The Future of Cannabis-Infused Beverages and Addressing Generational Gaps with truss beverages' Scott Cooper

Scott Cooper made the move a year ago from Molson Coors to the start up, truss beverages, to reimagine what the cannabis market could look like. An experienced business leader, marketer and innovator with a track record of breathing new life into businesses & brands and unlocking new opportunities, Scott brings great insight into his new chosen path and what kinds of generational opportunities and limitations he faces in changing the landscape of cannabis-infused beverages.

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Episode Transcript

Leon Goren (00:00):
Special thanks to Aryn and Berlis for helping us
bring you today's PEO leaership snippet podcast. Wel
ome to our snippets podcast. I'mLeon Goren, CEO and pre
ident of PEO leadership NorthAmerica's premier peer to peer
network and leadership advisoryfirm. Today we welcome Scott
Cooper present CEO at trussbeverages. Scott has been leader

(00:22):
in the CPG industry for manyyears having worked both in
Canada and the US. Prior totrust beverages. He served as a
global Chief Innovation Officerof Molson Coors for four years.
On his return back to Canadafrom Denver, last year, he
joined our PEO LeadershiCommittee, and I know both hi
advisory group in our communitare very happy to have him o
board. Scott, it's great to havyou with us today. Yeah, it'

(00:44):
great to be here. Thanks foinviting me looking forward t
the discussion. So I thought I'kick it off around th
transition to a company liktrust, and where you're th
president, CEO, maybe you juswalk us through a little bit o
how that happened. And maybsome of the differences betwee
those roles or any surprisesSure, yo

Unknown (01:02):
know, I think probably the most jarring transition for
me was for becoming the head ofinnovation globally, I was the
chief Commercial Officer for theCanadian business. And in that
role, you've got a lot ofresources, you've got a lot of
big company support around you.
And moving into that role ashead of global innovation, it
was really about creating newcapabilities for large

(01:23):
organization, and innovation,and particularly startups, it's
just a fundamentally differentskill set, then large companies
typically have and a part of thefour year journey there was
setting up those capabilities,bringing in a different team,
setting an agenda. And then in alot of ways, transitioning to
trust it was it wasn't easy, butit was almost a relief, I guess

(01:46):
is the word I would use it was achance to to, you know, building
capabilities in a largeorganization to start up small
companies. You're fightingagainst the the current and
everything that's in thatcompany systems process
capability is built forsomething else. And then so then
being able to come in andactually run one of those small
companies, and apply some ofthose disciplines of being able

(02:09):
to move quicker, you know,certainly being informed by
data, but but not getting to 90%certainty before you move. It
was really enjoyable coming intoit.

Leon Goren (02:20):
So you bring up an interesting point. And I know a
lot of companies are sort oftrying to figure this out. But
when you were with Molson Coorsand you're running innovation.
Do you have autonomy? Are youwere you, like, influenced under
the big header between the twocompanies? And because everyone
talks about, they feel stifledwithin those large

(02:41):
organizations, sometimes whenyou're running innovation,
right? So yeah, you gotinnovation, but you're still
having to support the wholelarger organization. So
sometimes it's not as innovativeas you hope it to be.

Unknown (02:52):
Well, specifically, the most important, we were given a
fair bit of autonomy, in evenincluding the somewhat the
degree of autonomy that wewanted. And at the time, we were
just coming to an end of an erawhere a lot of large companies
had set up air quotes garages inSilicon Valley, and they set up
these incubators. And ourobservation at the time was you

(03:13):
actually, it's not a good thingfor large companies Innovation
Group to have that muchautonomy. And almost none of
them succeeded because they weredisconnected from the commercial
needs and goals of the business.
And they were almost toocreative. So I am getting that
balance, right of beingconnected to the goals of the
business, in the case of MolsonCoors, staying very focused on

(03:34):
beverages, but starting to lookbeyond alcohol, and staying
closely connected to thebusiness units themselves, the
operating units, becauseultimately, they're the ones who
need to lead and commercializeany innovation that a central
innovation teams going to comeup with. And if they're not on
board, early and inpassionately, then that's gonna

(03:58):
undermine the success of ofanything they come up with. So
having the autonomy and beingsomewhat removed from the day to
day pressure of the of the p&lis important. So you can think
creatively and outside of theparameters of the business. But
equally being connected is alsovery important.

Leon Goren (04:18):
So you started though, as the chairman right of
trust, what sort of what spurredyou on to take on the
presidency? Oh, because it wasit's a major shift for you,
right? You've been in thecommercial, you were the
Commercial Officer, your chiefinnovation. And now you went
into that startup, and youactually understood the startup
because you guys were the oneincubating it. Any nerves

(04:39):
jumping in to that small startupto get it going?

Unknown (04:42):
Of course, at the time that I stepped into it, we
didn't have a plant built dowith COVID was just hitting.
There's still a lot ofrestrictions around what you
could and couldn't do with thenew legislation. So yes, it was
there was no proof of conceptsdidn't know if consumers are
going to like our product, evenif we could make good products

(05:05):
at that point in time, sodefinitely stepped off the
legend and jumped in the wateron that one. But if I kind of
wind back, this was aninitiative that we kicked off in
2017 when we've gone to theexecutive team at Molson Coors,
and then subsequently the boardand, and pitched them the idea

(05:27):
of getting into cannabis, andspecifically cannabis infused
beverages. So we've been lookingat it for a long time, we've
done a lot of research, we did alarge study with McKinsey with
about 10,000 consumers in NorthAmerica to really understand it.
So as much as it was a risk witha lot of unknowns, we also also
had a lot of confidence, basedon the consumer research and

(05:49):
data that we had. And we've madea lot of progress since 2017,
around some of the basetechnologies and making ingested
cannabis bioavailable, andfeeling the effects quickly
quick onset. So yes, I wasdespite some of those nerves and
uncertainties quite confidenttaking the taking the role and

(06:09):
actually really excited topioneer something. How many
times do you get to lead abusiness that has literally
never been done in the worldbefore?

Leon Goren (06:19):
It's amazing. It's funny, because I, we often have
been doing this a lot of years.
And so I often had the hiredguns who are always looking at
and going, that entrepreneurial,and it looks so fantastic, but
often very nervous to sort ofjump into it, right? Because
they, they look at it theyadmire, but rarely do they jump
and then some of that jumpactually sometimes sit back and

(06:39):
go, Oh my god, I had no ideathat it was going to be like I
had all these resources beforeand now I got no one and I'm
doing it out. And it'soverwhelming sometimes for them.
So

Unknown (06:51):
I guess I'm a little bit lucky in that I know, I got
to step into a startup that waswell capitalized. We've got two
large shareholders with MolsonCoors, and, and hexo in the
cannabis space. So I, I admirethose who take it. As much as I
took a leap. We have goodbacking and those who take a
true leap to kind of start fromscratch is, I think, a different

(07:13):
thing entirely. And justtremendous respect for people
who choose to do that.

Leon Goren (07:17):
No, it's great. So you've been at it now for a few
years. And it's and we've almostall of us on the sidelines have
been watching this wholecannabis space grow. And and
listen to the media and stuff.
Let's talk about the size of thebusiness because the perception
at I think a lot of people lookat it. It's growing. But we
don't know how fast it'sgrowing. We see retailer showing

(07:38):
up everywhere. Is it meetingexpectations in terms of let's
go back to that McKinsey studyyou guys did years ago, in terms
of size of market versus alcoholin terms of consumer adoption?
Is it coming as fast or have werun into a few barriers,

Unknown (07:56):
it is not coming as fast. So they started the
highest level of total cannabisretail sales, in 2028, was
around 2.6 billion and most hadbeen forecasting around 3.1 3.2.
In advance of that year, andthis year, looks like it's going
to come in around 3.8 to 3.9ish, maybe a little bit higher.

(08:21):
That mean COVID has definitelymade it difficult to predict
things. But but on trackingroughly people were forecasting
by 2025, about an $8 billionbusiness. So it'll be kind of in
that I think six to seven bythem. So significant and and
still challenging, largeestablished industries like

(08:41):
alcohol for scale and size, butnot merging emerging quite as
quickly as people had forecastand expected.

Leon Goren (08:48):
And is it the consumer like the consumer,
trialing it? That's sort of thebiggest challenge.

Unknown (08:55):
Yeah, I can speak specifically to cannabis infused
beverages because obviouslythat's where our focus and
expertise is. And when welaunched the business, where we
really were excited as cannabisinfused beverages, overcome a
lot of the social stigmas thatare associated with smoking, and
the other you know, the primaryforms of cannabis consumption.

(09:17):
And we thought that there wouldbe both current cannabis
consumers would gravitatetowards beverages and use us for
occasions where they didn't wantto or couldn't smoke. But we
also thought that there would bean equally large group of
consumers that were interestedin cannabis but didn't want to
smoke it would come into thecategory. And what we've found
for our business is it's beenvery much the former group, the

(09:41):
current cannabis consumers,adding beverages as part of
their repertoire, and verylittle of new consumers coming
into the category via cannabisinfused beverages. So that that
has not grown as quickly as wethought it would. Although on
the current cannabis consumerswe're seeing Really, really

(10:01):
strong trial, and about 85%repeat rates once people have
tried the products,

Leon Goren (10:07):
so it's more. Okay.
So if I understand it, it wasthe the new consumers who had
never really done this before,still were hesitant really to
sort of jump in and give it atry.

Unknown (10:18):
And still are. So I think that's probably the gap
between what industry wasforecasting from overall growth
to to where we are today. Ithink it'll still come, I think
it just change and behaviortakes time. And I know the first
time I would not, there was nota category consumer before

(10:39):
stepping into this role andtrying some of our products for
the first time, you really don'tknow how it's gonna affect you.
And so there's, yeah, it takestime to create space to try it.
And I think everyone kind of hasto go on that journey and, and
find a way to ease into it.

Leon Goren (10:56):
Yeah, no, I agree.
It was almost like a stigma thatyou've been brainwashed for so
many years that it took it takesa while because I've done the
same thing. I was on theoutside, right? Never have done
and want to try it. And thenonce you try it, you're like,
Okay, this is like alcohol andin many respects, right. But
there's still a lot of peopleout there who haven't really are
nervous about it. It's almostlike a generation gap. We got to

(11:19):
go through here possibly, verymuch.

Unknown (11:23):
There was an interesting study that was done
in the US probably about a yearago, where they asked
millennials and Generation Zversus Gen X and boomers, if you
could have only one of alcoholor cannabis legal, which would
you choose? And for Gen X andboomers, two thirds chose
alcohol and for Gen Z andmillennials two thirds chose
cannabis. So there is a there isa divide there around attitudes

(11:47):
and perceptions for sure.

Leon Goren (11:51):
That's awesome.
Well, Scott, thank you so muchfor joining us today and thanks
for sharing your insights on theindustry and even on your
transition. If you're interestedin our live webcast, the way
forward live and or any othersnippets, please take a moment
and visit us at PL leadershipcomm you'll find on our site
various previous recordedwebcasts, which include the
guests as Morgan housel,Professor Janice Stein, Harvard
Torres, Beth Kanter, Michelgoldheart, Dr. Jason south, and

(12:13):
we cover such topics as MentalHealth Leadership, world reset
and a host of others. Thank youfor joining us today and we look
forward to seeing you againshortly.