Dave Daly, founder of Grav Labs, shares his 20-year journey from creating the original Gravitron in his parents' garage to building an iconic cannabis accessories brand that's now expanding into THC beverages.
• Building a differentiated product with the original all-glass gravity bong in 2004
• Growing through innovation when a simple taster product helped save the company from debt
• Navigating the evolution from a single-product company to a full accessories line
• Making the transition from founder-CEO to bringing on a 50-50 partner
• Creating legal agreements that discourage litigation through requiring neutral arbitration
• Expanding into new categories with a glass-bottled THC beverage that "tastes and feels like you smoked weed"
• Developing distribution strategies through existing smoke shop channels while exploring liquor store opportunities
• Bringing valuable product expertise to the board of a public cannabis company
• Dealing with supply chain challenges from the recent US-China tariff increases
Visit grav.com to try the new Grav cannabis spirit beverage, a full spectrum product that captures the authentic cannabis experience.
--
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ben Larson (00:05):
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 83 of High
Spirits.
I'm Ben Larson and, as always,I'm joined today by Anne-Rae
Grabstein.
It's Thursday, april 10th 2025.
And we just got back from theso Curious Conference in Chicago
.
We got a great show for you.
Today we have a legend of theindustry.
(00:26):
If you've smoked out of a bong,you've probably used one of his
products, but he's done a lotmore since then 20 plus years in
the industry with Dave Daly.
We'll get to him in a littlebit.
But, anna Rae, you made it home.
How was the travel?
AnnaRae Grabstein (00:42):
The travel was okay.
But Chicago is a great city.
I really enjoy the food and theculture and the people, but
damn, does it have shittyweather.
Oh my gosh.
I've been really enjoying thespring in California the last
two weeks or so and I felt likeeverything was sort of shifting,
(01:03):
with the green hills and thesunshine.
And then you go to Chicago andit is cold and windy and not fun
to walk around.
Ben Larson (01:12):
We're not exaggerating.
The lows in California arehigher than the highs in Chicago
, that's true, by at least 10degrees.
Yeah, and it was shocking.
But yeah, I know, I went to aball game at Wrigley on Monday
night and I was telling my wifeabout it.
I'm like, oh, it's my firsttime at Wrigley.
(01:32):
And she's like you're going togo when it's 35 degrees out?
I'm like, oh, I didn't thinkabout that.
And I literally I'm like, can Iraid your scarf drawer?
Because I don't own scarves,but I know she had some fairly
neutral ones and so if you sawme in a scarf in Chicago, then
it came need to bring a big warmcoat.
(01:53):
But Chicago was great.
AnnaRae Grabstein (01:55):
It was really a wonderful event.
Hats off to Listen Ventures.
I think that they did thisincredible job of creating
(02:16):
beautiful branding and identityaround their event.
That made it something that itmade me want to go to it when I
saw the promotional materialsand how they were thinking about
it.
And then it really that brandcarried through into the
creativity with the way thatthey curated the content.
Ben Larson (02:34):
Yeah, yeah, I was not super excited to go because
I was just like anotherconference.
I eventually looked past that.
I there was meetings thatstarted popping up and
opportunities that drew me toChicago and I said, oh, you know
I could be there and go, butI'm really glad I did.
It didn't seem like theyattracted everyone in the room
(02:56):
and it actually inspired just alot of thought, because it
wasn't just a THC beverageconference.
They were doing thisnon-alcoholic social beverage,
which THC just happened to takethe spotlight.
But it really made me thinkabout the future and what is
like social drinking and how itdoesn't necessarily have to
(03:18):
include alcohol, and so I thinkit was really important for
people in the room to thinkabout that, like to really think
about the consumer and thinkabout the consumer perspective,
and I'd say that that's whatthey did really well is like
there was this persistent themeof feeling like the customer was
sitting in the room, eventhough it was a B2B kind of
conference.
AnnaRae Grabstein (03:38):
Yeah, within that I'll share that.
They that listen, shared onstage some of the research that
they did towards the end of 2024.
And they, through a bunch offocus groups and surveys, they
identified six active drinkingoccasions that they highlighted
and they talked about theconsumer's potential kind of
(04:03):
resonating with these differentoccasions.
And I have them here I canshare.
There's unwind, which is thetransitioning to evening.
There's the nightcap, aidingsleep and rest.
There's three, the party trick,priming the social pump.
Four, the zone in which is likeimmersing fully.
(04:26):
And five, they call the bonfire, which is about stoking shared
experiences.
And then six, relief oftreating yourself.
And I just, I loved, I lovedthis centering on the consumer
and the different behaviors andmoments when they might choose
to consume a beverage andthinking about what are the
(04:46):
right beverages for all of thesedifferent moments.
And you're right, it isn't justTHC, it's all types of things.
So I think that we're going tosee an evolution of social
spaces, thinking about beveragesin different ways.
That's definitely somethingthat I've come away with.
Ben Larson (05:02):
Yeah, and, and and for our first time conference,
the, the number of people andquality of the the attendees was
was really high.
And, um, you know, there's somuch going on in the industry.
Uh, I know, like Diana Eberleinwas flying in from her hearing
in Texas and landing and thenjumping on stage, um, and just
so much going on.
(05:23):
It's like catching up witheveryone.
It was a really nice groundingpoint.
Um, I know I woke up early inthe morning on Tuesday and
didn't get back to the hotel andwas just like talking, talking,
talking, basically until thelate hours of the night.
AnnaRae Grabstein (05:38):
I at my voice was gone by the end of the
night.
Also ended up at Soho housewith Kate Miller for miss grass.
Ben Larson (05:42):
She took me out.
AnnaRae Grabstein (05:42):
Thanks, kate, for picking up the bill.
The night also, I ended up atSoho House with Kate Miller for
Miss Grass.
She took me out.
Thanks, kate, for picking upthe bill.
I like that.
So it was just overall a reallygood time, and fast and easy.
So back in California, backgetting busy doing all kinds of
other things and if you're noton video y'all can't tell that
(06:03):
ben is wearing a suit.
Ben, why are you wearing a suittoday?
Ben Larson (06:07):
I don't know, but it's sucking the soul out of my
neck right now.
Um, I'm.
I'm leaving immediately afterwe hang up the phone, uh, to go
up to sacramento, and we'rehaving ncia's uh stakeholder
summit, where there'll berepresentatives from the
assembly, from the DCC and manyothers in the cannabis and hemp
(06:30):
community.
So important conversations tobe had.
California is an importantstate and we're in the middle of
a legislative session, so, yeah, hopefully we have some
productive conversations.
I am always skeptical, though,when I spend time in Sacramento.
AnnaRae Grabstein (06:46):
Yeah Well, and we should do a couple quick
little news updates.
But then we're going to jumpinto our conversation with Dave.
Last week we opined and what Ithought was a rant, but I think
it actually had some positiveoutcomes of content that came
out of it about the trade warand that instability that we
(07:08):
started metabolizing last weekas Americans and as business
owners has persisted.
I think that, from myperspective, some of the
comedians are our best filtersfor all of this, are our best
filters for all of this.
Jimmy Fallon said.
(07:29):
His quote I wrote it down forus is yeah, trump was like I
just saved the economy for me.
You're welcome.
Ben Larson (07:42):
Yeah, it's crazy because since last week, I think
we had quoted China being at a25% tariff and what are they now
at?
Like a billion percent.
AnnaRae Grabstein (07:51):
It's 145% as of this recording, but 12 hours
ago it was 125%.
So it's really hard to plan,which is one of the central
tenets of, I think, running agood business is clear planning.
So this is tough for everybody.
Ben Larson (08:09):
No question, he kind of failed at building physical
walls, so now he's buildingfinancial ones.
AnnaRae Grabstein (08:15):
Yeah, and then one more story that I
wanted to bring to the forefrontis that yesterday the news hit
about a whistleblower lawsuittargeting Metric and Metric.
Ben Larson (08:28):
And Metric for those that don't know holds the.
AnnaRae Grabstein (08:30):
Interesting timing.
Yeah, metric holds the trackand trace contracts with over 20
states for regulated legalcannabis, and this whistleblower
is claiming that the companyenabled a vast illegal
marketplace by failing to flagsuspicious distribution patterns
(08:50):
in California, despitecontractual obligations to do so
.
So I am excited to watch howthis all unfolds.
This is very interesting.
Ben Larson (08:58):
So the lawsuit's against Metric metric.
AnnaRae Grabstein (09:09):
Yes, it's claiming damages for being, for
being terminated and, uh,because of bringing these issues
to to the ceo, specifically, Ithink, um, who we've had on the
show, michael yeah look, I meanand this will come out in
discovery I don't think metricsthe the negligent one here.
Ben Larson (09:23):
like burner distro is pretty much like common
vernacular in California, and ifthe DCC hasn't caught on to
that yet, then again, I don'tthink it's metric, that's the
negligent one.
AnnaRae Grabstein (09:34):
Well, we'll see what the courts say.
Shall we bring on our guest.
Ben Larson (09:40):
Yeah, before I get myself into trouble with Nicole
before arriving in Sacramento.
Yeah, before I get myself intotrouble with Nicole before
arriving in Sacramento.
AnnaRae Grabstein (09:45):
So today's guest is someone whose work
you've probably smoked out of,even if you didn't realize it.
Dave Daly is the founder ofGrav Labs, one of the most
iconic brands in cannabisaccessories.
He's known for creating theoriginal Gravitron in his
(10:06):
parents' basement, I think, orgarage and shaping the modern
glass game.
He launched the company in 2004, bootstrapping it from his
parents' garage, like I said,into a nationally recognized
brand.
That helped to define theparaphernalia category, and over
the past 20 years, dave hasscaled Grave, fought for legal
reforms and, after stepping awayfrom his CEO role, leads
innovation and growth, includingtheir recent launch into the
(10:27):
THC beverage space.
He also serves on the board ofa public company and we're just
so excited to finally have Daveon the show.
Welcome to High Spirits.
Dave Daily (10:36):
Thanks for having me , guys.
Ben Larson (10:37):
Dude, good to see you and sitting in the hotbed of
a lot of this legislative talk,Texas.
AnnaRae Grabstein (10:44):
So, dave, take us back.
We said in the intro that youlaunched Grav in 2004, but can
you tell us about how it allstarted?
I think a lot of people wouldlove to hear your founder story,
and specifically when you knewthat it was going to be more
than a side hustle and turn itinto a real company.
Dave Daily (11:04):
Yeah, that goes way back.
I mean, when, when I first hadthis concept of, of making a
bong.
It was actually college.
You know, the typical dormstory, um, where we were making
our own gravity bongs and, um,I'll spare you all of the
details, um, but I went to workfor my dad's mortgage company at
the, you know in 2003 andquickly realized, like, hey, I'm
(11:29):
, I'm probably not, you know notinto this longterm.
It was actually right aroundthis, like you know, the
beginning of the loan crisis,and so we I was living with my
parents and, you know,fortunately, they were very
supportive and I said to them Iwant to try this, I want to try
to make this gravity bong thing.
And, and I went out to you know, this was my first exercise in
(11:55):
design and I had to go out andfigure out what a commercialized
gravity bong would look like.
Cause, at the time, I mean,everyone is smoking out of
gravity bongs and everyone, ifyou're you know, you're kidding
a dorm, you've made a gravitybong in your, you know, in your
sink.
And, and that was actually theinitial pushback when I
ultimately was able to bring aproduct to market, this gravity
(12:15):
bong, it was like, oh, you canmake those at home.
And I was like, well, you canmake any bong at home.
And and so I mean, look, youknow we can go deep into the
founder stories We've talkedabout this before but, like you
know, this idea of making an allglass gravity bong in 2004 was
an opportunity for me to show upat the bong trade shows with
(12:37):
something, with a product thatwas like truly differentiated
right, like no one had ever madea commercially viable all glass
gravity bong before, and so itwas a license to get into every
smoke shop in the country.
At the time, there was maybe,you know, I would argue, 1500
real smoke shops in the country,you know.
Sure, there was, like you know,there was also sex shops that
(12:58):
sold bongs and like other things, other areas that you know we
would try to like get into, butfor the most part these were
novelty stores and old schoolhead shops, and, and so that was
like 04 to 07.
I sat, you know I was in SouthAustin at a in like a shotgun
shack warehouse, making gravitybones by myself, like cutting
(13:19):
bottle.
You know, the gravity bone forthose that don't know what a
gravity bung is is a uh I, myversion of it was a wine bottle,
um specifically designed a copyof the kindle jackson um
chardonnay bottle and um.
And then I used a vase that Ifound at michael's.
That was just a cylinder vase.
(13:41):
And then I had to design a waythat the you know that the bowl
goes in the top.
That was just a cylinder vase,and then I had to design a way
that the you know that the bowlgoes in the top.
That was a clean look, etcetera.
I designed a box that made itlook, you know, commercialized,
and I'm doing this all by myself.
I had people that were helpingme along the way.
There were friends thatcontributed, of course, in
helping me sell, but, like, forthe most part, I'm up at the
(14:02):
warehouse making, you know,cutting the bottoms off of
bottles and you know, packagingthem and um putting them boxes
myself until two o'clock in themorning, you know, for three
years, like oh four to oh seven.
This is like my life and um.
And then in in oh seven, youknow kind of everything changed.
I had like worked.
I spent all this time trying tobuild this gravity bone company
(14:26):
.
That was, you know cause thegravity bung is still, to this
day, the most efficient way tosmoke flour.
Ben Larson (14:32):
Really quick before we get to the next phase.
Did your father know what agravity bong was?
That's my first question.
My second question is doesKendall Jackson know the
importance that they've playedin your story brand?
Because they should.
Dave Daily (14:47):
No, definitely not, and I'm trying to be cognizant
of not like telling you knowthis is.
This story can go on for 30minutes.
So, like, please stop me andask me any questions.
So the the?
The answer to your firstquestion is not at the time, but
my dad was always very I meanlike, like you can't, I mean I
guess you could tell this storyin a way where your parents
weren't supportive and you wentoff and was, you know, I
(15:09):
defected from my family and wemissed our debunking.
But I actually think thatanybody who has the amount of
meaningful happiness in lifethat I feel like I've achieved
has parents that have supportedthem along the way, and they
were always very supportive.
Did not know what a gravitybunk was, but, like the moment
that I built one was like, oh myGod, this is amazing.
(15:31):
So, yeah, it was, it was reallynice.
AnnaRae Grabstein (15:35):
So so talk about this.
What happened in 2007?
That that changed thetrajectory of the company?
Ben Larson (15:42):
Yeah, because a gravity bunk sounds pretty niche
Like.
I remember my one and lastexperience with a gravity bong
and it was mine was a 64 ounceGatorade bottle, so it was just
too much for my small lungs.
But I imagine it's like it'sinteresting to hear that there
was this pickup into all thesesmoke shops, so it's like, okay,
(16:04):
clearly there's a market, butit still feels like a pretty
niche product.
AnnaRae Grabstein (16:07):
Ben, you're just not a bong smoker, clearly.
Ben Larson (16:10):
I know, I know.
Dave Daily (16:14):
Well, we are talking about the height of bongs here,
like we're, you know, 04 to 07,like you know, we will
hopefully get there in thispodcast, but like we're probably
at the low point of bongs today, right, it during this podcast.
But like we're probably at thelow point of bongs today, right,
like, from a, you know, peoplesmoking out of bongs perspective
.
But the um, but at the timewe're talking about, like this
was the cool thing, like, if youwere smoking flour, which is,
(16:34):
like you know, something thatyou were, every single person in
the country was doing illicitly, then you know, it was, uh, you
know, it was a spectacle andyou wanted to create a spectacle
.
And so part of creating aspectacle is smoking out of this
apparatus.
And everyone's like, what thehell did that guy just pull out
of his closet, right?
So, like, when you saw it onshelf at a head shop for 50
(16:54):
bucks, it was a prettyattractive purchase.
So, you know, and the flashforward to a seven year point is
that, like, despite the factthat this was, you know, a
success in each individual smokeshop, I ran out of money.
It was like, you know, we, youknow I was selling, I remember I
was consistently about threehundred thousand dollars a year
(17:17):
for those first three years ofgravity bongs.
And, granted, my overhead waslow, but I was losing money.
And so what happened was Irealized like okay, I've hit a
breaking point.
I was actually taking outcredit cards to pay off the
other credit cards because theywould send you checks to be like
(17:41):
, hey, since you've just openedthis credit card, you can write
a check to like a vendor as anexample, but I would just pay
the other credit card off withthe new credit card and just
play the credit card game.
It was a very dangerous game,of course, um, but fortunately I
was able to crawl out of it,and what happened was seven was
that I?
(18:01):
I made this one hitter?
It was.
It was actually a derivative ofthe gravity bong.
The gravity Bong takes a bowllike a funnel bowl that goes in
the top of the Gravity Bong, andI was making all of those
myself.
And so when I was and I hadtaken the Gravity Bong to the
High Times Cannabis Cup inAmsterdam in 06, and everyone's
smoking after each other, it wasliterally like a small room of
(18:23):
people that are showcasing theirflower and allowing people to
smoke out of bongs, the flower,and so you'd have people lined
up to smoke out of that bong,one after each other.
Disgusting, pre-covid days,Unbelievable.
And although I never went backto that cannabis cup, I actually
designed this product calledthe taster, which was just a one
(18:44):
hitter that I.
It was very simple, likestraight clear glass pipe with a
restriction in it that youcould put a you know, basically
two hits of flour in, and I callit a taster.
And I took it to a trade showand it, like you know there's a
lot of details in here that I'llskip over but like that one
product got me out of debt.
I was able to like build allthese taster machines that you
(19:07):
know I had to be manned.
But like, build a taste machine, hire a glass blower, build
another one, rinse, wash, repeat, until you know, flash forward
six months.
I was like out of debt and Iwas onto like, oh, this is more
than just a gravity bone company.
I can make all of the productsthat are meaningful to head
shops, including spoons andbubblers and bongs, and you know
(19:28):
, and everything in between.
And, um, you know, the.
The fact is that like that's,that's, that's the last 20 years
, or 17 years, in a nutshell, isjust continuing to press that
button.
Ben Larson (19:42):
That's amazing.
Can we drill into that kind offirst inflection point Just
because I think as entrepreneurswe talk about the pivot so
often or finding product marketfit and just talk about that
like vast difference of likegoing from pushing the boulder
uphill running out of money toall of a sudden being like
something, feeling like it wasclicking and knowing that you
(20:04):
had to lean into it?
Dave Daily (20:07):
well, I think, as founders, we get so committed to
like our product and our visionand you do see these like you
know, and you hear these storiesof like people who you know,
the, the famous apple story of,like you know, steve jobs cared
about what was, you know, behindthe machine as much as what you
could see in the.
You know, in the, the, the back, you know the, the back end of
the machine as much as the frontof the machine.
It was all about like having asingle vision that was like
(20:28):
being laser focused and, um, Idon't think it's that clean.
I think that everyone wants tolike paint these pretty pictures
, especially on you know,podcasts like these, no offense,
but like here's a wonderfulstory about how you can better
your life.
And the fact is like it's not,it's never a straight line.
And, like you know, if you, ifyou are so rigid that you can't,
you know, pivot when the timeis, when it's time to pivot,
(20:51):
that's, that's explicitly whenfailures happen, and it
certainly almost happened to me.
I mean, I I would say that I'mlike very quick to eat my young
Um and um and over the, we'vehad moments, including right now
, frankly, for me, which maybewe'll get into it or not where
you have to make some harddecisions about what your
(21:14):
business is and what it's goingto become in the future, and
that reinvention has to happenconstantly.
If you're not paying attentionto it, I think that you will
fall behind Constantly If you'renot paying attention to it, I
think that you will fall behind.
AnnaRae Grabstein (21:25):
Oh, there's so much there.
Well, before we dive into thatreinvention and how you see the
world and where it's all going,give us the short version of
after that 2007 scaling momentwhere you really leaned in and
started to expand the productline.
What was the upward trajectoryfor Grav?
(21:45):
What were the ways that youwere looking at the business?
Was it number of units sold?
Was it revenue?
Number of customers that youwere serving?
What did that hockey stick looklike in terms of the business?
Dave Daily (21:59):
Very easy answer it was get more accounts as fast as
possible.
Easy answer it was like it was.
It was get more more accountsas fast as possible.
And cause?
I just knew that.
You know, I've had this metricmy whole career.
It was like okay, well, I knowthat each store sells about 12
gravity bungs a year a year,that's like like one per month
per store.
And so it was like well, I'vegot.
(22:20):
You know, the only metric thatI can pay attention to is more
store count, right, like andcause.
It held true like everywhere,and I didn't have all the stores
Like I was probably.
I remember I had like 600active stores.
And you know, in in 07, when itwas like, okay, how am I going
to come out of this?
And you know, because thatbecame okay, if they're doing
one gravity bone per month, howmany of these taster racks can I
(22:42):
sell them per month?
And it was like, oh, they'removing two of those taster racks
every month.
Well, that's, that's triple therevenue of my you know, of my
gravity bung sales.
So now I can like just, youknow, if I keep on adding more
stores and more products, thisbecomes exponential.
And so it was something toreally like hold on to and we
still do that today.
Like, we've got stores that are, you know that we kind of you
(23:06):
know that are our example stores.
I tell this to a lot of youknow companies that I advise
that like hey, pick, you know,pick some like geographical and
psychographical stores that arerepresentative of the stores
that you want to sell into andyou know, use those as your
example stores, not necessarilyto other people, although that
works, but like, use it as yourown model, like I think that you
(23:27):
know so many times like, sostupid as this is to say, people
just like go and try to selleverywhere all at once and don't
have any idea what's actuallyhappening in the stores that
they're selling to, or you know,frankly, the customer feedback
(23:47):
man, there's some, some greatnuggets and they're the.
Ben Larson (23:49):
I love the idea of, of launching with a singular
product that nearly guaranteesyou shelf space because it's
unique, and then and thenexpanding from there.
Um, you know, in the beveragecategory that I spend a lot of
time in, you know we see peopleapproaching it different ways,
where they'll launch with asingle SKU sometimes, but more
times than not they're comingwith a whole like offering of of
(24:12):
.
You know flavors, right, andyou're trying to grab shelf
space from the get um, andyou're using that selection to
kind of create more visibilityfor your brand.
But, yeah, starting with asingular form factor, it's kind
of like what Red Bull did.
I guess you go into a gasstation these days and there's
probably 12 Red Bull flavors,but everyone knew Red Bull for
(24:35):
that first singular flavor.
Dave Daily (24:37):
For a while.
Yeah, you told me to bring somequestions, so what we haven't
talked about?
Or maybe, ben, you and I talkedabout this a little bit, but
when you know, I'm an ArcViewguy.
So, like, I started in ArcViewin 2012, or really, I joined in
2012.
My first meeting was 2013.
Ben Larson (24:54):
Yeah, the Troy Dayton and Steve D'Angelo days.
Dave Daily (24:58):
Of course, and I guess pointing back that you
were also involved in ArcView.
Did you pitch to ArcView?
Did you actually raise money inArcView?
Ben Larson (25:06):
No, I never raised money with ArcView.
We had a friendly relationshipbecause of when we launched
Gateway and we were doing earlystage companies, and so I was
sending a lot of our companiesover to ArcView, which some did
raise money over to RQ, whichsome did raise money.
Dave Daily (25:23):
Yeah Well, I guess it's more of a patch into like,
how, like did that?
You know the original Vertosa,you know skew, so to speak.
You know, was it always justyou know emulsified THC, or did
you have vision early on that,like you, would do these other
things?
Ben Larson (25:40):
Yeah, I mean early on.
I'm trying to now, I'm tryingto think back.
It was largely THC.
We were in the regulated space,but more than anything, we knew
that we needed to create aplatform that allowed beverages
to work and be stable and tastegood, because that was not the
status quo in the space.
(26:00):
But we did believe thatbeverage was going to be a
future.
And so we came in with just thesingular focus of like we're
going to do one thing and we'regoing to do it really really
well.
And people always asked us likeare you going to launch your own
beverage?
And I'm like no, it's adistraction, we don't know
beverage and it's competitivewith our customer.
And so, yeah, I mean, eventoday, we're very narrow in what
(26:24):
we do in the supply chain.
But it's kind of a feature atthis point because it's
relatively complicated.
We found out I didn't know itwas going to be so complicated
when we launched, so what Ithought we were going to do was
probably different than what weended up doing, because we just
learned so much about thetechnology and how it plays into
this like really complicatedsupply chain you both basically
(26:47):
said that, that you started todo one thing and you ended up
realizing how much morecomplicated it is, and I've had
to pivot all through it, andthat is so interesting to see
both of you, through differentjourneys, come to that same
conclusion.
Dave Daily (27:00):
I love it yeah, well it's actually interesting
because, like my, my version ofthat is like, we are still like.
You know that our feature isglass.
Right like and that's that isthe through line like even our
you know this beverage thatwe're doing we, you know we, we
are the only beverage company inmarket with a mini liquor
(27:21):
bottle, glass mini liquor bottleformat.
To my knowledge, no one else isdoing that, and for good reason
.
Right Like the you know it's.
It's very complicated tomanufacture, not not?
I know that we're not at thepart where I plug myself yet,
but I you know, but but it's the.
you know the, the, the, thethrough line is is this glass
thing?
And's really hard to break awayfrom that as a brand.
(27:50):
Even at this pastCandidate-a-Con, we were
presenting our beverage.
They gave us an opportunity toput it on the table with the
other beverages and I overheardthree or four people be like,
isn't that the Bomb brand?
And it's like, at the same timethat I'm like, yes, they
recognize this.
I'm also like God, we'repigeonholed, right Like we're.
(28:12):
You know what's the when we'retypecasted, right Like an actor,
right Like we can't get out ofthis.
You know this actor?
Ben Larson (28:20):
Okay, we can't get out of this actor.
Okay, so now that it's here,now that it's on the table, I
want to talk about what led tothe launch of this beverage.
Right, because we're talkingabout bongs, we're talking about
one-hitters.
There's a lot, I know you guys,because of the menorah bong,
(28:42):
but somehow you ended up inbeverage which comes in glass,
notably I.
I had not thought about aboutthat until just now, but it felt
like there was like manydifferent directions grab could
go, and so I'm curious like,yeah, how did you make that
decision to kind of go off ontosomething where people are gonna
say isn't that the bong company?
Dave Daily (29:00):
well, I mean, it's easy to say that like, oh, you
guys decided to go from bongs tobeverage, and it's the title of
the podcast.
So like I'm not going to likeshut it down, but you know Eric.
So we don't see Eric, but he'sthe magic that makes this
podcast happen.
I'm just going to plug Eric incase you guys don't.
And you know, prior to this,eric's like oh, I remember when
(29:21):
you guys did this pre-filledglass joint in California and I
was like, yeah, that was a wildfailure.
We lost a lot of money tryingto do that.
And for those uneducated, wetried to become a flower brand
in California via like hey, weknow that people are already
smoking out of glass.
Let's make a pre-filled glassthing and put it in market.
(29:44):
And we found some partners.
Turns out the partners were bad, which, again, like it might've
been the reason for failure,but like I think that the bigger
reason was that they you knowit just was very hard to explain
the product and the butlersdidn't know how to, et cetera,
and it was more expensive thanjust a regular pre-roll.
It was not important what theproduct was, but like we did try
(30:06):
other things, and we've tried alot of things.
I mean like I've got morefailures, failed products under
my belt than successful ones.
Ben Larson (30:13):
And I love the room at your facility where you have,
like, the graveyard of all thedifferent products.
Dave Daily (30:19):
It's really great, it's a big graveyard of all the
different products.
It's really great Graveyard.
Yeah, we'll we'll, we'll flash,do a picture of that and post
Anyway.
So I the the the story on thebeverage is is really one of
like reading the writing on thewalls.
(30:40):
I mean, you know, I, I, I wasat, I was at BizCon in 2023 and
I always try to meet up withJosh Rosen there.
Josh Rosen is a dear friend ofmine.
I met him at Arcview.
He's the reason why I joinedthe Board of Forefront.
He put me on the Board ofForefront and how.
I know Jerry, who was on theprevious podcast, I guess two
podcasts ago.
It was on the previous podcast,I guess two podcasts ago, and
(31:03):
Josh was at the time the CEO ofVireo, and so he's in Minnesota
and he's like, hey, this thingis happening with beverage in
Minnesota.
And specifically, he was like,hey, this category is taking up
to 20% of spirit sale I guess Idon't know how to categorize it.
(31:24):
Take, you know, beer andrestaurant sales of of beverage
is like up to 20 percent of ofthat of revenue in these um, in
these venues, and that'ssomething that you can't like,
not pay attention to.
And so he was like, hey, youneed to go make bong water.
And he thought that that wasclever.
Like hey, put this bong, sellit and sell the water in a bong
(31:48):
shaped bottle.
Like that's brilliant.
And so I actually tried to dothat.
We, we like, we went all theway down the rabbit hole of
designing a bottle that lookslike a bong.
I should have shown.
AnnaRae Grabstein (32:00):
Not brilliant .
Nobody wants to drink bongwater should have.
Dave Daily (32:05):
I should have.
Nobody wants to drink bongwater, that's right.
Fortunately we didn't do that,um, but but we made the bong, we
made the actual, like you knowis a bottle.
Um, so the you know, we I cameback from that in 2023 and,
starting in 2024, I'd also knownIan Dominguez.
I'd met him a couple of timesand he was like, hey, you should
come to this Canada data conand um, and so I, um, I learned
(32:27):
a lot about it then and so westarted the journey in 2024 to
design the beverage and, um, ifyou know, if I had known now
what I knew, then I could havebrought this to this beverage to
market in three months, andinstead it took us 12 months
because, um, this is hard tonavigate.
(32:50):
I mean, like you, you guys areboth in it, but like and you
know the cast of characters butlike, it is really hard to
design a liquid from the groundup.
And hard because, like anybodycan make a I'm not talking shit
here Like anybody can make aflavor fizzy water.
There's a, there's a goodecosystem of things to do.
Where you want to make a fizzy,you know a fizzy water in a can
.
You know that is.
(33:11):
You know there are someincumbents that have done a
phenomenal job.
If you want to jump into thatspace, it's relatively easy.
How to differentiate is veryhard and um, and we're still
questioning whether ours isdifferentiated enough.
Ben Larson (33:26):
I will give you a little bit of plug, just because
, Anne-Marie, I don't thinkyou've had the chance to try it
yet.
I have it right here actually.
Oh, crack it open.
AnnaRae Grabstein (33:38):
I've been saving this one.
I had two and I've drank oneand I'm saving it for later.
Ben Larson (33:43):
I'm not going to open it All right, great, oh,
that's right.
They were all out on the tableat Canada, no, but the amazing
thing that happened when I triedit for the first time was, like
it was that moment where I'mlike this is how you marry the
form factor with the craft,which has been a big disconnect
for a lot of folks, right, it'sjust like.
It's like oh yeah, we're, wecan put the plant in everything
(34:04):
and create the experience.
And, like you said, dave, a lotof times it's about creating a
normalized flavor.
But when you make the plant thecentral piece of it, it all of
a sudden kind of creates thissynchronicity between the form
factor and the craft of growingthe plant.
So I just huge kudos there.
I remember just like sniffingit and tasting it while we, you
(34:26):
know, while we conversed over it, and it was kind of like a
beautiful moment for me as a asa beverage enthusiast.
Dave Daily (34:34):
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
AnnaRae Grabstein (34:37):
Talk about the the process, too, of
launching this beverage and howyou are seeing the space.
You mentioned that you startedgrov in um in texas.
You're still there.
The company is based there.
We've been talking a lot abouttexas because texas has been a
very um vibrant and thrivinghemp derived market and now
(35:01):
there's a bunch of legislativestuff going on there that we can
touch on.
But is it?
It was part of it also that yousaw this massive opportunity in
your backyard and so youdecided to launch in Texas first
, or how have you been thinkingabout the actual launch process
of this beverage?
Dave Daily (35:20):
Well, you're asking two things the launch plus why
you know the.
The launch plus why you knowthe.
The why, what?
Why we love this is because wefundamentally believe in this
form factor.
I mean, this has been, you know, if you ask anybody in cannabis
beverage, you know, or anyfunctional beverage for that
matter, like this is a categorythat has been a category of
(35:41):
sales since like the beginningof humanity.
Right, and you know it's, andit is a much more palatable
consumption method than smokingor vaping or even eating a gummy
.
Right, like this, you know, andit's, and it's in its infancy.
So it feels like this is like amoment and, you know, we
certainly wanted to capitalizeon that moment.
We, you know, for the record,though, like grab, we see
(36:03):
ourselves as a cannabis brand.
So, like you know this, this isan entry for us and, you know,
frankly, it's an entry becausewe're in texas and it's a very
limited, you know, market.
I mean, yeah, you could getinto, you know we, technically,
we could, you know, exploit theloophole of of him, for I'm
putting this in quotes because Idon't want to be cast as a, you
know, bad actor.
But, like you know, we don'thave a regulatory framework.
(36:25):
We prefer not to exist anddesign products outside of a
more rigid regulatory framework.
So we don't make flour products, we don't make vapes, we don't
make gummies.
Um, I mean, we arguably couldand should, and that is
certainly not something thatwe're not going to do, but the
(36:46):
you know this, this beverage hasbeen an opportunity for us to
showcase kind of our vision ofwhat, of what a can, of, what a
grav consumable product wouldlook like.
I mean, we heavily identifywith the smoker.
Like you know, we're smoker,we're a bong company, and so we
made a beverage for people thatlike to smoke bongs.
(37:06):
So if you probably aren't abong person, you probably won't
like a full spectrum liquid thattastes and feels like you just
smoked weed.
AnnaRae Grabstein (37:14):
Well, let's double click on that a little
bit.
In that a lot of the THCbeverage focus has been on
traditional Bev-Alk channelsliquor stores primarily
convenience stores.
You have a very existing andlarge customer base of smoke
shops and dispensaries as well,but have you been thinking that
(37:36):
that's where this product shouldlive?
Is it the smoke shop, or areyou thinking about those other
channels as well?
Dave Daily (37:44):
well, right now we are you know, I would you know
we're 98 distributing thisthrough smoke and vape channels.
Um, that's, that's been a.
I mean it's, it's a greatcategory for us, primarily
because we are already very well, um, merchandised in those
channels so we can, like, showup in our own sets in these
channels and it's, it's a veryeasy sell-in for us.
(38:05):
That being said, we are inenough liquor stores to tell you
outright, you know, a bigsurprise there's three X the
velocity in liquor stores thatthere is in smoke and vape
channel.
Now, you know, we can livepretty comfortably for a
relatively long time in Smokeand Vape and be okay.
(38:25):
So, like, it gives us a littlebit of an advantage that we
don't have to immediately lightup all these distributors.
But we're at a point now where,from capacity perspective,
where you know we are likelooking towards getting you know
, signing more distributiondeals, which is, you know, you
know now the humbling part,which is like, oh hey, by the
way, we have no idea how to setup and sign distribution deals
(38:48):
with liquor distributors.
This is like new territory forus.
So, um, that's been reallytricky.
Ben Larson (38:55):
I don't know if we're ready to jump to this, but
, like I, I'm starting to thinkabout your perspective, knowing
smoke and vapes jumping intothis beverage category.
But then NRA also mentionedthat.
Or you also mentioned thatyou're on the board of a public
MSO and I'm curious as to howyour perspective has brought
(39:17):
value to that board, or what youthink that that unique
perspective does for for theboard of a company like that
well, for the most majority ofmy tenure on this public board,
which is forefront public.
Dave Daily (39:28):
You know, public knowledge that this is, uh, you
know, forefront ventures, um,and we have operations in
massachusetts and illinois andwashington and a failed
experiment in californiawonderfully failed experiment in
california and the.
You know, the easy answer onthis is simply like product
marketing, I mean, that's,that's been where I have.
(39:51):
You know, um, that's themajority of my focus on.
You know, even within graph,product innovation anyway,
talked about it, you know, inthe introduction.
Thank you for that instruction.
Even within Grab, productinnovation, anaray talked about
it in the introduction.
Thank you for that introduction.
And so I've been.
You know, I've felt valuablethere.
I mean, my wife always asks melike do you feel like you
brought value to that boardmeeting?
(40:12):
And I do.
It's the surprise and I wouldsay this, like you know, as a
humble brag here is like whenyou get on a board of a public
company, it's like it feels like, oh man, I have really made it
like.
I am like on the board of apublic company.
I'm like what?
And for the record, I'm likeway out over my skis here.
I don't.
I'm like who am I to be on theboard of a public company.
(40:34):
But you know, yet again it's oneof those scenarios where like,
oh, like, no one's that smart,no one really knows what they're
talking about here, right, like, and you know, you get on this
board and the board nobody onthe board knows product Like,
these are all financial people,like, that's all these guys know
about.
And so the moment that we startgoing, you know bring in
(40:55):
management and we start talkingabout which cues are moving, why
they're moving, where they'removing is the part where I get
to really drill in and you know,understand, like, hey, why, if
you know, if pre-rolls are adisproportionate point of sales,
like how should we think aboutwholesale Like there's?
You know that the, the businessof the business, is where I was
able to to, surprisingly, youknow, add value because these
(41:17):
boards typically don't have anentrepreneurial lens and and
I've been the only independenton this board and you know that
boards are typically consistentof, like people who have
invested in the company.
You know, yes, you see, likeApple and Disney that have these
like, you know, ceos who'vebeen in other companies, that's
not like these small.
(41:37):
You know, every cannabis brandor MSO is a relatively small
board of insiders.
AnnaRae Grabstein (41:45):
I love that you have brought this up,
because I think that, first ofall, just having independent
board members is so incrediblyimportant and I think that it
was very smart of Forefront toinvite you to be on the board.
Kudos to them, especiallybecause where you came from in
(42:07):
the smoke shop channel reallywas the only place that people
were interacting in anout-of-the-closet way with the
cannabis consumer prior tolegalization, and so your
insight through that lens andthe way that you understood the
consumer as all these new stateswere turning on, I think, was
fundamentally different than theway that a lot of people were
coming into the market.
So I think that's really cooland you did touch on it, this
(42:30):
evolution of focusing oninnovation.
But what we didn't touch on isyou actually, as the founder and
former CEO of Grav, deciding tono longer be the CEO of a
company that you started, and,because we are really interested
in leadership and people'sjourneys, I would love to talk
(42:52):
about that and when you startedto see past being the CEO of a
company that you started, whatthat was like for you.
Dave Daily (43:01):
What it was like.
Well, you know, I'm sure thatthis becomes something that you,
that founders, make a decisionabout and, specifically, you
know, a hundred percent ownerfounders, you know, make
decisions about for a lot ofdifferent reasons.
You know, for me it was prettyopportunistic.
I, I was going through somechanges in my life and, um, just
(43:23):
so happens that my best friendsince I was five years old was
going through changes in hislife, you know, from a career
perspective, and came to me inconfidence and looking for a
company to to scale, and, um,and I at the time was, like you
know, this is 20, uh, 2019.
At the time, you know, I'm 15years into this company and, um,
(43:46):
I just we, we'd actually justreceived an offer to an LOI from
a public company to getpurchased, and so I had gone
through this existential momentof like, should I sell to the
public company?
Should I keep this private?
Like, what should I do?
And you know I was talking toanyone and everyone who would
listen and ultimately decidednot to, and you know, for grace,
(44:08):
you know, grateful that itdidn't happen because the
company that was made the offerwent to zero, which is a whole
other conversation we can talkabout.
Oh, that one I don't know ifI'm at liberty to like talk
about it, one I don't know ifI'm at liberty to like talk
about it.
So, but point is is that youknow, you know I I saw brandon
(44:30):
in this moment and was like youknow, and this, I'm gonna
simplify it but like I was like,oh, what a better way to you
know, there couldn't be a betterway to live my life than to
like share this company thatI've built with, like my best
friend and business partner and,like you know, someone who I
call brother.
I mean our children call eachother uncle.
So, like, far before we evermade this decision, and and you
(44:51):
know, but you go into thisrecognizing that there's a
massive amount of risk to it,right, especially, and I'm sure
there's a lot of leaders andfounders that you know, that you
talk to, that, you know to thathave made the decision to go
into business with a friend, andthat's very dangerous because
you could lose the friendship.
If you're willing to lose thefriendship, then, like sure, go
(45:13):
for it.
Or you know that thatfriendship is always going to be
the thing that comes first.
So what I would advise peopleis to, you know, first start
with like um 30 years offriendship and then decide but
now you know it's the.
To answer your question, likehow I made the decision was
what's much more about likecircumstances in my life and
(45:37):
recognizing that, like you knowwho I want to be and how I want
to live my life, and and andfrankly you know my, my wife now
had asked me a long time ago,like what's your succession plan
?
And like I think that's notsomething that people think
about a lot, especially likepeople who are running these
businesses completely on theirown, and, um, I wanted to make
sure that, like, if you know, Igot hit by a bus that, like my
(45:59):
family, would be taken care ofand that certainly would have
happened if I hadn't broughtBrandon on as a partner.
Ben Larson (46:06):
Man, succession planning and every aspect of
your business and life.
It's just so criticallyimportant.
We talk about a lot this, a lotin the Vistage group I'm a part
of.
But, dave, I want to drill in alittle bit more into the
relationship with Brandon.
So, like the premise of, yeah,30 year friendship, uncle, you
(46:27):
know that is that's a goodmotivator as to oh yeah, this
will work.
But since then, since 2019, I'msure there's been ups and downs
within the company.
And how do you make sure thatyou maintain that relationship
in those times?
Like, what are, what are someof the specific advice that you
would give?
Cause I know a couple others inthe industry where you know
(46:49):
they have a similar relationshipand I've already raised it to
them as like a third party, likekind of a red flags, like
really make sure you guysunderstand what your
decision-making matrix is likein the future.
Yeah, how have you maintainedtheir friendship throughout
making hard decisions in thebusiness?
Dave Daily (47:05):
Well, the easy answer is that the friendship
comes first, and you know we,you know now I say that but like
, obviously there's.
You know, we don't always agreeand the the the point of like,
disagree.
There's an art of disagreement,right, like you know, and I
think that there's.
We're in a moment right nowwhere, like you know, the we, we
(47:26):
recently did a round of layoffsand you know it's not something
that you know I want to go intobut the, the, the people who
are still with us at the companyright now we're, we're in a
moment where the mantra is like,hey, you're either in camp,
like, hey, this is so hard andI'm not sure how I'm going to
get through it, or we'll figurethis out.
And in these moments, we canonly have people, we can only
(47:48):
have we'll figure this outpeople.
Right, and that's that's howBrandon and I've always operated
.
It's like, hey, you can bringme anything and everything, the
hardest things in the world, andwe've been through the hardest
things in the world togetheralready, and so we just are
always operating as a we'llfigure this out.
Moment I get to bring thedumbest ideas to him and he can,
you know, shut him down, tellme, that's the dumbest idea I've
(48:10):
ever heard.
And I can't get upset about it.
And I need to tell him that,like, hey, you know you're, you
know the way that you're runningthis company isn't sustainable
and you know you're going tohave to make some hard decisions
about people and processes thatare going to, you know, send,
send us in a path that, like,could be a downward spiral and
(48:33):
he has to be okay with that andI have to support him.
And so, like the, the also, Imean we didn't get into it, but
like you know the structure ofthe deal and knowing, like you
know, yes, it's like oh yeah,sure, it's just because we're
friends.
Well, we spent a long time, youknow, six months of like working
on the deal to make sure thatthis, this contract between us
(48:54):
was airtight, right, and thatthat is a backbone of of like.
What we know is like hey, we'remarried, it's truly a marriage
and in every sense, in fact,it's probably more onerous than
a marriage, right?
Like?
Um, unfortunately, I've beenthrough a divorce and I know
that that, that that divorce wasmuch easier than it would ever
(49:18):
be to break up with Brandon.
Ben Larson (49:19):
Yeah, NRA.
Uh, Dave's reminding me that Ihave some homework to do for our
marriage me that I have somehomework to do for our marriage.
AnnaRae Grabstein (49:30):
Yes, I often tell people no handshake
agreements, but it's harder saidthan done, so why don't you
share a little bit aboutanything that was unique or that
you figured out as part of thatfor other founders to learn
from, as they're thinking aboutbringing people in an executive
levels or partnering withsomeone?
What are some of the uniquethings that you did in that
agreement between?
Dave Daily (49:49):
the two of you.
I give Brandon a lot of creditbecause I don't think that I had
.
I came into this idea of acontract the way that he did,
and I now I've come fully oninto his camp on this, which is
the actually the antithesis of acontract.
Right, like, everything aboutour contract makes it very, very
hard to litigate.
You know, the the foundation ofour contract is actually that
(50:10):
if, in the case of a fundamentaldisagreement, we each have to
get an arbitrator, and if thosearbitrators can't agree, then
they have to get an arbitrator.
So, like there's there's noworld where this is where we're,
like, really even allowed tosue each other.
It's like, you know, we justit's, it's a forced agreement
and, um, and we take this.
(50:31):
We, you know, we've actuallybegun to take this approach in
all aspects of the way that wedo business, which is, like you
know, when we enter contractswhich we prefer just not to
enter into, right, like, that'snot to say that we don't enter.
You know that that I recommendno contract between founders,
but I, but I do, you know, like,if I could avoid a distribution
contract, I would right Likeand as an example, but these
(50:55):
things are often unavoidable.
And so, therefore, the way thatwe approach these contracts is
to cut the litigationopportunities off at any at any
point.
You know, as an example, likevenue, right.
Like everybody wants to be ableto litigate in their home state
, we always insist on, you know,delaware.
Or like Alabama, right.
Like if you got a Floridacompany, a Texas company, let's
(51:16):
pick Alabama.
So, like it's going to bereally hard to go, we each have
to find lawyers in Alabama.
Ben Larson (51:21):
If we want to start to like get litigated.
I've never heard this.
This is awesome.
It's like I don't want to flyto Alabama.
Let's just settle it.
Dave Daily (51:28):
Right, exactly, and it, it, it works like no one, no
one wants to do that.
And so, like you know, it's uh,it's just tiny stuff like that.
That, like, uh, you know I'mgetting off track of of of
Brandon, but, um, but we, weapproached the, you know, our,
our agreement with that in mindand you know, and also a big
(51:50):
piece of it for me, which won'tbe the same for everyone else,
was that like I wanted to get to50% ownership.
I know it's like crazy, likeokay, you're going to give half
the company to somebody, butlike you know the way that we
approached it.
Now again back to Brandon, hewas like hey, let's, hey, let's
go get valuations for thecompany right now.
And he came to me and said whatwould you sell the company for
right now If someone wrote you acheck?
(52:10):
I came up with my number andthen we got valuations and we
took the top number and thebottom number that we got and
said, okay, this is our spectrumof valuation.
If you want me to join at thelow number, then, like you, keep
95%.
I keep 5% of anything abovethat number when we sell.
(52:31):
If you want to keep the highnumber, then everything above.
That high number is 50-50.
And you know the LDR, I chosethe high number and it gets him
to 50% ownership of the companyand what that also does.
(52:51):
And we're experiencing thisright now.
We're like, hey, we're 50-50now.
It's been five years ago.
The best thing is it was avesting period to make sure that
he didn't just leave me highand dry.
And now that we are 50-50 andwe're making decisions on a 50,
50 basis, it is like it'sactually incredible peace of
mind for me, because I know thatwe are incentivized exactly
(53:13):
equally.
And a lot of times you havelike, you know, it's like the
board back to the boardconversation.
You want to have five people,an odd number of people, on the
board, so you have a tiebreaker.
Well, again, like, if wedisagree, then you know we know
this, we know the drill, and sowe just have to come to an
agreement.
And we've never not come to anagreement.
You know, sounds easy.
AnnaRae Grabstein (53:35):
Yeah, it's nice when the incentives are
aligned, which is what you'reexperiencing within that
structure.
It's misaligned.
Incentives at the board levelcan make things really
complicated.
Misaligned incentives at theboard level can make things
really complicated.
Jeez, this time has flown.
I kind of can't believe it.
I don't want to end thisconversation without getting a
(53:55):
quick hot take from you, dave,about the trade war, because I
know that a lot of yourmanufacturing of your products
does happen overseas, so I'dlove it if you could just give
us your perspective on thatquickly for our listeners who
are navigating these samequestions themselves.
Dave Daily (54:09):
Well, I would be remiss not to say that you
should try to cheat however wayyou can.
I mean, we're all being cheated, in my opinion, out of our.
I mean, if you're makingproducts and you're experiencing
it, everyone's going toexperience this.
So, like you know, we happen tobe making the majority of our
products in China.
(54:30):
We're obviously relativelylimited via the beverage that
we're making, but everything,even little stuff like the
packaging of our beverage, hasbeen made in China, and now
we're going to need to onshorethat.
But it's not as simple as likeOK, we're just going to call a
domestic company and get it forthe same price that they were
selling it for last month.
No, the domestic company isgoing to raise their prices also
(54:56):
.
So what my concern about thisentire trade war is going to be
is that it's going to have atrickle effect across the entire
economy and all prices aregoing to rise, and you can't
just pick out China and be likeokay, everyone else can supply
the rest of the world.
It doesn't work like that.
We actually used this toolduring the last trade war, where
we would reroute our containersthrough Vietnam, which did not
(55:16):
have such a restrictive tariff,and we'd save 30, 50 grand on a
container just by sending it toVietnam.
First take off the Made inChina stickers, put on Made in
Vietnam stickers and send it toAmerica.
It's like it's such it createsoperational headaches and
(55:38):
everyone is going to cheat.
So I mean, look we, just wehope that they go away.
That's the answer.
Ben Larson (55:45):
Wow, dave, thanks for giving the addendum to our
discussion last week.
It's funny.
We've been fighting inflationso hard and now we're talking
about everything gettinginflated again just because of
the cost of goods.
That's going to be aninteresting time period.
Really appreciate you coming onthe show.
It's time for us to move to ourlast call.
(56:06):
This is your opportunity toplug whatever it is that you
want to give a shout out to callto action, cannabis related or
not.
Dave Daly should be the lastcall.
Dave Daily (56:17):
I guess is going to be to please get onto gravcom
and try our beverage.
We made a full spectrumcannabis beverage that tastes
and feels like you smoked weedand we really would appreciate
everyone to try the gravcannabis spirit.
(56:41):
That's my plug.
Thank you for letting meadvertise on your show.
AnnaRae Grabstein (56:47):
Do it, do it.
It's delicious.
I highly recommend it.
That's my plug.
Thank you for letting meadvertise on your show.
Do it Do it.
Dave Daily (56:53):
It's delicious.
I highly recommend it.
Also, thank you for having me.
This is absolutely awesome.
You guys are the best and it'sbeen so nice to get to know you
even outside of this podcast.
You know previously and I'mexcited to stay in touch with
you guys.
Ben Larson (57:01):
Amazing.
Dave Daly from Grab.
All right, thank you, sir.
We'll catch up soon.
Thank you so much.
All right, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you for engaging andasking questions and comments
while we record this live onLinkedIn Live.
Thank you for listening andrating and reviewing and sharing
all the things with our podcastthat is available on Apple,
(57:24):
itunes and Spotify andeverywhere else you listen to
your podcasts.
Special thank you to ourproducer, eric Rossetti Dave
called him out on the podcast,he really is the magic behind
the scenes and, of course, ourteams at Virtosa and Wolfmeyer.
Please like, subscribe.
Like I said, do all the thingswherever you want to listen to
(57:46):
us, but most importantly, folksstay curious, stay informed and
keep your spirits high untilnext time.
That's the show.
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 83 of High
Spirits.
I'm Ben Larson and, as always,I'm joined today by Anne-Rae
Grabstein.
It's Thursday, april 10th 2025.
And we just got back from theso Curious Conference in Chicago
.
We got a great show for you.
Today we have a legend of theindustry.
(00:26):
If you've smoked out of a bong,you've probably used one of his
products, but he's done a lotmore since then 20 plus years in
the industry with Dave Daly.
We'll get to him in a littlebit.
But, anna Rae, you made it home.
How was the travel?
AnnaRae Grabstein (00:42):
The travel was okay.
But Chicago is a great city.
I really enjoy the food and theculture and the people, but
damn, does it have shittyweather.
Oh my gosh.
I've been really enjoying thespring in California the last
two weeks or so and I felt likeeverything was sort of shifting,
(01:03):
with the green hills and thesunshine.
And then you go to Chicago andit is cold and windy and not fun
to walk around.
Ben Larson (01:12):
We're not exaggerating.
The lows in California arehigher than the highs in Chicago
, that's true, by at least 10degrees.
Yeah, and it was shocking.
But yeah, I know, I went to aball game at Wrigley on Monday
night and I was telling my wifeabout it.
I'm like, oh, it's my firsttime at Wrigley.
(01:32):
And she's like you're going togo when it's 35 degrees out?
I'm like, oh, I didn't thinkabout that.
And I literally I'm like, can Iraid your scarf drawer?
Because I don't own scarves,but I know she had some fairly
neutral ones and so if you sawme in a scarf in Chicago, then
it came need to bring a big warmcoat.
(01:53):
But Chicago was great.
AnnaRae Grabstein (01:55):
It was really a wonderful event.
Hats off to Listen Ventures.
I think that they did thisincredible job of creating
(02:16):
beautiful branding and identityaround their event.
That made it something that itmade me want to go to it when I
saw the promotional materialsand how they were thinking about
it.
And then it really that brandcarried through into the
creativity with the way thatthey curated the content.
Ben Larson (02:34):
Yeah, yeah, I was not super excited to go because
I was just like anotherconference.
I eventually looked past that.
I there was meetings thatstarted popping up and
opportunities that drew me toChicago and I said, oh, you know
I could be there and go, butI'm really glad I did.
It didn't seem like theyattracted everyone in the room
(02:56):
and it actually inspired just alot of thought, because it
wasn't just a THC beverageconference.
They were doing thisnon-alcoholic social beverage,
which THC just happened to takethe spotlight.
But it really made me thinkabout the future and what is
like social drinking and how itdoesn't necessarily have to
(03:18):
include alcohol, and so I thinkit was really important for
people in the room to thinkabout that, like to really think
about the consumer and thinkabout the consumer perspective,
and I'd say that that's whatthey did really well is like
there was this persistent themeof feeling like the customer was
sitting in the room, eventhough it was a B2B kind of
conference.
AnnaRae Grabstein (03:38):
Yeah, within that I'll share that.
They that listen, shared onstage some of the research that
they did towards the end of 2024.
And they, through a bunch offocus groups and surveys, they
identified six active drinkingoccasions that they highlighted
and they talked about theconsumer's potential kind of
(04:03):
resonating with these differentoccasions.
And I have them here I canshare.
There's unwind, which is thetransitioning to evening.
There's the nightcap, aidingsleep and rest.
There's three, the party trick,priming the social pump.
Four, the zone in which is likeimmersing fully.
(04:26):
And five, they call the bonfire, which is about stoking shared
experiences.
And then six, relief oftreating yourself.
And I just, I loved, I lovedthis centering on the consumer
and the different behaviors andmoments when they might choose
to consume a beverage andthinking about what are the
(04:46):
right beverages for all of thesedifferent moments.
And you're right, it isn't justTHC, it's all types of things.
So I think that we're going tosee an evolution of social
spaces, thinking about beveragesin different ways.
That's definitely somethingthat I've come away with.
Ben Larson (05:02):
Yeah, and, and and for our first time conference,
the, the number of people andquality of the the attendees was
was really high.
And, um, you know, there's somuch going on in the industry.
Uh, I know, like Diana Eberleinwas flying in from her hearing
in Texas and landing and thenjumping on stage, um, and just
so much going on.
(05:23):
It's like catching up witheveryone.
It was a really nice groundingpoint.
Um, I know I woke up early inthe morning on Tuesday and
didn't get back to the hotel andwas just like talking, talking,
talking, basically until thelate hours of the night.
AnnaRae Grabstein (05:38):
I at my voice was gone by the end of the
night.
Also ended up at Soho housewith Kate Miller for miss grass.
Ben Larson (05:42):
She took me out.
AnnaRae Grabstein (05:42):
Thanks, kate, for picking up the bill.
The night also, I ended up atSoho House with Kate Miller for
Miss Grass.
She took me out.
Thanks, kate, for picking upthe bill.
I like that.
So it was just overall a reallygood time, and fast and easy.
So back in California, backgetting busy doing all kinds of
other things and if you're noton video y'all can't tell that
(06:03):
ben is wearing a suit.
Ben, why are you wearing a suittoday?
Ben Larson (06:07):
I don't know, but it's sucking the soul out of my
neck right now.
Um, I'm.
I'm leaving immediately afterwe hang up the phone, uh, to go
up to sacramento, and we'rehaving ncia's uh stakeholder
summit, where there'll berepresentatives from the
assembly, from the DCC and manyothers in the cannabis and hemp
(06:30):
community.
So important conversations tobe had.
California is an importantstate and we're in the middle of
a legislative session, so, yeah, hopefully we have some
productive conversations.
I am always skeptical, though,when I spend time in Sacramento.
AnnaRae Grabstein (06:46):
Yeah Well, and we should do a couple quick
little news updates.
But then we're going to jumpinto our conversation with Dave.
Last week we opined and what Ithought was a rant, but I think
it actually had some positiveoutcomes of content that came
out of it about the trade warand that instability that we
(07:08):
started metabolizing last weekas Americans and as business
owners has persisted.
I think that, from myperspective, some of the
comedians are our best filtersfor all of this, are our best
filters for all of this.
Jimmy Fallon said.
(07:29):
His quote I wrote it down forus is yeah, trump was like I
just saved the economy for me.
You're welcome.
Ben Larson (07:42):
Yeah, it's crazy because since last week, I think
we had quoted China being at a25% tariff and what are they now
at?
Like a billion percent.
AnnaRae Grabstein (07:51):
It's 145% as of this recording, but 12 hours
ago it was 125%.
So it's really hard to plan,which is one of the central
tenets of, I think, running agood business is clear planning.
So this is tough for everybody.
Ben Larson (08:09):
No question, he kind of failed at building physical
walls, so now he's buildingfinancial ones.
AnnaRae Grabstein (08:15):
Yeah, and then one more story that I
wanted to bring to the forefrontis that yesterday the news hit
about a whistleblower lawsuittargeting Metric and Metric.
Ben Larson (08:28):
And Metric for those that don't know holds the.
AnnaRae Grabstein (08:30):
Interesting timing.
Yeah, metric holds the trackand trace contracts with over 20
states for regulated legalcannabis, and this whistleblower
is claiming that the companyenabled a vast illegal
marketplace by failing to flagsuspicious distribution patterns
(08:50):
in California, despitecontractual obligations to do so
.
So I am excited to watch howthis all unfolds.
This is very interesting.
Ben Larson (08:58):
So the lawsuit's against Metric metric.
AnnaRae Grabstein (09:09):
Yes, it's claiming damages for being, for
being terminated and, uh,because of bringing these issues
to to the ceo, specifically, Ithink, um, who we've had on the
show, michael yeah look, I meanand this will come out in
discovery I don't think metricsthe the negligent one here.
Ben Larson (09:23):
like burner distro is pretty much like common
vernacular in California, and ifthe DCC hasn't caught on to
that yet, then again, I don'tthink it's metric, that's the
negligent one.
AnnaRae Grabstein (09:34):
Well, we'll see what the courts say.
Shall we bring on our guest.
Ben Larson (09:40):
Yeah, before I get myself into trouble with Nicole
before arriving in Sacramento.
Yeah, before I get myself intotrouble with Nicole before
arriving in Sacramento.
AnnaRae Grabstein (09:45):
So today's guest is someone whose work
you've probably smoked out of,even if you didn't realize it.
Dave Daly is the founder ofGrav Labs, one of the most
iconic brands in cannabisaccessories.
He's known for creating theoriginal Gravitron in his
(10:06):
parents' basement, I think, orgarage and shaping the modern
glass game.
He launched the company in 2004, bootstrapping it from his
parents' garage, like I said,into a nationally recognized
brand.
That helped to define theparaphernalia category, and over
the past 20 years, dave hasscaled Grave, fought for legal
reforms and, after stepping awayfrom his CEO role, leads
innovation and growth, includingtheir recent launch into the
(10:27):
THC beverage space.
He also serves on the board ofa public company and we're just
so excited to finally have Daveon the show.
Welcome to High Spirits.
Dave Daily (10:36):
Thanks for having me , guys.
Ben Larson (10:37):
Dude, good to see you and sitting in the hotbed of
a lot of this legislative talk,Texas.
AnnaRae Grabstein (10:44):
So, dave, take us back.
We said in the intro that youlaunched Grav in 2004, but can
you tell us about how it allstarted?
I think a lot of people wouldlove to hear your founder story,
and specifically when you knewthat it was going to be more
than a side hustle and turn itinto a real company.
Dave Daily (11:04):
Yeah, that goes way back.
I mean, when, when I first hadthis concept of, of making a
bong.
It was actually college.
You know, the typical dormstory, um, where we were making
our own gravity bongs and, um,I'll spare you all of the
details, um, but I went to workfor my dad's mortgage company at
the, you know in 2003 andquickly realized, like, hey, I'm
(11:29):
, I'm probably not, you know notinto this longterm.
It was actually right aroundthis, like you know, the
beginning of the loan crisis,and so we I was living with my
parents and, you know,fortunately, they were very
supportive and I said to them Iwant to try this, I want to try
to make this gravity bong thing.
And, and I went out to you know, this was my first exercise in
(11:55):
design and I had to go out andfigure out what a commercialized
gravity bong would look like.
Cause, at the time, I mean,everyone is smoking out of
gravity bongs and everyone, ifyou're you know, you're kidding
a dorm, you've made a gravitybong in your, you know, in your
sink.
And, and that was actually theinitial pushback when I
ultimately was able to bring aproduct to market, this gravity
(12:15):
bong, it was like, oh, you canmake those at home.
And I was like, well, you canmake any bong at home.
And and so I mean, look, youknow we can go deep into the
founder stories We've talkedabout this before but, like you
know, this idea of making an allglass gravity bong in 2004 was
an opportunity for me to show upat the bong trade shows with
(12:37):
something, with a product thatwas like truly differentiated
right, like no one had ever madea commercially viable all glass
gravity bong before, and so itwas a license to get into every
smoke shop in the country.
At the time, there was maybe,you know, I would argue, 1500
real smoke shops in the country,you know.
Sure, there was, like you know,there was also sex shops that
(12:58):
sold bongs and like other things, other areas that you know we
would try to like get into, butfor the most part these were
novelty stores and old schoolhead shops, and, and so that was
like 04 to 07.
I sat, you know I was in SouthAustin at a in like a shotgun
shack warehouse, making gravitybones by myself, like cutting
(13:19):
bottle.
You know, the gravity bone forthose that don't know what a
gravity bung is is a uh I, myversion of it was a wine bottle,
um specifically designed a copyof the kindle jackson um
chardonnay bottle and um.
And then I used a vase that Ifound at michael's.
That was just a cylinder vase.
(13:41):
And then I had to design a waythat the you know that the bowl
goes in the top.
That was just a cylinder vase,and then I had to design a way
that the you know that the bowlgoes in the top.
That was a clean look, etcetera.
I designed a box that made itlook, you know, commercialized,
and I'm doing this all by myself.
I had people that were helpingme along the way.
There were friends thatcontributed, of course, in
helping me sell, but, like, forthe most part, I'm up at the
(14:02):
warehouse making, you know,cutting the bottoms off of
bottles and you know, packagingthem and um putting them boxes
myself until two o'clock in themorning, you know, for three
years, like oh four to oh seven.
This is like my life and um.
And then in in oh seven, youknow kind of everything changed.
I had like worked.
I spent all this time trying tobuild this gravity bone company
(14:26):
.
That was, you know cause thegravity bung is still, to this
day, the most efficient way tosmoke flour.
Ben Larson (14:32):
Really quick before we get to the next phase.
Did your father know what agravity bong was?
That's my first question.
My second question is doesKendall Jackson know the
importance that they've playedin your story brand?
Because they should.
Dave Daily (14:47):
No, definitely not, and I'm trying to be cognizant
of not like telling you knowthis is.
This story can go on for 30minutes.
So, like, please stop me andask me any questions.
So the the?
The answer to your firstquestion is not at the time, but
my dad was always very I meanlike, like you can't, I mean I
guess you could tell this storyin a way where your parents
weren't supportive and you wentoff and was, you know, I
(15:09):
defected from my family and wemissed our debunking.
But I actually think thatanybody who has the amount of
meaningful happiness in lifethat I feel like I've achieved
has parents that have supportedthem along the way, and they
were always very supportive.
Did not know what a gravitybunk was, but, like the moment
that I built one was like, oh myGod, this is amazing.
(15:31):
So, yeah, it was, it was reallynice.
AnnaRae Grabstein (15:35):
So so talk about this.
What happened in 2007?
That that changed thetrajectory of the company?
Ben Larson (15:42):
Yeah, because a gravity bunk sounds pretty niche
Like.
I remember my one and lastexperience with a gravity bong
and it was mine was a 64 ounceGatorade bottle, so it was just
too much for my small lungs.
But I imagine it's like it'sinteresting to hear that there
was this pickup into all thesesmoke shops, so it's like, okay,
(16:04):
clearly there's a market, butit still feels like a pretty
niche product.
AnnaRae Grabstein (16:07):
Ben, you're just not a bong smoker, clearly.
Ben Larson (16:10):
I know, I know.
Dave Daily (16:14):
Well, we are talking about the height of bongs here,
like we're, you know, 04 to 07,like you know, we will
hopefully get there in thispodcast, but like we're probably
at the low point of bongs today, right, it during this podcast.
But like we're probably at thelow point of bongs today, right,
like, from a, you know, peoplesmoking out of bongs perspective
.
But the um, but at the timewe're talking about, like this
was the cool thing, like, if youwere smoking flour, which is,
(16:34):
like you know, something thatyou were, every single person in
the country was doing illicitly, then you know, it was, uh, you
know, it was a spectacle andyou wanted to create a spectacle
.
And so part of creating aspectacle is smoking out of this
apparatus.
And everyone's like, what thehell did that guy just pull out
of his closet, right?
So, like, when you saw it onshelf at a head shop for 50
(16:54):
bucks, it was a prettyattractive purchase.
So, you know, and the flashforward to a seven year point is
that, like, despite the factthat this was, you know, a
success in each individual smokeshop, I ran out of money.
It was like, you know, we, youknow I was selling, I remember I
was consistently about threehundred thousand dollars a year
(17:17):
for those first three years ofgravity bongs.
And, granted, my overhead waslow, but I was losing money.
And so what happened was Irealized like okay, I've hit a
breaking point.
I was actually taking outcredit cards to pay off the
other credit cards because theywould send you checks to be like
(17:41):
, hey, since you've just openedthis credit card, you can write
a check to like a vendor as anexample, but I would just pay
the other credit card off withthe new credit card and just
play the credit card game.
It was a very dangerous game,of course, um, but fortunately I
was able to crawl out of it,and what happened was seven was
that I?
(18:01):
I made this one hitter?
It was.
It was actually a derivative ofthe gravity bong.
The gravity Bong takes a bowllike a funnel bowl that goes in
the top of the Gravity Bong, andI was making all of those
myself.
And so when I was and I hadtaken the Gravity Bong to the
High Times Cannabis Cup inAmsterdam in 06, and everyone's
smoking after each other, it wasliterally like a small room of
(18:23):
people that are showcasing theirflower and allowing people to
smoke out of bongs, the flower,and so you'd have people lined
up to smoke out of that bong,one after each other.
Disgusting, pre-covid days,Unbelievable.
And although I never went backto that cannabis cup, I actually
designed this product calledthe taster, which was just a one
(18:44):
hitter that I.
It was very simple, likestraight clear glass pipe with a
restriction in it that youcould put a you know, basically
two hits of flour in, and I callit a taster.
And I took it to a trade showand it, like you know there's a
lot of details in here that I'llskip over but like that one
product got me out of debt.
I was able to like build allthese taster machines that you
(19:07):
know I had to be manned.
But like, build a taste machine, hire a glass blower, build
another one, rinse, wash, repeat, until you know, flash forward
six months.
I was like out of debt and Iwas onto like, oh, this is more
than just a gravity bone company.
I can make all of the productsthat are meaningful to head
shops, including spoons andbubblers and bongs, and you know
(19:28):
, and everything in between.
And, um, you know, the.
The fact is that like that's,that's, that's the last 20 years
, or 17 years, in a nutshell, isjust continuing to press that
button.
Ben Larson (19:42):
That's amazing.
Can we drill into that kind offirst inflection point Just
because I think as entrepreneurswe talk about the pivot so
often or finding product marketfit and just talk about that
like vast difference of likegoing from pushing the boulder
uphill running out of money toall of a sudden being like
something, feeling like it wasclicking and knowing that you
(20:04):
had to lean into it?
Dave Daily (20:07):
well, I think, as founders, we get so committed to
like our product and our visionand you do see these like you
know, and you hear these storiesof like people who you know,
the, the famous apple story of,like you know, steve jobs cared
about what was, you know, behindthe machine as much as what you
could see in the.
You know, in the, the, the back, you know the, the back end of
the machine as much as the frontof the machine.
It was all about like having asingle vision that was like
(20:28):
being laser focused and, um, Idon't think it's that clean.
I think that everyone wants tolike paint these pretty pictures
, especially on you know,podcasts like these, no offense,
but like here's a wonderfulstory about how you can better
your life.
And the fact is like it's not,it's never a straight line.
And, like you know, if you, ifyou are so rigid that you can't,
you know, pivot when the timeis, when it's time to pivot,
(20:51):
that's, that's explicitly whenfailures happen, and it
certainly almost happened to me.
I mean, I I would say that I'mlike very quick to eat my young
Um and um and over the, we'vehad moments, including right now
, frankly, for me, which maybewe'll get into it or not where
you have to make some harddecisions about what your
(21:14):
business is and what it's goingto become in the future, and
that reinvention has to happenconstantly.
If you're not paying attentionto it, I think that you will
fall behind Constantly If you'renot paying attention to it, I
think that you will fall behind.
AnnaRae Grabstein (21:25):
Oh, there's so much there.
Well, before we dive into thatreinvention and how you see the
world and where it's all going,give us the short version of
after that 2007 scaling momentwhere you really leaned in and
started to expand the productline.
What was the upward trajectoryfor Grav?
(21:45):
What were the ways that youwere looking at the business?
Was it number of units sold?
Was it revenue?
Number of customers that youwere serving?
What did that hockey stick looklike in terms of the business?
Dave Daily (21:59):
Very easy answer it was get more accounts as fast as
possible.
Easy answer it was like it was.
It was get more more accountsas fast as possible.
And cause?
I just knew that.
You know, I've had this metricmy whole career.
It was like okay, well, I knowthat each store sells about 12
gravity bungs a year a year,that's like like one per month
per store.
And so it was like well, I'vegot.
(22:20):
You know, the only metric thatI can pay attention to is more
store count, right, like andcause.
It held true like everywhere,and I didn't have all the stores
Like I was probably.
I remember I had like 600active stores.
And you know, in in 07, when itwas like, okay, how am I going
to come out of this?
And you know, because thatbecame okay, if they're doing
one gravity bone per month, howmany of these taster racks can I
(22:42):
sell them per month?
And it was like, oh, they'removing two of those taster racks
every month.
Well, that's, that's triple therevenue of my you know, of my
gravity bung sales.
So now I can like just, youknow, if I keep on adding more
stores and more products, thisbecomes exponential.
And so it was something toreally like hold on to and we
still do that today.
Like, we've got stores that are, you know that we kind of you
(23:06):
know that are our example stores.
I tell this to a lot of youknow companies that I advise
that like hey, pick, you know,pick some like geographical and
psychographical stores that arerepresentative of the stores
that you want to sell into andyou know, use those as your
example stores, not necessarilyto other people, although that
works, but like, use it as yourown model, like I think that you
(23:27):
know so many times like, sostupid as this is to say, people
just like go and try to selleverywhere all at once and don't
have any idea what's actuallyhappening in the stores that
they're selling to, or you know,frankly, the customer feedback
(23:47):
man, there's some, some greatnuggets and they're the.
Ben Larson (23:49):
I love the idea of, of launching with a singular
product that nearly guaranteesyou shelf space because it's
unique, and then and thenexpanding from there.
Um, you know, in the beveragecategory that I spend a lot of
time in, you know we see peopleapproaching it different ways,
where they'll launch with asingle SKU sometimes, but more
times than not they're comingwith a whole like offering of of
(24:12):
.
You know flavors, right, andyou're trying to grab shelf
space from the get um, andyou're using that selection to
kind of create more visibilityfor your brand.
But, yeah, starting with asingular form factor, it's kind
of like what Red Bull did.
I guess you go into a gasstation these days and there's
probably 12 Red Bull flavors,but everyone knew Red Bull for
(24:35):
that first singular flavor.
Dave Daily (24:37):
For a while.
Yeah, you told me to bring somequestions, so what we haven't
talked about?
Or maybe, ben, you and I talkedabout this a little bit, but
when you know, I'm an ArcViewguy.
So, like, I started in ArcViewin 2012, or really, I joined in
2012.
My first meeting was 2013.
Ben Larson (24:54):
Yeah, the Troy Dayton and Steve D'Angelo days.
Dave Daily (24:58):
Of course, and I guess pointing back that you
were also involved in ArcView.
Did you pitch to ArcView?
Did you actually raise money inArcView?
Ben Larson (25:06):
No, I never raised money with ArcView.
We had a friendly relationshipbecause of when we launched
Gateway and we were doing earlystage companies, and so I was
sending a lot of our companiesover to ArcView, which some did
raise money over to RQ, whichsome did raise money.
Dave Daily (25:23):
Yeah Well, I guess it's more of a patch into like,
how, like did that?
You know the original Vertosa,you know skew, so to speak.
You know, was it always justyou know emulsified THC, or did
you have vision early on that,like you, would do these other
things?
Ben Larson (25:40):
Yeah, I mean early on.
I'm trying to now, I'm tryingto think back.
It was largely THC.
We were in the regulated space,but more than anything, we knew
that we needed to create aplatform that allowed beverages
to work and be stable and tastegood, because that was not the
status quo in the space.
(26:00):
But we did believe thatbeverage was going to be a
future.
And so we came in with just thesingular focus of like we're
going to do one thing and we'regoing to do it really really
well.
And people always asked us likeare you going to launch your own
beverage?
And I'm like no, it's adistraction, we don't know
beverage and it's competitivewith our customer.
And so, yeah, I mean, eventoday, we're very narrow in what
(26:24):
we do in the supply chain.
But it's kind of a feature atthis point because it's
relatively complicated.
We found out I didn't know itwas going to be so complicated
when we launched, so what Ithought we were going to do was
probably different than what weended up doing, because we just
learned so much about thetechnology and how it plays into
this like really complicatedsupply chain you both basically
(26:47):
said that, that you started todo one thing and you ended up
realizing how much morecomplicated it is, and I've had
to pivot all through it, andthat is so interesting to see
both of you, through differentjourneys, come to that same
conclusion.
Dave Daily (27:00):
I love it yeah, well it's actually interesting
because, like my, my version ofthat is like, we are still like.
You know that our feature isglass.
Right like and that's that isthe through line like even our
you know this beverage thatwe're doing we, you know we, we
are the only beverage company inmarket with a mini liquor
(27:21):
bottle, glass mini liquor bottleformat.
To my knowledge, no one else isdoing that, and for good reason
.
Right Like the you know it's.
It's very complicated tomanufacture, not not?
I know that we're not at thepart where I plug myself yet,
but I you know, but but it's the.
you know the, the, the, thethrough line is is this glass
thing?
And's really hard to break awayfrom that as a brand.
(27:50):
Even at this pastCandidate-a-Con, we were
presenting our beverage.
They gave us an opportunity toput it on the table with the
other beverages and I overheardthree or four people be like,
isn't that the Bomb brand?
And it's like, at the same timethat I'm like, yes, they
recognize this.
I'm also like God, we'repigeonholed, right Like we're.
(28:12):
You know what's the when we'retypecasted, right Like an actor,
right Like we can't get out ofthis.
You know this actor?
Ben Larson (28:20):
Okay, we can't get out of this actor.
Okay, so now that it's here,now that it's on the table, I
want to talk about what led tothe launch of this beverage.
Right, because we're talkingabout bongs, we're talking about
one-hitters.
There's a lot, I know you guys,because of the menorah bong,
(28:42):
but somehow you ended up inbeverage which comes in glass,
notably I.
I had not thought about aboutthat until just now, but it felt
like there was like manydifferent directions grab could
go, and so I'm curious like,yeah, how did you make that
decision to kind of go off ontosomething where people are gonna
say isn't that the bong company?
Dave Daily (29:00):
well, I mean, it's easy to say that like, oh, you
guys decided to go from bongs tobeverage, and it's the title of
the podcast.
So like I'm not going to likeshut it down, but you know Eric.
So we don't see Eric, but he'sthe magic that makes this
podcast happen.
I'm just going to plug Eric incase you guys don't.
And you know, prior to this,eric's like oh, I remember when
(29:21):
you guys did this pre-filledglass joint in California and I
was like, yeah, that was a wildfailure.
We lost a lot of money tryingto do that.
And for those uneducated, wetried to become a flower brand
in California via like hey, weknow that people are already
smoking out of glass.
Let's make a pre-filled glassthing and put it in market.
(29:44):
And we found some partners.
Turns out the partners were bad, which, again, like it might've
been the reason for failure,but like I think that the bigger
reason was that they you knowit just was very hard to explain
the product and the butlersdidn't know how to, et cetera,
and it was more expensive thanjust a regular pre-roll.
It was not important what theproduct was, but like we did try
(30:06):
other things, and we've tried alot of things.
I mean like I've got morefailures, failed products under
my belt than successful ones.
Ben Larson (30:13):
And I love the room at your facility where you have,
like, the graveyard of all thedifferent products.
Dave Daily (30:19):
It's really great, it's a big graveyard of all the
different products.
It's really great Graveyard.
Yeah, we'll we'll, we'll flash,do a picture of that and post
Anyway.
So I the the the story on thebeverage is is really one of
like reading the writing on thewalls.
(30:40):
I mean, you know, I, I, I wasat, I was at BizCon in 2023 and
I always try to meet up withJosh Rosen there.
Josh Rosen is a dear friend ofmine.
I met him at Arcview.
He's the reason why I joinedthe Board of Forefront.
He put me on the Board ofForefront and how.
I know Jerry, who was on theprevious podcast, I guess two
podcasts ago.
It was on the previous podcast,I guess two podcasts ago, and
(31:03):
Josh was at the time the CEO ofVireo, and so he's in Minnesota
and he's like, hey, this thingis happening with beverage in
Minnesota.
And specifically, he was like,hey, this category is taking up
to 20% of spirit sale I guess Idon't know how to categorize it.
(31:24):
Take, you know, beer andrestaurant sales of of beverage
is like up to 20 percent of ofthat of revenue in these um, in
these venues, and that'ssomething that you can't like,
not pay attention to.
And so he was like, hey, youneed to go make bong water.
And he thought that that wasclever.
Like hey, put this bong, sellit and sell the water in a bong
(31:48):
shaped bottle.
Like that's brilliant.
And so I actually tried to dothat.
We, we like, we went all theway down the rabbit hole of
designing a bottle that lookslike a bong.
I should have shown.
AnnaRae Grabstein (32:00):
Not brilliant .
Nobody wants to drink bongwater should have.
Dave Daily (32:05):
I should have.
Nobody wants to drink bongwater, that's right.
Fortunately we didn't do that,um, but but we made the bong, we
made the actual, like you knowis a bottle.
Um, so the you know, we I cameback from that in 2023 and,
starting in 2024, I'd also knownIan Dominguez.
I'd met him a couple of timesand he was like, hey, you should
come to this Canada data conand um, and so I, um, I learned
(32:27):
a lot about it then and so westarted the journey in 2024 to
design the beverage and, um, ifyou know, if I had known now
what I knew, then I could havebrought this to this beverage to
market in three months, andinstead it took us 12 months
because, um, this is hard tonavigate.
(32:50):
I mean, like you, you guys areboth in it, but like and you
know the cast of characters butlike, it is really hard to
design a liquid from the groundup.
And hard because, like anybodycan make a I'm not talking shit
here Like anybody can make aflavor fizzy water.
There's a, there's a goodecosystem of things to do.
Where you want to make a fizzy,you know a fizzy water in a can
.
You know that is.
(33:11):
You know there are someincumbents that have done a
phenomenal job.
If you want to jump into thatspace, it's relatively easy.
How to differentiate is veryhard and um, and we're still
questioning whether ours isdifferentiated enough.
Ben Larson (33:26):
I will give you a little bit of plug, just because
, Anne-Marie, I don't thinkyou've had the chance to try it
yet.
I have it right here actually.
Oh, crack it open.
AnnaRae Grabstein (33:38):
I've been saving this one.
I had two and I've drank oneand I'm saving it for later.
Ben Larson (33:43):
I'm not going to open it All right, great, oh,
that's right.
They were all out on the tableat Canada, no, but the amazing
thing that happened when I triedit for the first time was, like
it was that moment where I'mlike this is how you marry the
form factor with the craft,which has been a big disconnect
for a lot of folks, right, it'sjust like.
It's like oh yeah, we're, wecan put the plant in everything
(34:04):
and create the experience.
And, like you said, dave, a lotof times it's about creating a
normalized flavor.
But when you make the plant thecentral piece of it, it all of
a sudden kind of creates thissynchronicity between the form
factor and the craft of growingthe plant.
So I just huge kudos there.
I remember just like sniffingit and tasting it while we, you
(34:26):
know, while we conversed over it, and it was kind of like a
beautiful moment for me as a asa beverage enthusiast.
Dave Daily (34:34):
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
AnnaRae Grabstein (34:37):
Talk about the the process, too, of
launching this beverage and howyou are seeing the space.
You mentioned that you startedgrov in um in texas.
You're still there.
The company is based there.
We've been talking a lot abouttexas because texas has been a
very um vibrant and thrivinghemp derived market and now
(35:01):
there's a bunch of legislativestuff going on there that we can
touch on.
But is it?
It was part of it also that yousaw this massive opportunity in
your backyard and so youdecided to launch in Texas first
, or how have you been thinkingabout the actual launch process
of this beverage?
Dave Daily (35:20):
Well, you're asking two things the launch plus why
you know the.
The launch plus why you knowthe.
The why, what?
Why we love this is because wefundamentally believe in this
form factor.
I mean, this has been, you know, if you ask anybody in cannabis
beverage, you know, or anyfunctional beverage for that
matter, like this is a categorythat has been a category of
(35:41):
sales since like the beginningof humanity.
Right, and you know it's, andit is a much more palatable
consumption method than smokingor vaping or even eating a gummy
.
Right, like this, you know, andit's, and it's in its infancy.
So it feels like this is like amoment and, you know, we
certainly wanted to capitalizeon that moment.
We, you know, for the record,though, like grab, we see
(36:03):
ourselves as a cannabis brand.
So, like you know this, this isan entry for us and, you know,
frankly, it's an entry becausewe're in texas and it's a very
limited, you know, market.
I mean, yeah, you could getinto, you know we, technically,
we could, you know, exploit theloophole of of him, for I'm
putting this in quotes because Idon't want to be cast as a, you
know, bad actor.
But, like you know, we don'thave a regulatory framework.
(36:25):
We prefer not to exist anddesign products outside of a
more rigid regulatory framework.
So we don't make flour products, we don't make vapes, we don't
make gummies.
Um, I mean, we arguably couldand should, and that is
certainly not something thatwe're not going to do, but the
(36:46):
you know this, this beverage hasbeen an opportunity for us to
showcase kind of our vision ofwhat, of what a can, of, what a
grav consumable product wouldlook like.
I mean, we heavily identifywith the smoker.
Like you know, we're smoker,we're a bong company, and so we
made a beverage for people thatlike to smoke bongs.
(37:06):
So if you probably aren't abong person, you probably won't
like a full spectrum liquid thattastes and feels like you just
smoked weed.
AnnaRae Grabstein (37:14):
Well, let's double click on that a little
bit.
In that a lot of the THCbeverage focus has been on
traditional Bev-Alk channelsliquor stores primarily
convenience stores.
You have a very existing andlarge customer base of smoke
shops and dispensaries as well,but have you been thinking that
(37:36):
that's where this product shouldlive?
Is it the smoke shop, or areyou thinking about those other
channels as well?
Dave Daily (37:44):
well, right now we are you know, I would you know
we're 98 distributing thisthrough smoke and vape channels.
Um, that's, that's been a.
I mean it's, it's a greatcategory for us, primarily
because we are already very well, um, merchandised in those
channels so we can, like, showup in our own sets in these
channels and it's, it's a veryeasy sell-in for us.
(38:05):
That being said, we are inenough liquor stores to tell you
outright, you know, a bigsurprise there's three X the
velocity in liquor stores thatthere is in smoke and vape
channel.
Now, you know, we can livepretty comfortably for a
relatively long time in Smokeand Vape and be okay.
(38:25):
So, like, it gives us a littlebit of an advantage that we
don't have to immediately lightup all these distributors.
But we're at a point now where,from capacity perspective,
where you know we are likelooking towards getting you know
, signing more distributiondeals, which is, you know, you
know now the humbling part,which is like, oh hey, by the
way, we have no idea how to setup and sign distribution deals
(38:48):
with liquor distributors.
This is like new territory forus.
So, um, that's been reallytricky.
Ben Larson (38:55):
I don't know if we're ready to jump to this, but
, like I, I'm starting to thinkabout your perspective, knowing
smoke and vapes jumping intothis beverage category.
But then NRA also mentionedthat.
Or you also mentioned thatyou're on the board of a public
MSO and I'm curious as to howyour perspective has brought
(39:17):
value to that board, or what youthink that that unique
perspective does for for theboard of a company like that
well, for the most majority ofmy tenure on this public board,
which is forefront public.
Dave Daily (39:28):
You know, public knowledge that this is, uh, you
know, forefront ventures, um,and we have operations in
massachusetts and illinois andwashington and a failed
experiment in californiawonderfully failed experiment in
california and the.
You know, the easy answer onthis is simply like product
marketing, I mean, that's,that's been where I have.
(39:51):
You know, um, that's themajority of my focus on.
You know, even within graph,product innovation anyway,
talked about it, you know, inthe introduction.
Thank you for that instruction.
Even within Grab, productinnovation, anaray talked about
it in the introduction.
Thank you for that introduction.
And so I've been.
You know, I've felt valuablethere.
I mean, my wife always asks melike do you feel like you
brought value to that boardmeeting?
(40:12):
And I do.
It's the surprise and I wouldsay this, like you know, as a
humble brag here is like whenyou get on a board of a public
company, it's like it feels like, oh man, I have really made it
like.
I am like on the board of apublic company.
I'm like what?
And for the record, I'm likeway out over my skis here.
I don't.
I'm like who am I to be on theboard of a public company.
(40:34):
But you know, yet again it's oneof those scenarios where like,
oh, like, no one's that smart,no one really knows what they're
talking about here, right, like, and you know, you get on this
board and the board nobody onthe board knows product Like,
these are all financial people,like, that's all these guys know
about.
And so the moment that we startgoing, you know bring in
(40:55):
management and we start talkingabout which cues are moving, why
they're moving, where they'removing is the part where I get
to really drill in and you know,understand, like, hey, why, if
you know, if pre-rolls are adisproportionate point of sales,
like how should we think aboutwholesale Like there's?
You know that the, the businessof the business, is where I was
able to to, surprisingly, youknow, add value because these
(41:17):
boards typically don't have anentrepreneurial lens and and
I've been the only independenton this board and you know that
boards are typically consistentof, like people who have
invested in the company.
You know, yes, you see, likeApple and Disney that have these
like, you know, ceos who'vebeen in other companies, that's
not like these small.
(41:37):
You know, every cannabis brandor MSO is a relatively small
board of insiders.
AnnaRae Grabstein (41:45):
I love that you have brought this up,
because I think that, first ofall, just having independent
board members is so incrediblyimportant and I think that it
was very smart of Forefront toinvite you to be on the board.
Kudos to them, especiallybecause where you came from in
(42:07):
the smoke shop channel reallywas the only place that people
were interacting in anout-of-the-closet way with the
cannabis consumer prior tolegalization, and so your
insight through that lens andthe way that you understood the
consumer as all these new stateswere turning on, I think, was
fundamentally different than theway that a lot of people were
coming into the market.
So I think that's really cooland you did touch on it, this
(42:30):
evolution of focusing oninnovation.
But what we didn't touch on isyou actually, as the founder and
former CEO of Grav, deciding tono longer be the CEO of a
company that you started, and,because we are really interested
in leadership and people'sjourneys, I would love to talk
(42:52):
about that and when you startedto see past being the CEO of a
company that you started, whatthat was like for you.
Dave Daily (43:01):
What it was like.
Well, you know, I'm sure thatthis becomes something that you,
that founders, make a decisionabout and, specifically, you
know, a hundred percent ownerfounders, you know, make
decisions about for a lot ofdifferent reasons.
You know, for me it was prettyopportunistic.
I, I was going through somechanges in my life and, um, just
(43:23):
so happens that my best friendsince I was five years old was
going through changes in hislife, you know, from a career
perspective, and came to me inconfidence and looking for a
company to to scale, and, um,and I at the time was, like you
know, this is 20, uh, 2019.
At the time, you know, I'm 15years into this company and, um,
(43:46):
I just we, we'd actually justreceived an offer to an LOI from
a public company to getpurchased, and so I had gone
through this existential momentof like, should I sell to the
public company?
Should I keep this private?
Like, what should I do?
And you know I was talking toanyone and everyone who would
listen and ultimately decidednot to, and you know, for grace,
(44:08):
you know, grateful that itdidn't happen because the
company that was made the offerwent to zero, which is a whole
other conversation we can talkabout.
Oh, that one I don't know ifI'm at liberty to like talk
about it, one I don't know ifI'm at liberty to like talk
about it.
So, but point is is that youknow, you know I I saw brandon
(44:30):
in this moment and was like youknow, and this, I'm gonna
simplify it but like I was like,oh, what a better way to you
know, there couldn't be a betterway to live my life than to
like share this company thatI've built with, like my best
friend and business partner and,like you know, someone who I
call brother.
I mean our children call eachother uncle.
So, like, far before we evermade this decision, and and you
(44:51):
know, but you go into thisrecognizing that there's a
massive amount of risk to it,right, especially, and I'm sure
there's a lot of leaders andfounders that you know, that you
talk to, that, you know to thathave made the decision to go
into business with a friend, andthat's very dangerous because
you could lose the friendship.
If you're willing to lose thefriendship, then, like sure, go
(45:13):
for it.
Or you know that thatfriendship is always going to be
the thing that comes first.
So what I would advise peopleis to, you know, first start
with like um 30 years offriendship and then decide but
now you know it's the.
To answer your question, likehow I made the decision was
what's much more about likecircumstances in my life and
(45:37):
recognizing that, like you knowwho I want to be and how I want
to live my life, and and andfrankly you know my, my wife now
had asked me a long time ago,like what's your succession plan
?
And like I think that's notsomething that people think
about a lot, especially likepeople who are running these
businesses completely on theirown, and, um, I wanted to make
sure that, like, if you know, Igot hit by a bus that, like my
(45:59):
family, would be taken care ofand that certainly would have
happened if I hadn't broughtBrandon on as a partner.
Ben Larson (46:06):
Man, succession planning and every aspect of
your business and life.
It's just so criticallyimportant.
We talk about a lot this, a lotin the Vistage group I'm a part
of.
But, dave, I want to drill in alittle bit more into the
relationship with Brandon.
So, like the premise of, yeah,30 year friendship, uncle, you
(46:27):
know that is that's a goodmotivator as to oh yeah, this
will work.
But since then, since 2019, I'msure there's been ups and downs
within the company.
And how do you make sure thatyou maintain that relationship
in those times?
Like, what are, what are someof the specific advice that you
would give?
Cause I know a couple others inthe industry where you know
(46:49):
they have a similar relationshipand I've already raised it to
them as like a third party, likekind of a red flags, like
really make sure you guysunderstand what your
decision-making matrix is likein the future.
Yeah, how have you maintainedtheir friendship throughout
making hard decisions in thebusiness?
Dave Daily (47:05):
Well, the easy answer is that the friendship
comes first, and you know we,you know now I say that but like
, obviously there's.
You know, we don't always agreeand the the the point of like,
disagree.
There's an art of disagreement,right, like you know, and I
think that there's.
We're in a moment right nowwhere, like you know, the we, we
(47:26):
recently did a round of layoffsand you know it's not something
that you know I want to go intobut the, the, the people who
are still with us at the companyright now we're, we're in a
moment where the mantra is like,hey, you're either in camp,
like, hey, this is so hard andI'm not sure how I'm going to
get through it, or we'll figurethis out.
And in these moments, we canonly have people, we can only
(47:48):
have we'll figure this outpeople.
Right, and that's that's howBrandon and I've always operated
.
It's like, hey, you can bringme anything and everything, the
hardest things in the world, andwe've been through the hardest
things in the world togetheralready, and so we just are
always operating as a we'llfigure this out.
Moment I get to bring thedumbest ideas to him and he can,
you know, shut him down, tellme, that's the dumbest idea I've
(48:10):
ever heard.
And I can't get upset about it.
And I need to tell him that,like, hey, you know you're, you
know the way that you're runningthis company isn't sustainable
and you know you're going tohave to make some hard decisions
about people and processes thatare going to, you know, send,
send us in a path that, like,could be a downward spiral and
(48:33):
he has to be okay with that andI have to support him.
And so, like the, the also, Imean we didn't get into it, but
like you know the structure ofthe deal and knowing, like you
know, yes, it's like oh yeah,sure, it's just because we're
friends.
Well, we spent a long time, youknow, six months of like working
on the deal to make sure thatthis, this contract between us
(48:54):
was airtight, right, and thatthat is a backbone of of like.
What we know is like hey, we'remarried, it's truly a marriage
and in every sense, in fact,it's probably more onerous than
a marriage, right?
Like?
Um, unfortunately, I've beenthrough a divorce and I know
that that, that that divorce wasmuch easier than it would ever
(49:18):
be to break up with Brandon.
Ben Larson (49:19):
Yeah, NRA.
Uh, Dave's reminding me that Ihave some homework to do for our
marriage me that I have somehomework to do for our marriage.
AnnaRae Grabstein (49:30):
Yes, I often tell people no handshake
agreements, but it's harder saidthan done, so why don't you
share a little bit aboutanything that was unique or that
you figured out as part of thatfor other founders to learn
from, as they're thinking aboutbringing people in an executive
levels or partnering withsomeone?
What are some of the uniquethings that you did in that
agreement between?
Dave Daily (49:49):
the two of you.
I give Brandon a lot of creditbecause I don't think that I had
.
I came into this idea of acontract the way that he did,
and I now I've come fully oninto his camp on this, which is
the actually the antithesis of acontract.
Right, like, everything aboutour contract makes it very, very
hard to litigate.
You know, the the foundation ofour contract is actually that
(50:10):
if, in the case of a fundamentaldisagreement, we each have to
get an arbitrator, and if thosearbitrators can't agree, then
they have to get an arbitrator.
So, like there's there's noworld where this is where we're,
like, really even allowed tosue each other.
It's like, you know, we justit's, it's a forced agreement
and, um, and we take this.
(50:31):
We, you know, we've actuallybegun to take this approach in
all aspects of the way that wedo business, which is, like you
know, when we enter contractswhich we prefer just not to
enter into, right, like, that'snot to say that we don't enter.
You know that that I recommendno contract between founders,
but I, but I do, you know, like,if I could avoid a distribution
contract, I would right Likeand as an example, but these
(50:55):
things are often unavoidable.
And so, therefore, the way thatwe approach these contracts is
to cut the litigationopportunities off at any at any
point.
You know, as an example, likevenue, right.
Like everybody wants to be ableto litigate in their home state
, we always insist on, you know,delaware.
Or like Alabama, right.
Like if you got a Floridacompany, a Texas company, let's
(51:16):
pick Alabama.
So, like it's going to bereally hard to go, we each have
to find lawyers in Alabama.
Ben Larson (51:21):
If we want to start to like get litigated.
I've never heard this.
This is awesome.
It's like I don't want to flyto Alabama.
Let's just settle it.
Dave Daily (51:28):
Right, exactly, and it, it, it works like no one, no
one wants to do that.
And so, like you know, it's uh,it's just tiny stuff like that.
That, like, uh, you know I'mgetting off track of of of
Brandon, but, um, but we, weapproached the, you know, our,
our agreement with that in mindand you know, and also a big
(51:50):
piece of it for me, which won'tbe the same for everyone else,
was that like I wanted to get to50% ownership.
I know it's like crazy, likeokay, you're going to give half
the company to somebody, butlike you know the way that we
approached it.
Now again back to Brandon, hewas like hey, let's, hey, let's
go get valuations for thecompany right now.
And he came to me and said whatwould you sell the company for
right now If someone wrote you acheck?
(52:10):
I came up with my number andthen we got valuations and we
took the top number and thebottom number that we got and
said, okay, this is our spectrumof valuation.
If you want me to join at thelow number, then, like you, keep
95%.
I keep 5% of anything abovethat number when we sell.
(52:31):
If you want to keep the highnumber, then everything above.
That high number is 50-50.
And you know the LDR, I chosethe high number and it gets him
to 50% ownership of the companyand what that also does.
(52:51):
And we're experiencing thisright now.
We're like, hey, we're 50-50now.
It's been five years ago.
The best thing is it was avesting period to make sure that
he didn't just leave me highand dry.
And now that we are 50-50 andwe're making decisions on a 50,
50 basis, it is like it'sactually incredible peace of
mind for me, because I know thatwe are incentivized exactly
(53:13):
equally.
And a lot of times you havelike, you know, it's like the
board back to the boardconversation.
You want to have five people,an odd number of people, on the
board, so you have a tiebreaker.
Well, again, like, if wedisagree, then you know we know
this, we know the drill, and sowe just have to come to an
agreement.
And we've never not come to anagreement.
You know, sounds easy.
AnnaRae Grabstein (53:35):
Yeah, it's nice when the incentives are
aligned, which is what you'reexperiencing within that
structure.
It's misaligned.
Incentives at the board levelcan make things really
complicated.
Misaligned incentives at theboard level can make things
really complicated.
Jeez, this time has flown.
I kind of can't believe it.
I don't want to end thisconversation without getting a
(53:55):
quick hot take from you, dave,about the trade war, because I
know that a lot of yourmanufacturing of your products
does happen overseas, so I'dlove it if you could just give
us your perspective on thatquickly for our listeners who
are navigating these samequestions themselves.
Dave Daily (54:09):
Well, I would be remiss not to say that you
should try to cheat however wayyou can.
I mean, we're all being cheated, in my opinion, out of our.
I mean, if you're makingproducts and you're experiencing
it, everyone's going toexperience this.
So, like you know, we happen tobe making the majority of our
products in China.
(54:30):
We're obviously relativelylimited via the beverage that
we're making, but everything,even little stuff like the
packaging of our beverage, hasbeen made in China, and now
we're going to need to onshorethat.
But it's not as simple as likeOK, we're just going to call a
domestic company and get it forthe same price that they were
selling it for last month.
No, the domestic company isgoing to raise their prices also
(54:56):
.
So what my concern about thisentire trade war is going to be
is that it's going to have atrickle effect across the entire
economy and all prices aregoing to rise, and you can't
just pick out China and be likeokay, everyone else can supply
the rest of the world.
It doesn't work like that.
We actually used this toolduring the last trade war, where
we would reroute our containersthrough Vietnam, which did not
(55:16):
have such a restrictive tariff,and we'd save 30, 50 grand on a
container just by sending it toVietnam.
First take off the Made inChina stickers, put on Made in
Vietnam stickers and send it toAmerica.
It's like it's such it createsoperational headaches and
(55:38):
everyone is going to cheat.
So I mean, look we, just wehope that they go away.
That's the answer.
Ben Larson (55:45):
Wow, dave, thanks for giving the addendum to our
discussion last week.
It's funny.
We've been fighting inflationso hard and now we're talking
about everything gettinginflated again just because of
the cost of goods.
That's going to be aninteresting time period.
Really appreciate you coming onthe show.
It's time for us to move to ourlast call.
(56:06):
This is your opportunity toplug whatever it is that you
want to give a shout out to callto action, cannabis related or
not.
Dave Daly should be the lastcall.
Dave Daily (56:17):
I guess is going to be to please get onto gravcom
and try our beverage.
We made a full spectrumcannabis beverage that tastes
and feels like you smoked weedand we really would appreciate
everyone to try the gravcannabis spirit.
(56:41):
That's my plug.
Thank you for letting meadvertise on your show.
AnnaRae Grabstein (56:47):
Do it, do it.
It's delicious.
I highly recommend it.
That's my plug.
Thank you for letting meadvertise on your show.
Do it Do it.
Dave Daily (56:53):
It's delicious.
I highly recommend it.
Also, thank you for having me.
This is absolutely awesome.
You guys are the best and it'sbeen so nice to get to know you
even outside of this podcast.
You know previously and I'mexcited to stay in touch with
you guys.
Ben Larson (57:01):
Amazing.
Dave Daly from Grab.
All right, thank you, sir.
We'll catch up soon.
Thank you so much.
All right, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you for engaging andasking questions and comments
while we record this live onLinkedIn Live.
Thank you for listening andrating and reviewing and sharing
all the things with our podcastthat is available on Apple,
(57:24):
itunes and Spotify andeverywhere else you listen to
your podcasts.
Special thank you to ourproducer, eric Rossetti Dave
called him out on the podcast,he really is the magic behind
the scenes and, of course, ourteams at Virtosa and Wolfmeyer.
Please like, subscribe.
Like I said, do all the thingswherever you want to listen to
(57:46):
us, but most importantly, folksstay curious, stay informed and
keep your spirits high untilnext time.
That's the show.
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