Within the early 90s, Amy Taylor had desires of Olympic gold as an elite monitor and subject athlete.
Again then, she by no means might have predicted she’d spend the majority of her profession within the beverage enterprise. However after transferring to Atlanta (the place the Olympics have been to happen in 1996) and dealing for a short while for the Atlanta Hawks, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than she began to work for Purple Bull, simply because the now-famous model was starting to outline the power drink enterprise within the early 2000s.
“My stepdad warned me to not take the job as a result of he had by no means heard of the corporate,” she recalled. “And I stated, I feel there’s one thing particular right here. I took my Gen X project of making this Purple Bull model with an American lens on it for the American viewers.”
Taylor would spent over 20 years at Purple Bull, ultimately serving as president and chief advertising and marketing officer, the place her time there formed her philosophy on constructing iconic manufacturers.
“What I realized there was about making a scorching model and form of changing into part of or creating communication inside and across the zeitgeist,” she stated. “As a substitute of making an attempt to go quick and onerous and drive distribution and consciousness in any respect prices… the model was constructing relationships.”
Now, as CEO of Zevia, Taylor is making use of these classes to a unique sort of beverage mission. “We’re going to materially scale back sugar consumption among the many inhabitants that we serve,” she stated. “If a household switches from carbonated delicate drinks to Zevia, they will minimize their sugar consumption in half with one transfer.”
Identified for its zero-sugar sodas made with stevia, Taylor says Zevia goals to supply an reasonably priced, clean-label different for households. She’s additionally centered on evolving the model’s style and product innovation. “There are 20 molecules within the stevia leaf that may sweeten a product,” she stated. “Our job is to go extract those that carry out finest throughout the beverage. For the a part of the inhabitants which have had a adverse expertise with stevia, they’re going to want to come back again and take a look at Zevia. And I feel they’re going to be blown away.”
Like most meals manufacturers these days, Zevia is embracing AI. Taylor says they’re doing it with a “hacker’s method,” which implies encouraging each division to experiment with new use instances.
“Every division head challenges their whole staff, not simply their senior management, to provide you with new use instances for AI,” Taylor stated. From creating digital shopper prototypes to enhancing operations and finance workflows, Taylor stated the corporate is exploring quite a few purposes. “We use AI to problem our pondering and our assumptions. We need to develop quicker due to our potential to leverage AI with the folks that we’ve within the constructing right this moment.”
A part of Taylor and Zevia’s push to leverage improvements like AI is as a result of the corporate operates lean (fewer than 100 staff), and new applied sciences can assist them punch above their weight.
“We’re small and centered,” she stated. “And we’re scrappy as hell.”
You possibly can take heed to my full dialog with Taylor beneath and might join together with her (and ask her questions) on the Good Kitchen Summit later this month.
