Welcome to perceived reality I'm Nadia Atwas. One of the most confusing industries is the food industry. There are a lot of things that are perceived as healthy I actually not. And other foods are getting unnecessarily bad PR for some reason. Our next guest shows to dive into this jungle and launch a product that sounds very promising is supposedly super healthy. And we don't have to compromise on the taste. Hello Peter Ferrari. Good morning. How are you? I'm great. And I'm so happy that you are here because I really find it fascinating when people switch industries like you did. And then of all industries dive into one that is so confusing, so full of misunderstandings and just a flat out hard to navigate through. That's true. Highly competitive, highly competitive, commoditized environment. It seems very strange that the journey I was doing fine real estate development. We had residential real estate developer my mid 50s everything's going wonderfully. Jump out of that business with both feet and jump into the food business head first. It really is an interesting journey. Yes. And it was never your side hustle but it seems always your side passion. Why? Keep in a side passion and it goes way way back to when I was a child. In fact, I found a lifestyle of good health and well being when I was very young. My father was killed when I was 10 years old and that thrust my family into poverty. And basically, you know, at that time in the 70s, I was weak. I was poor. I was small. Boys fought back then. I was getting bullied and beaten every single day on the school bus going home, bloodied and bruised. Well, junior year in high school, I started lifting weights so that I could put on some strength so that I could defend myself against these bullies that were beating me so badly. And what I found was completely by accident, the very delicate and important interrelationship between the mind and the body and the soul. Because when I started changing my physical stature, when I started putting on muscle, everything changed. The way I walked changed upright. The way I spoke changed. The way I looked and addressed people changed. The way people looked and addressed me changed. Everything changed as a function of me starting to find a harmony between the mind, the body and the soul. And it was really at that point that I realized the importance of it. And I swore I vowed if I ever found a way to bring this awareness to people, to change people's lives, to really add value for folks that I would jump and I would do it. And that's why I've taken this company by the reins and I'm really happy to be introducing Jocke's sugar to America on the grand scale. And how did you start with it? So suddenly you decided, okay, real estate, bye bye. This was that's and it was nice to be with you real estate and now you're jumping into the food industry. How did you get started? Again, very strange. It was coincidental. I was asked to be on the board of directors of another health food company. And they were making these recipes with the particular ingredient that they had that was very healthy for you. And naturally before I could espouse their product line before I could be an advocate, I said, okay, you've got to send me a care package. I've got to taste the product. So they sent me a basket full of muffins and pies and cakes and waffles and the food was phenomenal. It was so good that I knew it had sugar in it because if you've ever had food that's got a sugar alternative in it, you know that it usually tastes like a water tin foil or just like the chewing on a bag of nickels. So I knew it had sugar in it. Tastes different. I tried a few. You can't get by it. It does after taste. It is. And it's completely you feel like, oh, this is satisfying. And I'm like, oh, what's this? What it is resented for a half an hour in your mouth. You've got this weird feel. And that's, you know, it's typically that's what I was expecting. Well, everything tastes so wonderful. I called my colleague back and I said, well, we've got to have a talk here. Now, understand the claims that you're making regard to the component of the recipe that addresses your ingredient. You've got sugar in here and that really is going to clash with a lot of the claims that you're making based upon the effects of sugar on the body. And he said, well, Pete, it's not sucrose. It's not the sugar we grew up with. It's psychos. And I said, okay, well, what's psychos? I've been, again, I've been going to the gym for 43 years. I'm 58. I've been living a good, what a clean lifestyle for 35, 40 years. I've never heard of psychos before. So he goes into this, the merits of this rare sugar, psychos, also called alulose, vegan friendly, hello certified non GMOs, your glycemic index, diabetic friendly, FDA grass status, proposition 65 compliant in California, actually clinically proven and randomized double blind placebo controlled human trials to control appetite, burn existing body fat and inhibit the body's ability to assimilate new fat, potentially prevent diabetes because of the way it impacts insulin levels. So he goes into them, the merits of this sugar. I'm not believing in what he's saying, bells and whistles are going off everywhere. It's not the way we've been conditioned over 50 years with regard to sweeteners across the board. Deep dove into the research, read the clinical trials of myself, read the footnotes from the clinical trials of the clinical trials. And I came out the other end and said, this is what I've been waiting for. This is how I can change millions of families, millions of people's lives, help them find the path to good health and well-being. Jocca is the catalyst. The company was born. It's so interesting that I knew about alulose already some years ago and because I was looking for something that is safe and has a good taste. But even on the alulose front, there seem to be different types. It is not so easy to just say, okay, here's the alulose and no matter what, just be happy with it. And so how did you decide on quality, where to get it from and how to get started with it? No, it's correct. All aluloses are not created equal. In fact, they've got some mom and pops out there, according to the International Food Information Council, still only 15% of Americans have ever heard of this sugar, really not a big presence at all. By contrast, Japan, perhaps the healthiest culture in the world. Well, how is life expectancy? Highest life expectancy in the world. It might be one of the reasons I always thought it was fish. Right. So it was fish as well and in the portion control, well, it turns out that they use the sugar to the extent that we use stevia here in this country, north of four or five thousand products. And so you look at the alulose presence in this marketplace. There's no IP in the market. We've got the ability to come in and really teach people the benefits. But there are some mom and pops out there and you're going to find that it's supposed to be sugar because alulose is technically a rare sugar. It's a monosaccharide. Yeah. So you cannot call it as sugar alternative. It is sugar. Not an alcohol. You are correct. And so when you try these other products, they don't necessarily taste like sugar, which they should. They've got that waxy, if it tastes like you're chewing on chapstick. You're only getting your hand and it's gummy. Like you've just taken gum out of your mouth. You've got one version out there. It's actually interestingly enough. The name is equitable with a pharmaceutical. If you put that particular version on the end of your tongue and you let it sit for 20 seconds, your tongue will start to burn. Oh, God. So we know that that's not a organic or healthy product. If it's having that kind of an impact on your body. Yeah, no. And as a presentation, we're looking forward waiting for something. That is not what sugar tastes like. I think everybody can agree. And so we spent a lot of time in Q&A heavily weighted procedures as we were evaluating the types of manufacturers that we would embrace and partner with in order to bring this rare sugar to the country and introduce it properly. And we feel like we've got a heck of a product. In fact, we are working with a private equity group in California. They're looking to help us with our institutional round, our third round. And I sent them some samples of jocke and natural. They wanted to taste it. Well, a couple of the gentlemen on the team, they couldn't wait. So they went out and they bought from the couple of mom and pops. They were actually in different states. They each bought a different brand. We got on the Zoom call and they were laughing. And I was, I said, okay, what's going on here? What's so funny? They said, Pete, we tasted jocke. We tasted these other things. You absolutely have to do a Pepsi challenge. For people that are younger, they might not know what a Pepsi challenge is. But back in the day, you lined up all these colas because Pepsi was supposedly better. You have to do a Pepsi challenge because jocke is actually sugar. Tastes like sugar. I made chocolate chip cookies with it. They were phenomenal. Does it also caramelize? Oh, caramelizes. It browns. It burleses. It isn't tried that yet. It's okay. It is a rare sugar. So it performs like sugar. It's really, it's really interesting. And it's astonishing that we haven't heard more about it. Yeah, I'm also a little bit puzzled by that. I mean, I've always investigated for new foods. And that's how I came across it. Especially when women go through pregnancy or when you're diagnosed with a certain type of a disease, then you know, you want to make the healthiest choices possible. For sure. And so I was always investigating on their phone. But now, so now you have this brand. You're launching it. You're launching February? February 1st is our launch date. Yes, we are. Yes, we do. What are your steps when you're launching a product? Do you want to make sure that it's perceived as what it is? For sure. And you want to make sure that it stands out. So what is your plan? Yes, it's actually a very interesting point. And incredibly important, what you say is establishing the brand at initial brand presence, especially in a market where there's no intellectual property, because there's no leader. And so to come in and establish yourself as the leader, as the dominant brand, you've got to be doing things on a world class level, even as a startup. And so to that end, when we were developing the name, Jocca, the branding, the logo, the theming, the iconography, the packaging, we went to the best of the best for all that, because we're going to be offering Jocca powered products in a direct to consumer model over the internet. So we went to the best of the best. We went to Gary Vee. We went to Vayner Media. We deployed almost our whole first round of funding with Vayner to develop the marketing assets that we see today from jump. And we knew we wanted to have a world class asset that people would be responsive to, that would resonate, that would stick with people. That's where it started. And then naturally the market segmentation work, what kind of market segments should we be going after in order to touch the appropriate people and make them understand the value of this sugar and how we can help them find a healthier lifestyle, which naturally is important, as well you have got to have a stable supply chain. The worst thing you can do in a direct to consumer model is go out of stock, because one click to the left, that person is going to go with another provider forever. It has nothing with the dress, but you do pre-order and it's a sexy thing. It's not, right? It's a sad, that's a bad PR. It really does. And so we had to make sure we spent eight months stabilizing our supply chain so that we had the particular redundancies in place that you needed to, so that if one component faltered, we had a placeholder that we could slide into that slot, business as usual, always serving the customer, adding value. So these are the mechanics of how this startup really, really began and then naturally funding. Funding is always the biggest challenge, right? The friends and family round is usually fairly easy. You've got friends that believe in you, if the vision is solid, the passion is there, right? Energy is everything in a startup. The passion is there. You're going to be able to close that round. And then there's always that step in between that I call the purgatory step because in this case in particular, we closed our first round, $250,000 at a $2 million valuation deployed nearly all that capital with VaynerMedia to create world-class assets to put us in position to be in position as Bobby and I'd says. But we're still pre-launched, pre-revenue at that point. So we have a valuation for our ceiling because we don't have any revenue. We really can't justify a valuation in any higher than $5 million. For our second round, we want to raise a million and a half dollars at a $5 million valuation ceiling. Well, a million and a half dollars is too small for the PE guys. I've got a lot of private equity groups and venture capital groups that are excited about participating, but you guys want to be putting in 10, 20, 50, $100 million in order to justify the allocation of resources in order to justify the injection of capital and move their needle. So I call the purgatory step because I'm too big for friends and family and I'm too small for the private equity groups. I'm stuck in the middle. Or there's like being a middle class to disnune your study. You can be poor, you can be rich, but middle class, that's what gets tricky. So that's exactly the position. There is a bridal there and you have got to get by it. You've got to punch through. And so there were many days when we were raising this money that it was Warren Buffett was resigning in my mind. One of his favorite monsters with the startup is just don't die. Just don't die every day trying to identify new veins of capital in order to close the round, close the round, fund a divinatory, we're able to service the customer the way we want to and really create a health and well-being company equal to that of a sugar company. We've got a unique opportunity here because of the physiological benefits of this sugar. We've got the ability to add value in people's lives beyond just offering them an ingredient. You've got an ingredient that were a control appetite, burn body fat and hidden the body's ability with some light new fat. You can use Jaca as the launching pad to find a trajectory of good health and well-being, to find better health for your family. We take that component of the business equally as seriously as building a sugar company, adding value for people out there. I think it's such a great point. Now how are you using this whole Maha movement to your advantage? Because it seems like momentum is in your favor. It is. It's very important for our companies that when you have a product that is aligned with a certain new narrative and with a certain movement as I would say, then you really got to dive into it. You got to use it. The PR move that is very important right now would say. It certainly is. As they say, I'd rather be lucky than good. It is incredibly fortuitous that the Maha movement is upon us. The R.F.K. Junior is spot on with his observations and his perceptions about what's going on in the food industry. We've got the ability now to really ride the co-tails of that movement where people listening years are really on. More than they ever have been. You've got, interestingly enough, there was a study done by McKenzie. 81% of consumers are now omnichannel buyers. What that means is they are reading nutrition labels. They're researching on the internet. They're asking their doctors. They're looking to friends and family before they're buying products. We've got a situation in America where folks are looking to understand. Folks are looking to learn before they buy, especially with foods. You've got R.F.K. Junior now and it's magnifying that effort like never before. Our vision really is to become a part of that movement and help people understand. We have a catalyst here to change the world one person at a time. The food is present in 80% of foods and beverages. Pasta sauces, barbecue sauces, bread, waffles, everything. To the extent that we can be helping people understand that there's a healthy, a really healthy alternative that has positive impacts on the body. We're going to have a really enjoyable journey. I think that you are onto something great here. 2025, good year, I would say, to scale the business. Any particular goals for 2025 that you think within reach? Aggressive goals always. Forshin favors the bold. Is that Machiavelli? Forshin favors the bold? Well, we've got very aggressive revenues, Argets. We're introducing a series of different skews, not just the pouches of sugar. The Jacque Jolt is a two-ounce bottle. It's got a little hit of caffeine in it, plus vitamins. Liquid Jacque, so it's actually good for you. You've got another number of skews in development, the skinny Jacque Rita, which is a truly skinny margarita. Of course, the skinny margarita is out there that have sugar on them because of agave and triple-second juice. We've got a skinny sweet tea out there that is just delightful. It's really, really good. You can drink as many of them as you want to because, again, it's not packed with these sugar alternatives that have been proven to be more of a problem than a solution, really. And so we've got very aggressive launch planned in terms of different skews, very aggressive revenue targets. I think we're going to have a phenomenal year. We've got some great agencies behind us, world-class resources that are going to be supporting us in our advertising efforts. So really, I believe the sky is the limit. I'm very bullish. Thank you so much for joining us. We're going to follow your journey. I hope you will join us soon again. Please, it would be my pleasure. That was perceived reality. Thank you so much. Join us next time.
