Odwalla

I was running the West Coast for Edelman at that point.

And through relationship was referred to the chairman of the board of a company called Odwalla, which was a fresh natural juice company that was distributing at that time in seven states.

And it was Halloween.

I'm handing the candy out while my wife's got the girls out in the neighborhood.

And it was amazing.

And then in the mid-'90s, there was the big Odwalla scare up in Seattle with E. coli, and a child died.

And the FDA came in and started regulating that all fresh juice had to be pasteurized.

And so my dad tried to go to the lobbyists and went to DC and started the Natural Juicers Guild.

Coca-Cola bought Honesty, eventually discontinued.

Coca-Cola also bought Odwalla, eventually discontinued.

Body Armor was bought by Coke for nearly $6 billion.

They took a $760 million impairment three years later.

Right.

Like they bought the premium juice company Odwalla in 2001, Fuse Beverage in 2007.

They acquired Honest Tea to capture the organic market.

Zicho to dominate the coconut water craze and Topo Chico in 2017 to capture the exploding premium sparkling water segment.

The successes do the opposite.

Think about Odwalla.

During the E. coli outbreak, they moved fast.

That case is a lesson in what to do under pressure.

Um, and I think health, um, really is, like, an amazing canvas to talk about, uh, what I find sacred about the human story and the human experience.

Um, and there was a friend of mine at the time, this is now 2018, a guy by the name of, uh, Greg Steltenpohl, who was the founder of Odwalla Juice and also Califia Farms.

He was a, a mentor and, like, a new friend in my life, uh, just like a really beautiful human being, and I was living back and forth between Shanghai and LA at the time.

I became really interested in functional mushrooms.