Ep 30: How Orka Built an Energy Drink for People Who Hate Energy Drinks

What happens when two friends in their twenties get fed up with syrupy energy drinks and decide to invent a caffeinated water that actually tastes like water? Orka founders Michael Moriarty and Nash Hale join Drinks Insider to talk about their journey from college roommates to beverage entrepreneurs. They reveal how they raised $355K in friends-and-family money, endured a year of catastrophic production failures, and finally cracked the code for manufacturing a clear pressurised can — just in time to ride a viral wave on Amazon.

We cover:

• The unglamorous truth about energy drink flavour fatigue
  
  
• Why beverage manufacturing is a form of hazing
  
  
• What a "seaming consultant" actually does
  
  
• How TikTok and a well-timed tweet changed everything
  
  
• The upsides and downsides of selling on Amazon
  
  
• Why they chose the name Orka and how they almost didn’t
  
  

If you’re dreaming of launching a drink brand, this is a must-listen.

• 00:05 — Intro to the Orka story and what happened when the WSJ found out
  
  
• 03:18 — “Why not just put caffeine in water?”: the founding insight
  
  
• 06:18 — They backed into health by chasing simplicity, not wellness
  
  
• 09:01 — Time to start a beverage company!
  
  
• 10:48 — The 150mg caffeine challenge and why flavour houses balked
  
  
• 12:35 — Panic attacks from over-caffeinated taste testing
  
  
• 18:04 — The transparent plastic can that nearly killed the business
  
  
• 21:08 — Every production run failed for a year. Here’s why.
  
  
• 23:24 — How close they came to shutting it all down
  
  
• 26:10 — Selling on Amazon: upsides, pitfalls, and inventory anxiety
  
  
• 30:26 — What happened after the WSJ feature dropped
  
  
• 34:39 — Final advice on why to be “delusionally confident”

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Meet your host:

Felicity Carter is an award-winning wine and drinks journalist, editor, speaker trainer and content strategist. She led Meininger’s Wine Business International to become the world’s most must-read wine trade magazine, and was founding Executive Editor of The Drop/Pix, which the Wall Street Journal named one of the most trusted sources of wine information. A regular keynote speaker at international events, she was named a 2024 Industry Leader by WineBusiness Monthly.