u/totality888

Watching bulls preseason game on TV just now. I'm not used to not hearing his color commentary. It just doesn't feel right. 😢

Hello. We're a new beverage brand (iced teas) who have been in business for a little over a year.

Some notes before my ask:

- our business is based in IL
- Currently self manufacturing from a shared commercial kitchen
- originally started as canned drink with low carbonation (we still have a table top can seamer in storage)
- customers preferred flat
- flat product in a small canning setup yielded squishy cans so we moved to bottles
- we've been selling out bottled beverages since this decision 1 year ago
- Product has been doing well in local markets.
- We are receiving interest from stores who have discovered us to sell our products to their regional stores if we move to cans.
- we are in early conversations with potential copackers.

During BOTTLING
- we pasteurize our blends
- we sterilize our bottles
- able to have 4 months shelf stability if refrigerated
- bottles fail ambient shelf stability

Transitioning to CANS
- we want to test a small batch for ambient shelf stability first before talking to copackers in parallel
- is there a can sterilization step that needs to be done? We're only familiar with the sterilization step for bottles
- what small scale aka not too expensive equipment we should be considering?
- are there any other steps I should watch out for?

Watching Summer League game 3 rn and he looks like an offensive rebounding machine. Dude is outworking everyone in the paint for those rebounds. I know it's just Summer League lol but guy is reminding me of a thicker Rodman. He's. In. Every. Rebound. I know I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. I was also big on Sanogo last year whatever.

Watching Caleb Wilson highlights doing 2 man game with Veesar at NC is getting me excited lol. I get it. The Vooch comparisons will be there for Steinbach. But honestly I'm not bothered by it. But he's so active, runs, dude just knows what to do around the basket (which I appreciated with Vooch). He's definitely a lot more active for a dude his size.

And damn that big on big potential with Caleb/Matas/Noa/Giddey could be really awesome.