Sam and Luke Walker

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and we are coming at you on a Monday. I am going to be your host today. Jen Ichikawa was unable to make this episode, but she is going to be coming back real soon. She will be on the episode coming up next Monday with Craig Barber, who's the CEO of O'Charlie's. What a fun conversation that was. And today we are coming at you with the Walker Brothers. Who are the Walker Brothers you may say? The Walker Brothers are a local kombucha maker. They're a company that makes kombucha.

01:02You may have heard about kombucha. They make both hard kombucha as well as, is it called soft kombucha? I don't know. Maybe we'll find out in this interview. So what they do is they ferment tea and then they turn it into kombucha. So if you've ever wondered what it was or how it is and you want to support a local company, these guys are amazing. They are brothers and today they tell their story. This was truly a fun interview. So nice to get to know them. We've been wanting to talk to them for a really, really long time. They've been referenced multiple times in previous interviews and just it was great to get them both here in studio. So we're going to do that here in just a second. Want to say thank you guys for all the follows. You can find us at Instagram at Nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio and you can go subscribe to this podcast. So I do some crazy things. I put episodes out all the time that are just random. I don't I try and do Mondays and sometimes a bonus episode Fridays when there's a lot of people that are coming into an interview.

02:05But sometimes I put out episodes randomly on Thursdays or sometimes I put them out Sunday afternoon. You have no idea. If you're a subscriber, it will let you know when I push out content early if you're just dying to hear it. So go and subscribe, turn on those notifications and go find us on YouTube. I'm going to start adding more videos to YouTube here real soon. I've kind of been on a pause as we've been making videos for Facebook and our reels and just some goofy stuff that we've been doing. You can also follow us on TikTok. We're kind of all over the place. So thank you, the listener, for listening and we love feedback. So let us know. Find it. You can DM me anytime. I'd love to know what your thoughts are on these episodes. If you have anybody you'd like to nominate to be on the show, I love it. That's exactly what we're looking for. So we're going to do a couple of ads here and then we're going to jump in with the Walker Brothers. Have a great week, y'all. One of God's great gifts to this world was fresh baked bread.

03:08That's why Sharpies Bakery delivers six days a week to your restaurant as they've been doing for 36 years. Aaron Mosso's family has been running Sharpies Bakery locally owned and operated right here in Nashville, Tennessee, like I said, for 36 years. Go check him out at Sharpies.com that's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com or Sharpies Bakery on Instagram and Facebook. Give Aaron Mosso a call at 615-319-6453 to set up an appointment to talk about what fresh bread you'd like delivered to your restaurant today. You have heard me talk about SuperSource for the last two years and in that time, Jason Ellis, I feel like he's taken over the city. It is hard for me to get a guest in here that doesn't use SuperSource and I'm telling you, everybody loves him. When you mentioned Jason, I'm like, oh my gosh, that guy's legitimate. Ask yourself this question. Do you feel that way about the person that provides you with your dish machine and chemicals?

04:11Because he's the real deal. And guess what? He's not going to make you sign a five-year contract. He's never going to say, well, you signed a contract, it's on you. He goes week to week. You never sign a contract, so he earns your business every single week. I loved it when we had Cam and Nickian from the Red Perch and they said, he's like one of our employees when he's in the building. He's that good. You should call him today. If you don't feel that way about your dish machine and chemical person, 770-337-1143 is how you get ahold of Jason, or go to NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com, click the Sponsors tab. There's a special link on there that will get you special discounts for new customers. Call him now. We are super excited today to welcome in Sam and Luke Walker, and they are the brothers who are the owners of Walker Brothers Kombucha. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, gentlemen.

05:12Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, so let's get, let's let everybody know whose voice is whose, because you're going to hear these different people talking. Sam, give me like a, hi, I'm Sam, give me like your 90 second elevator pitch or something. What do you tell people you do at the company? Hi, I am Sam. I am the older brother. Oh, you took one of my questions. You're the older brother. That's all I got. I handle sales and distribution and pretty much everything front facing. Okay. And how much older are you? Two and a half years. Wow. My brother's two and a half years older than me. We're gonna have a lot to talk about. Oh yeah. Luke. Yeah. And so this other voice here is Luke. Yep. Yeah, I'm Luke Walker. I am the younger. I am also the Star Wars theme name in the family. And I don't know why I didn't put that together before, but I'm just beating everyone else to the punch here. Thank you very much. But your middle name.

06:13It's going to come up, so. Is your. My middle name is Knott's Guy. Okay. My parents didn't recognize, my dad was a history teacher at the time and he went into his class after my parents had had me and his class asked, what's your son's name? He told them and they all start freaking out and he's like, what's going on? And they filled him in. So I don't know how they missed that. But he's thinking of legally changing it. I have been thinking about legally changing my middle name to Sky. I think you should. Yeah. Just so. Cause I get asked all the time. What is your middle name now? It's Talbot. Talbot. Yeah. Knott's Guy. Little known fact. Most of my friends don't know that. Yeah. Knott's Guy. Luke Talbot Walker. I just think it would be gratifying to. All the people. Yeah. It is. That's fantastic. So Luke and Sam, two and a half years older and you're in sales and you, Luke are in operations. You make it happen inside.

07:13Yeah. I do the opposite. So originally a lot of recipe development and still that. But now that's transitioned into, you know, what does it look like to scale these recipes to make them, to replicate them at a commercial scale and, you know, have the same quality. And in kombucha that's a weird game just cause it's not like beer or wine where there are these, there's this long history of commercial production that, and like on online resources or so it requires a lot of creativity to. And trial and error. A lot of trial and error and a lot of mixing and matching in terms of, we use beer equipment, we use wine equipment, we pick a bunch of different people's brains in order to come up with systems that work for us. That's pretty cool. So when you first started like the company, after like six months, how much, I mean for how long has the company been around?

08:15How long have you guys been doing this? About two and a half years. Okay. So I'm like about to be born basically. We're about to be born. Yeah. Okay. We launched in October of 2019. Wow. Which we thought was a great time. We thought it was a great time to launch in October. We launched our alcoholic line, I want to say March 13th of 2020, which is the day, which is the day that Trump declared a national state emergency. That's the day I did my first podcast. Hey, you're still here too. So yeah, we did our very first podcast on March 13th, maybe it was the 12th. I don't know. One of those two days. That was Friday the 13th too actually. I think it was a Friday that I did the first one because everybody was out there saying like that they canceled March Madness. They canceled the baseball spring training. They paused the NBA season and they paused because I was looking for a hockey game that Thursday night and it was canceled. I can tell you we did not cancel our kombucha release party.

09:17We had no idea when it was coming. Well, there's like one person in the country that had it by then and we all freaked out. I mean, yeah, it was a crazy time, man. It was. So you guys released your alcoholic kombucha and you threw it. Where'd you throw the party? It was in East Nashville at our the print shop that we use for apparel called Friendly Artic. Cool. Give a shout out to the local print shop. I like it. Okay. So how much were you producing? Like I said, six months into doing this, how much were you producing and what are you doing now? Oh, that's a good question. Well to put it in perspective in terms of what our production vessels looked like, our fermenters at the time were we had about 20 or so 60 gallon fermenters that we were using. Okay. And that was for our non-alcoholic line. And so now we ferment that same product in 1200 gallon fermenters.

10:18So it's going well. It's going well. We were probably doing a hundred to 200 cases, a case is 24 cans, a hundred to 200 cases a month. A month. I was like, a day? When everything closed, when everything closed down and now we're doing well over, you know, almost 2000 a month. Okay. Well, that's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of growth. So this thing is going nuts. I'm a sober guy, right? So I love kombucha. When I stopped drinking, because that's just, I don't know why. I think there's like this, the energy in the world says you should drink kombucha. You don't drink anymore. And you just do. But I didn't even know there was like alcoholic kombucha, but it's blown up. I mean, it's everywhere. Yeah. It's, it's an interesting category. It's definitely on the West coast, it's, it's very established now. So when, when we were launching, there wasn't really like a Southeast player yet.

11:21And that's, that's what prompted us to actually give this business a go is we, we saw this big white space and we had been dabbling with making this at home for a couple of years actually before we had ever heard of it being a thing, just for personal reasons, because yeah, we're, we're big craft beer people, but we both have fairly sensitive guts. So we would drink kombucha a lot of times after having beer. And then kind of one day just thought, Oh, does that help? It does to a degree. Yeah. It's, it's kind of like, if you've ever, have you ever had an apple cider vinegar tonic? Like not, not like I could discernibly talk about, I, yeah, I used to have pretty bad acid reflux and in part, it just has to do with diet and my, my diet wasn't great at the time. And, but one, I started taking prescription medicine for it and I saw like a voice therapist too, and wasn't making much progress.

12:21And then Were you, were you singing? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I, yeah, I was much more interested in like singer songwriter world at that time. That was a challenge, but I came across a forum online that was talking about how helpful apple cider vinegar can be. And I was like, you know what, I've got nothing to lose here and didn't taste great, but I was amazed with just how much, yeah, it relieved my symptoms and kind of putting into perspective. Now, I understand a bit more of what's, what's going on there, but apple cider vinegar and then kombucha also, which shares some of the properties are both alkalizing in your system when you consume them and you're, What does that mean? Basically it's like most I use the term alkalizing very often. Most foods that your body wants to be at a certain pH, like certain balance and that's slightly alkaline and most foods that we eat and definitely alcohol and yeah, most foods that we eat really, unless we're eating super healthy, Which most of us don't.

13:30tend to be acidifying to your system. And so drinks like kombucha or apple cider vinegar help kind of gear back towards that balance that your body actually desires. So because beer is definitely acid producing, we were seeing some benefits from drinking kombucha afterwards. Okay, so how did it work? You guys are testing this out because you're a singer and you have this, this acid reflux and you guys like, did your craft beer, guys, your history craft beer, Sam, did you work in that industry? I did. Yeah. Yeah. So I started in a craft bottle shop here in town called the Filling Station. Oh yeah. Is that an Edley's thing? It was. So now it's owned by Brandy and Brian who came over from Yazoo, they're an awesome couple. So started there and just fell in love with beer and went from there to work with Scott who started Honky Tonk Brewing Company.

14:36So I ran the sales over there and then went to Lippman Brothers from there as a portfolio manager. Lippman Brothers is a distribution company. Yeah. Yeah. Big green trucks. Big green trucks. So worked over there for a while. So I had, my whole goal was to work in the whole three tier system. So to work for a retailer, a producer, a brewer, and then a distributor. And that's generally the tier relationship that you need to play the game in this industry legally. Interesting. But we were moonshining for a while out of our cupboard and then out of a garage. We weren't selling anything, but we were definitely. Whose idea was it to like turn this thing into something that you guys do together like into a business, the Walker Brothers, Kombucha? Like was it sitting around drinking beer one night and someone's like, we should do this. Like no, seriously, man, like just do this. Like how did that go? Well I think both of us have always been a bit, we've both had the entrepreneur spirit, but I don't think we necessarily envisioned working together.

15:45But then we started living together and that was an initial piece of the puzzle, I think. So at first I was, I'm always wanting to mess around with strange experiments at home, like food experiments, particularly, and I would recruit Sam's help with that as often as I could. Do you like things that are like super spicy? I do. I love spice. I love spice. Yeah, we both. My brother's one of those people that like eats fire and he's like, this isn't hot. I'm like, that's literally on fire. He's like, yeah, I can't feel it. I'm like, what's wrong with you? I feel it. I get the full under eye sweat. It's a good feeling. Sometimes. I have to like train, I have to like train to eat spicy stuff for like weeks before I go hang out with him. It's ridiculous. Yeah. It's a whole thing. I mean, spice is great. Yeah. No, I love it too. I like sometimes I feel like I need to lay off. I just put hot sauce on any meal that's not sweet inherently.

16:45It's like, oh, this calls for hot sauce. Are you guys from Nashville? No. We're from Boston, Massachusetts. Really? Yeah. Born and raised. How come I didn't get that in your? Jamaica Plain. You don't have that. You don't have the accent. It can. Maybe it'll come out later. Maybe it'll come out later after a couple of kombuchas, which thank you guys for you've brought in some kombuchas for me to try. And right now, I'll let the listeners know I am drinking the blueberry jasmine kombucha, which apparently this is a non-alcoholic version. That's our top seller for non-alcoholic flavors. I love this. Thank you. This is delicious. And all it is is exactly what the name says. So all of the tea in our base kombucha is going to be a blend of green, black and jasmine And then in that flavor, we add whole blueberries in there. We don't even juice them. We let the low pH of the kombucha just kind of leach out the juice naturally, which makes it a little more delicate and a little less sweet.

17:50And then we add a second edition of jasmine tea. We put it in cold like you would for iced tea. Okay. Let's educate the listeners now. Let's talk about how you make kombucha. Let's talk about what it is. I think there are people out there that still don't understand. You said there's three different types of tea, the process, and then there's something called scoby, S-C-O-B-Y, right? And I read that this is that you inherited your aunt's scoby. How the hell is that even like, does she just have like a jar of scoby laying around? Like I've had this for 50 years and I'm going to bequeath it to you. How do you inherit a bacteria? Is that a bacteria? Bacteria and yeast. So scoby is an acronym and it stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. So basically in order to brew kombucha, you need both yeast and bacteria.

18:50People often tout kombucha for probiotics, probiotic bacteria, but there's yeast in the picture too. And that's really essential for the bacteria to do its job. They've got a symbiotic relationship. There's a symbiotic relationship there. We can rewind, kombucha is fermented tea. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's starting there. Fermented tea. So you're making tea. You're adding scoby and fruit. Yeah. So I can walk you through the process. Basically like, it's as if you're making a large batch of sweet tea, which we think is kind of fun since we're doing this in the South. We're like, yeah, you know, this isn't too far off. But yeah, it's kind of like sweet tea meets moonshine. Go to Chick-fil-A, get the sweet tea and start brewing kombucha. Basically you need a good quality organic tea, just because you don't want any sort of artificial flavorings to be in there. Sure. The culture will not like that. So you steep a large batch of tea, if you were to do this at home, and then you cool it down.

19:57Well, while it's still hot, you add in cane sugar. That's traditionally the fermentable. And you cool it down to like below 80 degrees, which is a temperature that the yeast and bacteria can be happy at. Basically anywhere between 75 and 80 is ideal. And then you can add your scoby to this sweet tea. How much scoby? It looks, what does it look, is it like a gel? Scoby is a really confusing term, because it actually is simultaneously referring to two things. Usually when people talk about, oh, I'm, you know, my neighbor's giving me a scoby and I'm going to start brewing kombucha. That is actually the byproduct of kombucha, which is, yeah, it's like this cellulose sort of texture. It looks like a frisbee. It looks like a pancake. It looks like a pancake. Made out of like cellulose.

20:59Yeah, so it's kind of, it's got this whitish glossy look to it, but then it'll also have oftentimes like streaks of brown or tan, which is basically visible yeast, because this again is this relationship. So symbiotic. It's symbiotic. Yeah. Yes. But what the most important thing to know about kombucha really, if you're going to brew it, and like what a scoby really is, is that symbiotic bacteria and yeast is actually present in the fermented liquid, and that's what's most essential to brew kombucha safely and consistently, is basically once you have that sweet tea, you're ready to ferment it. You need to add at least 10% of the total volume with kombucha that's already been fermented and is down to a pretty low pH, and that will contain the bacteria and the yeast in it.

21:59So you don't actually need that pancake-like cellulose bizarre disc that everyone talks about. All you have to do is just add kombucha to it. Yeah. So you could go to the store, and if you were able to find a unflavored kombucha, I mean you could do it with a flavored one realistically, but ideally unflavored, and you just open that up, and if you poured it into a batch of sweet tea you'd made at home, as long as you've got at least 10% of the total volume, it'll make kombucha. How long? At home, you know, the culture takes a little while to develop, so sometimes the first couple batches can be a struggle, but once you get things going, 7 to 10 days is a good estimate. It depends on temperature. Will that create a zero proof, or will that create an alcohol version? So that's a good question. Home brewing, you're pretty much gonna hit right around 1% alcohol more often than not.

23:02I would guess that that's an average ABV of a home brew, which in terms of how you digest it still is gonna land like a non-alcoholic beverage, but it's actually pretty hard to brew kombucha to meet that 0.5% alcohol standard. So I know people are lobbying for the laws to be changed around that, just because naturally kombucha is closer to like 1 or 1.5%, and that's oftentimes when you get the most benefits of kombucha too. Huh. So. That's interesting. Yeah, starter liquid is what they call that, so starter liquid is also scoby technically, but starter liquid is what is really essential to brew kombucha, and then you'll wind up once you've brewed it with that scoby disc as a byproduct. And you can just keep that as a souvenir? You can keep it as a souvenir, you can keep it in there for the next batch, and it does help as well, just because it's more of that bacteria and yeast culture.

24:06So where can I buy this product? Where do you have it around town? Our favorite retailer to taunt is always the Turnip Trucks. They were our first account, so we're always trying to give them some love. So I love it. Kim over there at the Turnip Truck? Yeah, they're great. So you can find the non-alcoholic products there. We have about, last year we sold into 600 retail partners, so we're kind of all over the place, especially in Nashville. The alcoholic product you can get at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, Total Wine, so we have gotten it, and now Kroger, which is pretty exciting, so it's actually at the Kroger right down the street from here. Yeah, across the street. Are you guys in more states? We are. We are in seven states right now. Wow, so that's massive growth. You guys are doing great. I assume you're going to need to grow facilities here sometime soon?

25:09Is that a thing that's happening? Yeah, very much so. Pending right now, we're working on that. We have another space that we found in northeast Nashville. Right now we're based near the airport, and right now we're in kind of a business park. It's a... Like Elm Hill or something? It's off of Donaldson Pike. It's a funny setup there. It's kind of like office, and then blown out into a warehouse in the back. It's a business park. It's a business park. It's a business park, yeah. And where's the new spot going to be? It's a standalone new build warehouse, so currently we have about 3,000 square feet of warehouse, and everything is just stacked on top of each other. It's insane. No, no, it's pretty tight. The new space is 20,000 square feet, so it's a big level up for sure. So who's distributing your prize? Do you work with Littman Brothers? We do work with Littman, yeah, in east Tennessee. And then here in Nashville we work with Bounty Bev.

26:10Excellent. Yeah, they distribute the likes of like Jackalope is their biggest brand, Tennessee Brew Works. There's some good local players in there. So if I was a restaurant owner and I wanted to sell your kombucha at my restaurant, I would need to call Bounty Bev and say, hey, they have both the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. That's correct. It's available everywhere, and there's so many supply gaps and things, like there's no problem getting it? Not right now. The only problem is our constraint of doing a build out during this time of life when the economy and equipment lead times are all over the place. And Nashville's booming right now. So we're not the only ones trying to build things, you know. Yeah, I know. It's crazy what's happening to this city. How long have you lived here? I've only lived here for five years, actually, so I'm still pretty fresh. More senior than some, but yeah, we both live in East Nashville.

27:11Yeah, I've been here since 2010. Do you still live together? No, right before we launched the business, I was still living with Sam in his house and I made a judgment call of, you know, this is going to be a bit much if we're living together. Living together. Working together. Yep. Are either of you married? I am married. You are married. Yep. So you guys are attractive young men out here. You're owning a business. Nashville's a good place to be. Yeah. For you. For Luke. Luke, the younger brother, is single. Do you have a girlfriend? I don't. What's your story? I'm completely single and ready to mingle. I'm single. I just need to be more emotionally available, I guess. My brain's pretty consumed by this project. Was this told to you by somebody? Maybe. How many times? It seems to be a common line I've heard.

28:15So Sam, how long have you been married? One year in April. It was supposed to be two years, but the pandemic, we postponed our wedding three times. We're actually having a one-year anniversary wedding celebration in like two and a half weeks, which I'm very much looking forward to. That's awesome. We ended up flying out to Sedona, Arizona, and Luke and both our parents came. My wife, Mackenzie, is an only child and got married out in the desert. It was great. Wow. That's fantastic. It was pretty cool. That's so fun. Yeah. One year. The pandemic is just the craziest time, man. I'm telling you, I was telling somebody the other day that I thought there's so many more amazing things that came out of the pandemic. I mean, obviously there's a lot of death and a lot of things that are just horrible, but I talked to so many people who are like true innovators and true leaders that those people saw this pandemic and like almost as an opportunity because the level of busy that you are right now is kind of where we were at in the industry before this thing hit in 2019.

29:20Going into 2020 was like, holy shit, here we go. This is going to be amazing. And then we every single person had this just massive thing. It wasn't like it was one segment of the industry. It was every single person and not even in our country, like in the world, all of a sudden had to like shut down. And I've often talked about this, that there's no book that says how to lead a company or how to grow during a pandemic. But I think the people that were so damn busy, like the visionaries that just have ideas all the time, the entrepreneurs who just hustle, saw that as an opportunity to go, wow, we're going to get so much stuff done because I have time. When have you ever had three months where somebody said you have to stay at home? Yeah, like what can I get accomplished during this time? Did you guys feel I mean, I know you launched your alcohol version of it, like the day that this whole thing started like through that, like did you guys come up with any amazing ideas or what did you do during the pandemic?

30:21The brothers will answer that question and many more after this word from our sponsors. What chefs want has been serving the Nashville restaurant community for over 15 years. During that time, they've worked tirelessly to be well, what chefs want seven day deliveries, no fuel charges, 24 seven customer care, unparalleled availability, and they'll split almost everything they sell. If you're the kind of person that wants to see what's new when it comes in stock, you should follow them on the socials at what chefs want and sign up to be a customer at whatchefswant.com. Hey everybody, today we're talking about my good friend, Ben Ellsworth and GigPro. After years of spending too much time and money on useless staffing software, Ben Ellsworth knew something had to change. So out of necessity, GigPro was born. GigPro is the on demand marketplace for hospitality staffing. They're changing the way people work and hire.

31:23If you download the GigPro app today, you can get the help you need. GigPro has an exclusive promo offer for Nashville restaurant radio listeners. Sign up at go.gigpro.com forward slash n-r-r-b-i-z and make sure that you use that code. I want them to know that you came from Nashville restaurant radio. That again is go.gigpro.com forward slash n-r-r-b-i-z. That code will get you your first gig for free up to $200. Go check them out right now. Did you guys feel, I mean, I know you launched your alcohol version of it, like the day that this whole thing started, like through that, like, did you guys come up with any amazing ideas or what did you do during the pandemic? Yeah, I think I think you nailed it. We're both just flying by the seat of our pants and being really reactive, I'd say, in the pandemic, at least the beginning of it, forced us to pause.

32:24And it became a really strategic time of, I guess, reorienting part of our business model and developing a strategic plan for how are we going to pivot. And the main pivot we made was to focus more on direct to consumer presence instead of wholesale, because our wholesalers are pretty shut down and retailers are pretty shut down. But if we could still get our product in front of the consumer, then we could and we could continue to grow. So I think that was that was very beneficial. The way that we ended up doing that was creating leaning more into e-commerce. We did local free local delivery all the way out to Franklin. But you guys were doing yourselves. Yeah. Yeah. As well as a couple of employees. OK, so we were doing that. And then we signed up for literally every farmers market that we could. So we were participating in about seven or eight at one point.

33:25And that was just people felt safer shopping outside. And that was a way that we could actually be in front of the consumer instead of since we didn't have a taproom or anything like that, we really had no way to contact our consumer and be like, hey, this is who we are. This is what we want to do. Will you be a part of this? Yeah. And also, I think, tell me if this is a byproduct of that, but you really got to connect with the people during a time where nobody was me. I got to connect with some people doing this podcast. But when you're at farmers markets and people see you, that it's so hyper focused how local you are that I'm at this farmers market. We're right here in Nashville. We're making this kombucha. It's not I don't think of the big brands you buy at Kroger, but you're letting people know. I mean, you're building that almost that reputation. Yeah. Who you are. Yeah. And shout out to our sales guy, Taylor Martin there. He did a lot of that groundwork of getting us established at farmers markets and helping get those delivery routes established to.

34:27And he was really, I think, the face of the brand during that time while we were just trying to get organized on the back end. A lot of it, you know, for how are we going to how are we going to roll with these punches? You know, how do you guys work together? I mean, if I worked with my older brother, we would be fighting all the time. We couldn't be more the same, more the different at the same time. Do you guys fight? That makes sense. I think we're we're similar in that way and that on the surface we've got a ton in common and, you know, we'll walk into a restaurant 10 minutes apart and order the same exact thing. And it happens all the time. But we argue and I think we're still learning the answer to that question of how to work together. But I feel like we've created a symbiotic work relationship. We are a SCOBY. Who's bacteria? I'll be bacteria and can be yeast. Sure. But yeah, I think it's nice that we're both kind of handling front end and back end.

35:34Can you each have your own own spot of the warehouse? Creates a nice, nice space for sure. And our business partner, Caroline, she's kind of right in the middle of that. So she kind of ties together front end and back end by managing operations and fundraising and being a referee, being a referee. Yeah. In the metaphor, she would be the oxygen or the airflow. Yeah, really, really going for it. Yeast, bacteria and airflow. Yeah, essential. I think in your business cards, it should say that, like, Chief Yeast, I'm the oxygen in this relationship. Like, you'd have to explain that to everybody what that meant. Yeah. And it's just it's an icebreaker. COO, Chief Oxygen Officer. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of good. And people are like, what does that mean? You're like, well, I have brothers who own the company and sometimes they like to fight. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I can work with my brother. I think it's very admirable that you guys do. I think I think we've made significant strides.

36:37I would say it was a lot harder at first, and that's I'm glad that we were living separately. Is that your real place time? But yeah, but like at first, you know, when when the day to day was so much overlapping, you know, because we were just getting this thing started, we have very different work styles. So then there was a lot of stepping on each other's toes, a lot of arguing. And now that we have more distinct positions and roles, like there are plenty of days where our jobs are going to require us to talk with each other. But we're actually off doing. Did you know what your job is? You can you can essentially say, stay in your lane. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you have your lane and you know, when you step into his lane, that. Could be in depth a certain way. Yeah, I love that your motto, right? So your motto being a family culture, is that my wrong with that? Yeah, you got it. So a family culture is just is it? Obviously, there's a metaphor here that we've been talking about, the symbiotic relationship.

37:42But I also love this. And I wrote this down because this is if you go to the Walker Brothers dot com, drink Walker Brothers, drink Walker Brothers dot com, which I was able to visit from a very quick Google search. And when it talks about their motto, it says a family culture and refers to family origins that you also have that you have a commitment to treating your employees, your customers and business partners and the planet with respect. I I love that you put that as like that's who we are. Why is that so important to you? Because you put your business partners. And that that that was the one to me. Obviously, people hear customers and they hear their planet and employees. But business partners, that's the one to me that I really smiled when I saw that. Yeah, I think that our business partners, you can look at it a lot of ways.

38:44It can be internally our co-owners. It can be our equity shareholders. But first and foremost to me, what I think of is our retail partners and our our wholesale partners. And we wouldn't be here without them. Just someone, the first retailer that took a shot on our product. That's what got this whole snowball moving downhill. And that was the term truck. Yeah, the turnip truck and actually the post, which is used to be over in East Nashville. It's it's now frothy monkey east. But Tanya over at the post. Shout out to her. I'm sure she's probably listening. So definitely. No, I. I think that so many people have this forward facing be great, you know, we want to be great to our customers and great to our employees. It's like, yeah, but there's a lot of other people that you have to work with on a regular basis. I would love to see more companies say we treat our business partners with respect.

39:48Yeah, the food, the food and bev scene in Nashville is I mean, it is a family. It is. Yeah. And there's you know, I work with a lot of broad line food vendors and different people in my two restaurants, as well as just negotiating for other people. And it's amazing the distrust that so many people have in so many other companies. If you're a restaurant, do you trust Cisco or Gordon or US foods or whoever you're using? Well, they're always trying to like there's this battle between the two. And it's like, I want to figure out a way like that where most companies can respect each other. But I love the fact that you guys said because that that's how we win, right? We win when we treat people the way we'd want to be treated. Yeah, I think it's kind of like we talk a fair amount about like scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset and like how how you're engaging with another person. Are you expecting them to, you know, take something from you or potentially give something to you? And I think it's really helpful to subscribe to the mentality that this person has something to offer me.

40:52And not just, you know, financially or in terms of business, but like in terms of learning from them or potentially just like they say something funny. And that improves my day. And in the same way, I can give that little gift to someone else. So it's very tangible. Like a lot of the work I do is ordering lots of things. And I have to call people about equipment and stuff like that. And those conversations can go two ways. And, you know, that's determined really quickly just by simple things like tone of voice. And are you willing to veer off of just the baseline business of the conversation into a tangent that's maybe bizarre? Or and it changes my day every time that, you know, I get on the phone with someone in Massachusetts that I'm ordering cardboard case trays from. And we just talk bizarre shop for 15 minutes, which is longer than that call need to be. But there's something there that does have to do with respect in my mind.

41:56Yeah. And at the end of the day, business is I mean, we happen to be in the business of kombucha, but business is about relationship. And we just want to be bridge builders. That's that's the hope. Yeah. That's our logo, actually. Your logo is it is meant to be a bridge. Yeah. So the whole idea of the no one can see the can right now. OK, so I'm trying to figure this out. So your name, Walker Brothers, is the bridge over the water. I was like, it looks like water. That is a bridge. The name is going. Yeah. So the whole the whole idea is to build a bridge kind of to create the picture of what holistic health really looks like. And we want to be a bridge between what we've seen in craft beer, which is amazing communal health, bringing people together to enjoy a beverage and a vulnerable conversation, hopefully, or just laugh a bunch. Either way. Yeah. But we want to build a bridge with that communal health that we see. And same in the restaurant industry.

42:58You know, it doesn't just have to be craft beer. And also with the picture of holistic health that we that we know and love in kombucha, which is self-health, taking better care of the body. And I think when you when you put those two things together, you're going to win every time. And that's why we make both non-alcoholic and alcoholic kombucha is I just think sometimes health can be defined a little too narrow. We, you know, a beer or two and can really open up conversation in a way that is super life giving in terms of expression and having great conversations or whatever it may be. So you've your history, your craft beer history in on your bio. If you go online, it says that you are a long time natural food innovator and enthusiast. Long time natural food innovator.

44:01I'm pretty I'm pretty young, so I don't know about long time. But I mean, I guess I got started early. But the history there ties a bit to what I was just talking about earlier with, you know, I I was pretty driven and musically and hit some firm roadblocks with my body, not wanting, you know, didn't feel good to sing because are you in a band right now? No, I'm not. No, I still play a bit of guitar and banjo. And I still love writing songs. It's just, you know, different different pots on the stove, you know, in terms of your creative outlet. Did you move to Nashville to do music? Ironically, no. That's I had kind of like, yeah, put music on the back burner. And and then I moved here. But I'm sure I have plenty of friends that, you know, from college, especially that I don't think I've been in touch with closely. And they I would imagine presume that I'm here like pursuing music, pursuing music.

45:04Yeah. I went to Boston for the first time in my life in September of 2021. You know, a lot of fun. Oh, that's great. That town is amazing, man. I guess whatever impression I had of Boston, I don't know. I had no idea what it was. But when I got there and we just we just walked like all that. We stayed in the Back Bay area and we just beautiful area. But we went to we went to a Red Sox game and walked to Fenway Park. And it's just the whole pageantry of being there and the history of the city. It's not like something you get in America. You know, in America, it's everything's pretty new. But you go to Europe and it's like, let's stay in hotels made in 1482. And you're like, damn, here we just don't have that history. I mean, it's just crazy. But Boston, it's amazing. Why why Nashville? Uh, yeah, so after school, I had moved back to Boston, actually, initially. But. A piece of it has to do with what we were just talking about with the scarcity, abundance.

46:04OK, I just found that even though I was from Boston, it was a bit it felt a bit harder to to break in. And maybe it was a bias because I was from there. But just in terms of that sort of level of mutual respect or trust right off the bat that you have with another person in visiting Nashville, I experienced a lot more of that, ironically, even though I was. Oh, yeah. You know, stranger traveling there. And so I think that's why Nashville has been a great home for our business, too, is just there's this level of trust and support right off the bat. And it's the mentality here seems to be more you have my trust until you break it. And I would say in the Northeast, it's a bit more you don't have my trust until you earn it, you know. And so I would agree with that statement. And that's I mean, there are pros and cons of both, you know, but I felt invited into the culture here, I would say.

47:06What? Yeah, well, whether whether you're here. Yeah, I mean, I love what you guys are doing. I look I said on the podcast a little while ago, I said, you know, I've got to find a kombucha company here locally, because I've got I drink water and stuff in this, do I get some local kombucha and then gosh, I'm trying to think of his name we had on the show. And he kept talking about you guys. Oh, that's sweet. Matt. Oh, yes. Yeah, no, no, no, not not that, Matt. But Matt, for me, pops been on the show. He's amazing. Yeah, we have Matt left. Left is my boy. Yes. Matt left was to rise on these great, great guy. He was my second interview ever on the show. That's awesome, because he lives like right down the street from me. And I was like, dude, come talk to me. And I literally had a microphone in my bonus room. He was talking on his cell phone. I was holding the microphone at the end of the speakerphone up to the. It's really it was really bad to start. And I think he did his virtual beer tastings. Yeah, kind of a similar way. Yeah, yeah.

48:09He got super creative. It was awesome. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. So, yeah. So so Matt left from Ryzone Productions. He's the one who told you about you right around the corner. I know you guys there. You guys have a whole thing. We will be there. You'll be. Yeah. He's I'm so excited they get to do those again. Yeah. He was one of those people that when the whole thing started, I want I want to know what the hell he's thinking because he does events. And those are put on the shelf 100 percent right now. And he was devastated. He was like, I guess I'll deliver pizzas like, I don't know. He did a good job pivoting for creative virtual events. We took part in a couple of them and is really cool. Yeah, he got a Chris Chamberlain gave writers pick for best in Nashville. That's nice. So I love that, too. Good people in Nashville. All right, man. So let's talk about how we get a hold of you guys. Instagram handles. Let's give any kind of plugs you want to do and we can get you guys out of here. It's a busy and you guys are slammed right now.

49:09Just all the time doing things. What's your Instagram, Sam? How do people how do people follow you if they want? Yeah, you just go to at Drink Walker Brothers. That's it. That's it. That's the only Instagram out there. It is at Drink Walker Brothers. Yeah. And then the website is Drink Walker Brothers dot com. All right. And Luke. I mean, same thing, the same thing. And I don't want everyone to try to go down a weird rabbit. If you're listening to this and you're single and you really dig emotionally unavailable men. I I'm I won't my emotions are there there. Yeah, anyways. Yeah, if you want to follow a weird Instagram account, Jerome Sanders is, I guess, technically it's a Finstagram account, but I didn't I didn't learn that until last year when I was a Finstagram. It's a fake Instagram account. And that was my first Instagram. And it still lives on. Maybe Jerome Sanders, Jerome J.R.O.M.E.

50:11Yeah. And who is Jerome Sanders? Is that your alter ego? I guess. Yeah. You don't want people to know that it's the Luke Walker. Yeah, it's it's you don't want to deal with the strike post. Maybe once a year, once or twice a year. So if you're if you're into that sort of thing with Scottie Pippen or yeah, the Scottie Pippen is another I guess. I guess I'm more of a Finstagram guy. But the Scottie Pippen, if you go to that athlete, that one is definitely there hasn't been a post in a while. But yeah, the the you get to do that as a breakfast athlete, the Scottie Pippen. If this is truly national, it'd be the Scottie Pippen, Junior. By the way, because that's true that that would that should be your Nashville one. But it's OK. But the one that's important, I think, Walker. That's the important one. And if you if you own a restaurant, you have a restaurant and you would like to sell Walker Brothers, either the zero proof kombucha or if you want to sell the hard kombucha. What are all the flavors that you guys have? Just let everybody know.

51:12Yeah. So for the non alcoholic kombucha, we have four core flavors. They consist of ginger, blueberry, jasmine. You also have a citrus flavor, which is grapefruit, lemon, lime and mint from Bloomsbury Farm. And then we have a cucumber melon flavor, which is cucumber and honeydew. So those are the non alcoholic flavors. We also do fun collaborations. We have one out right now called Booster, which is a collaboration with the Urban Juicer based off one of their juices. And then for and we have one coming up with barista parlor, which is going to be pretty cool. It's going to be a coffee strawberry kombucha. Oh, that's not alcoholic, too. Yeah, we've been trying to get into this this coffee thing where, you know, a lot of coffees will have these natural berry flavors, especially light roast coffee coming forward and so on with the berry. And then for the alcoholic kombucha, we have a dry hopped flavor, which is just dry hopped with hops that you would find in beer.

52:15We love citra as a hop, so that's what you dry hopped with watermelon lime, which is watermelon and lime juice juice, the which we source from California. And then we also have a ginger flavor, which is Peruvian ginger root. We have a couple of new flavors coming out here soon. The next one is going to be blueberry juniper, which is blueberries and juniper berries with oak chips. So we're trying to make a play with like gin botanicals. So that's going to be one that's coming out in the next couple of months to keep your eyes out for. And we have a bimonthly rotator flavor, which always changes. And we love to make that a collaborative flavor where we're collaborating with other businesses featuring products that are currently products and like fruit and herbs that are currently in season. So a lot of juggling. Yeah, I'm like, who comes up with these ideas and these flavor combinations? Do you do people like submit them or is this like you guys sitting around? You're like some of the some of them are we did these more?

53:17It's more of that. Yeah, yeah. It's for the rotators is definitely a group effort and kind of like I think we're down to give anything a go. Have you ever made one that was horrible? You're like, let's put like tropical. Yeah. Tropical. Terrible. Yeah. It was kind of like if if you're cooking at home and, you know, something starts to veer in a direction that you're not very sure about, so you just keep adding more. That's what tropical was so bad. It was just like, what is even in here anymore? You can't distinguish any flavor because there's so much. I think it was the second release of our rotator series. But you actually did release it. No, not really released part of it. And then we're like, this is we pulled it back. We don't like this. We don't want to stand by this. But since then, everything's been good. But that one was bad. Yeah. Oh, but some of the flavors are pretty OG. Like they go back to the garage days for us, which like watermelon lime. Actually, the three high gravity. Watermelon lime just seems like a porch pounder.

54:19Oh, you know, like you're just going to sit on a hot day and you could just chug this stuff. Yeah, 10 out of 10 on the crush ability index. Is it? Yeah. Shout out to Timmy, our buddy, Timmy Judge. He invented that index. Yeah. So basically, I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah. He used to sell beer and he would say he would go into accounts and be like, yeah, this is a nine point five out of 10 on the on the C.E. And then what? Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. Crush ability indicator. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we in making both the non-alcoholic and the alcoholic kombucha, that was a pretty important priority for us is crush ability. I think the other fun thing to talk about is we're going to be really featuring a lot more small batch, limited release, one off flavors. We're actually opening a tap room. So we're super stoked about that. You're opening at the new place. That's correct. Yeah. So we're going to have a 2000 square foot tap room with a nice outdoor concept as well. And that's going to allow us a lot of freedom to continue to draw outside the lines.

55:24We're also doing barrel aged kombuchas now, which we're putting in bottles that look more reminiscent to wine bottles. So larger format bottles, 500 milliliters. OK. And those are all with alcohol. That's correct. Yeah. Those are really fun because they kind of were kind of toying with the lines between different beverage categories where a lot of these will come across tasting a bit natural wine like. But in terms of ABV, they're landing between like seven and eight percent. OK. And then they do have a kombucha thing going on, of course. But they've been resting in barrels for like about a year. So it's it's pretty cool. It's it's it's definitely a fun project for us to feel like we're pushing some boundaries. Is it all cans? So that series of barrels is bottles. Everything else you do draft. We all know. Yeah, we do. We do kegs as well. You do keg. So if I'm out there and order a keg and put us on tap. That's correct. OK.

56:24So we have may pop on tap at the Green Hills Grill. Oh, yeah. But maybe they're rotating. I think to do different kind of kombucha would be really fun, too. Sorry, Matt. He does cans now, too, which is fun, you know, so we do different things. But obviously, restaurants supporting local people are going to be asking for it. But thank you guys so much for taking the time to be here today. The last thing, the last thing that we have you do. And you guys can do this together, separate, however you want to do. I don't there's no rules. Is that you guys going to take us out? So whatever you want to say, as long as you want to say it, the open mic to you, you could say nib high football rules. I don't care. Do you get that reference? OK, nobody does. It's an Adam Sandler date yourself. Yes. Oh, I date myself all the time. Jen. So Jen Ichikawa is my co-host. She was unable to be here today at this time. And she has twin brothers named Ben and Jerry.

57:26So she would love the name thing. She would have been all over this. Yeah. Oh, it's nib high football rules. Is that Billy Madison? Yes. OK. Yeah. At the end, where he's where he's trying to sell the equation doesn't know what to say. And he's like, you buy football. Yes. The very end, we are now dumber for what you just said. At the end, he goes, nib high football rules. And everyone freaks out. OK, I'm there with you. Yeah. You say whatever you I don't care. Whatever you say. I love that movie. Oh, man, I feel so validated right now because I used to say, like Jerry's final thought style and everybody's like, nobody knows what that means, man. Like Jerry Springer at the end of his show would do like a Jerry's final thought. And now everybody who listens knows. But I'm going a completely different route. This show, you guys say whatever you want. The mic is yours as long as you want to say whatever whatever you want to say. Did you take us out? Me first. I mean, I would say now more than ever, given what we're all seeing with COVID world and all the difficulties of life is just what we were talking about with respect.

58:40It's like, man, if you're going to live an enjoyable life, it really does require respecting yourself for sure, but also respecting other people and and just accepting the the lack of control of of it all. And the beauty of that, the beauty of how that can be a blessing and also very stressful. But that's been on my mind a lot recently in the in the past few years here. So, yeah, trust the process. That's what that's what we're doing right now. Yeah. And I'd say love your neighbor. And then on the Adam Sandler front, O'Doyle rules. There you go. So, you know, it's widely known here on the show that I'm an alcoholic. But the thing I think you're talking about just now, and I know everyone's applied to these, but this is this is no way to go. Thank you guys. Pretty good. The Serenity Prayer. Yeah, is just so one of those things that we always we always say, you know, God, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change.

59:44And you say it almost as like you're regurgitating this this phrase. But if you stop and you think that you go, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. It will change your life if you freaking do that. And the wisdom to know the difference. Yeah. The courage to change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference, right, like so many people lose their minds over shit they can't control. And it's like you will live a happier, healthier, wealthier life if you just stop worrying about stuff that you can't control. Yeah. I mean, just let it go. And now's the time. I mean, if there's ever been an invitation, at least in my lifetime, and I think most of listeners here, we have this invitation loud and clear every day right now, just with how many things are clearly out of our hands. Yeah. And also just another. So I'm just thinking of Altrez now. So good. No, it's good. I just want to say the Nashville food and beverage scene for being so receptive of what we're doing.

01:00:44Yeah, honestly, it's pretty incredible. I couldn't think of starting this company and doing what we're doing in any other city. So I love that. Well, hopefully it grows across the entire country. And so proud to have you guys here in Nashville doing this. I love that you guys are not born and raised from here, but you're here. And there's a different there's different things. People can come to Nashville from other cities. And while there's people that say, oh, California, New York. But like when you come to Nashville and you adopt and you come into this community, it's not just about what you can take. It's also what you give back. And it doesn't matter where you're from. I've never seen anybody come from any other place that didn't immediately come in and be welcomed with open arms. It didn't give. And like it's just this thing. The whole community is so welcoming to so many people that you can't just come in and take and then take and be gone. Like it's it's all about giving and respect and being kind. Like you said, just being kind. And it's a it's a really unique place to be honored to have you guys here and be a part of it.

01:01:46Thank you for coming today. You're off the hot seat. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for hosting. All right. Big thank you to Sam and Luke. The Walker Brothers for joining us in studio. And Diana, she she didn't get any love. Diana was in the studio also, who does their PR. She was sitting next to me, kind of giggling throughout Luke's admission of his emotional unavailability. Man, that was hilarious. So much fun with those guys. If you're out anywhere and you want something that's good for you, that's healthy. See if you can get a Walker Brothers kombucha, ask people for it. Remember, they were distributed by Bounty Beverage. You get them right now at Whole Foods at the turnip truck. You can also get them any urban juicer and good people, man. Good people. Glad to have them here in Nashville and glad to have you, the listener here. This episode is going to be one on a Sunday afternoon pretty early. And I hope that you're a subscriber and I hope that you're enjoying this beautiful weather. I took a hike this morning.

01:02:49It was amazing. Back into it. Had so much fun listening to my buddy Eric Cacciatore on his podcast Restaurant Unstoppable. If you don't listen to that, you should check that one out too. It's a really good one. I hope that you guys are being safe and hope that you have a massively wonderful week. We'll be back on Friday with Kayla Ellis. Wow, what a fun interview that was, too. OK, have a great week. Stay safe. Love you guys. Bye.