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Brian Hyatt is Vice President of Sales at Herbal Oasis, a hemp beverage and functional beverage brand under the cbdMD umbrella. Before hemp, he served in the infantry with the United States Marine Corps from 2009 to 2015, then spent years building wine portfolios for Republic National Distributing Company, including running an HEB team through the pandemic. This episode is a completely organic conversation, no script, no questions on a screen, just two adult beverage veterans getting to know each other in real time.

Brian breaks down how Oasis built a product line for every type of consumer, from 5 and 10 milligram entry level cans to a 30 milligram option built specifically for Tennessee's incoming cap, up to a 50 milligram option for experienced users, plus a mushroom only nootropic blend for consumers who cannot use THC at all. He also gets into two new 750 milliliter spirit format bottles, one unflavored for anyone who wants zero taste of hemp.

This conversation goes deep into what actually works in hemp beverage sales. Brian shares the exact playbook he learned coming up through wine distribution, why patience beats a rushed pitch with a buyer, how to run a tasting event that converts, and why suppliers, not distributors, are ultimately responsible for building their own brand.

It also goes personal. Brian and Nate both talk about walking away from alcohol and finding hemp beverages as part of that path, and about the veteran community specifically, the population using hemp beverages to move off prescription pain medication and manage anxiety without becoming another number in an addiction statistic.

If you sell hemp beverage, work in adult beverage distribution, or you are trying to understand why this category has resonated so fast with veterans and everyday consumers, this episode delivers real operator insight with zero fluff.

Learn more about Oasis at herbaloasis.com or follow @tryoasis

Connect with Brian Hyatt on Linkedin

The Ready To Drink Podcast covers the people, brands and policy shaping the beverage alcohol, hemp derived and functional non-alc categories.

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Two North Carolina distributors who go head to head for shelf space every single day just sat down together to fight for the same category. Ed Johnston, President of Tryon Distributing, and Rick Craig, Vice President of R.H. Barringer Distributing, cover the same territory, work with the same suppliers and compete for the same retailers. On paper that makes them rivals, but on the hemp beverage fight, it makes them allies.

This conversation covers what the hemp beverage category has actually done on the ground in North Carolina. Tryon has sold at least one case of hemp product to over 1,000 unique retail partners year to date. Some off premise retailers report hemp beverages now make up a quarter to a third of total revenue. Craft breweries across the state are filling tanks that beer no longer fills. None of that shows up in the headlines about a federal ban.

Ed and Rick get into why hemp beverage is a natural extension of the regulated adult beverage business, not a threat to it. They break down the RegulateDontRuinNC.com campaign and why appropriate regulation beats a ban. Nate shares a testimonial from a veteran who uses hemp beverages instead of VA prescribed pain pills. It is one of the most direct conversations on this podcast to date.

If you work in beer, wine, spirits or hemp beverage and you have stayed quiet on this fight, this episode is for you. Two distributors just showed what it looks like to put competition aside and stand up for the category.

This episode is part of the Regulate Don't Ruin NC series. North Carolina is deciding right now whether hemp beverages get a real regulated framework or get pushed back to the gray market. That choice affects retailers, manufacturers, and consumers across the state.

Learn more and share your own story at RegulateDontRuinNC.com

This series is proudly sponsored by Tryon Distributing Co, Crescent 9, and Torch Drinks.

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Kate Hansen owns Dogwood Hops & Crops and Trophy Room Bourbon Bar in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She's also PTO president at her kids' Title I elementary school. Those two roles collide in this conversation, and that collision is the whole argument for regulated hemp beverages.

Hemp drinks make up roughly 10% of Dogwood's total sales. Kate walks through why her customers buy them, better sleep, no hangover, a lower proof option next to a full bar menu, and why she thinks regulation protects the category instead of threatening it. Age gating, testing, and labeling are what keep product off the street and out of a kid's hands. Illegal markets check none of that.

Kate also breaks down what's actually at stake with North Carolina's cannabis tax revenue potential, using Colorado as the comparison. Colorado has put over three billion dollars in cannabis tax revenue toward public schools since legalization, with a meaningful share going straight to K-12 funding. Kate's own school lost tens of thousands in COVID funding and now runs on a shrinking Title I budget. She makes the case that this isn't a niche industry issue. It's a school funding issue, a small business issue, and a jobs issue that touches farmers, labs, distributors, and every neighbor who isn't even a customer.

This episode is part of the Regulate Don't Ruin NC series. North Carolina is deciding right now whether hemp beverages get a real regulated framework or get pushed back to the gray market. That choice affects retailers, manufacturers, and consumers across the state.

Educate yourself, then sign the petition at RegulateDontRuinNC.com

This series is proudly sponsored by Tryon Distributing Co, Crescent 9, and Torch Drinks.

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Dwayne Carson spent years working Capitol Hill and on a recent episode of the Ready To Drink Podcast, he told a story about postal closures that every hemp beverage stakeholder and consumer needs to hear right now.

Members of Congress used to think closing one small post office in one small town was a free line item. No cost, no controversy, easy math. Then the constituent calls started. The blowback from a single small post office in a single small district was enough to make members rethink the whole approach.

Dwayne's read on hemp right now: staffers are getting the emails and calls. Members are starting to hear it. One member told him hemp is now a top two issue in his office.  

KEEP GOING!

Here's the ask, straight from David Thomas of Drink DELTA:

The federal ban on most hemp THC products is scheduled to hit this fall. The Senate is writing the government funding bill right now and a short hemp extension can ride on it. That extension decides whether the category keeps operating while real regulation gets written or whether the cliff hits on schedule.

Members are home in their districts this week. No committee rooms. No lobbyist gauntlet. Just constituents.

The other side has the money and the lobbyists. They don't have the millions of adults across every state who actually buy these products. That part is on us.

Tell the Senate to include a hemp extension in the funding bill. The Hemp Beverage Alliance built a one minute tool that finds your senators and sends the message for you: https://www.hempbeveragealliance.org/action-center

Click "Tell the Senate to include a hemp extension in the CR." One minute. One message.

Offices count these. Real constituent volume moves votes in a way lobbyists can't match. Brands, retailers, distributors, and everyday customers all count the same in that inbox.

Send yours. Then send this post to five people in the industry and ask them to do the same.

Full conversation with Dwayne Carson is on the Ready To Drink Podcast.

The Ready To Drink Podcast covers the people, brands and policy shaping the beverage alcohol, hemp derived and functional non-alc categories.

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Five minutes of kindness to a stranger, that's the challenge I give every single week on the podcasts.

Put your phone in your pocket and look at the strangers walking down the street. When you're at the gas station, filling up your coffee, ask the person next to you how they're doing. Then shut your mouth and actually listen to their story.

Focus on somebody else for five minutes a week. Twenty minutes a month. We talk about ROI in here all the time. Spend 20 minutes a month with different strangers and watch the ripple effect that occurs.

You're not always gonna win. Some people are gonna look at you like you're crazy. That's fine. It's not about winning. It's about putting the good out there, because this world is a crazy, beautifully destructive place.

Your life might be fulfilled. You might have your family, everything might be good. There's somebody out there that isn't and I'd bet over those 20 minutes a month, you're gonna hit people who aren't having a good life. Who may not even want to be on this earth.

Five minutes. That's all I'm asking.

The Ready To Drink Podcast covers the people, brands and policy shaping the beverage alcohol, hemp derived and functional non-alc categories.

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Jared Smith is President of Perfect Hydration Alkaline Water and Star City Beverage, backed by parent company Golden West Food Group. He sits down with Nate Fochtman on the Ready To Drink Podcast to break down how a private label beverage operation turned into one of the fastest growing alkaline water brands in the country.

Jared walks through launching Perfect Hydration in December 2016, selling a million bottles in the first month at Costco LA, and never losing that account since. He explains the difference between ionized and chemically altered alkaline water, why potassium bicarbonate and magnesium sulfate beat sodium and chlorine on taste, and why the brand put pH 9.5 front and center on the label instead of hiding behind vague marketing.

The conversation also covers his path through Campbell Soup, Earthbound Farm, Pepsi, and Cavita, where he helped scale the company from 14 million to 65 million in eighteen months and became director of sales at 28. He shares what it took to win and lose national Kroger distribution three separate times, why he never hires ahead of the sale, and how Star City Beverage grew from a 10 million dollar private label operation into a nearly 40 million dollar business built on innovation instead of commodity pricing.

Connect with Jared Smith on Linkedin

Perfect Hydration - Perfect-Hydration.com

Star City Beverage - StarCityBeverage.com

The Ready To Drink Podcast covers the people, brands and policy shaping the beverage alcohol, hemp derived and functional non-alc categories.

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National Hemp Association Chairman Geoff Whaling joins the Ready To Drink Podcast to break down the Goodness of Hemp Act, the White House meeting behind it, and why the hemp industry is running out of runway before the November 13th deadline.

Geoff traces his path from Canadian politics and the Newman Haas race team to Canopy Growth Corporation, and how that experience shaped the Goodness of Hemp Act now moving through Congress. He explains why the beverage industry's silence on hemp legislation is a mistake, what separates the Goodness of Hemp Act from the Barr, Griffith and Sheehy bills, and why farmers keep getting left out of the conversation.

Topics covered:

• How Geoff Whaling's political and motorsports background led him into hemp
• The White House meeting behind the Goodness of Hemp Act
• Why the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills never legalized cannabinoids
• The beverage industry's blind spot on hemp legislation
• What happens to hemp beverages after November 13
• How to support hemp legislation without writing a check

Learn more about the Goodness of Hemp Act at TheGoodnessOfHemp.org

Connect with Geoff Whaling on Linkedin

The Ready To Drink Podcast covers the people, brands and policy shaping the beverage alcohol, hemp derived and functional non-alc categories.

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Eric Rogers is a National Account Manager for the convenience channel at Phusion Projects, home of Four Loko, and spent years before that with Sierra Nevada and Craft Brew Alliance calling on Circle K, Wawa, and Racetrack. In this episode of Ready To Drink Podcast, Eric breaks down what it actually takes to earn distributor trust, why crew drives fail without preparation, and how national account managers function as intrapreneurs inside the beverage industry.

Eric and Nate dig into convenience store single-serve dynamics, the real estate math retailers now run on every inch of cooler space, and why RTDs keep growing while total beer, wine, and spirits volumes decline. They also talk through the early hurdles facing hemp beverage distribution, why beer distributor networks matter more than dispensary systems for scaling hemp drinks, and how founders can build the kind of market presence distributors respect.

This conversation covers convenience channel strategy, RTD category growth, distributor relationship building, crew drive execution, hemp beverage distribution, and craft beer industry history from Red Hook to Four Loko.

New episodes drop weekdays covering beverage alcohol, hemp THC, functional non-alc brands, distribution strategy and the real stories behind the category.

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Matt Compton spent years building out cannabis retail and dispensary merchandising strategy, most recently as Commercial Operations Director at Jushi (Beyond Hello), before a June 2026 corporate realignment laid him off. In this episode of Ready To Drink, Matt breaks down how dispensary merchandising differs from liquor retail, why data tools like Headset and BDSA drive MSO buying decisions, and how brand partnerships fill category gaps like drinks. He also opens up about his path from a traumatic brain injury and disability to a cannabis buying career, his use of hemp beverages to move away from alcohol, and what job seekers in cannabis and hemp beverage should do right now to stay resilient.

This conversation covers dispensary retail strategy, MSO buying and promotional planning, cannabis career transitions, functional hemp beverage use, and the mental health side of layoffs that the industry rarely talks about.

If you or someone in your network is hiring for buying, merchandising, or commercial operations roles in cannabis or hemp beverage, share this episode with them for Matt Compton.

Ready To Drink covers beverage alcohol, hemp-derived THC, and functional non-alc business strategy, five days a week.

New episodes drop weekdays covering beverage alcohol, hemp THC, functional non-alc brands, distribution strategy and the real stories behind the category.

Ready To Drink Podcast: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | ReadyToDrinkPodcast.com

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Jason Ufema, owner of Shy Bear Brewing and co-owner of Rich Coast Coffee in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, joins Ready To Drink Podcast to talk about running two beverage businesses on the same family property his father built in the 1960s. Rich Coast started as a coffee service company in 1978, growing through 13 acquisitions before Jason intentionally contracted the footprint to a controllable service radius. Shy Bear Brewing, now nine years old, sits directly across the campus.

Jason breaks down why he has never chased national distribution and instead protects a 100-mile radius built on personal relationships and same-day service reliability. He talks through the COVID years and record profitability from outdoor dining, why he avoids brewing trend chasing like hazy IPAs and pastry stouts, the Untappd debate and why ratings are not the same as objective quality, and the case for ordering flights instead of the same beer every Friday to actually understand your own palate.

We also get into Pennsylvania House Bill 2309, the hemp beverage bill, and what it would mean for Shy Bear and Rich Coast if Pennsylvania allowed a hemp beverage license similar to the RTD spirits permit structure, plus real numbers from bars and liquor stores in North Carolina and New Jersey on what percentage of revenue hemp THC beverages now represent.

Find Jason and his brands: Shy Bear Brewing - ShyBearBrewing.com & Rich Coast Coffee: RichCoast.com

New episodes drop weekdays covering beverage alcohol, hemp THC, functional non-alc brands, distribution strategy and the real stories behind the category.

Ready To Drink Podcast: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | ReadyToDrinkPodcast.com

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Presented by The FreeMind Group - FMGStrategy.com