Episode 2090 - Graasi: Your Daily Dose of Organic Wellness

Graasi isn't just another drink; it's a USDA-certified organic barley water that's expertly crafted as a functional beverage for your daily hydration and overall wellness. Forget sugary sodas and artificial alternatives – Graasi is presented as a truly healthy, clean, and convenient option, proudly emphasizing its plant-based, vegan, and non-GMOcredentials.

At its core, Graasi harnesses the power of organic barley grass juice powder, making it the first certified organic barley water of its kind in the U.S. Each 16 oz bottle is more than just a thirst-quencher; it's packed with benefits, including 100% of your daily Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc to bolster your immune system. Beyond that, it's a source of prebiotics to nurture a healthy gut, and brimming with antioxidants to combat daily stressors.

With just 35 calories and a mere 4 grams of organic cane sugar (sweetened also with organic monk fruit), Graasi delivers functional hydration without compromise. It's a light, refreshing way to elevate your water intake, available in subtly delicious flavors like Cucumber Lime, Citrus Mint, and Lemongrass Ginger. All ingredients are carefully sourced and the product is proudly made in the USA, ensuring a clean label and a pure experience for the health-conscious consumer.

https://graasi.com/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What of Old what ale Boti cide the world.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It is your girl, the one and only Ash Brown,
and this is the Ash said It show over two
thousand episodes since twenty fourteen, half a million streams around
the world. None of this is possible without you, guys,
So I thank you so so very much. Today my
guest is founder and CEO of Gross. We've got Chris Lacarata. Hey, Chris, well.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Good evening as you. Pleasure be with you.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yes, thank you so much for joining us. And Chris,
where in the world are you today?

Speaker 4 (00:39):
I'm in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Oh, so, what's the weather like you guys have in
decent weather?

Speaker 4 (00:46):
No, we're not.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Act she's raining. So it's been pretty heavy rain all day.
So I think you're out of Atlanta, right, So I
don't think.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
You're Yeah, we've been.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, it's been raining all day here too, so it's
been kind of gloomy. But you know it's because we're
going to brighten it up with some grassy news. So
to start the job, let's let's get into how did
things start with the brand? Like, what was that origin story?

Speaker 4 (01:12):
Well, you know, we have we had a very unique
story and not one you typically hear you know, I'm
from manufacturing.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I spent most of my career.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
In manufacturing and operations, and my start was in my
wife's hometown in western New York, and it was a
town that was going through a whole series of factory
closures and loss of manufacturing jobs, which the community which
is reeling from. And that's where I got my start,
and unfortunately, the plant that I was working for was
shutting down as well. So over the course of it

(01:42):
then I stayed in manufacturing for the next thirty plus years,
and unfortunately I saw that very same thing happened far
too many times and really in many cases destroyed a
lot of small communities. And even if I had a
factory in that community, it was affective as well, because
you know, a talent would leave and services dry up,
and of course drugs and those types of things.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Start to play a role. So in twenty seventeen, I
hung my corporate hat.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Up after thirty plus years, and I just said, I
want to try to do something to create new manufacturing
jobs here in the United States. So I went back
to my wife's hometown and got in touch with the
Economic Development agency there and flash forward two years. We
worked on a project to start up a new processing
company there, a food processing company, and we were in

(02:29):
the final phases of that and the pandemic hit and
everything went.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
On hold as a result of that.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
But as the pandemic was wearing on, we saw an
opportunity to take what we had learned and do a
pivot and create a brand, a good, healthy brand, especially
one that was affecting immunity, and we saw an opportunity
for that, and.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Lo and behold, de Grassi was born.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
It took us about a year to develop the brand
and we launched into market in January twenty twenty one.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Wow, so that was I started.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, that is incredible.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Now, as you were in that phase of Okay, let's
take it back a little bit, back to when you
were about to launch, when you were about to actually
launch the brand. You've guys got all of your your
business minds and everything in order. Was there anything that
happened that surprised you or something that you learned in
that process?

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Well, I think what we were learning and it was happening.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
To coincide with what was going on in the markets.
We stuck to wanting our brand to be certified organic,
and as you probably know, most of the beverage industry
is not organic, and we just felt like, you know,
this is something that if we're going to create a good,
healthy brand in a sea of unhealthy brands, we wanted
to make sure that we had the certification that could

(03:49):
help people trust that brand. The problem with that for us,
and the challenge for that for us as an emerging brand,
was that we had to, you know, obviously educate the
public on what it is. And we were a barley
based drink and people didn't really know what barley water was.
So probably the biggest challenge for us was making people
understand what we are, what the drink is, and how

(04:11):
it could help them in their health and the medicinal
benefits of it. That's been the biggest challenge.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Gotcha, gotcha?

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And for you as founder and CEO, what would you
say has been your proudest moment with the brand to date?

Speaker 4 (04:27):
But the product, I can tell you this just happened.
By the way, Wellness Magazine just.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Did a feature on us, and we didn't ask them
to do it.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
They just called us and said they were doing it,
and we waited for it with our fingers crossed. And
the article came out.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Which was glowing, and they basically telled you know, in.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
That article, one of the statements they made was that
GROSSI is not just a beverage of revolution. And they
went through each of our ingredients, They went through each
of our flavors, and they went through why that's important
to market and why it's important to consumer. And we
couldn't have asked for more. That was our proudest moment
because that was literally five years in the making.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
That is wow. That's wonderful to hear that. You know,
like you said, they just called you guys up. They
you know, the product speaks for itself essentially.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
It does it does that?

Speaker 4 (05:18):
Really couldn't have said it better.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Maybe one other if I could, if I could offer
it asks we had, believe it or not. This is
a little odd, but we love it.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
We had a agency that represents fifty mixed martial arts
fighters professional fighters. They called us and they said, would
you send us some of your product because we're very
particular with our with our fighters and our athletes about
what they consume and their health and recovery and MoU
sugar and all those things. We sent them our product.
They loved it, and as a result of that, we

(05:50):
are we've been a sponsor of what's called the mag Agency,
the Martin Advisory Group, and they represent fifty mixed martial
arts fighters and we we are now we sponsor with
a hydration sponsor for.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
What's called Where Legends Rise.

Speaker 4 (06:06):
It's a where young fighters go to Las Vegas and
they do a two day long tournament, and we've done
that twice. Now we have another one coming up in June,
so we're very proud about that as well.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yes, as you should be. As you absolutely should be.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
And for listeners that are not familiar, tell us a
little bit more about grassy. Who's at four, who is
at help and what are some of the benefits.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
Yeah, let's start with the benefits. I mean, the base
of our product is barley grass juice powder. It is
not the grain. It's what they call the tender young
grass and it's harvested at the teak of its stutrients,
so it's also gluten free and barley grass juice powder
is it literally provides all eight essential amino acids. It
has twelve of the sixteen non essential amino acids, and

(06:54):
it's proven to help support detoxification of the liver, the
blood and the gas to intentional track and it also
helps with free radicals, So we love this and it's
also it's been described many times as a superfood with
long medicinal history. So that's the base of our drink.
And we wanted it to have immunity boosting power and
the functional which is what the consumers are looking for

(07:15):
these days, and we impuse it. We write them in
d C and zinc for immunity boosting power, and all
the ingredients are organic of course, as we guess, and
we just lightly sweeten it, very lightly, because we wanted
it to be low sugar and low.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Calories thirty five.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
Calories in a world where sugar drinks like sodas are
forty grams of sugar or more and low sugar drinks
out in the beverage market today are considered to be
eight to ten. We're at four, so we're very low
sugar drink and it has a number of addicginal benefits.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
But you know, mereity boosting is one and the all
things I talked.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
About with barley grass juice powders the other. And so
it is a functional drink that has a benefit not
just hydration.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Gotcha, gotcha? That was good.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
And are there any slavor varieties that people can maybe
look forward to?

Speaker 4 (08:09):
Yeah, well we have right now. We have cucumber line,
we have lemon grass ginger, and we have citru Smitch.
But we have two more flavors done, Watermelon Booze and
BlackBerry Peach. And we have three actually.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
That we're still working on but almost done with.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Lemonage, so we are going to extend the line and
we're working on a tonic as well. So and it
all be sir, sort of find organic as well.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Awesome, just in time for summer. I love it. Yes,
that is awesome. Wow. So that's was certainly not least.
What advice would you offer to.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Someone now that's listening to the show, that's catching your
episode that's like, you know what, I've got this idea,
but I'm not one hundred percent sure on how to
move on it or if I should move on it.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
What would you tell them?

Speaker 4 (08:57):
Well, you definitely have to get some I mean, I'm
from beverage industry, so I've had a little bit of
benefit there. But I do reach out to and we
use a distribution company that has got long histories in
bringing brands to market, because even if you understand the
industry or the product, you're coming up with the distribution

(09:18):
and sales channels to get started with, and the dynamics
of how that works with retailers and supermarket chains and
things like that can be very detailed and very complex
and very expensive. So that's the other thing too. I mean,
you have to have a source of funding to get
you through those early phases because there's a lot of promotion,

(09:39):
there's a lot of selling. You're constantly on the mark
and you're constantly chasing until you start to break through.
So the big thing is understanding who your partners are
going to be with and who you're going to make
sure that you stick with. In terms of understanding the industry,
but I would say distribution and where you're going to
sell your product and through what manals is very important.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
And then I also.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Understanding what consumers.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Are looking for specifically and meet that need and find
out who.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
The players are they can help you in that sales channel.
That's important.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Sounds like the plan, Chris.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
That was a lot of really great information and I'm
sure open up the eyes of many potential Grassy fans
out there and those people that are great great looking
for it in they're grocery. But for people that want
to get more information or maybe get it shipped to
the house, what do.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
They need to do? Grassy dot com, g r a
A SI dot com. And if you'd like more information about.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
The product itself, we do blog posts. We have over
forty blog posts that are a little more technical and
answer some much more questions about the product and the
medicinal benefits of it.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
We also are across all of social.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
Media if you'd like to take a look at We
have a lot of videos on YouTube and we also
use Instagram, of Facebook and rumble.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
So an x by the way on all of that,
if people would like to go take a look.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
At com awesome, awesome, Well, much more success to you
and the whole team, Chris, keep up the great work
keeping us healthy like that, well, thank you, thank you, Yes,
and I can do it absolutely. I appreciate each and
every one of you guys. Thank you so much for
your love and support. Keeping in mind. Anyone to tell

(11:23):
you that you can't do what you want to do,
you look them square in the face, you tell them,
don't believe me. Just watch watch what I do, watch
me make it happen, Watch me make history. That's what
we're doing this for the history books. Social media is nice,
but real life is so much better. The next time
you guys,