Got milk? Belinsky does—minus the lactose. The Boston native grew up chugging chocolate milk after basketball practice, but when he became lactose-intolerant, he switched to alternative milks. Frustrated by the fillers and synthetic additives in milk substitutes, he and cofounder Manny Lubin created Slate, hawking zero-added-sugar, high-protein milks and lattes—without added protein powder. “The way I describe it is you put milk through a Brita filter,” he says. Cows are still involved: Slate simply skims the milk, then filters out the natural lactose sugars. The startup launched in 2019 after a popular Kickstarter campaign and an appearance on Shark Tank. Since inception, Slate has sold more than 15 million cans of milk at more than 12,000 locations, including Walmart, Kroger, Whole Foods and Wegmans. Investor interest has been frothy. Backers include the cofounders of RXBar, Halo Top and Drizly, as well as OneRepublic lead singer Ryan Tedder, who cumulatively have poured in $25 million.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 Josh, so great to be here with you today.
00:05 - Thank you for having me.
00:05 - Of course, so let's start by telling me,
00:08 what does your company do?
00:09 - Slate, we sell high protein chocolate milks and lattes.
00:13 - Ooh, delicious.
00:15 - Yes, of course, taste is number one priority.
00:17 And we say we sell strength,
00:19 so the high protein gives people strength,
00:20 and we create products that are not only better for people,
00:23 but better for the planet,
00:24 so we have an environmental mission too.
00:25 - Very cool, I'll dive into sustainability later,
00:27 but I first wanna hear about your founding story.
00:30 - Sure, so my co-founder, Manny Lubin and I
00:33 are both from the greater Boston area,
00:34 and we grew up playing a ton of sports.
00:36 After games, after practice,
00:37 our moms would always give us chocolate milk,
00:39 and there was always great protein, good electrolytes.
00:42 I didn't realize that chocolate milk
00:43 actually has more electrolytes
00:44 than most sports drinks, just naturally.
00:46 So we drank it all the time, we got older,
00:48 it became lactose intolerance, we couldn't drink it anymore,
00:51 and had to start drinking these name brands
00:53 that basically screamed to the world
00:54 that we were the guys with tummy issues.
00:56 And so that was where Slate was born,
00:58 we just wanted to create a chocolate milk for us
01:00 that we could actually drink every day
01:01 and feel comfortable with.
01:02 - So what made you think then
01:05 that you could take this leap into entrepreneurship
01:07 and have a successful business?
01:09 - A lot of people talk about it,
01:10 they're like, "Oh, it's amazing
01:11 "that you guys were able to do this."
01:12 And I, first of all,
01:14 my family has been incredibly supportive.
01:16 Before this, we actually worked
01:17 for a real estate tech company,
01:18 and I remember when I was leaving
01:20 to start the world of chocolate milk,
01:21 my dad was like, "How many wealthy people
01:23 "do you know in real estate?"
01:24 I was like, "A lot."
01:26 And he's like, "How many wealthy people
01:27 "do you know in milk?"
01:28 And I was like, "Dad, that's the opportunity,
01:29 "that's not the..."
01:31 So that was kind of that big jump,
01:33 but for me, I knew that worst case scenario,
01:36 if I fell on my face, my parents were there to catch me,
01:39 could move in with them.
01:40 I don't know if they would like that or not,
01:41 but very, very lucky to have that support system behind me.
01:44 I tell everybody too that going into something alone
01:47 is very, very hard.
01:49 Inception of the idea to actually launching
01:51 our first product was two full years.
01:53 I don't know if I was alone
01:54 but I was able to kind of push through and do it.
01:56 (upbeat music)
01:59 - Now part of the things I love about your story
02:01 is that you guys went on Shark Tank.
02:02 - We did.
02:03 - Tell me about how that experience is for you.
02:05 - Besides the 55 page NDA that I can't say
02:08 a lot of the things that happened,
02:09 it was honestly an incredible experience as an entrepreneur.
02:11 No matter what happens on that stage,
02:13 it was one of the coolest things I've ever done,
02:15 being out in LA and doing it and meeting everybody.
02:18 For us, we did a Kickstarter video
02:20 and the casting team reached out to us.
02:22 And so when we went out there on the show,
02:24 we had no final product.
02:25 There were lab made samples.
02:26 We had no sales.
02:27 All we had was the Kickstarter.
02:29 And so we definitely were a little bit early
02:31 before wanting to kind of be ready to go out there.
02:33 But we were like, you know what?
02:34 This is an opportunity to get in front of people,
02:35 potentially find a great partner for the business.
02:37 And we got destroyed on national television.
02:40 It was definitely brutal on our egos.
02:42 As we say, great for the brand, tough on the ego.
02:44 And it aired about a year later.
02:46 And when we look at it now, they run it every two months.
02:49 Like it's on all the time, which again,
02:51 great recognition, people still tell us,
02:53 but my mom is still pretty upset.
02:55 She's like, you gotta let them know
02:56 how good you guys are doing now.
02:57 And I'm like, well, maybe if they read Forbes,
02:59 they'll find out.
03:00 - There you go, exactly.
03:01 You talked about sustainability earlier.
03:03 So I wanna circle back on that.
03:04 How is that such a big part of your brand?
03:07 - It's really important to us.
03:08 I mean, I think for us, it's not only important to us
03:11 to have making humans better,
03:12 but we gotta take care of the planet that we're on.
03:14 And so we wanted to figure out a truly authentic way.
03:17 I think sometimes companies get a little bit too involved
03:19 in the world of they need to do something
03:22 'cause they think they have to
03:23 or have some sort of ESG goal they need to hit.
03:25 And so for us, it was starting with the aluminum can.
03:27 So we're 100% recyclable aluminum can,
03:29 where a lot of things are in plastic bottles.
03:31 We learned a lot about how a lot of the waste
03:33 that doesn't end up getting recycled in North America
03:35 ends up in the Indian Ocean.
03:37 So we actually partnered with a group
03:39 to be a plastic neutral certified business
03:41 and have plastics neutral certified products.
03:43 And on the other side of that,
03:45 throughout our entire supply chain,
03:46 find ways to continue to make things better.
03:48 So we do come from dairy, we are from cows.
03:51 So we have cows that we're using the milk that,
03:53 again, we make lactose free,
03:55 but we have methane machines on the farms
03:57 to help convert that into energy to power the farm.
03:59 So it's not just wasted methane or hurting the environment.
04:02 So anywhere that we can kind of bring that in, we want to.
04:05 - And one last question for you, Josh.
04:08 What would you like your legacy to be?
04:10 - Personally, I've always been really into health
04:13 and fitness and somebody like my dad
04:15 and my parents actually both,
04:17 we've all tried to be as healthy as we can.
04:19 And my dad has a nasty sweet tooth.
04:21 He loves his chocolate chip cookies and anything sweet.
04:24 And so for me, being able to now give him a product
04:27 that tastes really good to him, that's sweet,
04:28 but also is not sacrificing his nutrition.
04:31 If we can keep coming out with more and more products
04:33 like that for even just him,
04:35 that help him live a little bit longer,
04:36 be a little bit happier and healthier.
04:38 If we can do that for more people, that's really the goal.
04:40 So just leave a little bit of an impact as best we can.
04:42 (upbeat music)
04:45 (upbeat music)
04:48 (upbeat music)
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