeing distribution starting to grow, we're feeling really good about the way forward. This will maybe build on that. Growth in 2Q per the guidance and acceleration in the back half of the year. Can you talk about the building blocks of that accelerating growth trajectory over the balance of the year? Yeah. I think as we alluded to or as we discussed in our Q1 earnings call, we reiterated our guidance for the year. I think for the year we believe we'll be returning to growth, which is really exciting. I think a couple of things to note. We're really confident in that partly because of the expanded distribution. Yes, we've talked about the Walmart expansion and Albertsons, but it's just two of many examples of expanded distribution that really are sort of hitting in kind of Q2 and Q3. As you may know, the traditional spring resets have been delayed a little bit. Generally speaking, we've been a beneficiary of it. We have a lot of confidence that that increased distribution is going to lead to increased growth. Now, there's obviously two caveats to this. One, of course, is we don't, the macro remains uncertain, but accounting for that and accounting for the fact that in Q1 we kind of were lapping a lot of lost distribution, and then in Q4 we have to lap that sort of pipeline fill from Walmart. It is going to be a little bit kind of like a parabola or kind of a spike in Q2 and Q3. All that being said, we're pretty confident about returning the business to growth and really in an accelerated manner in Q2 or, excuse me, in Q2 and Q3. You mentioned the uncertainty related to the consumer. What are you seeing right now in terms of consumer behaviors? Are you seeing retailers kind of change in the way that they're planning? Just a little color about how that's impacting your business or what you've seen so far. Sure. So it's early. If we're thinking macroeconomics, it's early. But let's bear in mind that there's a convergence of two things. Of course, the unknowns, and there is some murkiness in the outlook for the rest of the year, consumer discretionary, et cetera. But that's happening at the same time as retailers are actually figuring out what this category is. So previously, you may have found Zevia sold in one section and some of our competitors scattered around at two or three other beverage categories or even all the way over in produce. And so as we've seen at Walmart, who has reset what is now called modern soda, all of these now better-for-you sodas in one shopping destination. Despite all the macroeconomic headwinds, we're seeing tremendous tailwinds that have to do with just how the category is being merchandised and the rising levels of awareness of better-for-you soda on the whole. We're benefiting from brands that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to seed the idea with the consumer that better-for-you soda is a thing, that soda could be better for you. We're getting expanded distribution as a result of those tailwinds. While there might be some, and there will be some macroeconomic headwinds, we think we're very well suited to grow in the midst of that, partially because of these category and retail drivers, but partially just because generally speaking, people continue to be willing to invest in health. That investment is less discretionary. We have historically weathered economic downturns, I would say, better than most on a relative basis. We're a home stocking brand. We're affordably priced relative to other better-for-you sodas and those that we sit next to on shelf now. We find that repeat purchase within our very loyal consumer base continues at that same rate in the midst of headwinds. We're still quite bullish on the outlook on the year despite maybe some limited visibility. You mentioned two kind of, I guess in my mind, competing things, but maybe you think of it not in the same way. You have retailers that are featuring the category much more prominently. Yes. You have large, larger, whatever, competitors that are being much more vocal, have a lot more resources maybe than they had previously. How do you think of the puts and takes between those two? Yeah, how do you think about the competitive? It's glib to just say a rising tide floats all boats. Let me tell you why the current rising tide floats this particular boat. We for a long time were the number one brand in a very small category that was not really mainstreamed. We came out of the natural category. We were kind of the only game in town in natural soda. As we started to build mainstream distribution, we started to win a broader consumer base. We still have a long way to go. We're single-digit household penetration. Now, as again, there are being millions of dollars put into seating with the consumer the idea that soda could be better for you. When they come to the shelf set, they also have the option of Zevia, which has a variety flavor profile, usage occasion relevance up and down, multiple day parts, multiple family members versus sort of limited usage occasions, a great taste, always zero sugar, not just less sugar, and then finally more affordable. We find ourselves in a situation where as the category awareness rises and distribution grows, we're very well positioned to be the choice of the consumer, especially in the midst of economic headwinds for a better-for-you, great-tasting soda. Do you think you get the credit from consumers that you deserve for being more competitively priced? Is that recognized? Maybe with the different retailer presentation, maybe it draws it out a little bit more. I'm just curious if you think that that is appreciated by consumers as much as it should be. Sure. Our job is really to build awareness. We are, again, in a category that has 90% household penetration. We're at single-digit household penetration levels. Our greatest opportunity is to drive trial. How are we going to do that? We're going to do that by, of course, expanded retail presence, but also through marketing, through sampling, and through rapid innovation. How do we then leverage our price advantage by simply being at a lower price point on shelf? We're not messaging that we're a value player. We're just available, again, oftentimes a home stocking brand and multi-pack at a lower price per unit and lower price overall. Bear in mind, we're a couple cents per ounce, excuse me, we're a couple cents per ounce more expensive than conventional soda. We remain a premium product, but we are just less expensive on a relative basis than those that we sit next to on shelf. Are we getting credit for it? I think what happens is as awareness grows, we get the trial and the repeat comes when affordability becomes more of a factor. Awareness, a big enabler has been the marketing pivot or the leaning into the marketing side. I guess, what are you learning about marketing the brand? How has that been received so far? How are you thinking about spend and the right levels and mediums? Yeah. Let Let me talk a little bit about how we're thinking about it and what we are learning, and then maybe Girish could talk on spend levels and just the balance of prioritization from where we are now. I think what has changed since last time we sat here together is I think Zevia has really found its sharpened voice. You see that in the campaigns that we ran at the end of the year that went viral, and then the campaigns that we've been running through the beginning of this year partnering with a crossover artist, Jelly Roll, who's like a very mainstream yet just polarizing enough character to sort of speak to middle America. A lot of the category around us talks to, if you may, like a coastal elite. It's Paris Hilton at the DJ Deck's on Melrose Avenue. We have got Jelly Roll walking or running a 5K with really anyone else who chooses to get off the couch and come out and join him. He has lost 100 pounds and is just trying to do a little bit better every day. He is a remarkably authentic person, which brings me to this. We really are all about authenticity. A lot of brands talk about authenticity, but we are the anti-artificial soda. We have a little poke fun with a little parody in our last campaign at AI. With the campaign around Jelly Roll, we have been kind of poking fun at celebrity endorsement with a celebrity endorsement. I think we have really found this lighthearted, parody-driven voice that speaks to a much broader consumer base. What you're seeing right now is really the mainstreaming of the Zevia proposition outside of the natural channel and in 4,300 Walmarts supported by a marketing campaign that I think is very relatable and very on time for today's consumer. Do you want to talk a little bit about spend? I think in terms of spend levels and priorities, we're trying to balance both sort of the top-of-funnel brand awareness with ensuring we're supporting our retail partners appropriately. I think low double- digits is sort of what we're targeting right now for 2025, which is almost 2x what we were spending in 2023. Largely we were reinvesting a lot of the savings we've been driving to ensure that we can drive sustainable long-term growth. As we continue to drive more efficiencies, we'll continue to sort of balance how do we invest to drive that longer-term profitable growth, drive brand awareness, but also kind of drop dollars to the bottom line. Sure. You mentioned some of the incremental Walmart distribution. What can you share with us about how that's going so far? Is it more broadening your reach? Is it bringing in existing customers more frequently? How are you seeing that play out so far? Sure. I mean, going from 800 to 4,300 Walmarts obviously significantly raises our profile and supports our top priority, which is growing our user base, ultimately supporting the growth of household penetration. We're seeing existing Zevia consumers shop at Walmart and buy more. Most importantly, we're finding new shoppers trying Zevia for the first time. Indicative of that, our number one selling SKU is our variety pack. Historical data would tell us that folks discover their favorite flavor in a variety pack and then come back and buy a slightly higher margin straight pack as part of their home stocking habit. We expect that pattern to continue. Overall, it's going well. It's a very competitive set. There are super fast-growing brands within the set, and there are only four brands. We know that there's a number of new entrants. That set will continue to get disrupted and have some new players come on board. What is really encouraging is here we are midstream within the year. The set's only been active for about six months, and we're already launching new flavors into the set, bringing a second variety pack, which we talked about on the Q call. We are finding that as large as Walmart is, they are very agile and they are highly invested in this category. We are continuing to kind of engineer the set together to optimize sort of the square footage and serve the shopper. You had talked on the earnings call about adding the new variety pack and some other SKUs. How do you think about the brand's potential within that set? I mean, it's relatively narrow. There are other entrants. I mean, do you expect to continue to gain share of that? Will the set continue to grow? Yeah, it's going to be really competitive. We launched, and I'm proud to share that we launched with 11 SKUs at Walmart. I mean, that's a really wide variety. It's a variety pack and then 10 flavors. What we'll look to do is optimize that over time and put our best foot forward with our very best flavors. I imagine the other brands sitting alongside us will be doing the same. Remember, I mean, Coca-Cola is launching a brand into the gut health space. I think Coke and Walmart have a long-standing relationship, and I imagine they may show up as a new neighbor. It's going to be competitive, and I think it'll play out over time. Importantly, our velocity has accelerated week over week throughout the year without exception. That's the right type of momentum to maintain and then grow our space and our share. Shifting gears a little bit to C stores and DSD. Those are still very early days as well. Can you talk about the brand's readiness for those channels, for single-serve oriented channels in particular? You already mentioned being a home stocking brand. When you think about the brand pivoting to a more kind of impulse-oriented occasion, how do you think about that? Sure. Maybe just for the audience, this is quite unusual. 85%-90% of our business is in multi-packs and a minority in singles. Most brands start out in singles, build some user base, and then start trading people up to multis. We have sold multi-packs for 10+ years. We have only been in the singles business for a couple of years now. In order to step change that, we have sold singles in the natural channel, which operates sometimes like a deli almost. That has gone quite well for us. We are now expanding singles into mainstream grocery where our DSD footprint has enabled it. Next, to your point, the category really needs to prove itself in convenience. Convenience has come a long way with healthier beverages and foods across the board, but it is still a very tight space with a very competitive set. For us and our competitors, we're seeking to just sort of demonstrate that opportunity within convenience. How we're doing it in Zevia is to launch in a number of regional convenience chains in the Northwest and the Southwest, which are the two geographies where we have DSD or Direct Store Delivery Service. We'll be able to test and learn around flavor, merchandising strategies, and price in order to really vet out what's the right national plan for us from that point forward. How do you think about the cadence of that kind of further expansion? It's early days, right? We're literally rolling that out now. I think our learnings from those regional chains will inform the cadence as well, Andrew. It won't be fast. Singles will not be a majority of our business anytime soon. It is very important for us to drive trial. Singles is a primary portion of that strategy, as are variety packs in the meantime. You had talked about outperforming the rest of the market with some of those. Is there any way to kind of speak to magnitude? I don't know that I've heard you do that before. Is there anything that you can? We haven't quantified it, but what I can tell you is in grocery, where we have DSD merchandising services, we are out of stock less frequently. We have a higher percentage of sales on display, so percentage of ACV on display. From a volumetric and revenue perspective in sort of the high single digits to low double digits range, that geography is outperforming the rest of marketing grocery. That's a presumption that we can take to the sort of next geographies if and when that's relevant. Sure. Something that we were just discussing before we got started here, you've been adjusting some of the taste profiles of your beverages kind of incrementally. A lot of times that can be a tough needle to thread. How has that been received? What is different for those that may not know? How are you planning to roll that across the rest of the portfolio? Yeah. So generally, we super serve the soda consumer with flavors like Cola and Ginger Ale and Lemon Lime and Orange and the ones that you would expect, the soda flavors. I think what's most exciting for us in innovation is the breakthrough that we've had around a more sugar-like taste experience. Oftentimes our Stevia-based and natural flavors blend shows up really well in something like a Creamy Root Beer because that creaminess delivers the flavor in a more sugar-like taste experience. What we haven't been able to do yet is be more competitive in light and fruity flavors, many of which are very on trend now. With a recent breakthrough in what I'll call a more sugar-like taste experience with our Stevia and natural sweeteners and natural flavors blend, we've been able to go into this Strawberry Lemon Burst, which is the big exciting news of this year. It opens up a whole pipeline of additional flavors that are on the come for the rest of this year and looking into next year. It is quite delicious. Good. I actually like it. I also know you'd never lie to me on Stevia. Not a single time. On product innovation specifically, you mentioned the success of this one. But broadly, innovation has been a real success story for you guys over the last little bit here. You have the retailer exclusives and things like that. How are you kind of leveraging new products to grow the customer base? What are the plans around cadence of new products? What's the right amount per year? How do you think about that? We're picking up our innovation pace significantly. If you have presumed that Zevia would bring one new flavor each year, you would be right in the past. This year we have our one big new piece of national news. We have Orange Creamsicle, which is exclusive to Sprouts. Let's see what happens if that's successful there in terms of its future opportunity. We have a number of seasonal flavors or retailer exclusive flavors coming online in the back half of this year. We are significantly picking up the pace of innovation to support driving trial and expanding the user base. Some of that is enabled by the breakthrough that we've had in the taste and sugar blend. Are you evolving kind of the flavor profile now that you've done the taste profile change? I mean, how do you think about that more structurally kind of shifting or broadening your opportunity set across? Yeah. I mean, I think the taste improvement does two things for us. It supports consumption intensification with our small loyal base that we have today. More importantly, it starts having people come and try Zevia that maybe wouldn't have tried it before because we either offer a flavor that they like or because their first experience in drinking a Zevia is a good one. I wanted to shift gears to margins. The gross margin story has really been a standout. I feel like I haven't been able to model my gross margins high enough, which is not a challenge. It's not a challenge. You have talked a lot about kind of mid-40s, high 40s generally. You just cracked 50% here in the first quarter. Where have you been kind of exceeding your internal cost management expectations to get that upside? How do you think about the durability? Yeah. I think in a couple of things. One, as we think about how have we been able to manage that margin expansion, I think important to note we've been able to expand margins while returning D&A to more traditional and competitive levels. I think really we've been able to drive that via improved inventory management, really continuing to sort of refine and hone in on the portfolio and sort of reduce a lot of the extraneous SKUs. Then really work with our co-manufacturing partners to really optimize the product formulations and product manufacturing. I think we've driven a lot of what I believe to be sustainable improvements in margin. Of course, there's the 200 bps headwind that we had articulated vis-à-vis tariffs primarily around aluminum. We think there's still some additional opportunities for us to offset some, if not all of that, through continued refinement of the portfolio. Certainly, price enters the discussion. Lastly, I think there is still further work we can do from a sourcing standpoint because we've made a lot of progress, but there's sort of more progress to make. Long-winded way of saying, I think upper 40% continues to be our internal target. We do believe there's an opportunity in the long run to maintain low 50%, but I think it's going to come with scale and it's going to come once we can get past some of these tariffs. On the tariff point, how much, I guess, visibility do you have to some of those offsets that you discussed? What's maybe the timing to which that's going to start to really flow through? Both from a negative and an offsetting perspective. Yeah. So we've already in Q2 begun to see some of the pass-through expenses on aluminum tariffs from our co-manufacturing partners. It'll start to hit in Q2 and be more of an impact in Q3 and onwards. I think from a visibility standpoint, we do have visibility into the levers we need to pull. It'll probably take us a quarter or so to be able to kind of get all of the ducks in a row to ensure that we have the reduced cost to offset that. You may see a little bit of choppiness in sort of Q2 and Q3, but we think that once we start exiting Q4 or in Q4, we'll begin to get the offsets against the headwinds that we're seeing. Long-winded way of saying. No, that's perfect. Will be at the upper 40s when the year is sort of all wrapped up, but there just may be a little bit of choppiness in the next couple of quarters. All of that from a cadence perspective. Obviously, you've got it Q2, you've got it the year. All of that is in the guides. In the guides. Correct. You had the productivity program, which you've worked through at this point. How are you thinking about that on a go-forward basis where maybe is it continuous improvement? Are there other kind of chunky opportunities? Are you utilizing some of that to offset the tariffs? Maybe kind of we're co-mingling now. How do you think about those pieces? Yeah. A year ago, we announced this sort of broad-based productivity or transformation initiative. We initially had sort of an $8 million-$12 million target. I'm really proud of the work the team has done to get us to $15 million today. I think we'll continue to see that sort of bleed into the P&L over the remainder of the year. As we look forward, I think we've identified incremental opportunities primarily around supply chain, some in COGS, some in sort of selling and warehousing, or really our transportation network. Over the next several quarters, we're still working on sizing those opportunities as we speak. We do think they'll be material. To your point, we're hoping to sort of get through that kind of transformation or the remaining transformation, let's call it, by mid in the next four quarters or so so that we can really kind of move beyond that and really focus on how are we going to grow the business. I think that will be the sort of the transition point where we'll be able to really kind of start refocusing the business on that. As you continue, as I think about where you are now from a margin perspective, think about kind of the way you frame the long-term margin profile. Obviously, marketing, which you're funding through some of the cost saves. You're going to have the DSD rollout as well. How do I think about just kind of the flow of your gross margins, but also your profitability kind of over the course of the next couple of years? Yeah. I think as we think about sort of 2026, my hope is that we will be able to, one, demonstrate really compelling unit economics and reinvest the majority of that into really driving sustainable long-term growth. That sort of is the flywheel, right? Where if we can really demonstrate sustainable long-term growth with really compelling unit economics, you then will get to a point in 2027 and beyond where you're really getting to sort of EBITDA margins and cash flow generation that is going to be really attractive. I think although we've guided to 2026 being the year we flipped the switch from EBITDA negative to EBITDA positive, I think we will continue to bias to growth because with those compelling unit economics, I think in the long run, that'll create a really meaningful business with low double-digit EBITDA margins. I think I would note in Q1, we could have been profitable, right? We were investing for growth because of where we see this confluence of consumer acceptance for the brand, retailer acceptance for the brand. It is really important that we capitalize on that momentum. To get from the 2025 guidance to EBITDA positive in 2026, what specifically needs to happen? Yeah. I think we need to complete the transformation that we've talked about, which is not only ensuring we get the $15 million that we believe we've already achieved, that incremental that I've talked about. Then really those marketing investments, which we believe are working and driving growth to drive incremental growth. I think the good news is that between the two, we don't need top line to grow 50% to get there. We need moderate top line growth and those cost savings that we talked about. I think that will get us there. When you--I do not know how much of the last panel you just listened to--but when you think about kind of the broader health and wellness trends within beverage, functional beverage, better for you beverage, how do you think it all fits together for the consumer? What is the consumer going to do with all these different options? Yeah. You know, and maybe some other folks know that I spent 20 years building the Red Bull brand. It was every year that we said, "Okay, it is saturated enough. There can't possibly be room for one more." Here we are 15, 20 years later, and it's still just an absolute onslaught of new products and new options for the consumer. Maybe I'll just reground us in one thing. That is that carbonated soft drinks have the same household penetration as toilet paper and toothpaste. We're talking in the '90s. North American household stock soda. What I think is exciting is that there are multiple options now sort of in the fringes around soda for functionality at a higher price point for limited usage occasions and for a fairly limited consumer, right? When we're talking functional beverage. At the core, the mainstream consumer is definitely moving away from sugar. It is a macro trend that is global and here to stay. The sort of new news that is on its way is the younger consumer, and I think the consumer of today and tomorrow is moving toward a clean labeled product. What that means is that there is a massive category that has 90% household penetration that either must evolve or be in time replaced. When Walmart uses language like modern soda to contemplate the idea of low or no sugar and clean label sodas, I think it is really a signal of what is to come. That in a very, very big way, we can define the future of soda as being a very simple product with very few ingredients, all of which are grown in the ground and not made in the lab, and that you don't have to consume your sugar or your calories from a beverage, but you can save it for nutritious foods and enjoy your soda across usage occasions without any guilt or any reason to worry about it. I welcome innovation. I love all the sort of fringe functional products. I think they help to sort of rise the proverbial tide. Ultimately, I think we're a soda for soda drinkers at a soda price that tastes great without any of the reasons not to drink it. This is what I think is really the largest opportunity over time. I feel like you don't like it when I ask this question. Bring it on, man. I don't know what's coming, but let's see. As it relates to the grander vision of where you guys can play in your portfolio, and you have tea, energy drinks, and you're very focused on the core soda for obvious reasons. I know everybody. I want to stress that. Where do you think the brand has the right to play over time? How do you expect or think the portfolio can evolve over time? I don't not like that question. I actually really like that question. We joke for everyone else's knowledge. We have been focusing on soda. What that means is that we have gotten out of some businesses that do not serve that purpose. We had a mixers business. We have a kids' business. We have exited those for great efficiency and focus now. They have benefited the business and will continue to benefit the business by doing that, even if it has been some volume headwinds over the last couple of years. We now sell tea, which is a great tasting organic tea. That is a small business that we kind of harvest on the side. We have energy drinks, which I will talk about in a second. We have soda, which is far and away our focus. We need to become famous for great tasting zero sugar clean label soda that is affordable, that you can stock in your household. Once we do that, and that sort of proverbial flywheel is feeding the business in the way that Girish just described about the next few years of an outlook, there is a future revenue stream in energy drinks that we could be able to put our attention to. It deserves that attention. People that sell energy drinks get up all day and think only about energy drinks. When we have the organizational capacity to go and do that, we think there is space for true clean label energy drinks. By then, we will have the brand reputation as being the one to bring that to market. In the meantime, it is a great business in the natural channel and on Amazon. We want it to do its job over there until we're ready to take our brand equity into that space. Got it. Does that really answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I don't not like it. I wanted to stress that we're very focused on soda. Thank you for the support. Yeah. Maybe I'll just close with this one. When we're having this conversation a year from now, how do you think the conversation around Zevia will have evolved? What will we be talking about looking back and saying, "Hey, executed on this extremely well. Excited about this for the future." What will we be talking about? I appreciate the way you framed the question because we are heads down focused on execution right now. Why I'm proud of Q1 results is because we executed what we said we were going to do. We intend to put a few quarters together like that. If we're here on the stage together next year at this time, which I hope we will be, I think we'll be finished talking about, as exciting as it is, margins and profitability and all of the different levers that get us there because our transformation program will have delivered against that. I think we will have grown our distribution in the way that Walmart, Albertsons, Walgreens, and others to come that we haven't announced yet have demonstrated the way they're communicating to the marketplace that this is a serious future play in the form of modern soda. I think we'll be reaping the benefit of that. I think we'll be realizing that this breakthrough taste evolution that we have created has invited far more consumers into the category. Most of all, Andrew, I think we will be talking about now investing in marketing such that we ensure that Zevia is a household name. That's great. That's a great place to end. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thanks so much. Thanks to.