CPG Week: Bottled Water Behemoth And Omsom’s New Owner

[00:00:05] Monica Watrous: Welcome to the CPG Week podcast by BevNET and Nosh, your source for the latest food and beverage industry news. I'm Monica Watrous, Managing Editor of Nosh, here with my co-hosts, Brad Avery and Lukas Southard. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe on your listening platform of choice. On the podcast today, we're discussing a bottled water behemoth and Omsom's new owner. But first, we all just returned from Live Summer in New York City. Brad, what were your highlights of the trip?

[00:00:35] Brad Avery: Great show, first of all. I always love being able to catch up with everybody that I talk to online all the time in person. So I tried a few new brands. So it was OK Energy, they were in the New Beverage Showdown. I gave that one a try. Oh, Uncle Waitley's, the ginger beer brand. I sampled that and that was like really premium spice ginger, like really had a kick to it. It's full sugar. And so I kind of took it thinking like, All right, I'll have a few sips and then put it down. And then I found myself continuing to drink it long after I was like, oh, it's too much sugar.

[00:01:12] Monica Watrous: It's so good. And there's like made with scotch bonnet. I think that's what gives it the kick, the extra kick.

[00:01:18] Lukas Southard: Yeah, it's definitely more than just ginger beer. It's got like the chili spice in there. It's great.

[00:01:23] Monica Watrous: Lucas, what were the highlights for you?

[00:01:26] Lukas Southard: I had a great time at the show as well. It was nice to meet a lot of the brands that I usually just talk to. on a screen, I got to meet in person, Louie, who's the founder of Flyers. And Aaron Nosbisch, who's also a founder of a HempTHC brand called Breeze. He was on stage during a panel about the future of HempTHC beverages and how it relates to the rest of the beverage scape. But I think one of my favorite parts was actually going out to dinner with some of my colleagues. We had a mushroom trip and not the psychedelic kind. We went to a mushroom-centric restaurant. I know it's not as fun, but it was a really cool restaurant. It was called Third Kingdom and it was in the is in these village and it everything was mushrooms. So I had like a lion's mane dumpling and some grits with a Pio Pino mushrooms, which I'd never heard of. It was great. And it was just nice, like having dinner with some of the people that I haven't been able to socialize with as much. Most of the San Diego crowd.

[00:02:35] Monica Watrous: That's lovely. I had a lot of fun traversing Manhattan with Melissa Traverse. Travers, our director of community here at BevNET and Nosh. She and I did a little grocery store crawl. We hit up Fairway, Citarella, and Pop-Up Grocer. And I spent way too much money at all three of those locations. But we had a blast. And as for the show, I hadn't been to a Live Summer Summer event yet. So this was exciting for me to experience. And we heard so much great feedback. Everything went smoothly. People really had a great time and I'm super pumped to start planning Nosh Live in December. So, of course, even though we were at Live Summer, the news didn't stop and we didn't stop reporting on it. Brad, you wrote this week about Blue Triton Primo Water merging into a bottled water behemoth. Can you tell us more about that deal?

[00:03:35] Brad Avery: Thankfully, they waited until Monday after Live Summer ended to announce this deal because this is a pretty huge shift in the water space. Primo Water Brands, which is the largest bottled water manufacturer in the US, they own the former Nestle Waters portfolio with brands like Arrowhead and Poland Spring, they are going to be merging with Primo Water, which is a premier water jug and dispenser business, serves a lot of office accounts. The combined entity, once this deal closes, is going to be worth an estimated $6.5 billion, and that's just on closing. So this is a very big shift in the water space, and it's also expanding both companies' arms in their respective spaces. Now, Primo Water does have the Ready Refresh business, which they acquired from Nestle, that also does jugs in office and home account delivery. But that's really Primo's bread and butter. So this now gives Primo a huge CPG wing as well.

[00:04:39] Lukas Southard: Yeah, I was looking at the list of different brands that are under both of these companies that are now merging and Blue Triton, as you said there of like Arrowhead, Deer Park, Polar Springs, Saratoga, Pure Life, Ozarkia. And then with Primo, it's like Alhambra, Crystal Springs, Mountain Valley Water, uh, Kentwood Springs. Like it just, I feel like it's every somewhat generic bottled water brand that I've seen.

[00:05:08] Brad Avery: It's the regional brands. Yeah. And they are huge throughout the country with different brands. And I mean, they have political sway. This is a company that was in The New York Times recently for their impact on Maine groundwater sourcing laws. This is a billionaire family, the Metropolis family. Demetropolis is going to be the non-executive chairman of the business. The CEO of Primo Water will take over as CEO of the combined company. If you also look at retail scanner data, private label is the largest category in bottled water in the US. It's over $6 billion. Now, Primo Water's growth is not going to be just in CPG through the Primo Water merger, but this does perhaps move Primo Water ahead of private label as far as the company's retail and market capacity.

[00:06:07] Monica Watrous: That's pretty significant. And in other awesome MNA news, last week while we were at Live Summer, we did report on another big deal that came through. Day Day Cook, the Asian food powerhouse, has acquired OnSom, the Proud Loud cooking sauce brand. It's a deal consisting of cash and stock paid over a four-year term. We don't have the financial terms of the transaction. But sisters and co-founders Kim and Vanessa Pham will remain involved with the company as strategic advisors according to their LinkedIn posts. And Kim and Vanessa said they expect to accelerate product development for the company under Day Day Cook. AumSum debuted in 2020 with its signature sauces and expanded to noodles last year. Brad, you actually talked to the founder Norma Chu of Day Day Cook. about Plans to Expand and its origin as a content and recipe platform. Can you tell us more about who this company is and how they're expanding?

[00:07:10] Brad Avery: Yeah, Day Day Cook is based in Hong Kong and they were founded in 2012 actually as an online recipe sharing platform. But over the past couple years, and really just within the last 12 months, they have become a M&A powerhouse, picking up a lot of American based Asian food brands. So they've acquired Nona Lim, they've acquired Yai's Thai. And when I spoke to Norma, she said that her goal is to establish Day to Cook as the general mills for Asian food. They recognize this sea change that has been happening in the international aisle, in the U.S. market, and is also taking effect around the world with next generation, innovative Asian food products and CPG. So Omsom seems like a perfect addition to that roster as far as a trending, innovative brand that they can now bring into their network and service it with a pretty robust support system.

[00:08:17] Monica Watrous: Brad, it was actually the story that you wrote about Day Day Cook, using Norma's words, comparing the platform to the general mills of Asian food that caught the eye of the Pham sisters. As we got a little peek behind the curtain on how this deal transpired, we saw a screenshot of a LinkedIn message that Vanessa sent to Norma saying, I saw an article in Nosh about what you're building and we're interested in collaborating.

[00:08:44] Brad Avery: Yeah, Vanessa shared that on Instagram, and that was a little bit of a surreal moment. I guess sometimes, you know, you write these articles and you're thinking, are you know, is anyone actually reading this? Well, you know, it's this have an influence. So that was that was kind of cool to see. You know, I don't want to take any credit, though. I mean, they are the ones that built this company. And Norma is the one that's leading this growing conglomerate, you know, an international business and with an eye for these brands that she believes can be major household names in the future.

[00:09:18] Monica Watrous: Definitely. And AumSum, it's more than just the cooking staples and noodles that they've introduced to the market. They're educators and advocates. We've seen a lot of content on social media dismantling the, quote, ethnic aisle in supermarkets and re-educating consumers and industry about MSG and actually got Whole30 to stop banning MSG from its framework.

[00:09:50] Brad Avery: I think that's something that has been a real hallmark of their style of leadership, is that they are going to be outspoken, they are going to be upfront and leading and advocating for this whole category, for their national cuisine, from their heritage, for bringing the food aisle in the grocery store forward with new innovative products.

[00:10:17] Monica Watrous: Another thing that I love about what AMSOM has done is they collaborate with tastemakers and chefs representing different cuisines, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and bringing cultural integrity to these products.

[00:10:31] Lukas Southard: It will be really Exciting to see what DayDayCook can do with AumSum because AumSum has done a great job scaling itself in a short amount of time. And with the backing of DayDayCook, it feels like we might be seeing AumSum in every grocery store before we know it. Without missing a beat, DayDayCook announced this week that it's appointed a new chief operating officer, Malik Sadiq. who has 25 years in food and beverage. Most recently, he was the co-CEO and COO of Live Kindly Collective, but he also was senior vice president of international and export divisions of Tyson foods. So this is a seasoned CPG executive that's going to be. one of the ones leading the charge at Day Day Cook and probably doing some really interesting stuff, bringing AumSum to consumers.

[00:11:32] Brad Avery: You know, I think you also have to consider what are Day Day Cook's current capabilities and something that they can provide. When I talked to Norma, she said increased manufacturing abilities, support on R&D, sales and marketing and logistics, access to a broader distribution network that includes some mainstream retailers and large chains in the country. I know that their philosophy towards M&A is also looking at companies that are growing by at least 20% year over year. So that maybe gives us some insight into what Omsom's trajectory is as well, and why Day Day Cook felt confident to make this acquisition.

[00:12:08] Monica Watrous: Well, I'm excited to see more from Day Day Cook and continue to watch as it grows and builds this General Mills of Asian food platform. Here are some other notable bits of news from the week. Basemakers lays foundation for its CPG services house with brokerage division. BTR Nation builds out bar business with innovation and distribution. And Abite with Casey Gaston, executive leader of local and emerging brands for Whole Foods. For these stories and more, become an insider at BevNET & Nosh. That wraps up this edition of CPG Week by BevNET & Nosh. Thank you to our audio engineer, Joshua Pratt, our director is Mike Schneider, and our designer is Aaron Willette. If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe on your listening platform of choice, and we will see you next time.