EP 48 Rob's Path to Health & Happiness Through Generation NA

Imagine exchanging your favorite cocktail for a non-alcoholic beverage and discovering a world full of flavor, community, and a healthier, happier you. That's exactly what our guest, Rob Theodorow, owner of Generation NA non-alcoholic bottle shop, did. He bid farewell to booze and embraced an alcohol-free lifestyle, finding joy in simple moments, rediscovering old hobbies, and opening up a thriving business.

Rob breaks down his story, which is a testament to the power of choice and the freedom found in sobriety, and what led him to opening up his bottle shop. Our conversation gets into the fast-growing trend of non-alcoholic beverages, exploring the variety of options available from craft beers to zero-proof cocktails and wines.  Rob also shares his ambitious plans for Generation NA and the excitement that's coming in 2024! His decision to open his bottle shop has created a space for others to connect and create lasting memories, and I can't wait for you to hear more about it!

Get in touch with Rob at Generation NA!
Instagram | Facebook

Thanks to Giesen 0% Wines for sponsoring this podcast episode. 

Thanks to Giesen 0% Wines for being our exclusive non-alcoholic wine sponsor!

Connect with Deb: @Mocktail.Mom

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Transcript

Deb: 0:02

Welcome to the Thriving Alcohol Free Podcast. I'm your host, Deb, otherwise known as Mocktail Mom, a retired wine drinker that finally got sick and tired of spinning on life's broken record called Detox to Retox. Let this podcast be an encouragement to you. If alcohol is maybe a form of self-care for you or you find yourself dragging through the day waiting to pour another glass, I am excited to share with you the fun of discovering new things to drink when you aren't drinking and the joy of waking up each day without a hangover. It is an honor to serve as your sober, fun guide, so sit back and relax or keep doing whatever it is you're doing. This show is produced for you with love from the great state of Kentucky. Thanks so much for being here and big time cheers. Okay, welcome back to Thriving Alcohol Free.

Deb: 0:52

You guys, I am a little bit out of my mind right now because I have Rob from Generation NA non-alcoholic bottle shop up in Lafayette, Indiana, is joining us today. I am so excited. First of all, Rob, I absolutely am so grateful for your encouragement. You and I are friends on Instagram. I've been to your shop in Lafayette. Your shop is beautiful and I wanted to have you on the podcast because you just celebrated, I think when we're recording this I think it was two days ago you had 1,000 days of being alcohol free.

Rob: 1:20

That's correct. Yeah, comma club.

Deb: 1:23

The comma club. So you and I are both in the comma club, so I want to talk to you. I wanted to have you on today because you do not have a background in running a non-alcoholic bottle shop. I want to hear your story about becoming alcohol free. I want you to share your story about opening up a non-alcoholic bottle shop which, as we're filming this right now, I can see the shop right behind you. Your shop is so beautiful. Your shop is like the gold standard of how all non-alcoholic bottle shops should look. It's so beautiful. So okay, Rob, welcome, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being on today.

Rob: 1:50

Thank you, Deb, so much. I appreciate the kind words.

Deb: 1:53

Oh, I mean it, I totally mean it. Okay, so 1,002 days ago. So I don't know when this podcast is going to come out exactly, but so it'll be 1,030 days or so. Okay, so you woke up and you were like I'm going to stop drinking, or did you just want to moderate, or where kind of were you in your alcohol free journey?

Rob: 2:09

So I was a moderate drinker. Covid happened. I own a tech business. I became a pretty heavy drinker. So the first year of COVID I drank pretty heavily and I actually tried to do a dry January In January of 2021, I failed at it. I did do about two weeks right, so went back to drinking, tried a dry February which I kind of made up. I was like let's try this again.

Rob: 2:34

I could have had another two or three weeks and went back to drinking. Then March 10th came around and I woke up and I didn't want to drink anymore and I haven't had a drink since and I realized that it was difficult for me to moderate. I really enjoy drinking. So, like a lot of people do, I have a lot of stress in my tech job and just wanted to feel better. Physically, I was having a few problems. My blood pressure was elevated, I was having like stomach pain, just different things. I just didn't feel well. I was waking up a lot at night. I had a fast heart rate.

Rob: 3:10

Mental health wise, my anxiety was out of control. There were days that I couldn't leave the house. I remember one day in particular and this day still haunts me. It was probably in that January or February of that year and I'd gone back to drinking and I was just trying to sit in the driveway and drive my daughter to school that day just a couple of blocks. I couldn't do it. My anxiety just would not let me really do it. I had to have my wife take her to school and I thought you know what? This isn't a good life for anybody, right? I mean, what am I trading for or feeling slightly relaxed for 10 minutes. I'm trading my life here. You know I became a pattern that I wanted to improve upon. I really wanted to take an initiative to get back to the person that I knew I could be, both physically and mentally. So I am over a thousand days now and last time I had my labs run my blood pressure is now perfect.

Rob: 4:05

My mental health, I mean doing things like this. I do a lot of like in-person speaking events. I was made president of my local business-to-business networking group with other CEOs. Really, I would go up every week and chat in front of like 40 business professionals. I mean I don't want to say my anxiety completely went away, but cutting the booze if it was just one thing that's improved, that alone would be worth it. And there's all these other side effects, great improvements that you get when you cut out too. So like your sleep, your skin, your appetite, your energy, I mean your numbers like blood pressure and things like that.

Rob: 4:43

I found that I get a lot more enjoyment out of life, right, like even doing little things, like hanging out with your kids or going to a movie or eating a sandwich, like you get like more enjoyment out of them, and it's not just because you're not hungover, it's because you're not giving your brain these cheap dopamine hits right and you're not like artificially like bumping that up. So I found that I have just a lot happier in life alcohol-free. I don't have any plans on going back Now. When I quit I didn't say that I was never going to drink again. I didn't label myself an alcoholic, I didn't do any of that. I didn't go to AA or anything like that. But I knew I didn't want to drink that day. And every day I wake up and I just don't want to drink for that one day and I just take it one day at a time.

Deb: 5:25

Same, exact same. And I will say I mean you're young, you have young kids and so yeah, just to. I mean I was doing. I was the same, like trading my life, Like what was I trading my life for? And all the anxiety that I had from drinking.

Rob: 5:38

And I was not feeling the best on Sundays and I'd hang out at home or on the couch. I wasn't out. So now, you know, I'm hanging out with my kids. I taught my daughter how to ride her bike the first summer I got alcohol free. I hang out with my son, we go geocaching, like we're out, and they grew up so quick. So my kids are 10 and 13 now. So you know, it was about three years ago and they were at a good age where they were to start probably noticed that I wasn't spending as much time, but I didn't want to regret it too. They're going to be going away. They're not going to be living here forever and I don't want to ever look back and say I should have spent more time with my kids, because I'll never get that time back, right.

Rob: 6:14

I don't want to ever regret it and I know now that I can be the best father that I can be, the best husband that I can be and the best business owner too. I own a few companies. And tell you what? You're not a good business owner when you're hung over, so I mean you're not really wanting to go out and do a bunch of stuff. So I was. I was doing a disservice to myself, my employees, my customers, my family. So I just needed to change one small thing and that has really, I feel like I've leveled up, like I feel alcohol free is next level living.

Rob: 6:45

And before I became sober I just kind of thought people said that because maybe they wanted to pretend that that was it or maybe they didn't want you to fill a sorry farm or whatever it was. But it's true, like it really is true. And the longer that you're sober every day or maybe not every day at this point, but every week or every month that goes by I continually notice new benefits from it and it's great. And think back to some of your favorite memories, right, a lot of them are probably when you were a kid or at high school, or a lot of them even as adults. You probably weren't drunk. So think about that.

Rob: 7:18

What are we looking to get out of life? We're looking to get good memories and good moments and connection. You know the drink shop that we have here at Generation NA is really all about that and we offer a lot of functional drinks as well. So if somebody is looking for relaxation or balance or focus or energy, we can still give them that.

Rob: 7:33

But the benefit is, you know, with alcohol you kind of numb the good and the bad, so you're just kind of like just numbing everything when, with a functional beverage or with sobriety, you can really enjoy the good right, and you can really just get the most out of that moment. I found in particular that going to a sporting event and just absorbing that energy from the event promotes a lot of dopamine and endorphins and feel good you know where. Before I had to be drinking, to even go out in public because of social anxiety and stuff, right, right, and I didn't really remember the event or the show or the concert or whatever I was at and it's kind of sad, you know, honestly, that I missed out on that and there's a lot of people that don't realize there are these experiences in life that you can have alcohol free and they're so much better.

Deb: 8:24

It's so true and you said it's so interesting. Like you said, like it's just that one small I think you said small thing. You know that you removed right, but like before, like when you were drinking, did it feel small in your life? Like, did drinking feel small, like a small decision, or did it feel like a huge decision, like to try to give this up?

Rob: 8:41

It was a big. My life revolved around alcohol, I mean social events. That was the first thing I was at the bar. There was always an excuse you have a good day, you drink. You have a bad day, you drink it's Tuesday, drink it's the weekend. So yeah, I mean, I guess I should have said it was like one thing, like well, yeah, I don't mean that.

Deb: 8:59

But I agree with you though. Now, like being on the other side of it. Now, being alcohol free it is, I look at it, I go. It was one tiny little thing and I was allowing it to be this big thing in my life, you know.

Rob: 9:10

Yeah, early sobriety is challenging. The first couple of weekends specifically, I remember feeling that really kind of sad for myself and that I was missing out. I wasn't going out with friends, I was at home. It was hard. It got a lot easier. Like I mean, I don't even think about alcohol now, whether it's a Saturday night or anything, and it just. It just takes time and it does get easier.

Rob: 9:34

I saw a graphic once and it kind of showed a person's brain and it showed different colors and there was like a red, yellow and blue and the red was really big and then it was supposedly like this is the way your brain feels about alcohol over time, and then it basically just shrunk that section of the brain and that allowed more room for other things. Right? So you're allowing more good to come in or really just more of anything. Really honestly, because you're not focused on alcohol. I mean it does take up a lot of brain power and space. I mean, what time is it now? So 441?

Rob: 10:07

When we're filming this, I would have totally been thinking oh, it's almost 5 o'clock, I'm going to start. You know, start drinking. What are we going to have for dinner? Just pair well with some wine. It's almost kind of exhausting to think about doing all that. And then you have to maintain that, of course, because everyone's kind of chasing that the first drink, the first buzz, and that's what everybody wants, right. But after you've had one you've got to have two to get back to one, and then you've got to get three and then four, and you have to keep drinking to feel how you did at the beginning and then you just feel like crap.

Deb: 10:37

Yeah, yeah. No, it's true, and it takes up. It does take up so much time. So now, like not drinking? I mean like I have so much time. That's why I started doing stuff on Instagram, because I was like I had all this time in the evening. I wasn't zoned out, I wasn't thinking about drinking. It was like, ok, what am I going to do with myself? So yeah, so you're a true entrepreneur with many businesses. So you were like, why not start another one?

Rob: 10:55

I got into all my high school hobbies. Let's see, I started playing basketball. I got back, I set up a bunch of fish tanks.

Deb: 11:01

Did you really?

Rob: 11:02

I got my bass guitar back out. I used to play in bands. I totally did all that.

Deb: 11:06

I love it, I love it, I love it. You're like I got into my old high school hobbies. That's so perfect.

Rob: 11:11

Yeah, because I mean, that's kind of who you go back to, because I went away to college. I went out of state to Purdue at 18. My first beer was on my 18th birthday at a fraternity, and so it was kind of just the culture from 18 on was around drinking every weekend, and so you really kind of lost your identity with your hobbies and your free time. Because your free time is all about well, we're going to the bars and we're going to meet up with friends or whoever, and it really does take a lot of time and I don't think you realize that until you're sober. But the benefit of that is the weekends are a lot longer, and I did. I mean, you're not hungover and you have all this free time, so it's a lot of fun. You have a lot of free time for hobbies, of course or in your businesses.

Deb: 11:53

Yeah, you have a lot of fun and you get to go back, I think, to who you were before. Drinking became a part of your memories, like you were saying.

Rob: 12:00

It's who you really are, yeah it's who you really are. And I think it just kind of comes back. Your brain returns to who you really are as a person and it's not dependent on this highly addictive substance. It's kind of driving some of those decisions in your life.

Deb: 12:16

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Deb: 13:33

And if you want to meet their winemaker, go back to episode 33 of the podcast, where Duncan Shuler joined me to share about the Giesen story. So you're back to your old self. You have all this time now. So you're like let me open up a non-alcoholic bottle shop. And I know we talked about this for the Mocktail Summit, so if anybody hasn't registered for the Mocktail Summit, please do so. But Rob is one of the guests on the Mocktail Summit to talk about specifically opening up a non-alcoholic bottle shop. So do you want to share with everybody how you got into the non-alcoholic bottle shop space and how this has become such a passion of yours?

Rob: 14:07

Absolutely. So early on in sobriety, my wife bought me a six pack of athletic brewing and I tried it. I liked it. I got into non-alcoholic beers, started an Instagram channel it was first branded NAbeer and I just rated and reviewed beers and I noticed we were getting a lot of engagement and that was great and so I thought, okay, maybe there's more people like that out here, right? So I thought it'd be kind of cool to open a shop, and I had a tech space at the time that during COVID, we had a lot of available space. We actually even had a bar area upstairs. So I bought about 10 cases of beer, a couple of the ritual spirits and some Shirley wines and that was it. I was like I don't know. I don't know if people are going to come, I don't know if people are going to buy it. It was in like the third floor of an office building and there was no sign. So I made an Instagram and a Facebook post and opened the doors and we had like 30, 35 people that day, one that came in and I was like, oh my gosh, dude, like you guys like this stuff. And they're like yes, buy more. So we've just expanded every week and then.

Rob: 15:07

So last summer we were doing it as a pop up. I wanted to start off small. I didn't spend any money starting up maybe 500 bucks, cheap shelves and some products, and then every week we would just invest back into the shop. So we buy a cooler, a tap system, buy more inventory, whatever it is About a year ago. So October 1st, we got our retail spot. That is behind us now and it's a thousand square feet on Main Street in Lafayette, indiana, and it's been great. I just work virtually for my other company, so I sit at the bar and I do like my nine to five, and then when people come in I get out of my desk and help them out around the store. So one of my initiatives was to like not sit at a desk as much too, because that's not healthy, right?

Rob: 15:47

I mean we're helping them out, and so I've done that for 20 years. So I thought this is a good opportunity for me to still do my day job, because tech businesses are virtual. Now I'm getting up, I'm getting my steps, I'm helping out the community with it. But it's been great. We made our shop more of a liquor store, a tap room, just without the alcohol, so people that are missing drinking can come in and get the full experience. I mean you could do draft beer, you could do shots, you could do beer pong on Main Street sometimes.

Rob: 16:15

We do live music, so anything that we've even done, like beer bongs, like anything that you can find at like a bar, like. We want to give people that experience, but without the alcohol, because that's a big part of it when you stop drinking, like you miss going to these places. Some people don't feel comfortable going to a bar, but they want a place that they can socialize. We have a lounge. People can come in, they can sit at the bar, they can sit at the lounge, do some work, have a non-alcoholic draft beer, whatever they want. We do frozen adaptogenic slushies in the summer, so we do a different recipe every week People can vote on and we just want to make it fun, you know, and we want people that walk by to want to come in and check it out.

Deb: 16:49

Yeah, yeah, OK. So for anybody who's listening, who's maybe you know, maybe they're just doing dry January. They think about doing dry January. They're trying to do dry January. You know what advice maybe would you give for them as they're thinking, you know, like you know, when am I going to drink? I'm not drinking.

Rob: 17:02

Well, we try to make it easy. So I started off with the dry January and, like I said, it didn't work out so well, but I eventually figured that out. The contrast of going back to drinking is actually what helped me decide that I wanted to stay sober but drink wise. There's a lot. I mean, some of the craft beers we have have won medals over, like their leaded counterparts. So like against, like beers with like eight times the amount of ABV. So if you like craft beers, draft beers, any style under the sun, we have them. We do, obviously, a lot of ready to drink zero proof cocktails, mocktails. We do drinks with adaptogens. So if you want to relax, we'll have things like Kava or functional mushrooms, cbd. We get all sorts of fun stuff. We do zero proof spirits. We have some ciders, bitters.

Deb: 17:50

I mean we have the lines and you've got the not all lines.

Rob: 17:53

Yeah, we have a lot of that, so I can't forget that. Because you got us in Wine Enthusiast magazine, so I can't forget that.

Deb: 17:58

Yes, yes, that's right, I forgot about the article. Yes, that's so awesome, okay. So yeah, is there a certain thing that most people are interested in when they first like? I know for me, when I first stopped drinking because I was a wine drinker, so I wanted to find what are the good and knock off wines. So is or is it just depend on who the customers is walking in. Somebody's maybe looking for wine, somebody's looking for ready to drink.

Rob: 18:18

Yeah, it kind of depends, and so our most popular skew are our mix and match six packs. I love that you do that. We do two of them now so we have the regular cardboard style so you could fit any of the cans or bottles, and we also have a larger tote. Now it's larger so you could you could mix in the spirits, the wines and the mixers and you get 10% off. So we encourage people to try a lot of things so they can come in and make a six pack and try six different beers or three different beers, couple wines, maybe a ready to drink cocktail and they could try a single can of it. So they don't have to order it online and after shipping, maybe spend 30 or 40 bucks to try one thing. They could come in and get a single can. Or they could come in on a Friday and get a free sample. We always do a free sample happy hour. Or on Saturday we do non-alcoholic flights, different theme every week, so we may do red wines or bourbons. We got gins going this week. You get to try five, sometimes six different samples for like eight bucks. So it's just getting people to try out these products. It's amazing.

Rob: 19:13

We just did an event for the chamber the other day and next to a regular like a regular, like beer and wine shop, and the line was wrapped around for them. Not a lot of people for us, right, a couple of a regular six, seven hundred people at this. So then we noticed people were. They're walking right by us. We started asking people hey, would you like a sample of this wine or this beer? Okay, yeah, they would come up and almost everybody that tried a sample either loved it or purchased a product from us while they're waiting online. So it's really just getting them to try it and asking them. I felt like I don't know why, but sometimes people feel that comfortable they don't want to go into an non-alcoholic shop. We're just selling drinks, you know we're not, we're not going to buy.

Deb: 19:56

Yeah, yeah, we're not going to buy, we're just selling drinks. Yeah, and there's so many good things to drink when you're not drinking, yeah there really are.

Rob: 20:02

Yeah, I mean, I think the functional beverage space is really where it's at. We get a lot of like the Purdue students right. So they come in and they're like I need energy and I need focus. So like, okay, well, we have a couple of drinks that we'll do both and they'll get through a paper or studying for an exam, or somebody will come in. They're like I've really had a hard day. My brain is just firing off. We need, I need something that's going to kind of reset it and kind of slow it down. So, okay, we have a drink for that too. So it's great being able to recommend something to somebody and not just going into a liquor store and just always just having that one option. It's really about flexibility and options and education on ways that we can promote brain health in certain directions.

Deb: 20:42

That's huge. That's huge. So did you know about like the functional you know drinks before you opened up Generation NA Like? Did you know about like Ashwa Ganda and Kava Like? Did you know about that? Or this is something you've learned since you started this.

Rob: 20:55

Not in the drink space, but I've been taking L-theanine, which is a green tea extract, for about 10 to 12 years, so I take a chewable form of that and back when I was drinking I had a lot of anxiety. I was on medication for a period of time and then I stopped the medication and L-theanine was able to help me manage that. So in terms of the supplement form, yes, but in terms of the beverages we started carrying like recessed drinks early on. So they have, like the magnesium and the I think lemon balm and L-theanine, but we really didn't have a lot of it and I think that that section of the category of the non-acrylic space has really grown a lot too. And, like I mean, we opened 18 months ago, so a lot of the products that we have now were I don't even think they were around.

Deb: 21:37

Isn't it crazy. We're like the dinosaur's in the.

Rob: 21:38

Midwest here doing this.

Deb: 21:40

No, it's true. I mean, like there's so many products that have just come out in this last year, just in this, just in 2023.

Rob: 21:46

It's insane, like I used to have to hunt them down and beg people, and now we get contacted every day and all the time hey, will you carry us, will you carry us? We get boxes every day with our deliveries and their sample bottles and we're not even requesting them. People are just sending us all this stuff. Oh my gosh, that's great. We want to carry these and get customer feedback. I mean, unfortunately, we're at the point now we don't have a big shop. We can no longer carry everything.

Deb: 22:07

But we try to carry as much as we can.

Rob: 22:09

I think we have about 450 unique SKUs. It's not a huge shop so like we have to be a little careful now, but we cycle out products. So if you come in, let's say you came in today as a customer. If you come back in two or three weeks, there's going to be a section of the store it's like rotated out, totally changed.

Deb: 22:25

Yeah totally different, you just go through this stuff quickly.

Rob: 22:28

You know, on the weekends some of the drink categories will sell like one per minute of some of the categories of drinks. So like those things are going out the door, Like I have a pallet next to me of a certain drink because we can get our costs down and I know we'll sell through it. So we'll order like 100 cases at a time.

Deb: 22:43

That's incredible, I mean for a small, for a thousand square foot shop in Main Street, america, you know, okay, so dry January is coming or dry January is here. 2024 is here. I was just about to be here. I'm not sure exactly when this episode is coming out. But what are you most excited about, though, for 2024?

Rob: 23:00

Yeah. So a couple of things. We have a dry January tasting series. We've lined up seven brands from around the country. These are not just small brands, you're just like some of the biggest brands in the space that are coming here to do tastings at our little shop in Lafayette, indiana.

Deb: 23:14

I love it, rob, congratulations. I mean just really, can we just stop right there, like that's huge?

Rob: 23:19

I was going to say that's not what I'm most excited about, though that was just like a side note. Well, we're really excited about it. We're going to be coming up with our own Generation NA branded beverages. The first one I'm picking up. On Sunday I'm going to Chicago and we have a new collaboration with Brawler Drops. It's a Mango Bellini and it's a Generation NA collab product. We have a couple others in the works that are really excited and we're going to be trying to come up with our own Generation NA branded products.

Rob: 23:47

A lot of people ask me are you going to open a Generation NA in my town? That's not really my vision for my brand. I don't want to just have them. I want to have one really really cool shop that people will come to. But then we want to get into other fast sets of the area. We have a lot of data. We have 18 months of consumer data. If you put 400 drinks together, what do people like? What do people ask for? What's missing? Where are these holes? We have the data. We're going to start making our own beverages and filling in those holes and then getting them out not just our bottle shop, but other bottle shops.

Deb: 24:19

Congratulations. Please put me on your list, Customer number one. I hope you're shipping. Do I have to come to the shop to pick it up?

Rob: 24:26

That's also good news, because we get asked about every day if we ship. We're not going to ship all products, but for our Generation, na branded products. That's the plan, along with merch. So if you, if it's our product, we're going to have it available for shipping.

Deb: 24:40

That is fantastic. Oh my gosh. Okay, 2024 is gonna be so massive for you. Okay, you're gonna have to come on again to the podcast, like at the end of the year. We have to do a recap of what has just happened, because if we get nothing done.

Rob: 24:54

Don't invite me if I have to come back and say we got none of that accomplished.

Deb: 24:57

That's me. Yeah, that'll be me. Yes, I had all these grand plans and now I have.

Deb: 25:03

No, I will you'll have plenty of things to drink if it, but I'm sure it's gonna work. I'm sure it's gonna all work out Just fine. I'm sure it's gonna be amazing. Okay, rob, thank you so much for coming on driving alcohol-free. I am just so thrilled for you and for the thousand plus days that you have, you know, under your belt of being alcohol-free, and for just one encouragement you are to everybody who walks through those doors of your shop and who walks through the doors of your, your Instagram account to get connected. So thank you for all the support you've been to me. I really, really appreciate it. So well.

Rob: 25:33

Thank you so much, Deb. This podcast is amazing. I know you've helped a lot of people with your social media accounts and what you're doing, so it takes a lot of great people in the space to make it, make it a thing right. I mean, people want great drinks, they want to feel included, they don't want to feel Stigmatized or marginalized or anything. So, yeah, we want to make this thing Mainstream and it takes a lot of people to do that.

Deb: 25:57

Absolutely. It's so much fun. It's so much fun to be in the non-alcoholic space together. It is.

Rob: 26:01

I'm having a ton of fun, like I get up and I love going to work and and I just genuinely am excited about coming to work. I'm like man, it's Saturday. I'm not working today what the heck. I love my family hanging out with you, but I really do like love working. I could see doing this for a long time because it's one of the most rewarding things I've done in my life and not just saying that because I worked in tech for 20 years and tech can be great, but it's also you know. I mean people don't always thank you. They usually hear from them when, like their stuff's broken.

Deb: 26:31

So I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, the tech people, you. The only time I ever call a tech person is typically if there's a problem.

Rob: 26:38

So so like the plumber.

Deb: 26:39

You know like you don't call the plumber to say like thanks, great job, yeah, the water's running. You know you call when it's not running exactly.

Rob: 26:45

So it's kind of nice to be on the other side of. People are excited to come in and yeah help them out. We can find a drink that can literally like, change your life. It's not just a drink, it's an opportunity to make their life better. Every can that we sell here is a can. That's not alcohol and that's not a promo for circle back, although that's what I'm drinking. I love these guys.

Deb: 27:05

But you're right, it's a can that's not filled with alcohol.

Rob: 27:07

That can, yeah, yeah, every can every can we sell is is hopefully an alcohol replacement. And you know we just want to change the narrative that we're just fun drink shop like come in. You know, if you walk into a convenience store and you don't think twice about it like come and check this out, we got a bunch of great drinks exactly so.

Deb: 27:22

Make a trip, you guys. If you haven't, you know, made a trip to middle America. If you haven't gone to see Purdue's campus or you're taking your child to to visit colleges, make sure Purdue's on the list and stop at generation NA and meet Rob and Lauren and everybody in his shop. They will take great, great care of you.

Rob: 27:36

So, yeah, thank you, rob.

Deb: 27:37

Thank you for your time and thank you for being on the mocktail summit. I'm so happy for everybody to get to hear more about your shop on there.

Rob: 27:43

Absolutely. Thanks for having me dad appreciate it.

Deb: 27:47

Big time cheers to you for tuning into the thriving alcohol-free podcast. I hope you will take something from today's episode and make one small change that will help you to thrive and have fun in life without alcohol. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social, send up a flare or leave a rating and a review. I am cheering for you as you discover the world of non-alcoholic drinks and as you journey towards authentic freedom. See you in the next episode.