EP 65 Discovering The Pathfinder’s Hemp-Based Elixir with Kraig Rovensky

In this episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Kraig Rovensky, representing The Pathfinder, a fermented and distilled hemp-based elixir that's taking the world by storm. In our discussion, he answers all your burning questions about this innovative product and sheds light on what makes The Pathfinder stand out in the world of non-alcoholic spirits. 

From its roots in Seattle to its skyrocketing popularity nationwide, Kraig shares the brand's journey,  including the many hiccups along the way. Plus, he shares some creative ways to enjoy it, whether you're a beer lover or a cocktail connoisseur. We also discuss the future of the non-alcoholic beverage industry and what's in store for The Pathfinder enthusiasts. You won’t want to miss out, so join us as we raise a glass to innovation and the joy of discovering new flavors in the incredible NA space!

Get in touch with The Pathfinder!
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Follow Kraig on Instagram! @kraigthepathfinder

Thanks to Giesen 0% Wines for being our exclusive non-alcoholic wine sponsor!

Connect with Deb: @Mocktail.Mom

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You are loved. Big Time Cheers!

Transcript

Deb: 0:01

Buckle up, friends, and welcome to the Thriving Alcohol-Free Podcast. I'm your host, deb, otherwise known as Mocktail Mom, a retired wine drinker that finally got sick and tired of spinning on life's broken record called Detox to Retox. Let this podcast be an encouragement to you. If alcohol is maybe a form of self-care for you, where you find yourself dragging through the day waiting to pour another glass, I am excited to share with you the fun of discovering new things to drink when you aren't drinking and the joy of waking up each day without a hangover. It is an honor to serve as your sober, fun guide, so sit back and relax or keep doing whatever it is you're doing. This show is produced for you with love from the great state of Kentucky. Thanks so much for being here and big time cheers. Okay, hey friends, it's Deb. Welcome back to Thriving Alcohol Free.

Deb: 0:53

I am so excited today because one of the things I've been wanting to do this year in 2024, which we are doing is bringing in brands, because we have questions. We go like what on earth are these wonderful products we're finding or buying? For example, today I'm holding the Pathfinder, so if you haven't tried the Pathfinder, this is your opportunity. We're going to ask we're talking today with Kraig Rovensky. Am I saying your last name, right?

Kraig: 1:16

You are indeed. Yeah, did I say it right? Okay, good.

Deb: 1:18

Okay, good, Kraig and I are connecting today, Kraig's with the Pathfinder, and I'm so happy. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Kraig: 1:25

Well, of course, thanks for having me.

Deb: 1:26

Yeah, yeah, okay. There are so many questions about this product. It's like everybody goes, so I love it. It's a botanical non-alcoholic spirit, fermented and distilled. Right Kind of the basics, the most basic basics. Can you just start us out with, like, what is beyond that? What is the pathfinder? And a question actually from my Facebook group, from Rich Loud, is how would you describe it to someone that maybe only drinks, like was only a beer and wine drinker? How would you describe it?

Kraig: 1:55

Yeah, totally. Your description is pretty spot on. We are fermented and distilled from hemp seed. Non-alcoholic bitter elixir would be you know, to kind of keep with our old timey world branding in a world of. If you were to correlate with alcohol or to, like you know, that side of things we are close, akin to say, like an Amaro or Vermouth, something that is, like you know, bitter in that same kind of sense for a wine and a beer drinker. That is a good question. I don't think I've ever had anyone ask that before.

Deb: 2:24

Yeah, very good question, thank you Rich, he's a listener.

Kraig: 2:27

Yeah, so I would say I mean anyone that is very into, say, beer culture. In German and French, specifically beer culture, it is common to add bitters to light beer. So things like pecan Amir pecan, which is a french style amaro, so it's made of orange peels and fairly bitter, heavy. It's generally common to add that to like a light beer, whereas in germany it's pretty common to add like different fruits and and liqueurs and other things to beer. So in that same sense I would say, if you're like very into beer culture, then we're something that you could just add to a light beer does make a very good addition to a light NA beer. I actually had it with the visitor lager not that long ago, which was quite delicious.

Deb: 3:11

Oh, really Okay, and how much do you add?

Kraig: 3:14

About an ounce, a little more, I mean depends on your own flavor profile, of course.

Deb: 3:18

Sure, sure, sure.

Kraig: 3:19

For good measure.

Deb: 3:20

Okay, and I made myself, I just recorded a podcast right before this, so I didn't do anything too fancy, but I did just make myself a very simple your Pathfinder spritz. So it's two ounces of so good Pathfinder, two ounces of the Pathfinder, about half an ounce of lemon juice and then top with sparkling water. So it is so delicious, so big time. Cheers, Kraig, to you.

Kraig: 3:40

Cheers. Thank you. I would recommend, if you are a fan of bitter things, to switch out the lemon for grapefruit. Oh, just a slightly, slightly more bitter version of.

Deb: 3:50

Okay, yes, love, I love. Yeah, I like the bitter, I like the little bite.

Kraig: 3:53

Yeah, write that down, write that down.

Deb: 3:55

I am writing it down, yes, because otherwise, greg, I won't remember. I'll be like what it was that he said. What fruit did he sell me? Okay, so how have you? I know Guy is the founder of the Pathfinder. It started in Seattle, and how have you gotten involved in the company? Where did you come in?

Kraig: 4:10

on the story here yeah, so there's three founders. Guy is one of them. So Guy came in from the world of Diageo, so working for Big Brand Alcohol, and he was consulting in a cannabis company based out of Washington State started by one of our other co-founders, chris Abbott. Basically, the whole question for them came from what's the future of the back bar? It's not Alkynas Cannabis. We're watching younger generations move away from alcohol into cannabis or psilocybin, kind of watching that and like where would that go? What would that look like? What would that look like?

Kraig: 4:42

And so the idea was to one day have a full, tasty spirit that could sit behind the back bar and be just up there with everything else. But how do we get there? And part of that was let's make a non-alcoholic version of that. So a non-alcoholic version that could be more wildly adapted and is catching on to the trend of non-alcoholic in general. And then they, through his work with Diageo, guy had met a gentleman named Steven Grass. Steven Grass is the guy behind the brands of Hendrix and Sailor Jerry's Rum. He owns a design agency out of Philadelphia called Quaker City Mercantile and he approached them with the idea. At this point Steve had not done anything in the world of non-alcohol, but his branding agency does the branding for Guinness and High Life and Milagro, tequila and huge global brands, wow, and obviously still Hendrix and Sailor Jerry's and a handful of other ones, and they pitched in the idea and he got on board and bought in as a founder and we utilize their branding agencies, who creates all of our brand world.

Deb: 5:45

I was going to say, because everything I mean your labels and all the branding is amazing. That all makes sense. Okay, okay.

Kraig: 5:53

Then I came in prior to launch. We at that point were where would we launch this? Where would it look like to launch this being that we were inspired by the West, being that a lot of our botanicals are very much from the Pacific Northwest. Seattle made sense. Chris lives in Seattle, so that also was a tick in a category for that side. And we then hired a guy to do PR for them to basically be like what would it be like to launch here? How does that look? At this point, liquid wasn't even fully developed. We had no bottles. The branding was still being created around it.

Kraig: 6:25

The gentleman that they hired I actually knew. He was childhood best friends with the owners of a restaurant in Seattle that I was their beverage director. I handled all of their cocktails and the spirits and it was just a thing I had been doing on the side. And he reached out to me because he's like he does PR for some of the biggest breweries in seattle and works with a lot of beer brands. So he's like I know nothing about cocktails in comparison to you. Like can I pick your brain? And so I got on board at that point as a pure consultant and was supposed to just help them build the brand and help them find someone to do the job that I'm now doing, and the more that that I was, the more that I was doing it, the more I was like actually wait, like I think I might want to just do this.

Deb: 7:08

So I love that. I love that.

Kraig: 7:11

So I partner in a bar back in Seattle called Life on Mars and had a conversation with my partners about being like hey, I don't, I don't want to be the guy here every day anymore. Can I take a step back from that and step into this? And now we've been two and a half years almost since I joined the team. Well, no, closer to three, three years now actually.

Deb: 7:32

Wow, wow. And how has it changed since when you first came on? Or since when you first stepped into this Like, okay, I'm the guy we're looking for.

Kraig: 7:42

Yeah, I mean we at that point we were bottling in 500 milliliter bottles. Because of supply chain woes at the time, that was really the only bottle we could get in the size that we or in the shape that we wanted. And so we we were just bottling to bottle so that we could put out a product instead of waiting an unknown amount of time. And we actually our first initial batches were all done in the UK because the guy that helped finish and finalize our liquid lived in London and getting across to America at that time because of COVID was just very difficult and it was really hard for us to go tour a facility and see if it would be able to be a place that we could make it, and so we were dealing with a lot of complications in those first year.

Deb: 8:24

Really, yeah, extra challenges. That, yeah, extra challenges the brand wouldn't have had if you'd launched later. Yep.

Kraig: 8:30

Yeah or earlier. I mean, if we launched earlier we would have had them eventually, but wouldn't have had them at the beginning.

Deb: 8:35

Yeah.

Kraig: 8:36

And so now it's. You know we're we're a little more stable, but our like instability now is more like we're selling way more than what we're projected. We, you know, not quite doubled, but almost doubled what we expected to sell last month, and so our problems now are just like, hey, we might not, like we don't have the bottles that we think we do, and, like you know, we had a big stockout situation last year due to the bottles that we're currently in weren't around, so we had to bottle into round bottles instead in a limited edition run, and during that time we were being called the Pappy Van Winkle of the non-alcoholic spirits world because we were being allocated. Stores were only selling one bottle at a time. You couldn't come in and buy more.

Kraig: 9:17

We were having to say no to so many of our bar and restaurant partners that generally carry us. It's been a wild ride to get here and now I'm not. For a long time I was the only person working on the brand really outside of the founders, and now we have a team of brand ambassadors across America who stepped in. We're fully launching some states with proper distribution and really showing up as a big brand, which is awesome.

Deb: 9:42

That's phenomenal. And did you double last month? So during dry January you did double than what you projected.

Kraig: 9:47

Almost yeah, and that was incredible. That was a continuation of a trend for us. We, december almost doubled November and November had doubled anything we'd done before that. So we, you know, our growth rate at that point was, you know, a projection of. We've raised like 30, 35% each month, so going up to 40, 45, almost 50 was not in the projections for us, which, again, great problem.

Deb: 10:11

Good problems. Yeah, this is a good problem, craig. Yeah, I hope you're working on commission. That's a really good problem. That's awesome. Okay, somebody in the Facebook group was asking do you have any plans to have any RTDs or ready-to-drink cans, which I know? You know what an RTD is, but for somebody who's listening they might not know what an RTD is or ready-to-drink can.

Kraig: 10:28

Yeah, we're a bar-first brand, not a consumer side, so for us, being in a bar, being visible, being forward, is the most important. And RTDs, though, they can be sold. I mean, my bar in Seattle has the Ghia RTDs that we give out and, yeah, I have nothing against those, but it's not like it's not how we want to show up. We want people to utilize the liquid and make their own thing with it, but that's certainly not to say that that's a no. There is some things in the works that are a collab with another brand that I can't quite speak of yet.

Deb: 11:02

Sure, sure, okay, yep, you can tell me later after we stop recording. Yeah, yeah.

Kraig: 11:06

I can tease that there is some things in the works that will come out that won't be Pathfinder specific but will be a part of that are in RTD Great great. Oh, that's exciting. Okay, yeah, with an RTD or even a different flavor. For us, when we launched, a lot of the inspiration came from two brands, one being Seedlip and one being Hendrix, and Hendrix is just Hendrix, and Hendrix launched in 2008. But looking at that bottle and all the places that they're in, you would think that Hendrix has been around for hundreds of years.

Deb: 11:35

I was going to say I would have thought that's been around forever. No idea, that's only since 2008. Wow.

Kraig: 11:41

Yeah, brand was conceived in 2005, officially launched in 2006, but really only like launch, launched in 2008. Those might be a little skewed on numbers, but I know it was. 2005 was when the brand was birthed, like the actual idea of what it is. But if you look at it, hendrix is everywhere. They're in dive bars, they're in like the grossest bars or the nicest bars, they're in duty-free stores and they never released another version until about six years ago and it was a limited edition. Like this is we're going to make x amount and that's all there is, and so for us, like that's kind of an inspiration, we want to just really be singly focused on one thing, get pathfinder into as many places as possible, and then, once we're more a global brand, once we've kind of started to establish ourselves in more places, like, yeah, we'd love to put out a limited edition flavor or our unique line or an RTD or whatever it is. But yeah, for right now it's just being like, yeah, just incredibly singly focused.

Deb: 12:34

No, and I think I mean they. What do they say? The riches are in the niches, right Like, singly focused? No, and I think I mean they. What do they say? The riches are in the niches, right Like? Or in the niches, you know, it's like, just to even I just got my haircut by a guy this week the new guy and he only does hair. It doesn't. I don't get my hair color, but he doesn't do color. He doesn't do eyebrow wax, doesn't do anything. All that's where the growth keeps happening, so you can focus on perfecting it.

Kraig: 13:00

Yeah, I personally make RTDs with Pathfinder where I'll I'll bottle up like an espresso tonic and Pathfinder that I'll go and hand out to accounts and you know it comes in a little bottle with an eye and that's like my way of giving thanks to bartenders and you know I've given them out to like the staff at Poisson and like other places around New York City when I'm deciding about. But you know that's a me thing and if you want one you can ask.

Deb: 13:23

Okay, okay, yes, you could sell those Very limited edition right? You can have your own Etsy the Pathfinder.

Kraig: 13:29

RTDs are on Etsy, your little shop on there.

Deb: 13:33

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Deb: 14:15

Globally available, look for Giesen 0% wines wherever you shop for your non-alcoholic options. Their family of alcohol-free wines include the most effervescent member of the family, the sparkling brute 0%, which is absolutely delicious for any celebration. My personal favorite although I do love them all is the Sauvignon Blanc, coming in at only 100 calories for the entire bottle. And, not to be missed, the other members of their 0% family the Riesling, the Premium Red Blend, the Rose Day, the Pinot Gris. With Giesen's 0% wines, there's a de-alcoholized wine for everyone and every occasion. Give Giesen a try and let me know how much you love it. And if you want to meet their winemaker, go back to episode 33 of the podcast, where Duncan Shuler joined me to share about the Giesen story. Okay, so for somebody who's maybe they want to find the Pathfinder where can they find it? To either purchase it if they're not in a bar, if they want to make drinks at home Most of my listeners, I think, are trying to make mocktails or non-alcohol cocktails at home.

Deb: 15:08

I know mocktails isn't really a word you guys use right.

Kraig: 15:10

No, but that's okay.

Deb: 15:11

That's okay.

Kraig: 15:15

I mean the easiest is our website, drinkthepathfindercom. We sell bottles right there. Outside of that, we do have a good relationship with a lot of different online retailers Croissant and Zero Proof and we are slowly. If you are in Washington, California, Illinois or Florida, we have a good amount of partners in all of those places now that we've launched proper distribution and we're getting into Whether it's their non-alcohol bars that are, or non-alcohol bars or bubble shops in those areas or or actual liquor stores. We're also available almost nationwide in every single total wine.

Deb: 15:46

Uh, location, yeah that's where I shop locally. Yeah, I'll shop locally at total wine.

Kraig: 15:50

I'll go like if I'm buying you know something, I'll go in there and shop locally, yeah yeah, they just expanded us into more stores and we're I think it's like something like 70 or 80 stores from being in all of them, so great, almost all of them and that probably by summer or fall will be in all.

Deb: 16:07

That's that is very exciting.

Kraig: 16:09

Yeah, that's the hope and the messaging we're getting from them and what we're hoping for for ourselves. So that's kind of like the easiest way you know for anyone outside of online.

Deb: 16:18

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and zero proof. I think they gave me a code, mocktail Mom, I think it's my orders from there. They get, I think, 15% off. So, yeah, we like a discount or shop retail, whatever. Okay, what are your favorite ways to use the Pathfinder?

Kraig: 16:32

I love just drinking a neat. I mean also to go back to the, to the adding to beer. I think that it is a amazing flavor profile to add to a light, a light beer or even, like you know, a more bitter ipa uh works great as well. As far as thinking of cocktails, I mean I'm uh, I've always been a stirred. I have uh in in my my older years have started to get acid reflux more and more so. The citrus drinks, drinks don't.

Deb: 16:57

I'm 52. I'm 52. I have no idea what you're talking about, Craig.

Kraig: 17:00

Yeah, the citrus drinks don't do it for me anymore. So a nice, like you know, na Negroni or Manhattan would be like the two kind of drinks that I focus on the most, or like a half-under old-fashioned something that's just like very bitter forward take on that.

Deb: 17:16

Really nice, really nice, okay, so do you think is the word hemp problematic for people, or is there a lot of education that you have to do? Or maybe would you like to educate the listeners a little bit on the hemp in the product.

Kraig: 17:29

I think, in setting ourselves up to be something that was easy to sell, we went the exact opposite. Hemp is wildly misunderstood, is the first thing I would say. And then, even outside of that, just on our like, how hard it is. It's, you know, being that we're not trying to replicate a thing that already exists. It's hard to get people to conceptualize what that looks like, and the closest that you can compare it to in the world of spirits is things that are also generally hard to conceptualize, and most people don't know what a mario wolf roof is. So all three of those things are generally difficult.

Kraig: 18:01

For hemp, it's most people, when they see hemp, they assume cbd or they assume thc, and we, we use hemp seeds, and the hemp seeds themselves do not have cannabinoids. The cannabinoids start to start to form into the hemp plant until the stock and the flowers start to grow, which is why, when you think of, like, when you can, you know if you were buying weed, you buy the bud, you don't buy the stock. You know it's that's where the TC actually grows. So for us, like, the number of cannabinoids that you could possibly find in hemp seeds is like a 0.10 zeros, until you get a number and, like you know, that's essentially zero.

Deb: 18:38

Right, right, right, right, as close to zero as you can get.

Kraig: 18:45

Exactly. But it leads to a lot of questions of like oh, will this get me high, will this show up, you know, on a drug test, and these sort of questions. And for us, again, it ties back to that first thing of wanting to create a spirit that would eventually have TC in it. We wanted it to come from something. When you think of whiskey, when you think of gin, tequila, all of the like, the great spirits of alcohol, they all come from something like. Gin is birthed from a distillation of juniper, whiskey comes from grains, and so when thinking of what would it would a hemp spirit truly look like? What would a tc spirit look like? Well, it has to come from weed, it has to come from hemp and it has to come from hemp. And utilizing hemp seeds was because hemp seeds are the only part of the plant that you can use for human consumption, which is why you can buy hemp seeds and then whole foods.

Deb: 19:25

Interesting. Yeah, I put it in my protein bowl or whatever.

Kraig: 19:29

Yeah, and for us it was looking at the history of old Western apothecary style medicine like TC. Cbd was used in a lot of them. Hemp was was using a lot of them. Hemp was using a lot of them, but as far as any of us could find, no one had ever distilled hemp seed before, and so to do something that no one else had ever done was also where this happened to come from.

Kraig: 19:49

And you know, wanting to truly be unique, wanting to truly create something that no one had ever created, we didn't set out to make something like an Amaro or a vermouth.

Kraig: 19:57

The only reason that we do compare that sometimes is because we are made the exact same way. It's hard to get away from that in a bartender's mind when you're like, oh well, you're an infusion of bitter herbs and roots, so that is an Amaro. But yeah, we wanted to create something that would have looked like you would have seen it in a snake oil salesman's pack in the old West, in the old 1850s, and so we wanted to utilize the botanicals from that time, from that era, from that place, and hemp was a very big crop the golden age of cannabis, 1830s to the 1930s, before that was banned in America as a crop like hemp was utilized in a lot of different ways, and so to be able to like, draw attention back to that, to take something that possibly no one had ever done and be able to say, like like hemp is a you know has good use, like look like we can create something like truly delicious.

Deb: 20:48

So delicious, so good, it's so surprising. I mean, it's such a different, it's so different, you know. So it's like what is this that we're drinking?

Kraig: 20:55

It's so good.

Deb: 20:55

Yeah, okay. So what would you say? Craig is like, the future of the category, this non-alcoholic space. That has changed so much. I've been alcohol-free since December 31st 2020. So I broke up with Chardonnay. Thank you, thank you, but it's changed so much. So what do you see as the future of what's happening in this space?

Kraig: 21:23

I mean you're at the other side of things. Yeah, I think we're very much in the early days of the veganism and vegetarian movements, where there had to be separate spaces. And if you look at the numbers, according to Boisson's numbers, 80% of people who buy non-off products still actively drink. They're just finding ways to regulate whether it's their day, their night, their year, whatever it is, and I think that, that, to me, is the future of the category, is more inclusivity on and a mix of.

Kraig: 21:45

I will say that there will always be a space for alcohol free spaces.

Kraig: 21:49

You know a lot of people that are sober, being in a bar is triggering, and so having those spaces is important. In the same way of like how I conceptualize my menu of life on Mars is to, you know, make a menu that won't be triggering to people. And that's always a constant conversation because everyone is different. You know, one of our partner's best friends is sober, still actively, comes to the bar all the time, finds the bar not to be triggering but finds where things are on the menu to be triggering, and how we describe things can be. So it's constantly learning, but, like his, his triggers are different than other people's and so it's a constant conversation. But I think that that, in the end, it's to me it needs to be mixed more instead of being fully separate spaces. I also think that, conceptually, what I find to be a very interesting thing about young people who aren't drinking is the amount of emphasis on brands to replicate something that exists, because a lot of the people who aren't drinking now don't know what any of that even tastes like.

Deb: 22:45

That's true, no, you're right.

Kraig: 22:47

It's very interesting. Why are we focusing so much on replicating an Aperol spritz when someone who is 21 and is determined they don't want to drink and they're much more into maybe weed or mushrooms or whatever it is doesn't know what an after all spritz even tastes like. So to them, like you're trying to pitch to the wrong crowd and I think that NA unless whoever the first person to crack figuring out how to make an NA whiskey truly tastes like an NA whiskey like they're going to kill it. But until then, I think we're seeing more brands be more creative, be more unique, and I think to me, like the metric of people who actively don't drink for sobriety or health reasons or whatever it is, is a very small segment of the population. I think that it's when you think of those people, like most of those people do know what those things taste like, but are also always looking for something new and unique, and I think that we're starting to realize that that's where we should be aiming for is how to just create something that tastes good.

Deb: 23:42

That's excellent. That's so good. Okay, somebody in my Facebook group was asking what are the best ratios of add-ins. Is best to not water down the flavor of the Pathfinder.

Kraig: 23:53

It does depend on what you are making. I think like and this is something I remind bartenders all the time is when you're thinking of making an NA drink. It doesn't have alcohol to counter the dilution of adding water. So when you stir a shake, that's the point of doing that is, you're adding in water to dilute. And I think with a lot like like Pathfinder sits in a kind of a realm of its own because of the way it is made and the flavor profile holds like solution is fine and you're going to just pull out different flavors if you do so.

Kraig: 24:22

But when you're thinking of adding in other things, you got to think of what those are because if you think about it adding lemon juice, adding sugar, adding anything else that's in that round teas or whatever it is those are all also diluting Pathfinder or whatever it is those are all also diluting Pathfinder and at that point you don't need to do much shaking or stirring to add in dilution. At that point you're just wanting to chill it. I think a very unique thing I've seen in the utilization of bars is, at this point, the combo of adding in NA spirits to alcoholic cocktails. There's one bar I know that uses seed lip and they actually freeze seed lip into ice cubes and adds that to their Negroni.

Deb: 25:00

Oh, that's such a good idea.

Kraig: 25:02

Yeah, and I started to conceptually think about that. In the world of NA drinks, where it's like I could make like an NA Negroni or an NA Manhattan variation and I could freeze seed lip into the ice and that way it's, I'm adding in some liquid dilution, but it's liquid dilution, that's adding a flavor and adding something new. Like we mess around with freezing tea instead of water, using tea cubes for dilution, so you're adding in just more flavor. You're just adding in I love that.

Deb: 25:31

Yeah, I love that. Okay, yes, and especially because, right, like, if you're trying to freeze vodka, it's not going to freeze, right, but like, with these non-alcoholic spirits, non-alcoholic options, they actually can freeze. You can make some ice cubes right, yeah. So you can make Pathfinder ice cubes.

Kraig: 25:45

You can make Pathfinder ice cubes. Yeah, we have accidentally made Pathfinder ice cubes by shipping in the winter and bottles no-transcript going to come into my happy half hour.

Deb: 26:05

We're going to make a mocktail together or non-alcoholic cocktail, sorry. Maybe we can make something with some Pathfinder ice cubes. I don't know, is that a possibility?

Kraig: 26:12

Yeah yeah. I did a espresso tonic variation with frozen Pathfinder ice cubes, so Pathfinder melted and it became more Pathfinder forward as you drank. I love that. That was one thing. I've also done a Pathfinder ice cube in basically a spritz variation. It was with Willerton's Bitter Peritivo and Prima Pave sparkling wine and then the Pathfinder would melt into that over time.

Deb: 26:39

I bet that's delicious.

Kraig: 26:41

I bet that's so good.

Deb: 26:42

Yes, it's so fun, isn't it fun? I'm so excited that you joined me today. Thank you so much, craig, for coming to Thriving Alcohol-Free, and just thank you to you and your team for all that you're doing in this space and for just creating such a unique deliciousness for us to enjoy because there's so many good things to drink, right when we're not drinking, or we're in between drinking, you know, or for whatever reason.

Deb: 27:05

So it's really really good to have you here today, so make sure everybody's following along. If they're not following you on instagram, your instagram account. Is what drink? The pathfinder is that right?

Kraig: 27:12

yeah, our brand's one is drink, the pathfinder, and my personal one is Kraig with a K the Pathfinder.

Deb: 27:17

Kraig with a K Pathfinder. All one word, yeah.

Kraig: 27:21

Just Kraig with a K, not as a word, but just yes, I didn't mean that. Yes, yes.

Deb: 27:26

Yes, we can put that in the show notes too. We can put your Instagram handle there too. So, yes, people can reach out to you, able to grab recipes from your website and to be able to use the product, whether they find it at Total Wine or grab it at Boisson, or if they're at their local bar and be able to have a cocktail there. So, Kraig, thank you, thank you, thank you. I really, really appreciate it. So great to meet you. You as well. Thank you so much. Big time cheers to you for tuning in to thriving alcohol free podcast. I hope you will take something from today's episode and make one small change that will help you to thrive and have fun in life without alcohol. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social, send up a flare or leave a rating and a review. I am cheering for you as you discover the world of non-alcoholic drinks and as you journey towards authentic freedom. See you in the next episode.