For the 166th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with FigBrew with Andy Whitehead and Marianne Whitehead. They love coffee, but coffee didn't love them. So they found a way to combat the issues and continue drinking their favorite morning cup. Add before brewing to moderate acid and caffeine in your favorite coffee. Or use by itself as a coffee alternative.
"Together Talks" feature # 166: FigBrew presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Can you reflect on a goal you set, achieved, and how it made you feel? Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
What aspect of running a company do you appreciate the most? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental? What is your why?
Story of how it was created?
A: It was created because I am a coffee lover. I really like coffee. I roast my own, I grind my own beans, I play with coffee beans from all over the world. But it's a one-way street, coffee doesn't love me back. Like a large subset of coffee drinkers, I have aged out of coffee. I'm more susceptible to the acid, the caffeine, the blood pressure spike associated with coffee consumption.
M: I'm not a big coffee fan. The bitterness of coffee just steered me away from coffee shops. When somebody says meet me at a coffee shop, I struggle because the hot chocolate is too sweet, the coffee's too bitter, and the teas just don't float my boat. But when you mix in fig with coffee, it is so smooth. Then I enjoy a cup of coffee. That's why we decided, this needs to be a thing. There are multitudes of coffee alternatives out there. Most of them are herbals or instants which don’t appeal to hard-core coffee drinkers. But our product is very unique in that, like coffee, it is a single ingredient. It brews like coffee, to the point of espresso, Turkish coffee, pour over, or however you brew your favorite brew, it has the same amount of dissolved solids as coffee. I think that's critical to give you that true coffee experience.
What separates you from your competition?
The most common question we get asked of our two products is what are the ingredients? When customers taste it, it shows on their face. They can't believe it is a one ingredient product. Nothing else is in the package except figs. That's very, very rare. In the grocery aisle, you need a PhD or dictionary just to read nutritional labels.
We love reviews. We have hundreds of five star reviews in the few years we've been doing this. Our favorite review is a two-star review that we got just a few weeks ago. We’re not sure what this customer expected but his review said, "It's okay. I can't taste the fig at all. It just tastes like coffee." That is our goal exactly. We want something that you can add to coffee before brewing to improve it, make it a better for you cup of coffee, but absolutely does not change the flavor. Despite what his expectations may have been, our expectations were met. That's why we really appreciate that review.
The single ingredient is a very big thing. There are coffee alternatives with anywhere from 4 to 12 different ingredients. Our motto is, we want to keep it simple. If you have issues with health, you’re an autoimmune sufferer, cancer survivor, whatever the issues are, now you have to look at multiple different ingredients and not only the ingredients, but their interactions. You have to ask if it is suitable for your lifestyle? That's why we feel very proud that our product uses a single ingredient that has been around for thousands of years, is grown sustainably, and provides exactly what we want and need to extend our coffee journey.
What have been the biggest challenges?
Educating the entire world about what fig coffee is and the benefits. Oddly enough, roasted fig as a beverage has been around hundreds of years. In 1873, there were 20 factories in Europe that made roasted figs. Since that time, it's been pretty much forgotten about. Figs are a remarkable fruit themselves and it's a remarkable product given its similarity to coffee.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
In the short term, we have repositioned the product based on how most of our customers drink it. Besides being a coffee alternative, there's a much larger subset of coffee drinkers who want that coffee experience, but just need to cut down on the amount. The scenario goes, if a cup is good, then a pot is better. However that's no longer moderation. When people run into health issues associated with coffee consumption, they have a decision to make. How can they cut back on coffee but still participate in the coffee culture.
Now, we're starting to sell it as a coffee supplement, something that replaces a portion of your ground coffee before brewing. This allows you to moderate the health issues, makes it more sustainable and more affordable without changing the flavor of coffee. There's really not much like that on the market today. There's plenty of flavorings that you add to the liquid after brewing but nothing added to ground coffee before brewing. That's very unique.
What aspect of running a company do you appreciate the most?
A: My background is technology. I'm classically trained as a scientist and previously built and sold a technology company. CPG is a very, very different business. We've had to relearn a lot of go-to-market strategy. The sales strategy comes with very different sales channels, very different direct-to-consumer marketing strategies. Our goal long-term is to recreate the coffee culture in its entirety. It requires a very unique product, something that is compatible not only with Espresso, used frequently in coffee shops, but also cold brew, and nitro cold brew. Fig is very unusual in that regard and it does all those things.
We've yet to find anything that coffee can do that fig can't do in a healthier, more sustainable fashion. We want this product to be everywhere you find coffee as something you can displace coffee with or add to your favorite coffee. Adding it in any ratio to help you micromanage your caffeine addiction.
M: The CPG environment is an incredible community of founders. We are collaborating a lot with other founders and the sense of community among founders allows everyone to come together and help each other and I think that's the thing I appreciate most. We all make mistakes, we all learn and some of us are further along than others and, if you can turn around and share knowledge and even just encouragement, I think that's the big thing I like about CPG. There's mentors out there and there's friends, so it's just nice
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
One immediately springs to mind as a classical marketing mistake. Our company is about four years old now, and the first roughly three years of our existence, we marketed the product almost exclusively as a coffee alternative. We finally came to the realization that our customers are mixing it with their favorite coffee to get a better experience, to moderate the acid, blood pressure spike, make it more sustainable, and frankly, give it a better flavor. That's actually how I've been using it for coming on five years now. It took us a very long time to realize our customers are doing this too. We started polling our customers as we attended coffee fest throughout the United States. We had a real opportunity to get belly to belly feedback. It turns out, that's what customers are asking for.
At the beginning of 2024, we repositioned the product as something you add to your favorite coffee before brewing. As I've said, that's not something you find on the market today. It created a lot of confusion and as a result, our sales dropped. We went from an alternative to a supplement for lack of anything else to call it. But this is a coffee supplement - not a dietary supplement. We had to educate people on what we mean by coffee supplement? What does it mean to add before brewing, to give you better for you cup of coffee? That was a lesson learned. Ultimately it was the right decision, but it did cause a setback. We were somewhat astonished about the amount of education that we had to redo just to introduce the exact same product, just a different product positioning.
What is your why?
A: It's the coffee culture. I am more addicted to the coffee culture than I am to the caffeine. I can kind of go on and off of caffeine. But every morning, I sit on my porch with that hot, earthy, dark liquid, and I plan my day. I come awake and just enjoy the day before the craziness starts. That's what a large part of the current coffee coffee drinkers do. Eventually they're going to develop sensitivities to the acid or caffeine in coffee. It's a known effect, it's been studied. We want to make that coffee culture more robust, more inclusive, because the coffee culture itself, by the coffee industry's own estimate, is going to cease to exist by 2050 due to climate change, disease, and deforestation. Every coffee tree in the world grows in a narrow band around the equator and that’s where the rainforest grows to competes for vital resources. It's a huge amount of carbon and water consumption, just to make coffee.
However, figs are grown every continent in the world except the Antarctica. It takes one-eighth of the water and one-thirteenth the carbon to make a cup of fig coffee versus traditional coffee. We sell in k-cups and bags and sachets and every way coffee is sold except ready to drink. We've tested RTD but we haven't brought that to market yet. We sell it exactly like coffee and intend to keep it as much in the wheelhouse of coffee drinkers because frankly that's what keeps us motivated.
M: My why would be we make a really good product. No fillers, no artificial ingredients. When we do coffee festivals, being a coffee alternative, we’ve found that regular people that drink coffee love our product. They come to taste all the coffees and they come back to our table and say ours was the best and most unique thing at the show. They've sampled all the coffee, they're bouncing up and down, and ours is better than anybody else.
That's huge, to be an outsider and for people that love, love coffee to come around and say that, it’s amazing and it's humbling because when we started, we had a great idea. But it's nerve-wracking to go toe-to-toe with coffee. We won Best of Show two years in a row with People's Choice Award at the largest coffee festival. We were really thrilled about that. But it's all about our customer support
Piece of Advice
A: I love solutions hiding in plain sight and have built my career around that. I would encourage anyone, if you have an idea that you think is good, ask does this solve a problem first and foremost? Is it something that has perhaps been overlooked? That's where you can make your most impact. Don't be afraid to jump out there. Take the plunge, build a good product, stand behind it, support your customers, and always treat them well. If you can do this, you will have a much higher chance of success.
M: Just being willing to help. Other founders have opened so many doors. Just don't be resistant to just help. Help where you can and pay it forward.
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In Closing
KLS wants to thank FigBrew with Andy Whitehead and Marianne Whitehead, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!