Founders & Friends

 You just wanna, you just refuse to use that microphone I bought you, huh? Yeah, I will. I gotta set it up. Yes. I sent to you in February. I'm using it right now. You see this? This is the mic. This is a nice microphone. It's very useful. It has good sound quality. Well, you don't hear me with this. We hear you.

But I, I think I can speak for the listener that it, it could be better. It could be better. I will. I'll, I'll set it up. It's not even a, you just plug the USB actually into the I did set it up. I did set it up. Are you on a desktop? Yeah, on the next one. I'll do it. No worries. It's just U ussb. It's like plugging in an iPhone charger.

You just plug in this U ussb. Yeah, but you know me. It's gonna take some time, but We'll, we'll, we'll do that for the next time. Remind me in advance, speaking of technology, how happy are you that we moved away from Gmail? Oh man. That was the most garbage system we've ever used. I I, I couldn't deal with it.

I know. I, from day one, I'm like, we gotta, we gotta get out of this. We gotta have GoDaddy. We gotta have GoDaddy. Yeah. We finally made the switch over to Microsoft Outlook. I like it better too. It's, it's definitely better than Gmail. I, I appreciate that you actually, uh, made it happen. Yeah. Two hours on the phone with GoDaddy customer support on a Friday afternoon, the things I do for this company.

Indeed. Likewise,

this company, we're finally about to be a company. With our first POS baby. Oh yeah. So we got POS coming in. We'll talk about that. We have our next round of packaging updates coming out. So our next production will have a, A refreshed package design. Talk about that. We have a new innovation coming out for toddlers, tally toddler.

We'll talk about that. Then obviously our pos. And the revenue associated with that is a good topic for the folks to hear about. And then we have some other things to cover because we've been slacking on the podcast front, my friend. We actually, yeah, let's do it. We tried to record one like a month ago and we were like five minutes in and we're like, yeah, no, this is not gonna work.

This is terrible. I remember on March 31st, right, we were too stressed out. We were too in the weeds. We couldn't, we couldn't extract ourselves from the minutiae of, of tally at that day. Yeah. But we're feeling good today, right? You got some good sleep last night. You're feeling refreshed. I got a good five hours last night, so do I feel good?

Sure. I mean, I'm pumped to do this podcast today. Well, your sleep was from Win to Win, like one to five. Actually no. 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM So I got a good amount of sleep. Oh, okay. You, you started working today at like seven. So you just, what'd you do from four to seven? Am just, uh, on, on, on, uh, just tossing and turning.

Woke up at like, got out of bed at like six, finally and started, uh, you know, the day routine. I cannot relate to that. Like between four and 6:00 AM If I wake up, I'm back asleep in like a second. It's like my deep, that's like where my ocean of sleep is the deepest I'm in like the Marianna trench between like three and 6:00 AM cannot be bothered.

Do you go to, do you, do you wake up at all in the middle of the night? Yeah, but I'm psyched to get back to sleep. Like, I, so I, I feel blessed. I cannot relate to the feeling of people who wake up in the middle of the night and are like, I wanna think about work right now. I'm like, I, I don't wanna think about work.

I, I, I know I'm going to have to think about work at 7:00 AM So like, why would I think about it in the middle of the night? I'm like, this is like sleep time. So the problem is the second I, I wake up. Uh, like in the middle of the night, I just, all of a sudden my mind goes to like, you know, like work or whatever, and it keeps me awake.

I'm awake. That's the problem. Then I can't, then my head's rushing with like, everything. Then I can't go back. So I need like a horse tranquilizer to knock me out for a good eight hours. I think you need to like sleeping more, like do you like sleeping? Like do you, are you like excited about going to sleep?

Oh, I love it. This is okay. So it's just hard when you wake up at 4:00 AM you gotta be like, man, the best thing right now, I have nothing to do. It's the middle of the night I get to just go back to sleep. Well, the problem is this, I, I drink a ton of water throughout the day, so I got to, you know, take a visit to the restroom.

Oh yeah. You are a, uh, a Gen. A Gen Xer. Well, I'm glad you got six last night. I'll send you the link for that medication that does help me. So first things first, the packaging update. So currently on our packaging we have zero gram sugar and then the big nine allergen free call out is right next to it.

We're gonna move that, we're gonna move the big nine allergen free call out to the side and put eight grams protein on the front. So hopefully our investors and loyal followers will appreciate that. That will probably be better for the mass market. Cause it's just a one two punch of, oh, okay. This is a plant-based milk for kids that has eight grams protein, zero gram sugar.

I'm interested you agree with that? Okay. Absolutely. And then we didn't make any other changes to the formula whatsoever. So there's no U p C change, there's no formula change. Uh, well actually I shouldn't say that. The original, we didn't make changes, but do you wanna, um, kinda give a high level of what we did of our process for chocolate?

Yes. Yes. So we, we worked with a big, big, big flavoring house that did a C L T report for us. And what's a clt? What does it stand for? Consumer-led testing. Right. And, you know, they, they got feedback from, uh, dozen, few dozen people and put together results of, of, uh, of, of what our product is versus the competitor.

And we got, got good, great feedback based on that. We just adjusted the chocolate, bumped up the vilo a little bit, round out the, uh, the cacao flavor and make it a little more smooth. So that's the only change. Very, very minor. Was it double fold vanilla extract that we use. Kind of like the premium vanilla, that's what you chose, right?

We use, we use a premium vanilla, right? Yeah. Adding a little bit more of that vanilla into the chocolate rounds out the, the slight bitterness of the chocolate. Because with chocolate, you, you could have milk. Like, just think about it this way. You could have milk chocolate, which is 70%. Cocoa, right? Or you can have dark chocolate, which is much better for you and is like 99% chocolate, and you know how that tastes bitter.

That's, that's what we have to contend with because we use pure cacao. So like ours is, imagine having a chocolate bar that's 100% cacao. It would be extremely bitter, right? So even the most pure chocolate bars are still like 95%. Um, so our kakao is amazing. It's pure, it gives you the best flavor of, of chocolate, but the vanilla really just rounds the edges on that box.

Nicely. So we're excited for everyone to taste the new chocolate, uh, formula when we produce it this summer in terms of, uh, Other updates. Uh, we, we, we brought two people in as advisors. They're one's a former colleague and a great friend of mine, Andrew Bott. He'll be in our supply chain advisor to the board, which is great cuz he's been in, he has an MBA from NYU Stern, which is amazing school.

Uh, and then he also has worked as a VP supply chain at. Companies that are in our space that have scaled. So he's a perfect person to advise us and, and, and keep an eye on our supply chain. And then my, uh, lifelong friend Andrew Ra, uh, is sort of our, our biggest cheerleader for Tally. Honestly. He's, he's, him and his family had really jumped behind the tally brand.

On a personal level, and he has a really good feel for, um, what we're trying to accomplish with the brand. And so he's our advisor to the board as the voice of the consumer because I can run things by him. He has great ideas for merch, he has great ideas for growing the brand, and he's willing to roll his sleeves up and, and get dirty with the brand, which is what we need right now.

We need just people that can deliver. And execute and, uh, add value to the company. So we're excited to add those two folks. And one of the things I'm working on with Andrew, um, RA, the, uh, the consumer advisor is, uh, a merch section. So here's my idea, John. See if you, let's see if you like it. You know how like when you order swag or you can like, you get the renderings of what you're gonna buy, like they put the tally logo on a hat and then they show it to you before you buy it, right?

Right. Okay. So here's what Andrea are gonna do. We're gonna create a merch section on the website. And we'll have all those renderings there. So we'll have all the cute onesies for kids, one T, two T, three T sizes. We'll have hats. We'll have kids hats. We'll have kids T-shirts, adult t-shirts. And what we'll do is we'll allow people to make a free reservation for the item, okay?

Mm-hmm. And then once we get. The minimum order quantity for that item in f In free reservations, Shopify will let you trigger out an email to everybody who's reserved it and say, Hey, we, we, we've reached the minimum. You know, please deposit. The money to buy it. And then we'll go ahead and then buy 50 of those t-shirts.

So it's like this exclusive. Love it. Love it. I'm glad you like it. And then in terms of, uh, innovation for the company, there's an update to share with that too. So I wanted to throw the ball over to your court to talk about. I. What we've been working on crazy, hard, fast, and quick as we do here at Tally over the past month of April, we are, we are excited to announce that, God willing, in June, early June, we're gonna be launching a, a tally, uh, toddler formula, uh, which is gonna be for, uh, toddlers one year and, and, and over.

That's gonna be in a powder form, uh, plant-based a hundred percent, nine, not allergen free, free of the nine major allergens. Uh, it's gonna have a beautiful base as the protein that's gonna be equivalent to one cup milk, uh, which nobody has out there, uh, for tad for, for toddler formulas and plant-based, uh, options.

It's going to, uh, have all of the, the bells and whistles mothers are gonna want for their child, omega three. It's gonna have choline complete, uh, 23 plus vitamin mineral, uh, package, and many, many more to discuss. Uh, just a little, little bit of information, uh, for, for for for the viewers. Yeah. And the organic oat milk is the main draw there, right?

That's right, that's right. This is gonna be unique in the sense that mothers are, are so familiar with oat milk. Mothers love oat milk, right? So, uh, imagine them seeing this on the shelf in, in a oat milk format for toddlers. They're gonna, I see, I, I, I believe you believe, jump on the opportunity. And again, pea protein is very well recognized.

Uh, it, it's very clean, it's friendly. Everybody knows that that particular protein, uh, and again, you know, this is all gonna be a hundred percent organic, so, This, this product formulation had. Not to say that it, it's been challenging. It's been fun, but, you know, there's, there's extra layers of security that, you know, we're, we're doing, making sure that all the ingredients are ready to eat, uh, organic, certified, uh, you know, other than watching out for the particular things in the, in the ingredients, what, what, what, uh, what they have, such as sugar added sugar.

Protein content fat. But, uh, you know, the, the whole process of clean, clean label certified, uh, organic, certified heavy metal testing. I mean, all this stuff is just, it's, it's good. It says a lot. It's, it's, it's different, but it's going to get us that premium that we need. Exactly. It's a whole nother, um, set of regulations that we're pursuing.

So when it comes to organic certification, We have to source organic oat milk powder, organic pea protein, and then all of our vitamins, minerals, um, fibers must be organic, and so our suppliers have to produce that organic certification. We then have to file that all away, keep it organized, and then we submit it to an organic certification agency.

And we're, we're moving quick. So do you, do you wanna share the timing of when we started this to when you think we can actually ship it started March 31st. Uh, again though, working long hours, right? Working 16 hours a day doing this stuff. It's not like you are working one hour, two hours a day. We know how to do it.

We know where to go. We know what to do. So, uh, we should be, we should have a, a packaging design ready next week, uh, in two different formats. Uh, uh, we'll save that for, for the next podcast, hopefully when we launch. But it's gonna be very unique and, and, and, uh, uh, innovative and trending. And, uh, we should be, we should have prototypes available with marketing material by mid-May, sorry, end of May.

And which at that point we can start sending samples out to buyers, uh, and, and be able to get orders from our main customers. Unify ke. You know, we already have, uh, some, some major people, uh, wanting to see this. So brands, retailers. So hopefully this will be a very, uh, quick, quick access to market. That's how we do things here.

We don't have time to screw around or debate and, uh, we don't have, you know, patience either to do that. So we're moving quickly against this dry toddler powder, which is an awesome item for direct to consumer, you know, in terms of being lightweight. Being able to ship it to people's houses. It's more eco-friendly than shipping a six pack of milk.

The six pack of milk is great, you know, cuz you open it, chill it, pour it, it's awesome. The, the toddler formula is great because you can mix it with water. Uh, it's lightweight, you can store it in the pantry. Um, And it's, it's much easier to ship from, from our perspective. Right. And, and just so everybody knows, yeah, it's fast to market.

This is how we do it, but we see, we see a white space and we react to it. Now, most people would, would hire a, a formulator from the outside that would milk them for one or two years. Spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to do it, but we do everything in house. We know, again, we have the best partner, Susan Ugal.

That has been the most incredible asset, uh, uh, you know, for, for us as a partner. Uh, nutritional Biochemist helped us with, with, uh, regulation, with, uh, you know, everything formula along the way. So, I mean, that's huge. Uh, you know, so there's, there's a lot of work that went behind this. I don't want people to think that, oh yeah.

It's just easy. Anyone can do it. This is very tedious and, and many hours and a lot of knowledge behind this to, to, to create this in such a short time. You have a certain process that I, I watch develop over. Email mainly with who you reach out to, the sequence of which you reach out to people, the samples you collect, the testing you do in-house at your personal food lab that you've set up for yourself.

So it is very cool. And then like Susan's huge, right? Because we send her, you send her obnoxiously detailed emails of like, not obnoxious, but like they're so. Tedious and she responds to them line by line. I love it. You're like, does 0.001 thiamine per kilogram translate to 1% of a daily value per pound, or do I need to lower the thiamine by a kilogram per ounce to then, and I'm like, To be honest, John, I skim those emails and I put 'em in the toddler formula.

I'm like, these guys got it. I, I'm like, does, does, it is, it is detailed. I'm like, should I CC Kyle on these or no? But it's good that you're in the loop. I, I like to have it. If I, if you need a second pair of eyes, I'm more than willing to have, drink a cup of coffee and make sure your logic ties out, but you truly lose me with the kilograms to pounds, to ounces to percent daily values.

Yeah, it's to wait. And now with this formula, it's not liquid ounces, it's volume. And you were like, dude, I poured 620 grams into a 700 gram bag. I didn't fit. I'm like, what? And I, I called you. I'm like, why didn't it fit? And you're like, whoa. Well, you know, it's because, uh, it's fluffier. I'm like, oh, of course.

It's like volume based, not like weight based. Exactly. It's trips. My head does not work that way. Yeah, no, it's all good. Makes sense though. And I, I am happy to be on the emails. I'm happy that Susan replies at one in the morning I Idaho time. Yeah, she's, she's great. She's an night owl man. Yes, she is. She is.

Sh her brain really clicks at night or something. I don't know what what it is, but man, she writes these crazy responses. It's, it's insane. And again, I want the veer to know it's, it's, it's just not like, yeah, we're taking powders and we're mixing it. We have a voila formula. I mean, you know, picking the, the protein, finding an organic version that pr one that works within your price range, making sure the, the gross margins, you know, meet where we want it to be at from the beginning when I sent you the spreadsheet, Kyle, remember, I, I sent a proposed formula without even trying it.

Right. Uh, I, I, I asked Susan, what do we need to be at for fat, for protein, for, uh, sugar, for, for a toddler age, one to three? I put that in a formula without even trying it, I knew what, what in my mind, what we wanna do. Then I, I, I, I source the ingredients. I had it within a week, uh, you know, where to go, you know, tried all that and had the pricing to know what our cogs were from the beginning.

So, We adjust everything as we go along, which is very, very important. Now, again, protein source, you know, uh, the P protein is, is, is not a, is not a, a full, uh, complete protein, right? So, Susan, uh, validated what was missing to make it complete, and, and I knew where to go to get those, uh, amino acids, right? So the, the deficiency.

We're gonna cover, uh, uh, to make it a complete protein. So again, a lot of knowledge behind this, uh, to make, make thing, make all this work. Yeah. I like how your brain works. Like I've noticed that where you start with the, the raw elements that you know need to be in it, and then you modify it based on how it tastes.

And based, like, we started with chickpea at, on this, I believe, and the first correspondences were like, oh yeah, let's just, let's just take our milk and remove the water and then boom, we'll have like this awesome chickpea formula. And as it turns out, you know, based on testing and tasting and stuff, you were like, you know what, the old milk would be killer here with pea protein.

And so you, you've, you tweaked it for taste, which is really, really, really important to start with. The nutritional label start with adding value to people's diets, cuz that's a core element of our company. We're not here to like, serve empty calories. Like that's something we do not stand by, but it has to taste good.

That's the number one driver of purchase, obviously, especially with kids. Absolutely. And so it's good. It's good. That's where you end, end up always. And, and ours, uh, taste really damn good. And, uh, I'm gonna send you samples. I'll make it this weekend. To you and Susan, I'm gonna send the, the only other 2, 3, 3 plant-based brands worldwide.

There is another brand in Australia, uh, that brand is not, not, uh, very good. It's, uh, rice, rice-based, uh, I haven't personally tried it. Um, Amy, who's listening definitely tried it. Uh, she told me that it's not very good, but I can tell you that, uh, the, the three that I'm gonna send you are absolutely.

Absolutely disgusting. Uh, you'll see for yourself and, and you'll see how clean ours tastes. It's really a world of a difference. I believe you. I believe it. I'm excited to see it. I'm a little worried about it mixing with water without using an a handheld immersion blender. Yeah. Yeah. You, you're gonna see when, when I send you the other ones versus ours.

Ours is actually, all the ingredients are soluble, so it actually falls to the bottom. That's the beautiful thing about our, our, our our, uh, formula. And it mixes very, very well. Uh, uh, you know, the mesh sizes that, that it ordered for all of the ingredients are, are very, very fine. So you're not gonna get like, big pieces, coursey pieces.

Again, you know, we're using a, certain products have different types, uh, very hard to find, right? Uh, getting rid of the, the, the, the, uh, fiber in some of 'em to make it, uh, more, more soluble, right? Make it, make it, uh, more mouth feel, more, more fluid. So a lot, lot, lot, lot of detail. I see. Why there's a market for protein powder.

Like, I know we didn't talk about discussing this, but I am curious to hear, so when you go to the store and you see. Whey protein powder or pea protein powder, are they just buying the raw ingredient and, and then rebranding it? That that's it, and selling it for a hundred percent markup. Now, what I wanted to talk to you about was once we launched this toddler formula, and hopefully God willing, we see great traction.

Let's go into the junior. Perform, uh, junior, you know, four plus age and, and do like a protein for, for them. I think, I think we're, we're, we're onto something here, right? You know, Susan will help us, uh, uh, what we need for like a growing child, four years plus or whatever, whatever age range you wanna do.

Like, we'll call like a junior where it'll be like a, like a, like a delicious chocolate flavored or vanilla flavored, um, uh, powdered mix, protein mix for them, right? That, that could have as, as a snack. Or as a meal even. So, uh, same, same, same concept as a toddler formula, but for like a junior. And, and there are brands out there that have that, here's a random question.

Why wouldn't we launch a chickpea protein powder isolate? Would that cause I see pea protein powder. If they're getting a hundred percent markup, we should launch a chickpea protein powder for adults. We could. We will. We, we, we can do that. Sure. We could do that. Would it work in water or would it just be clumpy and disgusted?

Uh, we have to test it out. Uh, we have to discuss more. More what, what we wanna accomplish and I can make some samples for sure. Interesting. Um, cool. So that's the toddler formula again. It's organic oat milk, toddler formula. I think organic oat milk, toddler formula sounds like a winner to me. Yeah. Yeah, it just sounds like organic oat milk, toddler formula.

It's beautiful. Yeah, it is because, because a mother oat milk is the, is the number one rising plant-based. Uh, milk for the past X amount of years. Right. Mother that, you know, goes to that section now and wants to buy their kids a top plant-based toddler formula. They know oat milk already. Right. So it's just easy, easy sell to them.

Yeah. I wanted to go there next with the share the, the latest market split. So to John's point, I was looking at some research notes from. Morgan Stanley, they cover Oatley, which is a publicly traded oat milk company, and they shared some data. So the latest splits are this, so almond milk is still number one.

Okay? It was 64% market share. It is down to 58. So the, the dominance of almond milk is slipping. And what's interesting is, so if you take that, that's a minus 6% share loss for almond this past year. What replaced that oat? So OAT has gone from 15% share to 21% share, up to 6% that all almond lost. So what you're seeing is folks are just literally trading in their almond milk for oat milk.

So oat milk, 15 to 21% is a huge. Growth. That's 33% growth year over year. And I see that trend just only continuing. Only, only continuing. And all of the data shows that to be true. So you're gonna continue to see almond decline, oat to increase, and soy is just cratering. I mean, soy, when I was working for WhiteWave Foods back in 2011, soy had like 60% market share of plant-based milk.

Guess what it is today? Seven. Seven. It's gone from 60% to seven, so you have 58% share. Almond, 21% share oat, so that gets you to about 80% and then the rest is really just. All others. So it's the PE milks of the world. It's the rice milks of the world. Um, it's coconut milk. Coconut milk's. About 6% actually.

So those are the, the latest splits. So John and I are very bullish, which means that we're optimistic in market terminology. On the rise of oat milk, it's gonna go from 15 to 21, which it already has. It's gonna go to. 50% plus and just almost fully replace almond milk because the, the oat tastes the same or better than almond.

And almond has this x very valid baggage of environmental concerns around water usage. So almonds only grow in one part of the world, really, like they truly thrive in this part of the world. Do you know what part of the world that is, John California, correct. Correct the, the Central Valley of California is an ideal growing environment for almonds.

It's dry and then it's wet, so it has dry and wet seasons. So you have all the almond crop coming from one part of the co country in the world, California, which also is what prone to droughts. You know, that's, that's why it caused us so many problems. If almond trees were spread out in Brazil and Africa and Europe, you know, it'd, it'd be one thing, right?

Right. Multiple water tables, multiple watersheds, like it's balanced, but those trees are sucking up Colorado River water. They're sucking up all the snow melt water. Um, In one part of the globe. So if California has a weak Rainier or a weak snow year, which isn't the case this year, by the way. No. But California has been in a five year drought.

You know, those almond trees are, are, are a major contributing factor to that. And, uh, there are a ton of almond trees there. I mean, a ton. It, it is the, the source for almonds. So, That is becoming more and more well known and, and folks are moving to oat, which has grown much more broadly in terms of it's grown in Europe, obviously oat least, uh, from from Sweden, there's oat the, there's a strong oat crop outta Europe.

There's a strong oat crop outta the United States, and oats can be grown in much more broader parts of the world. Interesting. Thank you for the background. I, I didn't know that about almonds. That's quite fascinating. Interesting stuff. So that's the latest market splits. That's why we're, we're very optimistic on oat milk.

So let's talk about our plant-based milk. So we had some cool, very cool and hard to get acceptances for our product in the market. We were accepted to the U N F I UP NEXT program, which is an exclusive program for the distributor, U N F I, who. Drops off products to all Whole Foods stores nationwide. So Whole Foods makes up about 60% of U NFIs business.

They're a distributor and, uh, so obviously a great person to be working with, right? If they work with Whole Foods and we're in their up next program, which is for suppliers that they deem as high potential. Category disrupting players, which is how they view us. That's pretty cool. And that gives us exclusive access to, uh, services that they provide.

We get discounts, um, on fees and, uh, we get, uh, More, uh, awareness in, in, in, in their network in terms of they're excited about us, right? Yeah. That's exciting. That's exciting. And you never had that before, so with your other parents? No, I, I never have. So that's why it is exciting. And then similar to that, it's the new at KeHE program.

So KeHE is a competitor with U N F I and they drop off to if you have a local vitamin shop or if you have a local whole food, um, health food store that's not Whole Foods. So all those mom and pop stores that people love, KeHE really specializes in servicing those accounts. And those accounts are called Independence.

They're not chains, right. There's probably just one or two of them in your area. And those add up and, and you have great experience with this program and executing against it. Yeah. This, this will, this will be a fun program. Uh, June one will be the launch date. Prior to that, uh, you and I are just gonna go at it with, with 400 plus, uh, account reps.

Really drive the product. It'll be in our hands to present it to them. Send samples if needed, or give a free fill to the stores or chains and get it out there and start the momentum going. And it's gonna be fun because a lot of activity will start and automatically over the course of 60 days, you're gonna see the brand.

Into probably up upwards of 250 retailers across the US and even Hawaii, down to Earth Stores. Order from there. Uh, even Hong Kong orders. From there, uh, you have the Caribbean that orders from there. All the islands, uh, Virgin, uh, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, uh, all these islands. Uh, we, we will start to get all this product as well.

So it's exciting. We're gonna be all across, uh, the, the Doth America. Areas in Hawaii and it's Caribbean. And what those two updates mean is we're not just blowing smoke. We actually have our first purchase orders. That's right. We got our first, oh, 10. 10 pos significant amounts, and that'll be the first to get out there and, uh, push.

Yeah. Yeah. Five figures, dollar value, feeling good. Took a, it was a long road to get to this point from. Accepting the product idea with you to raising money, to producing it, to then sampling it, to then having them accept it, to then having them place an order for it. I mean, talk about. Talk about multiple steps to, to, to get through.

Well, uh, yeah. It is, it is. And I told you very, you know, we're, it's a matter of time. It's not. It's not. If it's when and the when is soon, it's now. And I think that's the day we got our first PO from U F I. Which you said, okay, we're gonna go daddy, uh, we're getting away from Gmail. You're in a good mood. So you executed that.

So wait, wait, wait, wait till you see the product. I mean, you haven't seen it in stores yet. That that's gonna be the most fun when it's on store shelves. And you're gonna see people doing Instagram posts, uh, trying it. And, and that's really where you, that, that, that, that all that hard work, uh, is going to, is gonna be rewarding when you see people commenting on, on the product.

Yeah, I'm excited for that. For sure. So in terms of, uh, fundraising, um, we had a great call with genone Manifesto Ventures, which would be an amazing partner for us. Yeah, that's, that's big deal. The biggest, largest milk slash. Yogurt company in the world wanted to talk to us for, to learn more about tally.

And at the end of the conversation, they told us that we're up right up in their alley. This is what they're looking for. They just wanna see traction. And that's, that's, that's the next step for us. We gotta, we gotta show. Uh, our, our, our community, our investors, our, our network. Really what we thought is, is, is, uh, you know, put into reality and Danone would be a great strategic acquirer, acquirer of our company down the road.

Absolutely. Right. So that's, that's the kind of company that could buy tally for, you know, hopefully a, a large purchase price because we've proven it to be valuable to consumers. Um, warehousing, we're making some changes there, so we're looking at, basically tally will move best in the refrigerated door.

So when you go to the grocery store, where do you buy your oat milk? You buy it out of the refrigerated door. And so, as people know, our product is shelf stable, but we're gonna merchandise it, which means we're gonna be in the dairy door, we're gonna merchandise it refrigerated. And so we're making some warehouse changes.

To allow for it to be basically stored, long-term shelf stable, but then the facility has a, like a, a refrigerated section so that when the customer comes and picks it up, they pick it up. Chill. That's right. And that's just like how it needs to work, because otherwise, Target would reject it if, if we showed up to the dairy door at target store in your neighborhood warm, that dairy manager will say, this is, this is off.

This isn't right. Yeah, they, they actually do temperature checks for everything that comes in refrigerated. Uh, they'd actually have like a temperature gun. They, they, if it comes above 38 Fahrenheit, uh, which is roughly the six Celsius, seven Celsius, uh, you're not gonna be able to, uh, uh, you know, they're not gonna, they're gonna reject it.

That, that's, that's why we're doing it right. And then we've had some great press lately too. We've, we've really been impressed by our, our Press person and we've gotten articles, featured articles in bev net.com, which is a major website and veg economist.com, which is a, a, a major vegan website as well.

So if you go to veg economist uh.com and you search tally, you'll see our recent article feature with John and I's photo and talk about the, um, The product. And then if you go to bev net in search tally, that article came out like about three weeks ago. So we're getting good press, which is really helpful to build credibility with the market, with investors.

And it's just like nice for brand awareness. So pumped about that. Me too. Lastly with that, I think we're gonna get more and more, and you saw this note from me last night, but we're gonna get more and more into content creation and creating credibility for our brand by writing content that may or may not be about Tally, but I really wanna use Susan's expertise to start writing content about plant-based milk, nutrition.

All the things, right? All the things, vitamins, minerals for kids, how you can source these, how you don't need dairy. Yeah, and what you. What you do is you submit these articles and it's called Backlinking, and basically when you see folks where it's like written by this person, they are an expert at, you know, X, Y, Z company.

That link is critical. So it's called website credibility score, and it's critical for Google. And what Google wants to see is your website getting backlink from highly credible websites. So like the dream scenario would be Susan contributes to an article for American Academy of Pediatricians, and it goes on their website and it says, contributing author Susan Pugel Tally Kids.

And it links to our site. That, as subtle as that sounds, boosts your score on Google search so much that when kids, when parents search for kids' milk, you'll pop up higher because Google's like, oh, the Academy of Pediatricians referred to them. You know what I'm saying, John? Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I, I've read it this morning.

I love it. I think we got through everything. Uh, I guess the last thing for current events would be we're going, I'm going to the naturally bolder Spring Fling event, uh, to showcase a tally table on May 3rd, speak with potential investors, uh, similar to what we did in February, but this is, uh, it'll be warmer.

It won't be zero degrees. I won't make you fly in this time either. So I'll save you the, I'll save you that trip. Awesome, man. I certainly appreciate you. Uh, Making the time. Enjoy. Yeah, it was great. Kyle, thank you very much for, uh, making this happen. Of course, man. Have a good rest of the day and we'll catch up again on the podcast, uh, soon.

Okay, sounds good. Thanks man. Take care.