High Caffeine Without Jitters or Crash (Smooth Energy Explained) | Zest Tea

If your caffeine gives you energy… but makes you feel worse after, you’re not alone.

I got to a point where my usual beverage of choice wasn't making me feel better… it was making me feel worse.

Jitters. Crashes. Digestive issues. That wired-but-off feeling.

So I started looking for a better alternative — and found Zest Tea.

I had to bring on the founder, James Fayal, to break down how Zest was built to deliver a completely different kind of energy experience — combining high caffeine (135–150mg) with naturally occurring L-theanine to create focus without the internal chaos.

We talk about the shift happening in how people think about energy, and why more consumers are moving away from traditional caffeine experiences that come with unwanted side effects.

If your energy has ever felt like it’s working against you, this will change how you think about it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In a world obsessed with high performance, productivity, and optimization, the options for stimulation are endless. People keep reaching for more caffeine and power through their day, but everything is pushing in the same direction. Stronger, faster, more intense. And next thing you know, we're all overstimulated, crashing, and stuck in a cycle of needing more just to feel normal. But at the same time, there's a shift happening. People are starting to crave a smoother, more controlled experience with energy, something that actually feels good in their body. So, what does it look like to design energy without the spikes and crashes? Today I'm joined by James Fayle, founder of Zest Tea, the number one high caffeine tea in the world, a brand that's rethinking energy through a more balanced, sustained approach. It's actually a daily staple for me as well. Right now I'm drinking the blue lady. It's a black tea with an aromatic mix of orange, lemon, passion fruit, and hibiscus. It has 150 milligrams of caffeine. It's super delicious and definitely powers me through my day. So, James, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Of course, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Of course. So I love to get to know a little bit more about your background. Before starting Zest, what was your personal background with tea?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Sure. I was a competitive swimmer for about a dozen years. And one of the issues you run into with swimming is you have a lot of acid buildup because you are flat when you swim versus being vertical in just about every other sport. So when you're working out, your body naturally creates a lot more acid and you don't have sort of gravity to help keep it in your stomach. So a lot of swimmers develop things like gastro reflux disease, which is what I developed in high school, and have similar issues like that. And so I became very sensitive over time to things like higher acidic things like coffee. So when I got into the real world and really needed, you know, caffeinated beverages and things to help me work through long days. I, you know, tried to do that with lower acid things like tea and became a pretty avid tea drinker throughout college and then throughout my early working life. And, you know, quickly realized when working very long days and finance that I needed something with a little bit more tick than that. So that's sort of the early stages of what led me to this.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Wow. I never thought about how swimmers can develop more acid reflux because of their position in the water. That's mind-blowing to me. And I actually have acid reflux as well. So I definitely know the struggle. And I quit coffee a long time ago because it kept irritating my digestion. It was nonstop acid reflux and jitters, and just like wanting something that has a more sustained energy throughout the day was super important as well because the crash just was killing me.

unknown 3:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

And I know other people experience that as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Digestive is digestive reasons, heartburn, issues with acid are a major driver of our customer base. We about half of our customers are tea drinkers that were just looking for this. They just want that there was more care. And then the other half are usually coffee drinkers that are looking either for something that tastes better or something that you know interacts with their body a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Wow, that's very interesting. Because I've also tried low acidic coffee and it still gives me acid reflux or the chicory root. I've never actually experienced acid reflux with zest, which I find very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

That's good to hear.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Perfect. I love that. I really appreciate that. That community needs more options because it's so miserable.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Heartburn is, you know, people that have never experienced true like acid reflux-based, ulcer-based heartburn, you know, it is a dehabilitating, you know, condition when it hits you. And it takes years to get it under control. And, you know, the last thing you want to do once you get it under control is to, you know, spark it up again with issues.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Yeah, 100%. So besides like the digestive issues, what made you realize there was a problem with how people were actually experiencing caffeine?

SPEAKER_01 4:33

In my early career, I was working in venture capital and was sort of bottom of the totem pole. So it was really long hours where you had to stay, you know, very focused over long hours. People are sending you pitches that are their lives' work and and they're very in-depth, and they're sending you financial models, and you know, the last thing you want to do is just sort of blow somebody off because you're tired that day, or blow off an opportunity. So it goes both ways. And so you know, as somebody like myself that you know has attention deficit, you know, issues inherently as well, keeping concentrated is just expounded by if you run into a big crash for having a coffee or an energy drink or something like that. So yeah, I was really looking to develop something that moderates that. So you're not, you know, you're not chugging down a coffee and then you're, you know, wired for an hour and then the rest of the day is useless because you just want to take a nap kind of thing. I need another. And it it doesn't work after a while, not only after in one day, but after you know, years of doing that, your body's gonna become accustomed to that. So, you know, that was a major focus for me. And I I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do that. And I found that the that tea, the natural organics in tea, especially caffeine and altheinine, are a really effective way of sort of moderating that without negatively affecting sleep too much. And so I really narrowed in on that. And, you know, how we develop zest is we want to sort of take the natural organics and the natural effects that already occur in tea and boost them up a little bit so they're a little bit more effective.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

I love that because I found L-theanine to be one of my favorite compounds. It just really locks you in, allows you to have really close to no jitters with caffeine. It smooths the experience out. And I have also seen that increases the alpha brain waves like you have in meditation. So it really gets you in that focused state. And I've noticed I've never crashed when I've had zest. It just like this long caffeine rush throughout the day. And I really like that because with coffee, it's like you're on top of the world, and then boom, you're you're done. You don't want to do anything. I'm like, why do I feel so bad? Oh, I had coffee or even an energy drink because you know the sugar is in them as well. So I love the concept of putting tea as your main source because of the L-theanine that's naturally in it as well. And I'm also very curious how you were able to boost up those ingredients as well. Because you know, 135 to 150 you know, milligrams is like it's pretty high. So why did you choose to go a little bit higher than coffee and closer to energy drinks?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Sure. So there's a range on all these things when it comes to coffee and energy drinks. And we found that that, you know, 120 to 150 range to be sort of the ideal range for most people. It's like a normal coffee, you know, it's less than if you have a massive Starbucks kind of thing. The other thing about coffee is that caffeine levels vary a lot. So, like they've done studies on you know the 20-ounce Starbucks coffees, and they ranged from like 200 milligrams to like that that's a large coffee, so it's it's like multiple servings, 200 milligrams to like 550 milligrams for the exact same coffee that you get from like one place or another. So there's like a lot of variability in that. So, you know, narrowing down that variability was a was a big thing for us. But um, yeah, I also found that to be the level where um the effect was noticeable and and something that's been big for us since day one is we want all of our products to be very efficacious and that efficacy to be very obvious. And and it's not like uh, oh, you take it every day, like sort of cross your fingers that something works and you convince yourself that it does. You know, you have a zest, and there's no doubt in your mind that you know you feel the energy, you feel the focus, and then ideally you you don't you know feel that crash on the back end. So, you know, one of the interesting things about that crash on the back end is that it actually was not an early marketing point because I felt that I didn't think people would believe it. This is before L Fanina has become as popular as it is today. This was like 2014, 2015. I didn't think people believe it. It'd feel a little bit like snake oily. And then our early reviews started coming back and like no jitters, no crash. We didn't come up with that. That was like the most common like response we started getting from customers, and a lot of customers talking about like, oh, I used to drink four coffees in the day, I've switched to just zest in the morning, and like maybe you have one in the afternoon. And so, you know, that has since become far more central to our messaging. And then L-theanine has also come into the limelight as an ingredient. So, like as you were saying, L-theanine has a lot of beautiful aspects to it. It it is sort of a calm focus, and so it works really well with caffeine because it helps sort of moderate how caffeine is absorbed into your blood system and gets picked up by receptors in your brain. And then it's also just like great for sleep. So it works really well with like a melatonin because it lets sort of like calms your mind and then lets melatonin do its job, but it doesn't, it's not like making you fall asleep while you have it with caffeine and it's not keeping you awake. So it's it's this great substance that you can put a mix and match with various other additives for it to be really effective. So it was really helpful that like people started to recognize L-the-amine as an ingredient, people started to recognize the impact of L-the-amine. Um, and it became less of like a snake oily ingredient that you know nobody had ever heard of. So, so that sort of compounded our marketing messages over the years.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

That's so interesting that I believe your main selling point, uh, we found out that your your customer feedback. I mean, this is a it's a big differentiator. And I've never seen high caffeine tea. It was very attractive to me because I'm a big tea drinker as well. It's big in my culture. And to see like something that has high caffeine and can give me all the benefits without the crash that I get from energy drinks and things like that with the same amount of caffeine, basically. Big, big win. And not having sugar as well, like having actually like orange, lemon, passion fruit, hibiscus, and getting those flavors from those actual fruits and not having to have you know artificial flavorings as well. That's really appealing.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Blue lady is uh has a cult following with requests for like candles based on the blue lady scent and stuff like that. Really? Yeah, so blue lady, which is the flavor that you're describing, is is by far our most popular flavor. A lot of people really liked it because it doesn't need sweetener, it has a natural sort of orange. Passion fruit's a beautiful flavor, beautiful smell, and beautiful flavor. I love working with passion fruit. Yeah, it's just one of these flavors that just you know, it's the audience is male and female. People love it for a million different reasons, but it's it's I think it just about half of our overall sales are blue lady by itself. It's it's a very high percentage.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Wow, that's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

So, yeah, the other five like combined to match blue lady.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Oh, yeah, can you tell the audience what your other flavors are as well? And what are you drinking?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Sure. Oh, so we uh we also have a line of blurred of clean energy drinks, which they are not, I would say, outwardly tea flavors, but they use tea as a base for the same sort of functional benefits. We use a tea extract. And so these have 120 to 150 milligrams. The zero cal is 120, that the regular that's stolen, like 60 cal, it's 150 milligrams, 100 milligrams of L-theanine, vitamins, and then you have the option of either a natural cane sugar or a natural sweetener that is zero cal. This is blackberry lime, it's a zero cal, I drink it usually before I go to the gym or something like that. But yeah, so the other flavors on the hot teas are the number two flavor is pomegranate mojito, which so the blue lady is like our number one black tea, and then pomegranate mojito is our number one green tea, and it's a very mint-heavy tea, and people really love it. After that, we've got a super berry samba, which is like a berry mix green tea, which is our newest blend that's growing in popularity. We have a cinnamon apple, which is what I drink most mornings, actually. There's just something I grew up, like there's something about like I grew up in New England, and there's like something like so New England about like cinnamon apple, whether it's like oatmeal or like whatever, it's just it's just the vibe of New England. And we've actually seen that play out, which is funny. So, like we'll see cinnamon apple like outperform in New England specifically. But what else we got? We got Earl Grey, which is just a classic. We do a really good bergamot heavy Earl Grey. You like Earl Greys, and then we have a chai, which is another one of my favorites. So if you like like a spicy cinnamon clove type chai, the the chai is stands on its own just as a chai, rather than a caffeine chai. And then we have a patch and fruit berry energy drink as well as a pomegranate, sorry, yeah, pomegranate knit energy drink, and then the zero cow of the energy drink is blackberry line. So those are our major product lines.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Nice. I love that you have so many different flavor options, and they're pretty unique as well. I do love the chai. I have had that as well. I'm almost done with both blue lady and the chai, and then I finished the bag of Daryl Gray. So I love all those three. I'm gonna try the other flavors as well. But I'm not sure if I I got this question, but how are you able to make the teas have this much caffeine? Is there like an extract or something that you put in them?

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, so that took about two years, and it's a pretty complicated proprietary process that we use. But at its core, we're we're taking a tea extract that has all the organics that are naturally in tea in a concentrated form, and we are infusing it within the tea leaves and a slow process that actually sort of attaches it to the tea level at a molecular level, and that way these organics come out naturally with the tea. So the example I always use is that if you made a tea and you sprinkled caffeine into it, it would be the most disgusting tea you ever had. Caffeine is an incredibly bitter flavor. So all the tan, like all that, all that like dryness and and and bitterness that you get in tea or coffee, that's that's the caffeine. So it took us about two years to really nail down how to do this process without adversely affecting the flavor. Like when I knew we had nailed it, was when we won the one best new product, the World Tea Expo. And I was talking to, yeah, this was you know, years ago, but it was still a huge win. I was talking to one of the judges after, and these are like the snobbiest of tea drinkers possible. And so, like, I think of myself as like a like a realist pragmatist, like tea drinker, not like a tea connoisseur. You know, you have to acquire that when getting into like how to flavor teas and stuff like that. But you know, I oversteep my tea. I do all these things that like you know, tea connoisseurs would like find like insane. But so, you know, they're they spend all day rating like the best single origin teas in the world and like all this kind of stuff. And she went up to me and she said, We thought we were gonna hate your teas. Like we thought they were gonna be disgusting. Because again, they're very snothy, and like the concept of like a high caffeine tea was just like if we were the first ones on the market. And and she was like, But we thought it was delicious, it was amazing. And that's what like Sign Seal delivered you, you know, the award. And I was like, All right, if we've got these guys loving the flavor, then like we've nailed it, we finally got in there. But it definitely took it took years to to really nail down and to figure out how to scale it because we originally nailed it down in like super small batch, like home kitchen type stuff, and then getting that to the point where we could make you know thousands and thousands of pounds of you know, tea every month kind of thing was uh was a pretty major process.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

That must mean a lot to have these tea connoisseurs complimenting your brand so much. I mean, I was wondering this, you know, tea is usually seen as a lower caffeine source, you know, for people who can't handle a lot of like high energy stuff. So I was wondering like, has that been a potential hurdle for you to get people to try it out if they're worried about jitters or anxiety and things like that that they would usually get from other caffeine sources?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yes and no. Uh yes, in that like there's a certain part of the tea audience that you're just never going to acquire. Like I'd say a quarter of the tea audience that I see at like trade shows and stuff, they're like, Oh, what kind of tea is this? It smells delicious, and I'll be like, it's a high caffeine tea. And they're like, Oh, well, I don't do caffeine. So, like, I know. It's like, okay, yeah, you're not, you're not our our customer base. But most tea drinkers, it's not a strict, you are a tea drinker, you are a coffee drinker, you're an energy drink drinker. Like, I think we sort of think in terms of that, but like, you know, energy drinks have grown 5,000% since 2000. Over 50% of Americans drink coffee every day. And depending on what stats you look at, just about 50% of American adults drink tea every day. There's massive overlap in these camps. So a lot of people are like, okay, this is when I do this, this is when I do that, this is when I do this. And there's also just a lot of people that like, oh, I drink tea because I like the flavor of it, but like I wish you could get the best of both worlds at the coffee side. And then there's a ton of coffee, like, this is a massive customer base for us. A ton of coffee drinkers that are habitual coffee drinkers that they drink it for the daily routine of the caffeine in the morning kind of thing. But they're either neutral about it or just actually hate it. Like they're like, uh, like it's like I don't enjoy this, but like I can't get through a day at work without it. So those people eventually learn to love it, you know, as an acquired taste. But but there's a lot of people that are low-hanging fruit for us of well, you can get all the benefits of that. You're not gonna have a hard crash, it's gonna be lighter on your system. And for most people, they think it tastes better. So I I haven't found the that to be a major issue, but like it does take people a second to deal with that collision of ideas of like a high caffeine and tea, which I've never like that's not a normal thing to put together. And then when they think about it, they're like, Oh, that sounds great, actually.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, I mean, it does carry that different like position and and society and culture and things like that. There's a huge like cultural shift with how people want to experience energy now. We've seen this with like mushroom coffee, you know, how much it's exploding too. And people are craving that more grounded experience with caffeine. Because I've talked to so many people and they're like, I can't do the jitters anymore, I can't do the anxiety and the crashes as well. A lot of people are giving up coffee, at least around me as well. And I've had conversations with people about zest. For example, they've said, Oh, I don't want a caffeine source that blocks my appetite, for example, because people are like GLP1s and things like that, and they drink Celsius and it suppresses their appetite. And I'm like, nah, try zest. And yeah, I mean, all caffeine is like kind of a food suppression, but I can easily eat food with zest. At least that's my experience.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

But yeah, that's never been a complaint. Heck, I wish it would suppress my diet some more. That's never been a complaint without with zest.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah, so I definitely think you know, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in this category. Like a lot of people are very intrigued, and more people are going to, you know, I feel like be more conscious with their nervous systems and think I need something that's gonna actually sustain me throughout the day and not have you know the side effects of coffee or energy drinks. So I love that. And I also love you know the product decisions you've made. For example, that you have plant fiber tea bags. I found that very cool because there's you know a lot of talk about microplastics that leach into your tea, and people got really scared of that, and they're like, Oh, I'm not gonna buy uh tea bags anymore.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

So we we made that a very conscious decision because the the there's two types of teabag material in the premium. It's a pyramid bag, which allows teas to expand more, and they're used in higher quality teas so that you're not constricting teas like in a in a normal tea bag and it lets the flavors infuse a little bit better. But there's two types of materials you can use. You can use a nylon or you can use a corn-based plant fiber that's uh compostable, which is nice. And the nylon's cheaper, but we always felt that it was anti the ethos of tea and everything like that. I just felt sort of weird to put a plastic bag into a boiling hot thing of water, which ended up being the right decision because not too. Long ago, maybe five years ago, four years ago, there was this like huge uproar about microplastics specifically in tea bags. And these articles came out. And we didn't even really market it at that point. Like we didn't really talk about it. We just, you know, we're doing it. And all these people were reaching out to us and they're like, Oh, is there you know microplastics in this? And we had to explain the, you know, what the material was and everything like that. So yeah, we ended up being on the right side of history on that one, which was nice, but I'm not going to name names. But if you go to a grocery store and you get some of the more established brands that have switched into doing some bags in these pyramid tea bags, you can usually feel the material and tell if it's it just feels plasticky. And it can be confusing because some of the plant-based ones actually feel and look like the nylon ones, but um just from a cost-saving standpoint, most of the lower cost teas uh do use the nylon versions.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Yeah, and this is a big thing, I believe, for consumers that they see you're not cutting corners, like it's a big trust-building thing just to have this intentional choice because they want to drink it every day, but they don't want to feel guilty about it. So that adds another reason for them to continue drinking it, which is very cool. And I love the packaging, it's so aesthetically pleasing.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

We have a wonderful designer who also lives in Boston area, and uh and we're working on some cool new stuff too that is similar direction, just a little bit more exciting, I'll put it that way. So we'll see some new new brand variations coming out soon.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Oh, wonderful. I'm I'm excited to see that. Great. And how has customer feedback shaped the evolution of your products over time, besides you know, finding out that the L-theanine was a big factor?

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Sure. You know, it's why we came out with the canned beverage for sure, because there's a lot of people that, you know, were looking for similar effect in a iced tea format. So even though we don't like calling it iced tea because the flavor profile is not tea heavy, but the effect and the the functional ingredients are are the same as as our hot twos. We when we come out with new flavors, we spend, which is very rare, and we're working on some right now, but it's pretty rare that we come out and do flavors. We spend an insane amount of time. We have a group of customers that over the years have become sort of like our polling group. And we'll poll, you know, a few hundred customers that are avid customers about, you know, what do you guys think about these flavor profiles? What are you drinking outside of Zest? What about these combos, things like that? And once we get an idea for what people are interested in, where they see holes in our line, we then go to the drawing board and this is where it gets complex and why it takes so long. Um, our products work really well with certain flavor profiles and not very well with other flavor profiles because you do have the you know tannins of tea and the caffeine and all these kinds of things. So we have to be very strategic about how we make it. So then we do a massive number of taste tests and and and reformulations with our partners, our flavoring partners, and everything like that. And you know, that can take six plus months, and then we'll send out samples to customers and they'll give us reviews, and then we'll tweak based on that and send stuff back out. Our new product iteration is very, very customer focused and very much so. Like we hear obviously constantly, you can imagine as a tea company, the amount of people that reach out and say, Oh, my favorite tea is constant comment or whatever. Here's this old school flavor from Bigelow that we really love, and I'd really love to see it in this format. We have all these massive Google Sheets that you know have all this feedback. And so we we do whatever we can there. You know, we started coming out early on. We just had tea bags, we pretty quickly started producing loosely for the more avid tea drinkers that wanted, you know, lower costs per cup or you know, like to figure out how much of it they put into their own steeping. Yeah, it's it's sort of endless, I'd say there's very few decisions that we've made that are highly impactful that the ones that weren't driven by customers, more often than not, don't stick around very long. They they're sort of short-lived. When we try to figure it out in our heads, you know, we're not necessarily like we can't we can't see the future and we can't predict what the customers are gonna like. So you can try your best to come out with something that people love, but at the end of the day, you're gonna tweak. And we have, you know, yeah, the other, but we uh we have also tweaked flavors over the years, and we our core flavors we don't really do that anymore on because they've been around so long. But right after we come out with the flavor, we get inundated with I like this, I don't like this, you know, whatever. So this weeks, and and you know, when we have tweaked a flavor that's been around for a while, it's really interesting because you're like you know, you're gonna go through a few months of people just like hating your guts of like, oh, that was my favorite flavor, and you changed it. Like, we changed out the cinnamon for something that has proven to be it went from being our lowest the cinnamon apple one from being our lowest ranking flavor to like number three after this change. But that was two, three years ago, and like we still regularly get reviews of like change it back to the old cinnamon kind of thing. Because like you get these like avid. So we try to do it as infrequently as possible, but we also you know will make tweaks as is necessary to to certain flavors. So it's you know, I think like any company, it's it's all customer driven. You're that's why you exist is to serve the customers. So so if you're not listening to them, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Right, exactly. And yeah, it must be difficult to try to please everyone. And you know, there's only so much you can do. Just innovating the product and listening to your customers is everything. I'm sure they really appreciate that. I appreciate that as well. Because I love drinking it. Um, but that's great that you have such a good relationship with your customers and you're able to you know get all this feedback from them. That's that's very useful. And out of curiosity, where do you feel like you get like the most valuable feedback from customers today? Is it like Amazon, your website, social media, somewhere else?

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Um negative reviews are definitely a biggie. You know, we sell so much product on Amazon. I there's a stat that was floating around at one point that if somebody has a bad experience, they're 26 times more likely to leave a review than if they have a good experience. So if you have you know a 4.5 Amazon, it means that you know 99.5% of your customers are loving your product. Like it's just like an insane percentage. And one one star review needs 10 plus five star reviews to like keep you in that range. Like you have to pretty much everybody has to have a positive experience. So when you do get negative experiences, especially when it's you see it multiple times, you know, that's one of the key drivers. So, like, we're working on improving the bag material right now and keeping it with the PLA plant fiber, but we're switching it to a stronger thread because people are having issues that, especially when something goes to Amazon, it goes from you know, our manufacturing goes in a big box, goes to Amazon, you know, gets tossed around at Amazon, goes into the mail, gets tossed around the mail. The bag sometimes will rub up against each other and it'll break a bag or crack the side of the bag. And people hate that. And we saw an influx of it recently, not too recently, but over the last year or two, we saw an influx of so these are very slow things to fix because you've got to like start with suppliers that are overseas and then you know, work it into your supply chain, and it might take six months before it ever gets to a customer. But we have to get ahead of it. So we've been working on that for a while, and you know, later this year we'll see probably Q3, we'll see like the new teabag material that has a little bit more strength, you know, roll out the customer. So your existing customers that love your product, you know, they're your core customers, you got to keep them happy. When you get a bad review from somebody that is one of those people that is like, oh, I've been drinking this for years, but gives you a one star, like that's that's got to raise red flags. Um, so I would say that's really, really critical. Um and yeah, we also just try to like talk to customers. Like when I do a survey about new flavors or something like that, like we're working on some new hydration products, but we've been doing a lot of surveying in that. And like whenever somebody gives me an interesting response, you know, I'm sending them a whole email response and saying, Oh, can you like dig into this response that you give me? Can you provide more color on that? You know, I see where you're coming from here. Uh, like, where do you think that's coming from? Like, all these kinds of things. So, so you only learn so much from like the keyboard warrior, you know, message that you get on Amazon review or whatever. Like, you've really got to either call or do a series of emails with the customer to like get to the next layer of information. And so I find that really interesting as well, especially when somebody has a negative experience. Or, you know, we we for those that we can reach out to, Amazon makes that difficult. But people through our own website that have a negative experience, like we very much so follow up with them and try to figure out what's going on. I find that super, super helpful.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Hmm. I've personally never had bad experience with the bags, they've been good, but I you know, again, the whole 26x.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

If you have it's a sub 1% problem.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yes, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

But it's a sub 1% problem, but you know, all of a sudden it will be 10% of your reviews, and you're oh crap.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Yeah. No, it's great that you're on top of that and you know, stopping that potential flow leaving, right? Of customers like, ah, I can't take this.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

It takes one bad experience, almost any brand, especially food and beverage brands. Somebody has a bad experience, somebody smells something off, somebody tastes something off, somebody has a bad, you know, tea bag, whatever it is, and you're not reacquiring that customer. And and you know, 85, I said 85% of our sales were existing reorders or customers, existing customers, 15% were new customers. So, like we rely very heavily on people coming back again and again and again and again. So losing those customers is just absolutely devastating. And so we obsess over that.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Yes, it's actually mind-blowing how easy it is to lose customers over a very small thing that you know triggers them. And I I mean it, you know, when I read reviews as well, I'm like, wow, I've never had that problem. But to this person, it's a really big problem. And that's causes them to leave. And as a you know, big brand, is it easy to actually piece like all of those reviews together and like understand what's going on, or is it like all kind of scattered?

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Well, we we do segment the reviews and we do categorize the reviews as they come in. We've got you know well over 10,000 reviews at this point, so we have pretty good segmentation of what the issues are and we look for trends, uh things that are coming up new, and that helps. And we've got good team members that like you know really focus on that. Yeah, we use you know AI systems now too to you know, we'll throw uh 10,000 reviews after we've thought we figured out trends and stuff like that, and we'll start analyzing and say, oh, well, like you started getting you know 10 more reviews about this lately, like has something changed, and so so that helps quite a bit, but it's it's a big process, you know, when something comes up and enough of it is happening, that's when you know, I get flagged and you know, actively start working on effects.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Well, that's great that you have or AI tools.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

How to make something that's good better, you know, that's often also the thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Yeah, that's great. That you know, because we really appreciate that as customers as well, just to see like someone who's always trying to improve the customer experience and on top of it in the back end that makes us feel good because we want to keep you know experiencing the product, and there's so much competition out there as well. You know, it's like one little thing causes a bad experience for a customer, and then they just go to a competitor super fast. So it's good to be on top of that.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Yeah, I think you know it's a pretty good indication that like there's other since we came out, and especially right after we came out, there was a couple very large companies that came out with competing products. Um and since then there's been some other, you know, like Amazon type knockoffs and stuff like that. I think we outsell them to this day, like 10 to 1, even these like companies that are 10 times our size for their high caffeine teas and their energy twos, because you know, they're trying to, it's just a piece of their portfolio. It wasn't their, you know, core product or anything like that. So just like you know, staying on top of it, just having a better product is always going to win at the end of the day in the market. And you know, every time we've come out with a product that we don't think is best in class, you know, we it's gone away. Uh and you know, we were lucky that our first products, you know, Blue Lady was one of our first flavors. Our first products were great. And, you know, it's really hard to replicate that again. Anything sub a great, great product, it's just not gonna last in the market, especially with just like how quickly your product's gonna be due to, you know, whether it's on Amazon or by major competitors or whatever it is, it's you know, you you you have to be the best at what you do. And so like the more focused you are, the more like narrow your niche or whatever, the more you can own that thing.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

So when someone picks up Zest, what do you really believe they're buying beyond energy?

SPEAKER_01 36:21

I want them to buy Tom, which sounds contradictory to energy, but that is my experience. Like my favorite part of my morning is waking up, you know, I go like walk my dog, I come back, my water's ready at that point, I put it in the tea bag, and there's this like 20, 30 minute experience that I use a very big teacup, you know, beautiful, warm beverage in your hand, and you're like getting your day set up in front of you. And so, like, I think that like energy in a focused way is actually like again, somebody that like ADHD and all that, like finding that moment of calm focus and feeling on top of the ball and feeling like you're gaining control your day is like that's my favorite part of my day. And so, like, if anybody can like have that experience, that's I all I want. That that's the coolest thing, it's just like feeling like people you're giving people back control of you know what is inherently a chaotic life.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Yes, honestly, after I drink my tea, I feel like excited to take over the world. Like I don't know, like the caffeine rush that is just hits you really nice, and I'm just ready to get everything done. And sometimes when I feel like I'm tired, I just don't want to do anything. And all the work that I said I was gonna do, it just feels like triggering. Like I don't want to do it. But when I have this and I have the good, sustained energy and the really happy, excited mood, I'm like pacing around my room and I'm like just coming up with amazing ideas and I'm just like excited for the day. So I definitely agree with that feeling that you're describing. Yeah, and you said you've expanded, you know, beyond energy into hydration and I've also noticed sleep and more stuff as well. Was that driven by customer demand or a broader vision supporting how someone comes across their day?

SPEAKER_01 38:25

A mix. So we as a company are are somewhat restless and we enjoy the process of RD, I think. Maybe sometimes too much. I've I've we're much more deliberate about RD than at times in the past, and especially me, I I don't really like just like sitting on the products we have. I'm always thinking about like, oh, well, here's this really cool thing that we could do. But at the core of it is still that like we want scientifically backed, highly noticeable, efficacious products. And so, you know, when we say sleep, it's not just chamomile lavender, you know, it's not just like, oh, well, you know, my guru told me that chamomile does this and it helps calm your. And like there is some of that, and it is a chamomile lavender flavor, but we're also going to do low-dose melatonin and L-theanine. So it's a two-migligram L-the-anine, I mean melatonin and then 15 milligrams of L-theanine. So that, you know, we're we're sort of modernizing the functional tea segment that way, and we're trying to find that balance of what are these natural additives that we can use that are bringing this product to something that is really useful for people. And so that's where the sleep tea came out. We are, I expect that will come out. We it's pretty much done. So I might as well just mention it here, but a gut health tea, a probiotic, prebiotic, gut health tea that's been in the works for I don't know, two years. That's a like that's an example of like really you can come out, you can throw probiotics into a tea, but they'll all die because of the hot water. So, like, you have to use the right kind of probiotics and capsulated the right way. Like, there's all these things that you know, the RD on this stuff is just so much more complex than people realize. And then, yeah, on the side of the beverage side, it's still within the beverage side. We do have a hydration line. So we have an energy hydration line now that is a higher caffeinated but also healthy, sort of like a liquid IV, but more focused on the energy side. And then we're working on expanding more into the hydration space with a focus on really scientifically backed high electrolyte products that are much more based on what your body is losing in an intensive workout. So it's much more workout focused than what it is, you know. Like I not to name names, but there's a lot of hydrations out there that are pretty much made for hangovers, which, you know, you can use a high electrolyte product for hangovers. That's that's even more effective. But they're not actually replacing what your body's losing if you go to the gym and work out for an hour. They're not even getting close. And that's the vast, vast majority of electrolytes. We're sort of trying to build on what is the electrolytes that are best in class now. We're trying to make them flavor-wise. Flavor is also a very important thing to us, obviously. Flavor-wise, very accessible to people because a lot of those are not very universal in a flavor, they're very tart. A lot of people don't like the the higher electrolyte products. And we are also looking at there's a high interest in an electrolyte creatine-based combination product. And one of the nice things about that is that the effectiveness of creatine is massively increased when combined with an electrolyte because a lot of the electrolytes are carriers that carry creatine throughout your body. So if you're already using a creatine, you can really make it more effective by using a you know potassium-magnesium electrolyte-based product. So uh yeah, we're being very focused on things that are very scientifically backed um and you know, listening to our customers wherever we can. So I don't even remember where this question started, but uh uh that's sort of how we think about it. And the hydration space is still very much so that's like our RD department. Like our bread and butter is the tea and the the energy drinks. And this is like where we get to play and have fun because we're already in the space, we understand the space, we understand Amazon, we understand food and beverage, and you know, I'm somebody that uses creatine every day, I'm somebody that uses electrolytes every day. And we're like, okay, well, I think we have a brand that we can use as a platform and you know, and go into these new interesting spaces. So that's that's sort of a privilege, but you have to control that because that can take over a company if you're not careful. You got to keep your focus on what you do best and your core products, and then you can have this like skunk works off to the side where you get to do these cool things and you know, see if they take off. So that's what we have. We have a very, you know, I'd say the company's 95% what we do really well and what we've been doing forever, and then like 5% we get to tinker with these cool things.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

That's wonderful. I actually use creatine and electrolytes every morning, and I didn't even realize that was scientifically backed, but I use two different supplements and mix them together. So that's really cool that you're creating something that already combines them. And there's so much confusion in the electrolyte market and different variations of sodium and potassium. Like I don't even know what I'm supposed to use for what, and they're all marketed in the same way. Like you said, a lot of them are for hangovers and other situations where maybe you just were really sick or something, but I want something that's gonna, you know, sustain me, you know, after a workout or just daily use.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

So I think there's a lot of challenges in the electrolyte market just for the consumer of knowing like what do I pick, and a lot of Flavors are not good. They're really salty.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

There's there's the there's the stuff that tastes like a kid's drink. Some of the biggest that's like sort of the main the mass market electrolytes that you see everywhere, you know, and they have a lot of sugar and they have low electrolytes, and they're just made to taste like a sweet drink. They're made to taste like Gigarit. You know, at the end of the day, that was the original like electrolyte drink. And then there's like the high end of it that like people are like, oh, I I've come around to it, you know, like I it's an acquired taste, but like I love it now. And it's just like uh there's something in the and the funny thing is that these brands over here feed into that because what you're tasting is not actually salt necessarily, it is to a degree, but it's it's the combination of salt and acids that gives something tart. So like something like that candy tartness of that like sweet and sour, that sourness. Salt is not sour. So if you just put, if you ever had a sore throat, you put salt in this water, it tastes like seawater, it's gross. That's not what you're tasting. You're tasting citric acid and malic acid combined with that salt. So they're playing into that tartness as like an aspect of their brand. And some of them, it's very central to their brand. You know, they bring up salt, even though it's not necessarily it's what people associate with salt, but it is not salt creating that effect. So there's this middle ground that we really want to play with, with something that is a much more universal flavor profile. But and we're actually also trying to improve the electrolyte mix because I think there's you know constantly science developing there, and we can be sort of best in class on on both on both ends.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

That's wonderful. I love that so much. Great. So, where can someone experience zest for the first time?

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Oh, yeah. So I think you know, for most people, Amazon and our website, which is livezesty.com, is the best place for the vast majority of people. We have products in certain chains, which we're gonna expand more. Whole Foods has our beverage line, our canned beverage line. Texas HEB is our biggest retail chain down there. So that's a pretty popular one. Um, and then we have a big focus coming up actually near where you are. Um we're starting to focus pretty heavily on the New England, mid-Atlantic Northeast segment for new retail expansion. But 95% of people, Amazon and our website with Z D.com, L-I-B-E-Z-E-S-T-Y.com are the best places to order.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Awesome. And what would you recommend they start with?

SPEAKER_01 46:34

So we have this really good sampler pack of our top flavors. So, like if you go on our website now, you'll see like a little tag on the bottom left-hand corner. It's probably going to be our hero image soon, but it will say 52% off. You put in your email and it brings you to this sampler pack of our top flavors of the hot teas. And then you also get some free goodies, like an infuser, and then you get a free bag of the sleep tea with it as well. So that's if you just want to try everything, do that. If you want to try one flavor with the highest hit rate, you know, blue lady is the cold flavor. So go with that.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

I love that. I definitely want to try the the sleep one as well, because I need something that's just gonna help me wind down not too strong. So that's the two milligrams. You said two milligrams melts on it, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Yeah, it's a great like hour before you go to bed, you steep it up, and it's just like this, you know, read a book or you know, do what most of us do, stare at your screens for an hour and try to go to bed after that. Like it's just a great like wind down to the day. That's just again, it's that it's finding that calm sort of moment in a chaotic life that you know, we aimed for the same thing there.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Yeah, I need that because every time I want to wake up at 5 a.m., I end up sleeping at like 11. Like, I never get enough sleep. Wow, this this was so great, James. Thank you so much for being here and sharing more about your story and zest. And I think the bigger takeaway here is that people aren't just, you know, choosing zest for energy. They're choosing how they want to show up in their day because I know that's why I continue to drink it. I want to feel more clear, more in control and more steady and you know, have it last throughout my day without crashing. And so that's extremely appealing to me. So thank you so much for coming on.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.