Shawn Biega is doing some interesting things with CBD. His company Daytrip Beverages, has grown in popularity over the past four years and it is one of the leading companies in the recreational CBD space. We sat down with Biega to talk about the company’s future and its latest product, Daytrip Prebiotic Soda.
NGN: Why don’t you tell me what you guys are building out?
Biega: We started in the CBD Sparkling Water business. The goal was to make the best sparkling water on the planet and then we happened to infuse it with CBD to make a mood-elevating product. And what we did is we started by using plant uh based terpenes. And we’ve done that with all our products since we started and they’re basically plant-based terpenes that kind of mimic the sativa flavor.
NGN : How long have you guys been doing this?
B: So we started in the summer of 2019. That’s when our first drink came out. We’re very strong in California and the West Coast. We’re in 1,000 stores easily. Now with our CBD sparkling Water, which is really loved by a lot of people, we’re in a lot of the marquee independent stores like Bristol Farms. And then we’re all over the northwest in multiple states across the United States, from hotel boutiques to grocery stores. We came out with our new prebiotic line in November, around the holidays, and that’s starting to go out into distribution now to a lot of very large kind of locations. So that’s, that’s scaling very nicely.
NGN: What are the plans for like east coast to the South?
B: Right now we’re in Texas we’re in Florida and we’re starting to move out a little bit in, in New York City. Where are you based? Are you based in New York? Yeah, we were really doing well in New York. We just haven’t found the right distribution partner out there. So, we were selling, you know, and all the, you know, in Soho and Chelsea and a lot of those areas. So, we’re not, we’re not there right now.
NGN: What do you think about the future of this stuff? Are you seeing any sort of movement away from alcohol into CBD drinks like this?
B: I mean, the non-alcoholic crowd is, is big, and then, then the sobriety crowd is really big and they’re actually big users of our drinks. We support that in a big way. We think our drink goes great with mocktails. But now it’s a big trend. I think people are moving away from alcohol in a big way.
NGN: What’s what’s next for the company? What are you guys building out next?
B: We’ve really been focusing on this prebiotic drink. We’re going continue doing a in of the supplement business. We just launched Night Trip just about a week ago, which is a CBD sleep formula. It’s also got valerian root and we have some terpenes in there.
NGN: What about THC?
B: We’ve thought about it from time to time. We’ve played around with it. We actually did a test market with it in California and it went incredibly well. We made gummies. But we already had our hands full going after the grocery store uh business. We think about it all the time.
NGN: And what does the CBD market look like right now? It feels like it’s expanding. But what are you guys seeing?
B: Yeah, it’s, it’s been challenging due to the FDA. We’re one of the leading brands. We’re number two in the West and number three nationally in the United States in the CBD and food and beverage space. We expect to hopefully be number one this year, the way that we’re going. We’re growing really fast and we have great product velocity in the retail stores, and people just love it. Our community really loves it.
NGN: How did you get into this business?
B: I was a landlord to multiple cannabis companies in Berkeley, California. And at that time, I had sciatica, and a doctor, a famous doctor named Doctor Cameron, turned me on to CBD. And it really helped me and I haven’t really had a sciatic problem ever since. CBD definitely, uh, changed my life for the better. CBD just kind of takes the edge off and it’s just a nice enjoyable feeling.
