Founder Fundraising Journey: Victor Guardiola, Bawi

In this Founder Fundraising Journey episode, host Hannah Dittman sits down with Victor Guardiola, Founder and CEO of Bawi, a sparkling agua fresca brand bringing authentic Hispanic flavors into the modern beverage aisle with a healthier twist. Beyond the product, Victor is equally driven by a mission to increase representation for Latino and minority founders in CPG.

Victor's path started with a food and beverage entrepreneurship practicum at UT Austin's McCombs School of Business, where he uncovered the data behind sugar-sweetened beverages' outsized impact on the Hispanic community and realized there was no mass-market, better-for-you Hispanic beverage to fill that gap. From there, he spent months selling on tap at farmer's markets, cold-emailing hundreds of potential investors, and eventually landing his first checks from Austin business figures like Patrick Terry of P. Terry's.

Hannah and Victor dig into the brutal reality of raising a first round without a "rich uncle," the tipping-point moment when a notable investor's name unlocked the rest of the round, and how Bawi is now scaling food service and retail density across its two core markets, Texas and California.

Listen in as they discuss:

• Why 80% of initial startup funding comes from friends and family, and what that means for founders without that access
• How a UT Austin entrepreneurship practicum turned into the idea for a mass-market Hispanic beverage
• Selling agua fresca on tap at farmer's markets, carbonating overnight in a commercial kitchen until 3am
• Landing the first equity round from Patrick Terry of P. Terry's and Torchy's Tacos founder Mike Rypka
• The "golden follow-up": how one notable investor joining the cap table triggered a tipping point
• Why cold-emailing without leading with a pitch dramatically increases response rates
• Building initial retail density through independents and the natural channel before chasing national programs
• The risk of emerging-brand retail programs that can hang small brands out to dry
• Restructuring go-to-market strategy around food service in Texas and California, and the Cosmic Coffee case study
• Victor's mission to provide a healthier alternative to sugar-laden big beverage offerings 
• Slack Q&A: how to structure an elevator pitch and initial outreach email
  
  

Episode Links:

• Victor Guardiola - Founder & CEO, Bawi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorhguardiola/
• Email: [e-mail]
• Instagram: @vichg
• Website: drinkbawi.com
  
  

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Show Links:

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• Questions or comments about the episode? Email [e-mail]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics
  
  

Creators and Guests

Host

Hannah Dittman

Operations and Finance Correspondent at Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Victor Guardiola
80% Of startup funding is friends and family funding. And if you don't have that rich uncle, you are pretty much dead on arrival, so to speak. And you need to build that initial network and find that initial investor base in order to get your product off the ground. And I've seen so many startups die of a slow death, you know, not being able to successfully raise the initial capital in order to show the traction in order to get the funding to continue going down their business journey.

00:46
Hannah Dittman
Hey everybody. I'm Hannah Dittman, operations and Finance host of the Startup CPG podcast and today I am joined by Victor Guardiola, founder and CEO of Bawi for another Founder Fundraising Journey episode. Bawi is bringing authentic agua fresca into the modern beverage aisle with a sparkling, healthier twist, celebrating the bold flavors of Mexican culture while helping build a future where consumers can find products that feel both authentic and health conscious. But building a better for you beverage is only part of Victor's mission. He's equally passionate about increasing representation in the consumer industry, creating opportunities for Latino and minority founders, and celebrating culturally rooted brands.

01:29
Hannah Dittman
In this Founder Fundraising Journey episode, we dive into Victor's entrepreneurial journey, from selling at farmers markets and working late night shifts in commercial kitchens to raising multiple rounds of funding, growing a team, and building one of the category's most exciting emerging brands. We explore what it really took to earn the trust of Bawi's earliest believers and investors, how he crafted a compelling pitch, and the persistence behind the countless conversation and emails that ultimately turned into checks. Victor also shares the pivotal role mentorship, networking and relationship building played in shaping both the company and his fundraising journey, along with the practical advice for founders looking to raise capital themselves. Throughout the conversation, his conviction, resilience and passion for creating lasting change shines through, not only in what he's building with Bawi, but in how he's helping open doors for the next generation of minority founders.

02:22
Hannah Dittman
If you're fundraising, building a mission driven brand, or simply love hearing the real stories behind breakout consumer companies, this episode is packed with practical insights and plenty of inspiration from a tenacious founder with a lot of wisdom, mentorship and competence. Go grab yourself a Bawi. I am a huge fan. Crack it open and enjoy a great episode with a great beverage. Enjoy. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG Podcast. This is Hannah and today we're back for an awesome Founder Fundraising Journey episode with Victor Guardiola of Bawi. Victor, welcome to the show.

03:03
Victor Guardiola
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

03:06
Hannah Dittman
We're super excited that you're here today. And can't wait to learn more about what you've got going on with Bawi. I am a consumer and I do love your brand and your products. So having my. What do they call it, Starstruck moment, getting. Getting to talk to the founder today, I'd love to dive in first. With a brief background in your career journey and path that led you to Bawi today.

03:27
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, absolutely. So I got started, I guess within business. Back in 2016, I moved to Austin after graduating high school in Corpus Christi, Texas. And really my first business was at valet trash door to dumpster business model blew up in flames within a year. After that I ended up transferring into UT Austin from a community college. I always loved telling people, go to community college first if you can save some money, transfer in later. And at UT Austin I majored in public relations, minor in business and I was just part of the startup scene. However, I could get involved from the Longhorn Startup Seminar at UT Austin to eventually working for a couple startups throughout college and shortly after. But really, Bawi's inception was at a food and beverage entrepreneurship practicum at the McCombs School of Business.

04:23
Victor Guardiola
And that's where everything started for me, which I'm sure I'll dive into a second. And outside of that, I really spent most internships working on the M and A side. I ended up networking with my first corporate lawyer and I worked with him in M and A for a couple summers. And after college this was like right around Covid. Unfortunately, I ended up applying everywhere under the sun, getting rejected everywhere under the sun. But I did get an amazing opportunity to work for a local startup called Golden Ratio. And specifically there I worked in growth and marketing. So I was the founder's right hand man when it came to fundraising. His name is Clark Allen and he taught me the entire fundraising process. So it took me about a year of working with him until I figured out how to do it myself.

05:12
Victor Guardiola
And that was whenever I landed my first investor that allowed me to pursue Bawi full time.

05:17
Hannah Dittman
That's so exciting. And you've clearly had such an entrepreneurial spirit or calling from the get go. It seems like kind of refound yourself multiple times in that lane before your own journey. Is there anything in particular about entrepreneurship or the founder journey that really spoke to you and got you excited to pursue this path? Or was it just kind of happenstance that unfolded that way?

05:42
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, I mean, I had always known that I wanted to do something myself. Like I had worked so many different jobs in high school, I actually worked a full time job At a bank in the compliance department when I was 14, I had my own cubicle, everything. And that sort of cemented like, oh my God, I never want to do this like for the rest of my life. And throughout that time, like I made most of my money in high school and junior high and even before then flipping things on Craigslist, like that was my mo and my dad would be like, how the hell do you have two grand right now? And I'm like, I just flipped three Xboxes, bro. I don't know what to tell you. So I always knew I wanted to do something myself.

06:26
Victor Guardiola
But I think in relation to pursuing the right thing, like the right product, I was just waiting for the right thing to come around. And it wasn't until the food and beverage entrepreneurship program that I realized that a better for you Hispanic beverage with mass market appeal really had legs to stand on. So just waiting for like the right cart and the right horse to know latch onto to really pursue something meaningful. Right? Because I think a lot of people are a bit trigger happy whenever they decide I want to be an entrepreneur, but never really pursue the right opportunity, so to speak.

07:03
Hannah Dittman
Well, your resilience, your radical self reliance and your hustle and grit are clearly evident. I'm super excited to dive into a little bit more about Bawi. Obviously you've opened the door for the conversation a little bit here already, but would love to understand your company's mission, positioning, what you're all about and how it came to be.

07:22
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, no, without a doubt. Well, diving into it. The food and Beverage entrepreneurship program was a summer program at UC Austin. I took summer classes pretty much every summer during my time there. And this program like packed such a big punch. Like the faculty to student ratio is massive. It was like a professor, two TAs and only eight students. And the whole thesis of the class was coming in with a food and beverage concept and presenting to operators on a weekly basis. So every Friday we would present summary of our findings in these different categories, whether it's like primary market research, secondary market research, operations formulation. So on a regular basis I would be presenting to the founder of Vital Farms, the founder of C4 Pre Workout.

08:12
Victor Guardiola
And I realized super quickly, especially considering I was always super hungry to network too, that this class really packed a punch and I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn't try really hard and if I didn't network with these people. And I think I was the only one in the class that ended up trying to launch a product afterward. But really having Access to an amazing professor. Her name is Marissa Epstein. So she worked under the Obama administration and she was Michelle Obama's right hand and a lot of the school lunch reform. So we got to chat a lot about food policy. But what was really glaring to me digging into the research around sugar sweetened beverages within the Hispanic community was these SSBs or sugar sweetened beverages, they were like the boogeyman.

08:59
Victor Guardiola
They were responsible for more metabolic disease and all cause mortality than the next dozen food and beverages combined. It was a very startling for me to see that, you know, in order for me to change the industry and change the world in like a more concrete way, this was my path. And to add a little more insight to that, my dad's a statistician, so whenever I was digging through all of these research reports and analyzing everything, I was chatting with my dad who's done a lot of medical statistics himself and seeing like what is the boogeyman and what does that look like from a data perspective. And secondary to that, it was sort of startling to me to not see cultural representation within like broader cpg. And even today you see very few cultural innovations within cpg. And I'll dive into this shortly.

09:54
Victor Guardiola
But really the reason why we haven't seen like a mass market better for you Hispanic beverage or why you're just seeing siete foods pop off is because of socioeconomic reasons. Like black and Latino households have five to eight times less the household wealth and in a sector that requires so much startup capital and creating a physical good, you just see a lot less participation. Right. So I knew that the rub for me was like creating something that was mass market where a consumer doesn't have to know what an agua fresca is that innovated on health. And that was sort of the secret sauce for me to figure out. Oh man, I think this is worth pursuing.

10:32
Hannah Dittman
That's so awesome. There's so many layers of passion and mission and drive behind what you're doing and it comes through so clearly and huge. Huge believer in a lot of the things that you're saying and agree people don't realize, I think even sometimes investors don't realize how capital intensive it is and how hard it is to go from 0 to 1 in a CPG startup. Unless you're like some well known super connected founder or have like some celebrity thing going on or have something like crazy novel, it's really hard to find capital and get just to the place you would need to get to even have the opportunity to show traction to then be able to go fundraise. I always say it's like a very chicken and an egg problem.

11:22
Hannah Dittman
And you know, I've even had conversations with investors before where a lot of people will say things like, oh, well, yeah, most people just kind of like start out with a rich uncle or something like that. And sadly, that is so true. And not a lot of people from. Yeah, like you're saying different socioeconomic backgrounds can just like bank on the fact that they've got like some rich uncle benefactor or someone in their life that they can tap like that. And especially when you're thinking through like the first fundraises that you'll hear from people are normally friends and family rounds. And what happens if your friends and family aren't in a position to be able to support you in a capital perspective that way? What happens to those founders? So definitely echoing a lot of the things that you're touching on.

12:08
Hannah Dittman
I love your product. As I mentioned earlier, I think there's like so much thought that goes into CPG products that people maybe don't realize. Like, I'm sure even some of the things that you think about are like, how tight your bubble structure is and different things like that are part of your product. What was the journey of Bawi from an operations and a funding standpoint? Not just the passion and mission and inception of the IDEa, but once you really got to that point where you said, okay, this is the white space, this is something I'm really passionate about pursuing, how did the rest of the story come together in the product? Really?

12:43
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, Funding is definitely going to be the only thing that truly moves the needle in operationalizing any CPG company. So prior to making the canned version of the product, I needed to show early investors some form of traction that a better for you Hispanic beverage could sell. So I was in farmer's markets for six months here in the Austin area until Covid reared its head and on site consumption was no longer allowed. But it helped show potential investors both like traction for the actual concept, but also founder conviction. Because when you're 21 years old saying like, bro, please give me money, you need to show them just like a little bit more, right? So I had the proof of concept from the farmer's market.

13:29
Victor Guardiola
I was working for a food and beverage startup and I ended up getting connected to the former head of product development at Starbucks through my startup world. And her name is Jill Talcott from, I believe it's called Up Cup Creations. If you guys want to reach out to her, she's Amazing. She ran R and D for Starbucks for two decades and she really helped set the foundation for how to commercialize this like, fruit juice forward beverage. So specifically after I was able to raise some of the initial funding, which I'll chat about that process too, of course, I had to qualify whatever manufacturer would give me line time in the beginning for beverage companies, that is usually breweries.

14:12
Victor Guardiola
So breweries, they have additional line time, extra capacity, but whenever you're working with a lot of these brewers, your QC is not going to be amazing. In some of my initial production runs, they were immediately contaminated. I was shipping samples out to incredibly affluent investors and getting pictures of their pantries of exploded cans being like, hey, I'm actually out on this one with me being like, totally understand. Please give us just like one other production run to show you that we can successfully make this product. But on the fundraising piece, I was cold emailing everyone under the sun. And to your point earlier, 80% of startup funding is friends and family funding. And if you don't have that rich uncle, you are pretty much dead on arrival, so to speak.

15:06
Victor Guardiola
And you need to build that initial network and find that initial investor base in order to get your product off the ground. And I've seen so many startups die of a slow death, you know, not being able to successfully raise the initial capital in order to show the traction in order to get the funding to continue going down their business journey. So the first investor who ended up joining the cap table was Patrick Terry from Peterry's Burger Stand. If you're familiar with Austin in Central Texas, that's like our in and out. He is the burger man. He went to UT Austin and he gave me the time of day. And I had emailed him 13 or 14 times before. He eventually was down for a call. After the call, I met up with him in person.

15:56
Victor Guardiola
And a couple in person meetings later, he finally wanted to invest in Bawi and support us. But that is the process for initial fundraising. And I think a lot of people are understandably shy from looking at this as like a sales process, but that's what it is. These people are hopefully added to a spreadsheet somewhere. You understand how you're reaching out to them. And I think a really tangible piece of advice that I got from Clark Nowlin at Golden Ratio was every follow up you have has to add some sort of value. You are never just circling back with anyone about anything. It could be, here's a new version of our package design, here's new piece of merch. What do you think of this, here's a new flavor we're introducing, but you're constantly doing that.

16:47
Victor Guardiola
And the golden follow up is here's this notable investor you might be familiar with. And that's usually the tipping bucket moment with the fundraise where you show that X executive at Siete Foods ended up investing. And then everyone's like, oh shit, well they're in so I might play ball. And that's what happened. Patrick Terry invested. Then the founder of Torchy's Tacos invested like right after. And I was like, oh my God, I've been doing this for like a year plus, cold emailing everyone, chatting with everyone under the sun. And it took that tipping bucket moment in order to make something happen. So the other thing I'll say about this is like your hit rate is understandably going to be very low. Like, let's say you're converting on 1 to 5% of people. You're reaching out to hundreds, if not a thousand plus people.

17:42
Victor Guardiola
And these are not canned email templates you're using. You're tailoring everything. I really admire how you've been able to build P. Terry's burger stand at 2xyz. I'm trying to start a better for you Hispanic beverage would love 10 to 15 minutes of your time. So I have a small ask. I'm positioning myself as a hungry young founder with a differentiated concept and I'm adding value to every single follow up. And I am not giving up on the fifth follow up or sixth follow up. I'm like on top of it as much as I can until they tell me to like go away. Right? But that's how it is.

18:20
Victor Guardiola
And the other thing I wanted to mention too is like in that practicum, I remember a couple other brands starting outside of the practicum and I ended up networking with one of them who was starting a completely different company. And I remember this was years before I received my first funding. I reached out to him like a month after meeting and was like, hey man, how's your fundraising going? And he's like, I just closed $3 million. I'm like, how? He said, my dad invested, his friends invested. I did not have that luxury. And so many minority founders and female founders don't have that luxury. You're going against a lot of very real stigma within the industry. And you can see this empirically by looking at any funding reports from like nationalized data syndicates.

19:07
Victor Guardiola
It's very obvious that female founders and minority female founders especially have a really hard time raising that initial capital.

19:16
Hannah Dittman
So well said on so many points. This is like such a masterclass in mentorship. And I love the way that you're articulating and breaking so many of these things down that other founders are facing and going through with real practical advice and like very tangible. This is exactly what I did and how I got it done. And you're so right. And the interesting thing, especially with the funding gap is so much of the shopping is driven by those demographics and it's like the expertise in CPG really is in those demographics. So you would hope that would start to count for more and more spotlight would be shown there.

19:56
Hannah Dittman
But I think what it really comes down to is kind of the problem that we're talking about now, which is this like traction gap and being able to bridge to the bucket tipping point as you're calling it, needing some semblance of a seed to start with to be able to get to a point where a mainstream investor can feel confident that the investment is de risked. You said you started out in farmer's markets pre funding and you were scrapping it together. What did the like reality of that look like for you? Were you hand making your products? Like how did you go about that early portion of the journey and what traction and point did you need to get to be able to convert that first investor into your business?

20:41
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, I mean the farmers market days were an absolute grind. I believe I was still in school at the time. This was prior to working at golden ratio with Clark. And after class on Friday, I would roll into a commercial kitchen on off hours to get better hourly pricing. And I would be there in a commercial kitchen on the side of I35 until three in the morning, roll into the farmer's markets at 7am and start serving it on tap. But specifically, like I was like one of those old math problems where the victor buys 40 pineapples, needs to juice, you know, 40 pineapples to make X cups of agua fresca. And I had a business partner at the time who's no longer with the company and him and I were really figuring out how to produce this on tap within the farmer's markets.

21:34
Victor Guardiola
And that required access to brewing equipment, learning how to carbonate the beverage overnight. It was intense. And a lot of the, I guess success at the farmer's market was just selling out a day. Which you know, was like if we sold out the day we'd make six or seven hundred dollars, you know, on a great day and we'd Be there every weekend trying to self fund the business. But truthfully, like, that's a drop in the bucket, especially when you're qualifying like legitimate comans. You're not going to afford their line time, you're not going to afford your cans or any of the raw materials at that scale.

22:12
Victor Guardiola
And it's not until were able to close an initial equity round among three investors, two of them being Pete Terry and then Mike Ripka from Torchy's Tacos and one of Patrick Terry's business partners, they came in and provided the initial capital. And I can't say specifically what it was, but it was a bit over six figures and that was the capital we needed to actually take a stab at this and get the ball rolling. Right. So after that happened, were successfully able to launch into the market with the canned version of the thing we've been selling on tap in April of 2022. So it took years.

22:49
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, that's so much admiration for your journey and everything you went through and how much you had to believe in your vision and your dream to be willing to go through that. I mean, talk about hustle. To being in school full time and then having essentially a night job where you're just grinding it out and just obviously everyone listening who's done Farmer's Markets, like the one to one sales is energizing in some ways, but also very hard to scale, very draining. You've got a lot going on and then you're trying to fundraise and get this all together in the background and really professionalize the business. So huge congrats on all the success and like I said, a ton of admiration for where you've been and where you've gotten today.

23:33
Hannah Dittman
Once you got that initial investment in and now you're like, all right, we're going to be the real deal now we're really going to start to become an actual brand. What was the journey like from then on and what were the kind of milestones that you were focused on and working towards throughout your time after that?

23:50
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, in the early stages it was really starting to build doors in the places that would take us. And traditionally speaking, I think for a lot of early consumer brands, that's independent retailers, co ops, things of that nature. And then a lot of natural channel buyers are more interested in these like younger companies and they have, generally speaking, like more receptive innovation programs. So you're just stacking doors as soon as you can, taking your sales data from, hey, we've done really well at this dozen doors filled with independence or so would you be interested in giving us a shot? So we took that data to Central Market, that's H E B's version of Whole Foods here in Texas. Very natural forward nine door chain here in Texas. And that was sort of our anchor for the first year.

24:45
Victor Guardiola
So I think a lot of the early brand building up until you scale even past like a million dollars can be taken within like these independents and within the natural channel. I think the thing to watch out for a lot of young brands are some of these like emerging brand programs. A lot of them in my perspective use early stage brands to show their shopper base that they have innovative young brands on the cutting edge. But they really do hang you up to dry. And in saying that like I'm a bit callous, I'm a bit jaded around some of these partners we've worked with in the past that, you know, have these like national rollouts for small brands with crazy success hurdles that very few of these brands are able to actually materialize.

25:39
Victor Guardiola
And it sucks for early stage brands to get the green light for some of these programs and immediately get pulled and their revenue concentration is going to be so heavily indexed and a lot of these opportunities, they end up being put in a very precarious position for their investors and yeah, their business alike. So I would say start locally and build density within your local markets before you even consider expanding into these national programs. And although they would add like a good amount of top line, sometimes you're making a deal with the devil, so to speak. So you just gotta be really careful.

26:20
Hannah Dittman
Really well said. And I think that's a common like tension point in fundraising is this pressure and feeling of the need to grow to get investment or grow once you have investors to meet their expectations. But there's so many different factors that go into being able to produce sustainable growth. And like you're saying the brick by brick mentality of like really having rock solid demand that you can really stand on is oftentimes so much better than like the quick flywheel that you might get. It's like a dog running away and you're like chasing the tail to try to hold onto it.

27:01
Hannah Dittman
I think also when you're talking about retail expansion, something that I find a lot of founders reflect on as a, a learning point for them or sometimes even the implosion of their business is not realizing how much capital support and marketing support is needed to drive success in retail rollouts, expansion or Big placements. It's often thought of like the battle is getting the po, but I think the real battle is supporting that PO and protecting those velocities once you've gotten into position to get in. In the same way that it's like, it feels like the battle, it's getting the fundraise done, but the real battle is driving the business success after the fundraise gets done. And that's a longer, harder journey than that first mountain. There's like a way bigger mountain behind it that needs to get climbed.

27:54
Victor Guardiola
For sure. They're gilded opportunities most of the time. And it takes so much more cash to support these, like, larger retailer rollouts than you could imagine. So, I mean, it's a cool feather in your cap if you can afford, you know, to successfully drive trial in these new retailers. But, you know, what I would just say to all of these young founders that are thinking about pursuing these opportunities is how are you going to drive sales in these 500 national doors afterward? When you have like a couple team members, most of them are like 1099. It just becomes really daunting to do that.

28:31
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. I love the reality that you're putting it into. It's so true. There's like the human capital, financial capital component. There's timeline pressure. Like, there's so many things that go on. So you've gotten into retail and you're starting to get some traction and you're making it happen. What are the milestones that you are looking towards now that you're working towards or the big milestones? You completed another raise after your first initial raise. Correct. What were the milestones that you were hitting that allowed you to get the next raise completed?

29:04
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, I mean, we had really solid velocity fundamentals, and that was incredibly helpful whenever were going out for this raise. And that is in large part to shifting our strategy. A couple of years ago, we added an amazing president to the team. He's now my business partner, Dylan Houston. And that completely restructured our initial strategy of just going like an inch wide, mile deep within our largest markets being Texas and California. And with this being said, Bawi's available in 44 states. Like, we are spread out, but the concentration without a doubt is within Texas and California. And it starts with analyzing where your brand and product is succeeding and why it is. So Dylan did an initial analysis of the highest velocity Bawi accounts, and it became very apparent that food service was just a huge vessel for Bawi.

30:01
Victor Guardiola
And really, food service works for us for a few reasons. Bawi pairs really well with Food. And in addition to that, since we're a sparkling fruit juice, we make an incredible mixer and an easy mixer in so many of these accounts. And we saw a local account called Cosmic Coffee, they were doing over 200 cans of just my passion fruit a week. And were like, what's going on there? And that was sort of the initial case study of like, oh, my God, you know, they're treating it almost like Red Bull in terms of its dual use case. Like, this is great on its own, but we're mixing it into cocktails.

30:35
Victor Guardiola
And we took that roadmap and realized this is not only a great from business fundamentals perspective in working with food service distributors that pay you within 30 days, as opposed to broadliners who take quite a bit longer and adopt a whole lot more whenever you begin working with them. But secondary to that, these food service opportunities in these accounts, they were driving local velocities within retail to such an incredible degree. And after that first year, blanketing the Austin market with bars and restaurants, we saw a 370% velocity increase within central market within a couple of these other accounts. And really, I think the experiential nature of the product as you're having it within, like a dining occasion is super important. It's also an incredible place to discover a brand.

31:30
Victor Guardiola
And usually you have a much more captive cold case and captive audience to where I would be competing with, let's say, dozen beverages, as opposed to walking into name your grocer and competing with several hundred sometimes. So really understanding what works for your product right now and capitalizing that momentum and building a strategy around it. So to your broader question as to what are the next milestones, it's saturating these two key markets, Texas and California, with food service, while layering in all of the focus on our retail accounts on top of it. So all of our retail rollouts, largely speaking, they are within Texas and California. Those are the opportunities we are, like, squarely looking for.

32:20
Victor Guardiola
And we're also over indexing on foodservice to such a degree that requires us to staff a lot of these crucial positions from a director of food service who we just hired three or four months ago, formerly came from Spindrift and was number two in food service over there, and then hiring a CCO to help with the sales support, because for a very long time, it was Dylan and I, you know, running the show, and were just maxed out, so to speak. So having that structural support within the business and having additional hands owning these key departments of the business rather than having like one person understandably managing every aspect of the business that won't scale, the business will get too large very quickly. And it's a good problem to have, of course.

33:11
Victor Guardiola
But having these leadership hires in place to help manage the rest of our sales team, implement strategy, it's been essential for us.

33:21
Hannah Dittman
So awesome and so many interesting things that you said there. I am just in awe of all that you've got going on and the success that you've driven. Huge respect to you. A lot of times, you know, when we speak with investors, we talk about how there's sometimes a little bit of a knowledge gap on what needs to happen from a scaling position or growth expectation with a company over time for an investor's investment to be successful to them. As you think about the long term future vision of Bally, what are your personal goals or hopes and dreams? What's your vision for the company?

34:02
Hannah Dittman
And now that you have investors involved in your business, what do you think the expectations of what you need to achieve are and operationally be able to execute are for those partners to be happy with your success as well?

34:15
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, I think there's like an empirical answer to this as well as like a personal founder mission answer to this. Personally speaking, I think ushering in a wave of cultural representation, authentic cultural representation, has been what I have wanted for a very long time. I think people of every background and origin should have an opportunity to bring their products to the masses. And what I've loved about building this business too is I feel like we've helped wake up the industry and buyers in seeing cultural innovation as differentiation within a category. Because initially, you know, whenever I was pitching Valley, I would chat with a lot of buyers who didn't understand what were doing and saying like, how is this innovative? How is this stand out? Why isn't it functional? Why aren't you adding 3 to 5 grams of fiber to your beverage?

35:11
Victor Guardiola
And in my head I'm like, we are differentiated within your set because you have no cultural representation within your set. There's 70 million plus Latinos within the US yet we haven't had a modern beverage to represent us. And that felt like a white space opportunity secondary to that both on my personal side is waking up these large Hispanic food and beverage companies to innovate on health. And what I've seen during my time creating Bawi is no major corporation is ever going to innovate on health unless they see a customer they can capture by doing so. You have to show them empirically that there's a customer that would demand health innovation in order for them to do anything about it. And I have chatted with a lot of these folks at this point. You know the name, your Hispanic beverage player.

36:03
Victor Guardiola
I've chatted with several of them and now they're waking up to innovate on health. But it is purely a business driven decision. They do not care about health outcomes. They have all of this data firsthand. They understand how these snacks and these beverages are impacting these communities. And unless it's adding to their top line, they do not give a shit. So waking up the industry is incredibly important. And to your question about what the investors are looking for at this point, as a board governed company with institutional investors, what they're looking for is for us to hit the plan, us to stay on projections and grow the company based on what we agree on during board meetings. And that is an aggressive ramp. So we're slated to do right around three and a half million this year. Last year we did 1.2 million.

36:59
Victor Guardiola
The year before we did 370k. The business is growing aggressively and if we keep growing at that click, we're going to have plenty of opportunities from a fundraising perspective, from a growth perspective. And really we've proven that this formula of a better for you Hispanic beverage brand, this works and it's mass market in the same way that Siete Foods is. So who knows what the future holds? Who knows what's going to happen? Who's going to buy us if we stay private forever? I'm not sure. But if we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to have some doors open for us for sure.

37:33
Hannah Dittman
Well, I just am in awe of the way that you think about things and how easily articulated so many of these things are for you, which just shows how authentic and real it is just pulsing through you already and the things that you're already thinking about all the time and how important all of this really is for you paint such a clear story and picture. It's no surprise to me why you've had the success that you have had and I'm really rooting for future continued success as I'm sure all of your investors are as well and hopefully some new customers that you've acquired. Listening in today, I'd love to pivot over to a Slack question. As you know startup CPG has the largest Slack community in the industry with now over 35,000 members.

38:18
Hannah Dittman
I'd love to pull a question directly from our channel and have you answer it. As a case study for any founders that might have a similar question, today's question is how should I structure an elevator or quick intro pitch?

38:30
Victor Guardiola
I love this question because I have a lot of strong opinions on this. I think most of your outreach is likely going to happen via email. I have been known for sending a ton of cold emails and a majority of my cap table has come from cold emails. In these initial emails, it's imperative that you are not leading with a business pitch for fundraising. Marissa at the practicum, she taught me a really important lesson in saying networking is making friends and you are never initially asking a friend for money. Hopefully not ever, right? But generally speaking, the way I would structure my initial email, my initial pitch, it's a subject line that has something about me. Mine was first generation Mexican immigrant, Utah Austin grad, beverage founder. I'm trying to find any sort of overlap I have with the person I'm speaking to.

39:34
Victor Guardiola
So if they're a food and beverage founder, of course I'm going to write that. If they're from Texas, I'm going to write that. If they're Latino, I'm going to write that. And my email is super concise. I think a lot of people will get left on red constantly by going really hard on explaining the business opportunity and initial email. Most people are just not going to read that. So my emails were literally like, hi Patrick, my name is Victor Guardiola. I'm a first generation immigrant UT Austin grad working on a better for you Hispanic beverage concept. I really admire how you've been able to do XYZ at Peterry's, scale an amazing burger chain, blah blah. I would really appreciate 10 to 15 minutes of your time to hear more about your journey scaling pteries.

40:22
Victor Guardiola
Let me know and if I have a deck that does not have an investor slide in it asking for a certain amount of money, maybe I'll include it there. But generally speaking, you are asking for advice, you're not asking for money. And your hit rate will thank you for that. Because if there is great investor and brand fit, you're going to have the conversation. And if they like you at the end of the conversation, they're going to ask you, okay Victor, how can I be helpful? And if I'm looking for fundraising, my response is do you know of anyone who might be interested investing in Bawi? And that is how I was able to land all of my initial capital effectively. I am never ever leaning into the pitch of it all.

41:10
Victor Guardiola
I have never once opened up a pitch deck in my initial conversations with these people at all, if they request materials, I'm going to have a beautiful pitch deck ready for them to send via email. But I'm not going to Shark Tank the shit like that is not the move. And whenever you're pre revenue too, and you're like an early stage brand that hasn't done much in sales quite yet, that works to your benefit entirely because fundamentally these guys are going to invest in you know, as the operator and that sparkle in your eye. So I would absolutely recommend don't structure as a pitch. And the other thing I'll say here that's somewhat related is I think a lot of founders will look for accelerators and pitch competitions as avenues to build network and a fundraiser.

42:01
Victor Guardiola
And although sometimes these programs and these CPG meetups can be like really valuable, most of your networking should be done outside of those. And I've gone to so many meetups throughout the years. But just echoing again, pretty much all of my networking has been done outside of that via email. Just getting conversations with these operators, high net worth individuals to. Yeah, that's how I'd structure it.

42:31
Hannah Dittman
Incredibly well said. So many great points and so much tangible learnings to be had there. I think the way that you think about networking, relationship building, business, how much you've soaked up from important people around you and carried forward and applied it in other ways is so clear. Also this has been such an incredible chat. You have such a knack for mentorship Victor, and really are someone who deserves a mic. I'm so glad we got to spend today chatting with you and learning a little bit more about Bawi and all of the amazing things that you've accomplished and the future looking things that you have ahead of you. We'll all be rooting for you at startup cpg. So t. hank you so much again for all the awesome learnings, wisdom and time today.

43:15
Hannah Dittman
I could have asked you a million more questions for any founders that might want to continue the conversation or investors that might want to continue the conversation and have additional follow up questions for you. What's the best way for them to get in contact? And second part of my question is do you have any openings on your team or advice for anyone that might be looking to get into your space?

43:37
Victor Guardiola
Yeah, well you can find me on LinkedIn and on Instagram on LinkedIn. It's my name, Victor Ordiola. If you look up Bawi, hopefully you'll be able to find me. My Instagram handle is Vic H G. And the second part of your question as to if we're hiring, we are always looking for people who have worked within beverage. A lot of the people who haven't been a good fit in the beginning. Maybe things change down the line and there's an opening for them later. We have hired so many people the past like six months. So I think we're currently, you know, at capacity. But if you want to reach out to me, you can reach me at [e-mail] awesome.

44:21
Hannah Dittman
Well, thanks so much again, Victor for your time today. Really, really awesome to learn from you and really appreciate it.

44:27
Victor Guardiola
Thanks so much.

44:30
Hannah Dittman
Well friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. And if you love this podcast, you'll love our Slack community even more. Here at Startup cpg, we're a community of brands and experts and you should join. Sign up@ startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community of over 35,000 All Star CPG members, hear about amazing events near you and all our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I'll catch you on the next episode and I'll see you on the Slack.