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Stefani H  0:06  
Welcome to another episode of Creative Distillation. Your hosts Jeff and Brad from the ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ is Leeds School of Business discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. This installment of Creative Distillation kicks off a series of episodes recorded during our first road trip to Los Angeles for the Social Entrepreneurship Conference hosted by . Brad couldn't make it for this one. And Jeff is joined by special guest host , as they conduct some field research at , a soda distributor based in the Los Angeles area. Founder Danny Ginsburg guides Jeff and Shon through a tasting of a few of his custom made flavors while explaining how a German language major with a lifelong passion for bottle cap collecting became the soda Somalia of Southern California. Enjoy and cheers!

Jeff  1:04  
Welcome to Creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I'm your host, Jeff York, the research director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ, and not joining me today is our co host, Brad Werner. I'm actually in Los Angeles and I'm gonna introduce our special guest co host today, Sean. Hi, Sean, say hi to the folks. Hello, Jeff.

Shon Hiatt  1:28  
Thanks for inviting me.

Jeff  1:30  
Sean is professor of strategy at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. And he turned us on to an awesome establishment to do a podcast and we're burnt out here for the social entrepreneurship conference at USC. So you're gonna be getting a lot of episodes from that. We're gonna be podcasting, doing all sorts of interviews, all sorts of people. And so this is our first stop. And as our producer, Joel says, You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. So it's like 10am. And we are here at Real soda and real bottles with the founder, Danny Ginsburg, welcome, Danny. Thank you. So awesome to be here. You should see where we're sitting. I mean, this is like a recreation of a 50 Soda Shop, I'd say something like that kind of. And we were just looking at days inventory. We have some pictures up on the website as well. This is an amazing business. Thank you so much for hosting us here. Like, thanks for having me. So I was reading a little bit about this like so you were telling us some things. You were a bottle cap collector, even as a kid, correct. Yeah. So how did you go from that? To really? Yes, this is an empire of soda. It's quite amazing. Looking around here.

Danny Ginsburg  2:37  
Well, you know that they say necessity is the mother of invention, right? So I've been collecting bottle caps since I was a little kid. I even actually beforehand was collecting baby food lids but then we outgrew baby foods, I started collecting bottle caps, and babies

Jeff  2:52  
to collect baby food lids like Well, was it just just like the look of the Gerber lands? Yeah, the baby face.

Danny Ginsburg  2:59  
So back in those days, which was in the 60s, they had, instead of an expiration date or something on the lid, they had a code of some sort. And the code actually was the same. For example, if you had creamed corn or vanilla custard pudding, it had a different number and letter code on the cap. And when I was a little kid before I could even read, I knew that this and that, like I was always in the license plates and things I could tell from the lid, what flavor of baby food it was. And so my relatives used to quiz me on grab lids from my collection and say it and then they go into the pantry and look and go oh, he's right.

Jeff  3:35  
All right. So you've graduated from baby food starting to consume. So now where did you grow up?

Danny Ginsburg  3:41  
I grew up in Palos Verdes, California. Okay, South Bay. Cool.

Jeff  3:45  
And then how did you get interested in like soda? Like, I mean with the start with the caps, right, right.

Danny Ginsburg  3:50  
Okay, well, what would happen is there would be of course, there were a lot of things in bottles when I was a kid and gradually as time went on cans, were replacing the bottles, hate cans, and then of course, then plastic bottles came along. I really hated those. Yeah, yeah. So basically, I would collect the caps I would get bottle caps from soda machines and things like that. And they had bottles and at a certain point, you know, when we would go on traveling, this is probably where the idea of the soda came is I would see something with a bottle cap I didn't have or from or they would say the name of the city. It was made like Portland, Oregon or something or Colorado, you know. Yeah. There's

Jeff  4:26  
always regional sodas. We'll get into that in a little while for sure. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Danny Ginsburg  4:29  
And like I would see something and see I don't have that cat like in Colorado. Remember there was a town called Sterling Colorado? Yeah. No, Sterling. Yeah. And they used to have nesbit's bottling company there. Didn't Know Nisbets ball. Yeah. And when we were driving through there was a store that had like a an old Coca Cola cooler with an opener in a box underneath and they poured it out in a bag for me and I got all these bottle caps from Sterling, Colorado. And so it was very interesting. I like learned about geography and everything from all the different bottle caps but what would happen is you know, you'd go to a place that let's say they have a a brand that has seven or eight flavors and you'd get five or six of the caps, but there'd be that one or two flavor that that weren't in the mix. See them? So if I had the chance to buy a soda, I would buy one of those and drink it to get the cat

Jeff  5:14  
just purely buying this just to get the cap. It really

Danny Ginsburg  5:16  
is. Yeah. And what was interesting is you discover something like wow, they don't have this stuff in LA. This is great. Like the high blue cream soda. Remember the first time I had it? I can't believe they don't have this in LA.

Jeff  5:27  
I had a friend in college who would only drink blue things that was his thing. So he was really into the blue cream soda. Do you know what's the deal with that? Why is it blue?

Danny Ginsburg  5:35  
Do you know? Well, the history personally,

Jeff  5:37  
I thought might know the answer to this

Danny Ginsburg  5:39  
well, okay, that a lot of times in other countries they will call cream soda American cream soda like Schweppes, American cream, soda, Hong Kong, okay. But the thing is cream soda was one of those American things as opposed to like the rest of the world, which had ginger ales and things like that. So during World War One, this is what I read anyway. So I'm assuming it's true during World War One, as part of the whole patriotic routine, including like people changing their names from like, Muller to Miller and stuff like that. Or Schumacher to Shoemaker right, you know, so they had cream soda. So they came out with red, white and blue cream soda. So as a result of that, a lot of times it'd be the same flavor, but a lot of times they would change it. And so there's just a certain flavor that typically blue cream soda tastes like I love it. I mean, I it sells really well for us.

Jeff  6:27  
Oh, really? Yeah. Do you think it's because it's blue? Just and it's just grabs people's attention? Because I look at like, I mean, I guess with the right, like, when I think about craft soda, yeah, I think about rocket fits, like just wrapped off my head, because that's the place that you actually I see on national level, you see these things distributed, right? I mean, unless there's other ones I just don't know about. But like, a lot of the drinks are just like so colorful. We usually talk about beer a lot on this podcast and beer. Well, sure. I mean, me too. Obviously. This is only the second episode. Beer whiskey. This is awesome. But it's like the colors of it. Like do you think that colors like trigger people's buying propensity more? Or is it flavors? Or are they just looking for something unique? Like what do you think? Well, it's

Danny Ginsburg  7:12  
all part of it's all part of it. Right? So like like, for example, I my sodas sell much better when there's a display of like 150 of them, as opposed to when there's two or three mixed in with some Snapple and some Nellies, apple juice or whatever. Because the shock of seeing the display makes people stop like I just did. On my way. Here. I set up a Vons, which is one of our local supermarkets here. And they have a section there with 80 of our sodas. I always tried to make it like a kaleidoscope of colors and flavors. I don't really worry about let's have every flavor of boylan's and Fanta and whatever now, I'll pick the best flavor, in my opinion for every producer and try to make sure that the things are regional from all over the country, maybe some other countries, things that people remember from Chicago or from Tennessee or whatever. Oh, yeah, you know,

Shon Hiatt  8:00  
so Danny, I got a sense that you're like inquisitive. And you're like an explorer, right? So as a young child, you love going on these trips, you found these different soft drinks, right? I mean, then you went to the University of Southern California, and majored in

Danny Ginsburg  8:12  
German, German, and minored. In Russian, yes,

Shon Hiatt  8:17  
I guess to continue this exploration of different cultures and wells. And

Danny Ginsburg  8:21  
also here's the thing is that the bottlecaps got me interested in languages at an early age, we went to Europe, for example, and we'd go to like, you know, rescue, I'd love to go to rest areas got all the truck driver, the throw bottle caps out from all over the place, running around picking up all the bottle caps, and then trying to figure out okay, what country? Is it from? What city is it from? Well, so these things would say, you know, sometimes the ingredients, whatever, I didn't know if it was an ingredient or the name of a town. So I'd be looking up this before the internet on atlases and things and I would actually go to USC at a very good library to find these huge atlases that were like, you know, the pages were like a yard long, massive atlases and open them up and go to the index and look, you know, like German atlases and French and so on, trying to find out what's what. And so ultimately, in the process of doing this, I started noticing like carbonated water, you know, in German, or in Danish, or in Swedish, or whatever, you could tell what it was, if you knew one, you knew the other because it's like, oh, spelled differently, but basically the same thing, you know. And so I basically, I got very interested in languages. And when I graduated from high school, I actually worked for my dad's company doing real estate management and so forth. And I learned how to do that really well. And I had no education in it. And at one point, my uncle said to my dad, like, you know, your father basically suffered all his life to put you through medical school and you've incentivized your kids not to get an education. And so my response to that was to fire me, and I was like, I'm doing a good job. I shouldn't if I weren't working for relatives, I would be promoted. This is so unfair, but he said he would pay for the university and I said, Okay, fine. I said I know how to do this, whatever management stuff so I don't really need to you know, read books about things I've already done it for like for you There's so I said, I'm just gonna go and learn foreign languages because because the bottom line is, you have to what do you do with part of it, so you got to earn money and survive, right. The other part is spend it wisely. So I'd rather go to like a place like Europe and just, you know, get a car and just drive to all the countries and all on, you know, on my own or with a friend of mine or my wife, whatever, and not be in a like a bus with a bunch of American tourists that are gone. My pancakes tasted like crap and hotel today, you know, where some persons running around who speaks your language holds up a flag and counts you and every stop, you know, it's like, I didn't want to do that. So I was like, Okay, I kind of stuck doing this. I'm going to learn languages, but of course, everything in life, you know, it opens up another door, right? Yeah. And ironically, I wanted to become a professor, actually, of languages, because I wanted to three months off. And I ended up ended up in a business where I have to work so much, I could hardly sleep, you know. But it was it was interesting, because when I was at USC, and there were, there were a lot of very good professors, really interesting students, and some want middle on ice people. Sure. But there's also a structure there in some of the departments, you know, you have your department head and your various professors and so forth. And it was like those people? Well, it was the other politics with all of them. And the interesting thing is some of the best teachers were not the ones in charge. No, no, that was and so that really shouldn't

Shon Hiatt  11:17  
be the case. Yeah.

Jeff  11:18  
department here. So you know, I mean, clearly this is true, is there you go.

Danny Ginsburg  11:23  
Exactly. And and the thing is that I'm kind of eccentric. So I don't tend to basically, when people draw a yellow line on the ground, so you go too soon, but my thought is like, why website the other side of the line?

Shon Hiatt  11:40  
So you decide I academia is not for me, you graduated USC. Right? What did you do? Did you say I'm gonna Yeah, this is so distributed.

Jeff  11:49  
Really, for our listeners, you would have to see this place. I mean, we thought we were going to like a soda distribution warehouse. And we did massive

Danny Ginsburg  11:56  
Oh, I can show you we drove around behind

Jeff  12:00  
is the largest beverage distribution warehouse I've ever seen of any kind. It's pretty big. But the place itself is like an amazing museum of sodas. I mean, it's just incredible. So yeah, I mean, how did this come to be? Yeah,

Danny Ginsburg  12:12  
well, you know, in school, of course, you have a lot of like, you know, vacation time, and what have you and all the various holidays, and so forth. But you know, most of the people, if you don't work for the government, you don't really get to celebrate much of those, you know, except that there's less traffic on those days on delivery day. But what was great when I was there, as it is that there'd be you know, spring break and summer vacation and got all these like long periods of time, you know, and so what I would do is on those times, I would go in my van, and I would drive to other states and cities, and so forth, and buy soda and bottles and bring them back to LA. And then I figured out all of the street fairs and carnivals, and things that are going on. And every time I could find a pocket of time in between, like on weekends, and so forth, I would go in and set up a booth and sell sodas there. So I could get all my bottle caps, and so forth, and make a couple bucks, you know, and pay for my own habits, so to speak. And then what ultimately happened is I also at the same time, I used to write letters to people all over the world asking for bottle caps. And I ended up with a like a couple dozen pen pals all over the world. So what I would do is I would earn enough money throughout the year that I could on summer vacation, go to LAX and fly off to visit some of these people had a free place to stay. And then I got to experience their country and so forth. And that whole four years I was there, I just went around doing that. And it basically paid for all of that by running around and selling soda. So when I was done, you know, I actually had developed a handful of actual customers that had discovered me at street fairs, I was actually just delivering to them on the way to school or whatever, you know, anyway. And you know, at some point, one of them said, you know, you know, we can't just pay you cash when we need to get like a regular invoice. And I said, Well, I don't have a business license. And I'm like, I'm just kind of just doing this on the side. Fun, you know, and, and so I decided when I was graduating, so well maybe I'll just get a business license. And and you know, I don't know what I'll do in the long run. But I'll just do this for a while to see what it's like. And ultimately it it started making me enough money over the course it took about two or three years to get from, I guess poverty to sustenance, you know, and basically,

Shon Hiatt  14:06  
we're sourcing more locally from local soft drink, or were you already at that point, going more regionally nationally, trying sufferings from other parts of the country.

Danny Ginsburg  14:14  
I kind of figured out everybody that had stuff locally, there were places actually discovery one is going to USC, these cash and carry places in downtown LA not very far from USC, that would supply all those lunch trucks and so forth. And they had a lot of gray market product like from Mexico and so forth. And so I was started buying all that stuff and going and selling it to the gringos so to speak because, you know, it's like once you got away from those lunch trucks and all nobody knew about Mexican Coke, and I was like, like, how can you drink that aluminum and plastic and aluminum cans that used to have a picture of a coke bottle on it? I said that's an image. I have the real thing. That's what that's their slogan, the real thing. This is it. It's from Mexico, you know, and I used to also go down there and buy some, you know, bring my empties there and return them and stuff. You know, so I yeah, I just covered For all the different things, but then when when I finally got to where I pretty much was just doing all of that, I would use my knowledge of things from my bottle cap collection and start contacting companies when there was no Internet back then. So you couldn't just go online, you know, like, so I actually had to go and try to find out like, what's the number of the Cheerwine company in North Carolina. And and so I call over there and I've actually had from my old days of sending to every bottling plant the United States, I could find the address of, I had like a letter from Mark Ritchie, which was the family that owned Cheerwine and I so I made a photocopy of that and mailed it to them along with a letter saying, I've heard so much about your product. I've never tasted my entire life, but I'm now a distributor and I'd like to find out if there's a way I could buy some Is there a number I can call someone out and send it to them? Literally, it was like it was like a scavenger hunt. But I started digging up all these brands that I knew of, you know, Green River ale eight one, like say Cheerwine Saranac from New York. You know, all this kind of stuff. And yeah, started bringing bringing in Yes,

Jeff  16:00  
that's amazing. I have such fond memories. I grew up in North Carolina. I remember drinking Cheerwine at like stock car races. Yeah, totally was the thing. And then it went away for a while. And then it was and now it's back. I guess it's yeah, if you've never had your why make sure you seek it out. It's a cherry soda. I guess. It's

Danny Ginsburg  16:17  
like a wild cherry soda with a lot of caffeine in it.

Shon Hiatt  16:22  
The original energy drink?

Danny Ginsburg  16:23  
Yeah, well, it was invented in 1917 during Prohibition, and so it was invented. It was actually invented in a place that used to make wine that was banned from making wine, but they had the machinery and so necessity the mother of invention. Right. So there it is your wine.

Jeff  16:37  
Amazing. I mean, like Sean's actually written about that. We're going to talk about some of his work in a little while. That was your first paper. That was

Shon Hiatt  16:44  
That's right. The history of the soft drink industry. Wow. Literally, the temperance movement was the main opportunity for them to come about

Danny Ginsburg  16:52  
what probably sell so much in Utah.

Jeff  16:54  
What a crepe or names to buy away from perhaps to Pepsi. I love that name.

Danny Ginsburg  16:59  
That's great. Yeah, that's a great one.

Jeff  17:01  
Wait, let's try some of these beverages in front.

Shon Hiatt  17:03  
Then tell us So you went from distributor to also bring your own right? Well, yes, sir. Yeah.

Jeff  17:09  
What do you guys make? Right?

Danny Ginsburg  17:09  
Well, yeah, well, I make about 70. So these are, these are just some of them are esoteric. Wow.

Shon Hiatt  17:14  
And then how many do you distribute just so the listeners I have, you

Danny Ginsburg  17:19  
know, skewness? Because sometimes they're different sizes or variations. But I have about 2800 different things that you can order when

Jeff  17:26  
he 800. Yeah. And distributing nationally, or

Danny Ginsburg  17:29  
oh, well, we ship all over the place. Like Like you mentioned, Colorado, so Littleton, which is, Denver is, you know, yeah, there's a place called Roberts Italian deli. Yeah. And the guy that owns Bob Russo. Yeah, he's actually got a lot of businesses and so one of the things as he also has the real soda of Colorado so he buys shipments from us and how sells a lot of minutes place and he delivers the various places in the Denver area and even down in Colorado Springs, right. Right. And so So I ship stuff to him on a pretty regular basis. And I have people like that in other parts of the country, mostly in the West

Shon Hiatt  18:02  
are like V, we could say like the hub of distribution for 2800 Different soft drinks in the West.

Danny Ginsburg  18:09  
Yeah, people have referred to this warehouse as the mothership.

Shon Hiatt  18:13  
That is awesome. And then in addition to its go back this you brew 70 of your own products. We're gonna I guess, taste three of these today. Yeah,

Danny Ginsburg  18:21  
right. Yeah. I'm always coming up with something new and interesting, you know, and so yeah, if you want we could start out since it's like kind of breakfast time. Yeah, let's do breakfast. Chocolate covered maple smoked bacon soda, of

Jeff  18:31  
course. Breakfast of Champions. It's right up there with coffee stout as breakfast beverages. Yeah. Oh, yes. Now

Danny Ginsburg  18:40  
this comes in an easy open bottle. You can't see it on. Okay. Yeah.

Jeff  18:43  
So he opened that like it was no effort whatsoever. It was

Danny Ginsburg  18:47  
at the expense of making chocolate covered maple smoke baking soda bottle caps and oh my god, it probably going to last me 17 years, but that's okay. Chocolate. Maple chocolate covered me chocolate covered maple smoked bacon soda. That's

Jeff  19:01  
like that's, that's like

Shon Hiatt  19:03  
it's beautiful. Take a look. He's got a leaf.

Jeff  19:05  
You know, have you ever had wow, like so cool.

Danny Ginsburg  19:07  
It's like bakers.

Jeff  19:08  
Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, they're made for those that have a jar when I was a kid. Right?

Danny Ginsburg  19:12  
Me too. And they're not made from bacon. They're actually kidding. Hoelscher Believe it or not? Probably if the union of Orthodox rabbis were to watch the entire thing it could get it. They call that a hechsher but it just cost so much money to do that. And I don't think there's that many Orthodox Jews standing in line for this. So that's the only reason I haven't done it. So

Jeff  19:33  
smell it first. Yeah, just Alright, so the chocolate really comes off the Yeah,

Danny Ginsburg  19:38  
the bacon is more like after you drink it. If you burp. You'll be like hey, there's bacon in there.

Jeff  19:43  
Alright, so chocolate Yeah, it's big chocolate knows.

Shon Hiatt  19:47  
You know it tastes are helpful if you could probably add vitamins to this and it'd be a morning breakfast tray. Yeah,

Jeff  19:53  
that's really interesting. You get the chocolate and the initial flavor. Yeah, frying your tongue and then the maple Gotta comes after right

Danny Ginsburg  20:01  
and then the bacon is the finish. Because salty bacon finish. Yeah, it's very important because in in putting this together the initial work on it, because here's the funny thing, the flavor chemists that I work with is a very good guy, very knowledgeable, but he doesn't have as picky of a palette as I do. Okay, I'm like one of the pickiest eaters around and I used to be just, you know, my parents hated that, you know, and so they, you know, because we'd go to a place that would need anything, whatever. But the positive side of that is I can discern certain flavors, I guess better than maybe some other people. And so my flavor chemists loves to work with me on this because when I keep telling him changes change that when it finally finished and he tries he goes, Man, that's good, you know? And the thing is, when he originally tried with the baking soda, there were some other people that dabbled with there's like bacon flavored, whatever stuff, but a lot of it just tastes like liquid smoke. Right? And you know,

Jeff  20:55  
because that's all people, liquid soap and salt. Right. And I tried to brew a peanut butter cup beer for years. Yeah, people have done this now, but I tried for years. You can never

Danny Ginsburg  21:05  
belching beaver. No, I've never. Oh, you gotta have a peanut butter. The peanut butter. Chocolate stout. No, it's like it's like you'll love it. It's

Jeff  21:14  
melting beaver.

Danny Ginsburg  21:15  
Beaver Brewing Company. Yeah. So you're

Jeff  21:16  
crazy. How do you decide like to create a soda? Because you've created 70 sodas at this point. That's just I'm sorry, that still kind of boggles my mind. Well, I

Danny Ginsburg  21:25  
guess I get to a point where I feel there's a need. Like, like, for example, we're saying, well, I'll give you this stuff. There was one one gourmet store where the guys once said to me, like, you know, this is in the 1990s. He said, he goes, You want to try it a chocolate bar that has bacon in it. And I remember I said I love chocolate. And I love bacon. But that sounds weird. This was before it was like common. So I guess I'll give it a try. Like because I hate onions and bell peppers. I didn't have any of that. And so I was like, okay, alright, so I, I tried it. And I'm like, Oh, I love it. So in the back of my mind always wanted to do something like this. And I remember one time I was actually me and my big mouth back in the day, I would talk to people about it. And I ended up talking to some people that were kind of like milking me for information. Yeah, they ran off and made a bacon soda that tasted like liquid smoke like garbage. And I remember just thinking that's not what I had in mind, like in those people and I knew who it was and it really irritated me because I knew they got the idea for me. I said, Okay, fine. I'm gonna go and make it the right way. Right? So I go to my flavor chemists. I said, you know, I have a task, you know, and the interesting thing is, that's when I came up with the idea to make the beef drinker which I'm out of stock right now, which is the teriyaki beef jerky soda. We were looking at that earlier. Yeah, we ran out. We're getting more of that pretty soon. I remember when we were making it in the bottling plant because you know, a little Spanish right? So the people who like likes it and the bottling line there's smelly and they're gone Carinae like that and cotton and soda, soda and Spanish is we're gonna fresco but beef is carbonate their breasts so I said the rest fresco

Jeff  23:03  
appropriate because the tagline on the spot was breakfast in a bottle. Exactly. Jonah you know being the hardcore guys. We didn't eat breakfast so now breakfast of champions. That's right. Chocolate covered maple smoke baking soda. This is awesome. Buy real,

Shon Hiatt  23:22  
real soda company.

Danny Ginsburg  23:27  
Yeah, we have a lot of slogans. We call it propaganda.

Jeff  23:32  
This is this amazing. Well, what else we got here? Well,

Danny Ginsburg  23:35  
the next one has a slogan. Better than expected. And this is lemonade. I actually had a Russian grandmother. And she used to always say when my mom would make this big dinner she goes thank you it was better than but then I learned when I was at USC. They always say Lucia Tomasi dal, which means better than expected, but it's a way of saying you just you out I couldn't have expected anything in yourself. So it's not

Jeff  24:03  
like I expected this to suck right? It's okay. Like, better than I could have. Did yourself like my God never imagined something so good for you.

Shon Hiatt  24:16  
Let's make sure the listeners understood exactly so not lemonade, but Lenin. Yeah. And

Danny Ginsburg  24:20  
then they are not John Lennon but bloody mere elites. Linnaean.

Jeff  24:28  
That was amazing. All right.

Danny Ginsburg  24:30  
bottlecap. This one says yep, it looks like CCCP but that's really SSSR in Russian. Which means the so USSR, right? Yeah. So and then it says WWW dot Lenin a dot communist.

Shon Hiatt  24:45  
And on it is a

Danny Ginsburg  24:47  
social entrepreneur. This is a socialist.

Shon Hiatt  24:51  
Traditional hammer and sickle right.

Danny Ginsburg  24:54  
hammered in sickled. And then it says a tasty see right here. Tastes worth standing in line for bye. But sometimes,

Jeff  25:03  
like bottle,

Danny Ginsburg  25:04  
I'm like, Oh my God, you're buying lemonade and there's no line.

Shon Hiatt  25:09  
Because you didn't everybody stood in line.

Danny Ginsburg  25:12  
So anyway, here we go.

Jeff  25:14  
Oh, my daughter is gonna be such a fan of this. All right, thank you.

Danny Ginsburg  25:17  
Oh, my daughter doesn't like drinking soda. Can you believe it?

Shon Hiatt  25:20  
Yeah, so Jeff Go ahead. You've got the nose in the man

Jeff  25:24  
how soda tastes is I've never been it smells fruity. It's like a fruit punch kind of aroma getting is not fried, but I'm not nailing this one.

Shon Hiatt  25:36  
It's just like a mix between lemon and cola.

Danny Ginsburg  25:39  
Nope. Oh,

Jeff  25:41  
well I get the lemon for

Danny Ginsburg  25:42  
sure. By the way you can mix it with vodka it makes a CAMI kasi Brad was here to have that or mix it with showed you and it makes a Kim Jong dos

Jeff  25:58  
feel like those are actionable insights. But I couldn't get a chime quick enough.

Shon Hiatt  26:01  
There's a very unique flavor. You see. Yeah.

It totally is.

Jeff  26:11  
It's driving me crazy.

Shon Hiatt  26:12  
I mean, it's gotten.

Jeff  26:13  
I don't know what it is.

Shon Hiatt  26:14  
I don't know for me. I kind of feel like it's got a little bit of a cola aftertaste that makes me want to drink more.

Danny Ginsburg  26:18  
Yeah. Doesn't even have caffeine. No caffeine,

Shon Hiatt  26:21  
no cola at all.

Danny Ginsburg  26:23  
Caffeine and Soviet Union.

Jeff  26:28  
What is that flavor is making me nuts. Literally on the tip of my tongue? I don't know. I don't know. Tell us about this day. Because it's

Danny Ginsburg  26:37  
good based on a soda that I tasted on traveling in India. Okay, I only found in one place never found again.

Jeff  26:44  
And I was just not used to medicinal flavor going? Yes. Well, because it's

Danny Ginsburg  26:47  
mostly lemon and orange and a hint of ginger. Oh, it's

Jeff  26:52  
limited orange mixing with the ginger. So that's not a normal combination that you think of

Danny Ginsburg  26:56  
I know. Well, when I put it together. It's funny because the flavor chemists I have. He's Serbian. And when I put it together, I said okay, now, I didn't tell him what I was going to call it. I said, now I need you to turn it into red. But it needs to be a red, which is kind of a red orange. You know, because all the Soviet propaganda was red, orange, yellow letters. And so that was like, I wanted to be the color of the soda. It'd be the same as the signage and in Soviet Union, and he's like red, orange, because that doesn't go with this flavor. I go, well, we'll you'll see. And then when we finished and got the label, and I brought him a bottle of the finished product, and I said, Look what we made and he grabbed a bottle and he almost fell to the floor laughing he's just like, I can't believe I was like, why would anyone buys something like this? The same thing with like the people at USC cuz I remember I brought to the ligature department. They're like, You're crazy. Like, no one's gonna buy this stuff. But guess what? It's our number one seller. Number one.

Jeff  27:51  
No, I mean, the brand is I mean, it's so striking. First thing I walked in when we were winning this morning. I went straight to that T shirt. Yeah, just grabbed my attention immediately.

Danny Ginsburg  28:02  
They call that scare apparel. Well, yeah, exactly.

Shon Hiatt  28:05  
And just so the listeners know the bottle has both Roman characters as well as Cyrillic characters. Yes. So

Jeff  28:12  
explain what you mean by that John for those of us that are not

Shon Hiatt  28:15  
all right, daddy since he's the language

Danny Ginsburg  28:18  
and aid Okay, so lemonade, written le n i n a D E, but then it's also written in the alphabet that they use in like Russia and Serbia and so forth. It's called the Cyrillic alphabet. So it would be like the El ENINA de like Linien OD, you know, and so it says Lenin od Lenin aid and then it says, you know, lemon peel the onion, the onion bootcut Pete, which means Lenin drank Lenin drinks Lenin will drink. And it's a knockoff a very slogan, the Soviet slogan. Right? You know, Lenin geoenergy blendability achievement meant Lenin lived Lenin lives or is alive and it will live? Yeah. Well, I've been over and seen him in there reject from the wax museum.

Jeff  29:03  
I mean, this bottle, like it's just, I mean, it's just a work of loved it. I mean, it's like you put so much into this and, and to me, when we look at like any kind of like craft beverage or anything where people are making something for others to consume. I mean, this love you put into it. I mean, you're really trying to bring joy to people?

Danny Ginsburg  29:20  
I do. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, communism and so forth is very negative and kind of goes against the soul of people and when you can turn something that's ugly into something that makes you chuckle and so on. And so it's in a way sometimes it's a very good way to get beyond some of the pain and stuff that is caused by some of these things, you know, I mean, but you have to be careful, you know, it's like, I mean, I have some slogans and so on that depending on who I'm talking to, I'm thinking man shouldn't use that because they may not take it as a joke and they might you know, like, you know, not and I don't want anyone will try to really genuinely offend anybody, you know, of course, but

Jeff  29:55  
it's like, the power of satire like when you when you when you take something and you do Take it to such a lost count of the number of jokes on this bottle

Danny Ginsburg  30:05  
seen all the caps it's like once you've had it all the rest of just a bunch of CCCP

Jeff  30:15  
but like diffuses it right I mean at least it for the right audience it's like this is hilarious like so what's this last soda that we have to try it?

Danny Ginsburg  30:22  
All right so the last soda so Portuguese blend Oh Sean is so excited. So the thing is there is a part of palace Verdi's in California called Portuguese bend. Okay, so this shape on the on the label is the shape of palace Verdi's and it even has Portuguese bend written there. Okay, now the thing is, so my wife is from Brazil. And when we were in Brazil, we went to the state of Santa Catarina, which is south of Sao Paulo. Okay. And, and that's where the Portuguese first reached the land, you know, in South America, and they go Terra Vista, you know, meaning I see land, you know, and that was was down there. And so we went to a city called Florianopolis and they have even like a little island off of that called Aelia Gian Yato meeting. So you go to this elior do natural meeting. And they had this little like bar there Right? And they the boat like tickets there. It was actually where the tide when it's low, the bar is there and when the tide is up, they put everything and take it back.

Jeff  31:21  
And they had very regular hours. Yeah.

Danny Ginsburg  31:25  
Places like that around they'd like whales and stuff. Anyway, so So basically, what was really cool as they had these old Portuguese like jails and things like that there and they were showing us like the cannons and so forth. But at this bar, I ordered like, you know, a beer they have these nice beers and bottles. I get the cap, of course, my collection, but my wife ordered this thing that I thought was like the ultimate mega girly drink, you know, and it was like basically a pineapple like you see on the label where they cut off the top and carved it out. Okay, and then they put inside of it a mixture of pineapple juice Kush Shazza, which is the you know, Brazilian kind of like a tequila type drink from Brazil made from sugar cane, and covered with tons of mint leaves and a straw in it. Oh, and and the only thing missing was an umbrella. Yeah. Okay. And then I bought that. I said that. It's just like the most girly drink I've ever seen. She takes a sip and she goes try it. I go Nana. She goes, No, try it. I tried it. And I said, Wow, this flavor is incredible. Really. Again, Apple and mint leaf really work. And they discovered lately a pineapple mint leaf ice cream there too. So I come back to the US and say I'm making a pineapple mint leaf soda. Because it was reminiscent of tasting it where the Portuguese first landed and we live in palace. pretties near Portuguese band. Let's call it Portuguese blend because it's a blend. Yeah.

Jeff  32:49  
Oh, wow. So this this. This soda is like super bright green. Like I mean, electric green looking to me. Definitely get the men I don't get much of the pineapple in the nose. I definitely get the man.

Shon Hiatt  33:02  
That is delicious. You see? Oh my goodness. Gosh, the meat of this award. Oh.

Jeff  33:10  
Wow, that is really good.

Danny Ginsburg  33:12  
It's not only good. It's good for you. I know. Like my brother's a doctor. Really? And he's on untapped. Yeah, he likes beer too. So much barely foaming at the mouth.

Shon Hiatt  33:24  
Another breakfast drink.

Jeff  33:26  
Yeah, you mean beer?

Danny Ginsburg  33:27  
That great, you know, to have mouthwash afterwards because you're all nice.

Jeff  33:32  
It's really it's not a really sweet like, yeah, when you say pineapple you think I thought it was gonna be like very sweet, but it's not at all it's super like clean tasting just

Danny Ginsburg  33:41  
like make one soda. That's very sweet. It's called orthodox juice. What? It basically the idea from a Passover Seder. Yes, I was drinking that Manischewitz wine. Yeah. And I said, you know,

Shon Hiatt  33:56  
is that really sweet? That type of sweet. Oh, my goodness.

Danny Ginsburg  33:59  
But it's really good. You know, it's not like fine wine like Chateau Lesko. But it's, it's good. I mean, literally, like, I mean, Italy. My mother always goes on, like, I can't believe anyone drink that, you know, and I'm like, but it really, you know, it's not fine wine, but it's tasty. And so I thought to myself, I thought, you know, that's concord grapes. And all these grapes sodas are there, they're great, but they're not Concord grape, right? And all the ones I've always drunk, they're more like the pixie stick style, you know? And so I thought I want to make a concrete grape soda. And I want to make it taste like carbonated Manischewitz without the alcohol. And I had to put 59 grams of sugar into a 12 ounce bottle to do that size of tea an extra amount at the bottling plant. It was more sugar than a normal life but it has to be that flavor. And and and the funny thing is so so when I was telling people I'm going to make this stuff called Orthodox Jews. And I use like the English font with it looks like Hebrew letters. Okay, but then also, my mom's husband is like a total Bernie Sanders supporter. Yeah, I guess you want to call it make America great again. And so you know what I did? I made I made a split label production I made that and make America great again.

Jeff  35:21  
A different label. Yeah, it's

Danny Ginsburg  35:24  
also very sweet. All right.

Jeff  35:27  
sold the other been more

Danny Ginsburg  35:29  
ironically hito where most of the Make America Great Again has been sold. Were really, really Yeah. And I'm like, why would reorder reorder it like, wow, why? I don't know. I just think it's funny. The flavor is really good. I love the flavor. Yeah, it says that it says the soda elected grape by popular demand. The more you drink the purple or the states get

Jeff  36:04  
more important to use blue. And this is amazing. All right. So Danny, thank you so much for having us here. Real soda and real bottles, people are ordered approximately ordered directly from you, or they have to just find a distributor or someplace you've distributed to

Danny Ginsburg  36:17  
Yeah, they can order online from soda number for the letter u.com. So soda for you. So we actually prepare those right here at the outlet center. Because we have all these things you just go and keep and you can order all these you know, hundreds and hundreds of things. You know, we we send like a 12 pack with like double walled, you know, edges and so on, you know, and it's awesome. People local in Los Angeles, if they order five or six cases, we can just drive up and deliver it to their house. Wow, yeah. Oh, can we do that? But we do sell it like, you know, like I say, like, well, like Colorado, go to Roberts Italian deli in Littleton and Bob Russo and he has access pretty much everything. And, you know, he doesn't keep the stock that we do there. But I mean, you can order it for you for sure. That's cool. And then we you know, we're we shipped to like there's a lot there are like some hardware stores. There's a company that we work with in Illinois that actually is a allied with a lot of Ace Hardware stores and do it centers or whatever. And we're like in associated food stores, which they have some locations in Colorado is mainly Utah, right. But yeah, we we have probably 400 places that contact us that are like road places. You know, like when you're traveling, you know, like there's a place in Ohio called jungle gyms that's like this huge mega place. Yeah. 1000 square foot, right? stuff from all over the world. And so places like that they order like a pallet where they tell us like stack up 72 cases. Sure. So we have a lot of people that were like preparing pallets every day to ship to somebody somewhere. And that's one way we get it out there. But outside of the West we don't really have a lot of regular everyday distributors like us that run around. You know, I myself, I'm a delivery guy. You were doing deliveries this morning. While I'm doing right after this. They're loading my van now. So when I'm done, I'm gonna kind of run out and deliver to,

Shon Hiatt  38:00  
you gotta like some kjellson. Could people come here and just buy?

Danny Ginsburg  38:03  
Oh, yeah, yeah, right here. Yeah. And we have had people that are on a road trip that have come down here. Oh, sure. And put seven or eight cases on the roof of their car and bungee strap. They drive away with all this. Yeah, we there's nothing really like this anywhere. He's gonna be Joel and I head out of here, y'all. Yeah, you're welcome to end up in prices here at cheap. I mean, compared to most retailers because obviously, the wholesaler Yeah, so that's real. That's why I call it an outlet center. Because I remember the first one we first opened it up, there was this girl that picked out like six or seven sodas about 12 years ago. And she brought him up there pulled out a $20 bill and it came out to $7.81. And she goes Wait a minute, she goes

Jeff  38:46  
13 more?

Danny Ginsburg  38:48  
Yeah, so I mean, of course, you know, there's been inflation since then. But but it's still what sometimes when I see the tags like in markets that have my stuff, my jaw almost falls custom make that stuff of like, Oh my god. Killer. Yeah. Is the the actual liquid inside is not the most expensive part. It's like glass bottles. You know, and then all the various, even the box of boxes over $1 Now just for the cardboard box. Yeah, it used to be like 40 cents back in the day. So it's, it's getting expensive. But again, it's all relative. It's how it goes.

Jeff  39:26  
Well, this is fantastic. Danny Ginsberg founder of Real soda and real balls here in LA Yeah. So much for having us out. Remember,

Danny Ginsburg  39:33  
it's real taste no ways no aluminum after days, I

Jeff  39:38  
could do that. I can do a baron that for sure. Sean, thank you for joining me.

Shon Hiatt  39:42  
Thank you, Jeff. Great to meet you, Danny.

Jeff  39:44  
You too. So we'll be back here next episode talking to Sean a little bit about his research on soda and other craft industries. Once again, my name is Jeff York, research director at the Deming center at the the School of Business at the University of Colorado. Thank you so much. rejoin me for our second ever sober podcast. Brad, you missed out. We'll see you next time.

Danny Ginsburg  40:05  
It was a sobering experience it was.

Jeff  40:08  
I'm gonna drink some more chocolate maple Bay. Yeah, go

Danny Ginsburg  40:11  
for it. Go for it. I think I'd have a little more linen.

Stefani H  40:15  
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Creative Distillation recorded live on location at Real Soda In Real Bottles in Los Angeles. Learn more and order merch and soda at . We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas email us at cdpodcast@colorado.edu, and please be sure to subscribe to Creative Distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The Creative Distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ's Leeds School of BusinessFor more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's d-e-m-ing and click the Creative Distillation link. Creative Distillation is produced by Joel Davis at Analog Digital Arts. Our theme music is "Whiskey Before Breakfast" performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week for the next round of Creative Distillation. If you've enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy Leeds Business Insights, check them out at .