Is Alcohol Facing a Generational Reckoning? What Gen Z Is Really Telling Us

 📢I talk🎙️with Bourcard Nesin, of VP of Beverages of Robobank and Host of Liquid Assets👏🍷 🎇 🎉 ✨ 👏 🥂  😁 

“The Great Disconnect?” 

 📹 Or watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/pkpWJLFHrd8

We’ve all heard the headline: “Gen Z is drinking less.” But beneath that clickbait is a more complex—and more urgent—story. On this episode of Thirsty Thursdays, I sat down with Bourcard Nesin, VP of Beverages Research at Rabobank, to ask: What’s actually driving this generational shift? His answers were eye-opening, data-backed, and refreshingly honest. 

✅ Gen Z isn’t anti-alcohol—they’re just not showing up to the party.
Isolation, delayed independence, and over-parenting have disrupted the social environments where alcohol typically thrives.

✅ Health isn’t the full story.
Saying “I care about my health” doesn’t mean someone is healthy—it may mean they’re already experiencing issues.

✅ Cannabis is not the enemy. Loneliness is.
Bourcard argues that alcohol’s real competition isn’t THC—it’s a cultural shift away from shared experiences.

✅ The industry’s blind spot: Identity.
Young consumers today are more likely to be women or people of color, yet most marketing still targets legacy demographics.

✅ Advice for brands? Stop chasing volume. Start building meaning.
Whether it’s RTDs or wine, storytelling and cultural alignment matter more than SKU count.

Why It Matters:

The U.S. beverage alcohol industry is in its worst decline in decades—and it's not just cyclical. As Bourcard puts it, “The goal isn’t growth. It’s survival.” If your brand isn’t thinking differently (and inclusively), you're already behind.

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Host Jessie Ott's Profile on LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Bourcard Nesin and Rabobank
• 2:09 The Beverage Industry Landscape
• 4:29 Bourcard's Journey in Academia and Research
• 9:23 Understanding Trends in the Beverage Industry
• 13:49 Gen Z Drinking Habits and Cultural Shifts
• 18:52 The Impact of Marijuana on Alcohol Consumption
• 24:51 Youth Trends in Alcohol Consumption
• 29:51 The Impact of Economic Factors on Drinking Habits
• 37:59 Historical Context of Alcohol Sales Decline
• 46:34 The Importance of Consumer Connection in Marketing
• 54:51 Building Community and Brand Reputation
• 55:40 Liquid Assets Podcast Insights
• 56:30 Navigating Social Media and Personal Connections
• 57:16 Understanding Generational Differences in Media Consumption
• 59:59 The Importance of Mentorship and Workplace Culture
• 1:03:05 Identifying Industry Pain Points and Opportunities
• 1:05:32 Preparing for Future Challenges in the Industry
• 1:06:21 Rapid Fire Game: Fun Insights and Personal Preferences
• 1:22:36 Produced by Fedora J Productions
• 1:22:57 Tune in Next Thursday & Have a Great Week!

Transcript

Jessie Ott (00:29)
Hello everybody and welcome to Thursday Thursday. I am Jessie Ott and I have an exciting guest today. Bourcard Nesin VP Research Beverages at Rabobank.

Welcome to Thursday, Thursdays.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (00:41)
good.

Thank you.

I excited to be on the show and thank you for inviting me.

Jessie Ott (00:49)
Thank you for coming. So where are you calling from?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (00:53)
I am calling from Portland, Maine in my shared office, my wife, working in the same room who must listen to me constantly monologue about my work. But I'm in Portland, Maine, my office is in New York. I work for a Dutch bank called Rabobank that does a lot of work financing and supporting the drinks business. And my job as a researcher is to

Jessie Ott (00:56)
Nice.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (01:13)
help our clients in the industry at large kind of navigate big strategic challenges. most people think of, you do research, you're at a bank, you do equity analysts stuff, which would mean I tell people which stocks to buy. And I'm actually quite the opposite. I'm not allowed to talk about that stuff, which gives me a lot more freedom to think longer term, talk to more people, and be much more independent.

Jessie Ott (01:30)
You

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And beverages are fun.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (01:41)
Beverages are fun. We have a podcast called Liquid Assets. We publish a report and I've got to say, when I tell people what I do for a job, they usually think, that's cool. So it's, I don't like talking about my work because it's, I think it's boring to say for the hundredth time. But I do recognize that people think my job is cool.

Jessie Ott (02:01)
Yeah, yeah, I think so too. mean, I'm kind of I'm, you know, I appreciate some some data and, know, it's an exciting time to be a part of the beverage business because it's I would call it, you know, like a turtle, it was pretty slow moving and it wasn't very creative. And the last five to 10 years have been, you know, anything but like there's just so much explosion happening and trends and

you know, changes happening and that's really exciting to be a part of.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (02:32)
I maybe if not on the same page as you on that front, I would do anything to have a boring year, you know? Like, like give me no change. That's all I want. I want no change. So I'd appreciate it. No change.

Jessie Ott (02:37)
Nyeh heh heh heh heh!

Yeah. Unfortunately with the changing, you know, of the guard and different generations coming our way, we have to, you know, adapt and see what they're...

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (02:55)
You mean a global pandemic and then a reshuffling of the global economic order and all those things? I

would gladly just take a year in which we're like, nothing exciting happened this year. And I would gladly sacrifice 15, having 10 instead of 15 options of tequila RTDs to just have a boring year of my life in which I am not.

Jessie Ott (03:15)
Hehehehe

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (03:19)
either A, scared for my life or B, scared for my job.

Jessie Ott (03:23)
Yeah, no, right? And then all the tariffs conversation, just, there's something every year.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (03:31)
Exciting doesn't mean fun. That's what I'll say.

Jessie Ott (03:36)
Yeah, depending upon the topic, I guess you're right. So where are you from?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (03:40)
I grew up in northern Maine in a town of 400 people in the woods, a very rural conservative community. And then, you know, went to undergrad in Maine, went to grad school in New York and ended up in a New York city working for a bank that funds wineries and breweries and distributors and other things like that. They do a lot more than that, but yeah.

Jessie Ott (03:42)
Okay.

That's really cool. And what else did you do?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (04:03)
Growing up.

Jessie Ott (04:05)
Yeah, well like what did you, I mean, is that with Rabobank that you're talking about or did you have other, did you work with other companies?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (04:09)
Yeah, yeah, so-

So I did have,

I, Raul makes my first kind of like non-academic grownup job. So I went to undergrad for kind of like ecology and farming and was really interested in the way that, how do we valorize rural living in a way that was meaningful and improve our food system and save the world. And then I had to.

Jessie Ott (04:21)
Okay.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (04:42)
At the end of that, I did some research and worked in a research lab, did research on plant genetics and evolution. And at the end of it, I ended up having to run a farm, which is both not remunerative and also very hard. And so you make no money and you work your butt off. And I was like, I don't want to do this. And so I went to grad school for economics and hoped or...

Jessie Ott (04:50)
Cool.

Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (05:05)
My aspiration was to continue to work in academia or at least in academic adjacent fields like impact evaluation. So I went to school for economics with the intention of working with NGOs and governments in determining whether or not government programs are working. So hey, we're in some low middle income country. We have a lot of kids that aren't going to school and working.

And so we're going to try and see if the government pays families a thousand dollars a year to keep their kids in school, does that work? And I would ideally be the person who they called to say, hey, could we, like, could you help us set up this program and figure out if this is a good use of government money or good use of like NGO money? And I moved to New York, cause my wife's an architect and wanted to live there and quickly discovered that the only jobs had

5,000 applicants or 2,000 applicants. I don't have a, my uncle isn't the ambassador to Bulgaria. And so I wasn't ever going to get that opportunity. And so I ended up finding a home within a bank that finances food and agriculture companies. And it's been eight years since then. it was an interesting journey, I would say. I'd always pursued.

Jessie Ott (05:59)
wow.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (06:24)
the topic that interested me most in the moment and had the privilege to, you know, not need a lot of like financial backing to do that, right? I ended up always finding some funding or some job that matched what I wanted to do. And, you know, things have turned out pretty well to this point. Like I'm kind of happy where I ended up.

Jessie Ott (06:48)
Yeah, well you have a lot of great posts and you share a lot of great information in the, uh, in our industry, which is really great to follow. Uh, running a farm, huh? Wow. That must've been, man, I hate it. It is such hard work. You know, I grew up in a small rural town too, from Iowa. And so, you know, I always tease and...

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (07:00)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jessie Ott (07:13)
call myself a city girl. didn't even have a stoplight in our town. were like less than a thousand people. Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (07:18)
Neither did I. Yeah. No stoplight.

We actually didn't have a store. Like there were literally no places you could get gasoline or, ⁓ yeah. Yeah. There was in town over, but we're pretty small. So it's very funny because, because I feel like I was raised in the seventies, so I was born in 1990 because I didn't have internet growing up. You know, I think there's a lot of the place where I grew up still doesn't have internet unless they do satellite or something like that.

Jessie Ott (07:27)
wow, we definitely had that.

Yeah.

wow.

Wow. That is pretty rural then. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. No, I, a farmer, so did you have animals as well as plants or? Okay.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (07:57)
No, it was a, it was kind of a greenhouse operation. So we were, ⁓

I actually was living in Miami, and working for, a large distributor of herbs and greens. this is not a euphemism people. we sold what are called, I ran our, our kind of a micro greens operation. So, essentially you sprout some seeds and, then harvest them and ship them out to supermarkets for the, guess they call it like plant confetti and it's every fancy restaurant you go to has.

Jessie Ott (08:22)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (08:22)
those

little greens and my job was to like figure out how to do that as efficiently as possible to, to, you know, get better at it. And it just wasn't my thing. was like a lot of managing people with like, you know, you know, a lot of Cuban immigrants working there. And I was like middle management essentially. And, know, it was not that fun. it was cool. I think when it started, but eventually, you know, you're working, working your butt off, have a.

good education, but you're making, you know, I think I negotiated a $30,000 salary and living in Miami on 30 grand is not that great, even as a middle management guy. So back to school.

Jessie Ott (08:57)
Yeah, that's that

great. Yeah. Wow. But what a cool experience though. Watching things grow is cool.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (09:03)
For sure, yeah.

Yep, is. Unfortunately, is not what we're watching in the bed-valk industry. That's certainly true. Not much growth there.

Jessie Ott (09:13)
Yeah,

that's true. That's true. No, it's interesting growing in Florida versus other parts of the country because there's so much water here that, you know...

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (09:24)
Yeah, it's a

lot of plant disease, a lot of disease pressure. And so it's very different, especially because growing up in Maine, you have like four months to grow stuff. So it's all about like season extension and how do you get plants in the ground or find hardier varieties that can go into the soil earlier or double cropping. if you're doing silage and things like that, can you get, you know,

Jessie Ott (09:34)
Right, exactly.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (09:50)
some wheat crop, winter wheat, then plant corn in May after you harvest it at boot stage with some high protein feed. That kind of stuff is, you know, that's what we're thinking about. In Florida, it's just like grow, grow, grow, and it's a very different environment. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (10:01)
Yeah.

Grow, Yeah, and weeds do too really well.

That's what I have in my garden at the moment. Weeds. Yeah. Well, when you don't live here full time, it's a bit hard to keep everything going.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (10:12)
weeds. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

But yeah, so kind of back to my journey in the industry, I started out, it was a tough adjustment, I think. I have a very academic, ⁓ I guess I intellectualize things, right? And like to, I'm very comfortable with uncertainty and kind of not knowing stuff. And that was one of the biggest shocks for me culturally.

Jessie Ott (10:30)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (10:44)
going from a world of academia where I'm doing, you know, publishing academic research and peer reviewed journals and going into the business world in which, there is a lack of rigor, right? So people are content to put forward simple narratives that just seem to check out the box without necessarily really interrogating those questions. And so I've found, you know, I don't think the industry would work well.

if everyone behaved like me, but being and bringing that perspective of rigor and curiosity to analysis in the Bev Oc industry, which is my job, is really, really useful because I don't think a lot of people bring that perspective. And I often find myself not being a contrarian because I am by nature contrarian, which I am, but because I genuinely believe that the industry is.

misunderstanding trends or misunderstanding the driver of trends. And so I really enjoy trying to get into the weeds and figure out like, not just what's happening, but why and to whom really, right.

Jessie Ott (11:49)
Yeah, well, there's all kinds of speculation out there, but I think too, know, data is expensive. Getting access to data is difficult. You know, I'm sure Rabobank, you get access to whatever you need to do your job. No? Oh, no.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (12:04)
Exactly the opposite. It is an

interesting problem. So my data bunch in my job, or I utilize the data we do have, which is not enough. I don't really use it at all. And that's because I, one, don't have the same Surkana or Nielsen data that beverage companies do, or distributors or retailers.

And so why would I give them data they already have? And so I end up using, it limits what I can write about and how I can write about it. But it means the things I do write about need to be like pretty weird and original. And so it's kind of a crux that like, it's a limitation that drives me to be slightly more innovative. Like the, what is it? The enemy of the...

Jessie Ott (12:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, I would say so.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (12:48)
There's some analogy that like, scarcity driving, new stuff or whatever, forget what it's called. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (12:53)
Innovation.

So what trends have you been writing about lately? What's what's what kind of what are you just what are you discovering?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (13:04)
Yeah, I guess you invited me on after seeing my Gen Z report, is that right? Yeah. So I like that was a fun report. And a lot of it had been building for years, you know, but essentially, guess the journey started like 2018, 2019. There were all these like, literally, I looked at the Wall Street Journal.

Jessie Ott (13:11)
Yeah, I did. I thought that was super interesting.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (13:28)
And there were two articles that one said, and they were published within like six months of each other. One said, Americans are drinking less than ever, right? And the other one said, Americans are drinking more than ever. And I was like, which one is it? And so I went in and looked and the answer was kind of, it depends who you're talking about. And so I kind of knew about all these trends that like, well, older people drink more than they used to at the same age.

Jessie Ott (13:39)
Yeah, which one is it?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (13:55)
but younger people in particular, underage drinking is basically disappearing. But even then, if you go, well, young people are drinking less, that's true. But which young people? It turns out boys. Boys are the ones that are drinking less and women are drinking more or less the same as they did historically. And so you're seeing these like big declines happening one way the other. And when I look at the way the industry talks about younger generations, in particular, Gen Z,

There kind of are two very simplistic narratives that they use to explain why Gen Z is drinking less, because they are drinking less than previous generations. One is they are vain social media addicts that want to look as good as they can for their followers. And the other is they care

Jessie Ott (14:39)
Take their picture of their face.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (14:44)
deeply about health, that they wanna be healthy. And neither of those seemed correct because one, all people are vain. And I think that social media make people a little bit more concerned about the way they look. But honestly, everyone has always cared deeply about how they look. And it just might mean, know, like kind of media is communicating those expectations to you, right?

somebody on television, which everyone was watching, the monoculture, if you will, or the magazines and the cosmopolitans of the world to women and men's health for men, or is it social media putting that pressure on you? Those societal norms have always existed. And also, if you think about health in young people, young people are made of rubber. They're just so, they're one, they don't have any health problems most of the time. You don't start having health issues until your 40s and 50s. You don't get your prostate checked until you're 50. These things that as a boy, you don't.

but, but like, you know, there are these issues that, that, you know, health problems emerge as you, as you age. And so why are young people caring about health? and then also like my body is a temple for drugs and alcohol. That was my approach for being in my twenties. Right. And so there was this big, thing saying like, why would you worry about the health effects of alcohol if you're young? Because one, like death is a far off concept and health problems don't exist for you. but then also.

you don't get hangovers yet, right? Like you're not actually feeling the immediate impact of those things and young people aren't really good at long-term planning. And so they need immediate feedback to change behavior. And so I was like, okay, I just wanted to write what I thought would be an actual good, you know, analysis of, of, of why Gen Z is changing behavior. And I actually, was really pleased because there's a lot of junk research out there.

that this report got as much traction as it did. It ended up on World Star Hip Hop, if you don't know what that is, but it's like what of TMZ but lower brow. But like it really hit a nerve with people. And so I was really glad to see that it did break through because I think it was a rare example of real rigor being recognized in research on the business side of the industry.

Jessie Ott (16:28)
There is.

No!

Yeah, yeah. You know, people think that, you know, we're not drinking as much and we're not doing this, we're not doing that. And, and everybody just kind of gets on the same bandwagon of, what that, what that is, right? Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (17:07)
A lot of groups think, yeah, for sure.

A lot of people like in their defense, like you gotta go sell stuff. You gotta go market stuff. You know, it's not your job to be an industry analyst. And even when, you know, I write about these things, like even journalists can only pick out a couple of takeaways from these reports. And a lot of times they are, they lack the nuance. And so, you know, I wrote this report and a big part of it was about, you know, young people being poor.

Jessie Ott (17:15)
Yeah, not our job. Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (17:35)
And so a lot of headlines are Gen Z isn't saying no to alcohol. They're just broke. And I'm like, yes, they're broke, but so were millennials. Millennials were broke too when they were in their twenties because every young person was broke. you know, the anecdote I use is like I was in college and I tried to buy rice and it, my, my, you know, I tried to pay with a check and it got declined because I didn't have enough money in my bank account to buy rice. ⁓ that was being young, like being broke. I don't, you don't have a job yet.

Jessie Ott (17:57)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (18:01)
But reality is that yes, young people are poor and yes, Gen Z is poor, you know, compared to older people, right? 35 year olds have better jobs than people in their 20s. That's like been always been the case. But Gen Z is drinking less relative to their life stage, right? So they're young, they don't have money, they'll spend more later, right? And, ⁓ but there is something unique about that generation that is driving

Jessie Ott (18:22)
Mm-hmm.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (18:27)
them away from the alcohol category at this point in their life.

Jessie Ott (18:32)
I think a lot of it, and this is just experience from my nieces that live in different states, grew up in different states. But with the vaping being so big and pot, they don't really drink as much as they do pot. They just prefer pot. They don't feel bad the next day, which you don't, they don't even know what a hangover means yet.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (18:53)
Yeah.

So I

think that's a fair point, right? So whether or not we get into what I actually wrote in the report or not, I'll leave to you as the person doing the interview. I think a lot of people, after I published this report, I didn't talk about marijuana at all. I guess that's the other one that people point to. It's like health, vanity, and marijuana. the one I would argue that marijuana does give you a hangover, but it's just not.

the same as alcohol. If you smoke weed, you get groggy and don't feel great the next day. Like you're a little bit slower and a little bit more sleepy than you would be otherwise. But it's certainly less of a hangover. But I don't think it would be accurate to say it doesn't give you one. But the thing with weed is that the industry thinks about drugs and alcohol as being

Jessie Ott (19:33)
really?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (19:50)
like sheriff's throat is a thing I hear. And not only do I hate the phrase because it sounds icky, but it's also just not actually the way I think academics would, would approach the question, right? All drugs and are kind of like gateway drugs, right? So, so part of my one question that came up, right, was why would the, would the opioid epidemic also be negatively affecting alcohol sales? Because people are doing

different drugs and, you know, they're like, why wouldn't it just be marijuana that would have that effect? Right. and no one talks about that because what do you even write about as an industry analyst when it comes to something as devastating and sad as the opioid epidemic. But so the point is that, that young people, if you're a young person and you've never done any drugs or anything, you're straight laced and you go out and you try smoking weed for the first time and you feel intoxicated for the first time.

Jessie Ott (20:31)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (20:45)
you're probably much more likely and you have a good time, right? You have a good time and you're probably much more likely to try alcohol now than you would have been otherwise because you like, you've come over a hurdle, right? You tried weed and you got messed up and it felt good. And you're like, what are, well, now it's not as scary to try and get drunk. Why don't I go and do these other things? So for young people, there's actually been quite a bit of research because this is of great interest to, you know, the academic community and reducing harm from drug use and alcohol use.

They've actually looked at this question for a long time and people have been smoking weed for a long time way prior to legalization. Even if it wasn't legal, people are still using it. so they're kind of like, kind of cancel each other out. There's a lot of people who smoke weed that start using marijuana or more like people who start using marijuana that then in turn use more alcohol after using it. And then people who do the opposite. But both effects are pretty equal in the literature at this point.

Jessie Ott (21:23)
Yes.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (21:41)
And so I think there's an important distinction to make that like, yeah, young people are using weed and marijuana use is going up and alcohol use is going down, but I don't necessarily think they're causal trends, right? I think that I tend to think that weed is just a, like, I don't think people are like sitting there being like, well, I can smoke weed or I can drink alcohol. I tend to think people are, you know, alone more often.

Jessie Ott (21:54)
Okay.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (22:06)
that they're more isolated, they're more lonely, they're spending less time with people. And that means that alcohol, especially for young people, which is a very social drug for them, is something that is fewer opportunities to use. Whereas marijuana is a drug that really lends itself to being alone. If there's one, the most common complaint, I think, for people who don't like getting stoned is that it makes me anxious, and in particular, socially anxious.

Jessie Ott (22:21)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (22:31)
Guess what, smoking by yourself, it's both kind of socially acceptable among those who smoke, but also it's just a drug that kind of fits that occasion better. And so I think the case I've been making to beverage alcohol companies is your competition isn't marijuana, your competition is loneliness. And so you really have to be thinking along those lines to understand what the appropriate response is to these trends, because if you're out there battling marijuana,

you're going to miss what's actually driving the declines in alcohol sales. Which is to say, think marijuana use increases are more of a symptom of where culture is moving than it is a wholesale rejection of alcohol as not being, of thinking alcohol is bad.

Jessie Ott (23:12)
Yeah. I know most people are, if you're, if you do smoke, you know, most people will have the combination of both, you know, it's party time, whatever. My system can't handle it. It's like one or the other. And I don't really care for a pot that much. really, I prefer the taste of a really good cocktail or a glass of wine or whatever.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (23:23)
Exactly.

Yeah,

I mean, I don't disagree. think, you know, a younger me was, know, probably smoking more, but then I realized I don't like the anxiety that marijuana generated in me specifically. That's you know, sample of one, but you need to understand that, you know, the marijuana, the share of the population that has tried marijuana.

in the United States is like 60 % or something like that, but only 15 % of the US population uses it regularly, i.e. once a month. Whereas alcohol is like 80 % of people have tried it, but 65 % of the people use it regularly. And so it's like, there's a lot of people who just don't like marijuana, that they don't like the way it feels. And that's what that statistic tells me, is that a lot of people are trying it, and very few of them are saying, this is for me.

Jessie Ott (24:14)
Hehehe

Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (24:28)
and like, I think that's perfectly okay. mean, marijuana, you know, there's some possibility of, of dosing and limiting your dosing, but a lot of people have a terrible first experience. Similar is true for alcohol. mean, who has fun their first time drinking, usually ends up in disaster. ⁓ but, with, with marijuana, it's, can feel, like you can disassociate in ways that, that you just don't really with alcohol, with alcohol, the worst.

Jessie Ott (24:45)
Yes.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (24:54)
outcome is actually quite bad, but most people's experiences, you know, I feel really sick. Whereas marijuana is like, I feel like I'm going to die or I'm very scared about what's happening around me. And it's also kind of a zero to a hundred, right? You are either stoned or you're not, or you're, you know, you don't really feel that much. I know that you can be really, really intentional about dosing with marijuana. But like with alcohol, you can drink a glass and not feel any effect.

Jessie Ott (25:02)
Heh.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (25:20)
you know, if it's a moderately sized glass, but, I think, you know, with marijuana, you're either kind of stoned or you're not.

Jessie Ott (25:27)
Yeah. Yeah. And with

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (25:29)
least that's way it's

historically been consumed.

Jessie Ott (25:32)
Yeah. And with gummies, it's a whole other level of craziness because it takes a little longer to kick in than, so there's all those stories too.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (25:39)
Yep. There's

a lot of, well, I mean, it's a real thing that I think there's a research anyways would, for me, would suggest that combustible marijuana is safer than edible. One, don't think there is, the research is pretty clear that historically smoking marijuana hasn't been linked to lung cancer or any of those things.

There are serious concerns about marijuana and psychosis and as having a family member who suffers from schizophrenia, seriously, I take that risk quite seriously and it seems to be the most serious health effects associated with marijuana use. But yeah, it's definitely the edibles. The risk is that you

take too much of it, right? And then you overdose and you get, you you can end up throwing up uncontrollably or have like a real breakdown and need to be hospitalized for, you know, because you're terrified or, you know, acting really erratically. Whereas with smoking, it doesn't last that long and the effect is quicker onset. So you don't like sit there and go, I don't feel anything. I'll have another one.

I don't feel anything, I'll have another one. And that's what ends up happening with edibles.

Jessie Ott (26:45)
Right.

Yeah. that, first time I did, edible, was, it was first of all, too many milligrams and it took me a long time to come down from it. It was not fun for me. Yeah. It was just, it's not fun.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (27:01)
It's horrible. It's not fun. It's not fun. Overdoing

marijuana is terrible. It's terrible. It's the worst. And I think that is, you know, something the marijuana industry needs to be really conscious of is that, you know, when you have your first entry point into the category, you need to be trying really hard to make sure people don't have a terrible experience, which, you know, previous to today, where you see a lot of THC drinks in retail environments that are really low dose.

the initial surge of beverages after legalization because centralized manufacturing was not an option because you had to keep everything inside one state. And so there wasn't really much incentive to build the capital for consistency. You would see beverages were like one single, like one non-resealable bottle of marijuana beverage that had 10 doses.

And you're just like, so obviously somebody is going to drink that whole bottle and they're going to get a hundred milligrams when they really should be taking five and they are not going to be having a good time. But I guess again, coming back to this thing with young people, you know, I, I just, in some ways I'm jealous of the younger generation because they are more inclusive and, and, you know, really try and not, you know, compared to at least where I grew up,

Jessie Ott (27:59)
Right.

Yeah. No.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (28:20)
you know, attack people on the base of immutable characteristics, right? And they're much more accepting in some ways, but also they're showing us through statistics on mental wellbeing and, you know, the probability of having a major depressive episode is doubled. you know, they're not having a good time, even if beverage alcohol, like underage drinking and things like that are declining.

They're more isolated, they're more lonely, they're having more trouble connecting with people. And again, I think marijuana use to some extent is a symptom of that, not really a driver of it.

Jessie Ott (28:54)
That's really interesting. Is there other findings that you want to talk about within that article?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (29:01)
Yeah, so, you know, I think a big part of the research was showing that, you know, underage drinking is declining because of the loss of the social occasions, but also, you know, kind of trying to say that younger people aren't like underage drinking is really where we're seeing the steepest declines. And understanding what is driving those declines is important to understanding whether or not they will persist into later adulthood.

And the trends have so far suggested that underage drinking and people in their early 20s are drinking less in part because they start drinking later in life that people aren't drinking high school anymore. And by the age of 35, they drink essentially in the same levels in terms of the share of the population that regularly consumes alcohol, not necessarily in volumes, but the share of the population that drinks alcohol regularly by the time 35 is indistinguishable.

now than it was from, from 25 years ago. And I think a lot of that has to do with what it means to be a kid these days in modern society. And the fact that a lot of kids have trackers on their phone, that parents know where they are all the time. And, if you get caught or somebody posts a photo of you, you get kicked off the sports team or the track team or the, you know, the chess club or the math club or the drama club, you know, there, there are, you know,

Jessie Ott (30:13)
True.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (30:24)
The chances of you getting caught are much higher. Even if you try, one of the 20 parents in that friend group will have a tracker. And if you try and leave your phone behind, somebody's going to text you and be like, hey, where are you? And nobody answers, and they're going to get to the bottom of it. Or somebody posts one photo of you at a party, and there's some beer nearby, and you get kicked off of your sports team. So that's why I was a, when I was a sophomore in high school, I was starting on the varsity baseball team despite being 105 pounds because

Jessie Ott (30:31)
Exactly.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (30:54)
um, you know, somebody had taken a picture with a flip phone and posted it on my space and 11 upperclassmen got kicked off of the baseball team. And so like that there are real immediate consequences to drinking with a much like a higher likelihood of getting caught, which says to me that like, those are the things that young people respond to real immediate consequences. And so I think that, you know,

Jessie Ott (31:03)
Wow.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (31:22)
it makes sense that these young people are drinking less. And those limitations, the drivers of those limitations are disappearing as they get older, right? Because you no longer have a tracker on your phone when you're in your mid thirties. And so you don't face those pressure. However, I think there is a real societal shift in, you know, what, you know, if you don't have alcohol be a part of your formative years, right? The things that establish what

Jessie Ott (31:23)
Yeah, it really does.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (31:49)
acceptable behaviors are and what socialization looks like and what is normal behavior, alcohol is not part of that anymore. So I think there is a weakening of that decoupling of the trends between underage drinking and people drinking when they get adulthood. So I think a lot of people in the industry saw the findings as positive, whereas I saw them more as like, this isn't.

I don't think this is a sustainable change. it's so far, seems to be kind of the best case scenario where the industry can celebrate the decline in underage drinking and, you know, really cut back on the kind of moments where some of the most, you know, people that are young, they binge drink when they drink, right? Whereas if you get older, you drink more times a week, but you drink far fewer drinks. so, you know, young people are way more likely to binge drink. They're way more likely to be

dumb on account of being young and their brains aren't being fully formed. And so the industry can celebrate that, right? Say, hey, these people are going to spend the same amount of alcohol when they're in their 30s and we get to skip the worst versions of their consumption in their early years. So they're going to be more responsible when they do do drink and this is a win. I think that's true, but I also think that the center cannot hold things must fall apart.

Jessie Ott (33:07)
So you're saying that with the upcoming generations, that's a trend that will continue.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (33:14)
I just see fewer...

Jessie Ott (33:14)
And it's going to end up

declining that industry.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (33:18)
I

tend to fall on that front, that there are ways that life and socialization are changing and the role of alcohol in that, that kind of says to me that this trend that's held, that underage drinking has been falling for 30 years and yet by the time people are 35, they drink at the same levels or at least the same like share of the population consumes alcohol as previous generations. I tend to think that that doesn't seem...

as sustainable.

Jessie Ott (33:50)
Well, it probably isn't. You know?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (33:52)
Yeah. I mean,

yeah. Go ahead.

Jessie Ott (33:56)
I know, just, I, you know, I don't know. I don't know the answer, but I think what you're saying, it really makes a lot of sense. kids, kids don't have much money. It, you know, we, I mean, we didn't either, but you know, I mean, I'm sure that plays a factor in it too. mean, kids are also living with their parents longer. We were kicked out at 19. Like go, go on, get on your way. Like.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (34:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jessie Ott (34:23)
Go figure it out. Go fly, butterfly. You know what I mean? It wasn't like, let's keep you home for, my parents wanted to keep me home for as long as they could, but like, you know, back in that time.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (34:34)
Well, I'm a big,

and if people staying home with their parents is an indicator of the fact that there isn't as much economic opportunity out there, like it's kind of a symptom rather than a cause of being poor, right? Like living with your parents isn't the reason you're poor, you're poor and therefore you live with your parents. But another part of it is, you know, when we look at these declines in drinking and young people in particular, almost all of them are driven by boys and young men.

Jessie Ott (34:47)
Yeah.

Right.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (35:04)
I use boys and men interchangeably, but women are more or less drinking at the same rates as they have historically. And if we're talking about a 25 year horizon, women are actually drinking more than they have historically. So all of these declines are driven by boys, which has resulted in this very interesting kind of change that kind of in the last five years where women are now the majority of alcohol consumers in their early 20s. And I think if I was able to get the data to do this analysis,

they would actually be the majority of alcohol consumers in their 20s. ⁓ Boys still drink twice as much as women do, but women are going to college more than boys. Like 60 % of recent college graduates are women. And that means that women are making more money than they used to. It means that they're kind of going through the kind of secularization process that college does that might decouple some of your moral apprehensions about using alcohol.

Jessie Ott (35:34)
Interesting.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (35:56)
means that women are navigating the workspace and high power jobs, which means that you need to network and go out and drink and connect with people. There are all these different factors. You make more money with a college degree. so women are just becoming a bigger part of the drinking population. that just means that for every boy who stops drinking and every woman who stops drinking, since men drink twice as much,

It's kind of like the methane versus CO2. Methane's much more potent greenhouse gas. so every boy that stops drinking, you're losing twice as much volume as for every woman that stops drinking, just because boys drink so much more.

Jessie Ott (36:32)
Fair. Yeah, that's a good point.

Well, it's also, you know, become a convenience factor as we've seen with RTDs. You know, they're lower cost, they're, you know, single serve, you know. I also wonder if that has...

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (36:45)
Yeah, I mean, we've had all these single serve,

yeah, we've always had these like single serve things for boys, right? It was called beer. And, you know, I think it's important to understand that like that category has been antagonistic towards a lot of women in the past, that their advertising was pretty misogynistic, you know, you know, women more often than not in those ads were, you know, either props or, you know,

Jessie Ott (36:53)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (37:09)
Like literally there was an ad, the Coors ad where it was about some sexual fantasy with twins, right? Like that was the beer ad. I like twins and I just think about whether or not you're a woman watching that and being like, yeah, this is for me. This is a category that's definitely speaking my language because that's what I'm into. And so it's this weird thing where the alcohol category has become much more.

Jessie Ott (37:30)
Right.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (37:38)
kind to women, think in a lot of ways and more thoughtful for them. the category like hard seltzer has really opened up an occasion. There was no beverage for women that wasn't super sweet unless they wanted to drink beer that was sessionable and easy and ready to drink. And so there was this really big opportunity scene with hard seltzers serving women, but it turned out like boys are also really into it because they also kind of think beer tastes like poison, is really bitter and icky.

Jessie Ott (38:02)
You

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (38:04)
And

they also are as likely as women to be on a diet. And so the industry is kind of realizing like, if I actually market these underserved consumer groups, maybe, just maybe, it's going to delight and surprise the consumer group that I was already going after. Or at least that the message I tried to deliver to them is that, hey, hard seltzers, you thought they were for women, you put a bunch of mermaids in your Super Bowl ad in the case of Bon-En-Viv.

It turns out fat boys like it too. And so I think there's a lot of opportunities to continue to use that say with marketing to Latinos, right? So Latinos are 20 % of those population. Why do people like Modelo? Why do people like Tequila? Well, 20 % of the population is Latino and 80 % of those guys are from Mexico or Mexican heritage. And these people aren't just consuming and creating this monolith, they're out there changing society.

Jessie Ott (38:50)
the

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (38:59)
You know, and if we think about like, you know, someone like Bad Bunny, you know, he's Puerto Rican. He sings exclusively in Spanish and he's the second most downloaded artist in the world, according to Spotify, you know? And like, if you're out there trying to like connect with Latinos and you focus on Bad Bunny, guess what? Everyone likes Bad Bunny because he's badass. And so, you know, you're going to use this to maybe speak to your core audience in a way that you were never able to.

you know, with, you know, say, you know, some of these other talent and creative ideas. Another example is like, how many, like wine bottles, right? You you try and buy a wine and it has food pairings and it's like duck and goose and lamb and, you know, like seafood and it's like, do you know what I eat?

wine people? Like how many times have I actually had lamb at home besides like Mediterranean lamb shanks, you know, in the form of like, you know, making something from, from, you know, there's a Middle Eastern dish that, that is, you know, not even, you know, you wouldn't drink wine with it necessarily, but you know, it's just to say like, okay, well that doesn't actually connect with anybody. eats lamb with like the way that they're thinking, like the French.

Jessie Ott (39:47)
you

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (40:13)
you know, know, lamb. so why don't you just put tacos, like pairs with tacos? Like that is, and, it's make it simple, but also, so you're saying like, Hey, I see you, you know, Latino consumer, but guess what? Everyone needs tacos. And so you can do a better job. So a lot of the takeaway from this report is like, the demographics are changing that when we talk about young people are probably more likely than not talking about a person of color and or a woman. And, know,

Jessie Ott (40:18)
Make it simple.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (40:40)
They are just a much larger share of that population. They're a much larger share of the demographic groups that are drinking more relative to what they did 25 years ago. If you're in the business of marketing to women and people of color, you are actively marketing to a demographic. Whereas if you're in the business of marketing to white men, you have to beat everyone else out to get sales because they are a shrinking demographic, not only in terms of numbers, but in terms of their

like drinking habits. And so it's kind of this idea of saying, hey, go out there and like market to these people. And it might just help you rejuvenate and reconnect with other people, right? Because, you know, back to the beer analogy of, know, you don't belittle or sexualize women unnecessarily in your advertising, that turns me off, right? Like I'm a boy. I don't like that. That isn't my, like, I don't think that's cool. I don't think it's fun. It's not a value that I hold.

And so, you you may think like, women are the only ones who don't like this like nasty bit of, you know, advertising. It's like, no, boys, boys that boys don't like it too. And they also, especially if they're hetero and they want to, you know, show off to, you know, seem cool. Like you're not going to show up at a party, you know, espousing these old ideas and these old, you know, ways of communicating with women. want to be a, you know, attractive person and the values that.

Jessie Ott (41:58)
Right.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (42:05)
you know, are more likely to be seen as attractive aren't the ones that belittle and sexualize. And so that's the other thing. It's like, it's not just like, it's not just women, it's boys also that are going to be less likely to respond to those messages today.

Jessie Ott (42:19)
Yeah, that's true. That's really interesting. Can we shift over to, did you go to Dusseldorf for the Wine and Spirit show, Pro Wine? And I saw on LinkedIn, you did a talk about wine trends and how they dropped in the 80s and like what they did to kind of build back that.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (42:27)
Pro wine? Yeah, sure I did. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jessie Ott (42:40)
that business. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? think that's really interesting.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (42:44)
Yeah. So, the it's not just wine, it's actually kind of all beverage alcohol. Like that presentation is about wine, but but I think the trend I'm talking about are universal. It to beverage alcohol, and we're talking about the US here. You know, in the 1980s, between like 1970 and 1995, spirit sales on a per capita basis in the United States declined by 50%.

Jessie Ott (42:51)
It was? Okay.

Okay.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (43:12)
between 1986 and 1993, wine sales fell by 30%. And we're looking at the current period and we've seen wine sales lose 15 % of volumes, spirits are declining. I think I was talking to a retailer who had said like whiskey volumes are down versus 2019 in terms of sales volumes, not necessarily dollar sales, because we are seeing kind of premiumization there. So the question is,

Well, how bad could it get, right? We saw a 50 % decline over a 20 year period for spirits and a 30 % decline over seven years and we're only two or three years into the current downturn. Like, could it be that bad? And I would say, yeah, it could, we could lose that much. We could hemorrhage that much volume. It's happened before. So it's kind of saying there is precedent for it to get much worse. But also is there anything that was happening in the seven, in the eighties that can...

Tell us about what's happening today. And there aren't as many clear conclusions from that. There were some equivalents like the 80s were a period of high inflation. And though like economic downturns haven't affected sales of alcohol, think the financial crisis in 2008, 2009, we didn't see big declines in alcohol sales and yet we're not even in a recession and we're seeing declines in alcohol sales now. like, so maybe.

recession, like inflation does something that like unemployment doesn't do to alcohol sales, I'm not sure. But, you know, there's, there was this big bubble of, of, you know, the population of the United States born in the 20s, right, were reaching their prime spending years over, you know, in the 70s. And yet when, you know, the people born in the 30s was just a miniscule generation because of the great

depression meant that in the 80s, there was just a kind of a very small population in their late 30s and 40s that would have driven some of the more premium spending. also saw in the 80s, and that's similar today with boomers and gen Z, but we're also seeing in the 80s, that's kind of where the similarities, not where the similarities stop, but there was a lot of narratives in the 80s about health and I think,

know, people being concerned about health and the end of like the three martini lunch and things like that. I think a lot of that was driven by the decline in drunk driving because in the 80s we actually saw enforcement begin that there was actually standards for drunk driving and real penalties. The mothers against drunk driving was formed in like 1980. And there were also the legal drinking age was

increase from 18 to 21 on a state by state basis over the 15 years between the 1976 and 1991 or something like that. you're seeing literally a structural change of chopping off a segment of the population that was allowed to drink. So there's a lot of change that was happening there, but it's hard to connect that to.

Jessie Ott (45:57)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (46:11)
some of the changes happening now with the public health declarations of alcohol and whether or not it's good for you or bad for you. They're not as real, right? There's no, we're not raising the drinking age to 25 or creating new drunk driving laws like in Vietnam in 2000, they implemented a really severe penalty for drunk driving that led to like a 25 % decline in alcohol consumption overnight.

And it was just like those real policies change behavior and change consumption. And so it's really hard to be an industry analyst and look at the current downturn, which is as bad as it can be. It's probably worse than it's ever been in my lifetime having been born in 1990. And so I kind of am embarrassed as an analyst saying, I don't know what the most important thing is driving this decline, but I do know it.

can be significantly worse and we should plan for the worst. Because our goal over the next couple of years is not growth, it's survival. And I think companies should be very deliberate and very cautious in building their strategy and really be careful about building capacity and inventory. I don't think that there's like a fast consumer recovery around the corner. And I think, you know, if I were a brand, I would build a plan around

not seeing growth again until the, you know, for two or three years.

Jessie Ott (47:37)
for like some of the more established brands.

You're referring to her just in general. Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (47:41)
Yeah, if you're a new brand and you're opening up new accounts, yes, but

I guess like you have to, know, if you want to grow and the base level is 5%, you know, declines year on year, then you need to get 10%. You need to outperform your competitors by 15%. Right. And the real problem is, when you start building out production capacity and things like that, there's a real risk that you

end up committing to a supply that like, if you plan for 10 % growth and you decline by 10 % that year, there isn't a 10 % gap in the inventory versus, you know, your actual demand. There's a 20 % gap because you built for growth and you lost volumes. And so that's where you end up seeing companies go bankrupt. And I would just advise companies to avoid bankruptcy and be cautious and be really, really disciplined about supply and

and not necessarily investment in branding, but investing in capacity and infrastructure. And I think there's gonna be a lot of opportunities to use other companies' capacity to grow and even allowing for more out of stocks than there used to be. Because I think that what you really don't want is to have excess inventory, whereas out of stocks are just something that running tight budgets is going to have to allow for.

Jessie Ott (49:02)
Yep. Yeah, I 100%. We've talked on this show, you know, about what is it going to take to win? You got to have a story. You know, you got to have an elevated experience. It's not just a wine anymore. got to have, you know, and we all know what it's like to build out a wine brand. It's a hand cell anyway, right? It is storytelling. It is the vineyards. is, you know, and I think that

with people being in isolation, they wanna connect more, they wanna hear the story, they wanna hear the struggle, they wanna hear, not everything is peachy all the time. then people get behind people and when they win, we all get excited that they're sharing those experiences and that they're getting their wins. And so it's interesting.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (49:47)
Yeah. Yeah,

you mentioned ProWine and when I went to ProWine, there is a demand problem in the industry. And yet, as I walked around that, albeit this is a trade focused event, no one talked about how they're talking to consumers. No one talked about their marketing plan. They just talked about the terroir and how long it's aged and what is the grape.

And like, blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, no one here is thinking about how they connect and, you know, build demand for the next generation of consumers. And it was just like, literally no one wanted to talk about like, what is our campaign? What are we about? Like, how are we going to like connect with a new audience and grow, grow the pie? It was all such consistent in the weeds.

you know, all about the wine, all about the product. And, you know, I think that is the kind of thing that is going to those brands that can't stand out, right? If you look like everyone else, you can't outgrow the market. And so if you can't figure out to do something better and innovate and, and look different and do something different, the best you could hope for is 5 % declines in a scenario where the industry is shrinking by 5%.

Jessie Ott (51:02)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. I, I, gosh, I, it was 11 years ago when I went. ⁓ so it's been a minute. I'm sure it's evolved and changed.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (51:08)
Mm-hmm.

I bet it has not, just like the rest of the wine industry. I bet it is almost identical to what it used to be in terms of what people are talking about.

Jessie Ott (51:15)
Hehehehe

Yeah. I don't remember anyone ever talking about any branding though, to your point. Yeah. It's all about, you know, the slopes and the morning sun or the afternoon sun. Yeah. Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (51:26)
Yep. Yep.

what kind of soil it is, which as somebody

who wanted to become a soil scientist at one point in their life, I appreciate it, but like, you I don't think consumers are gonna respond to a conversation about cation exchange capacity.

Jessie Ott (51:42)
Yeah.

Nope, I don't think so. They get confused just looking at a wine bottle. Right?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (51:50)
I get confused just looking at a wine bottle. So it is harder than rocket science in some ways.

Jessie Ott (51:52)
Yeah.

It's just a crap shoot. You just gotta try it. Yeah. So is there anything else that you're kind of working on that you want to talk about before we shift over?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (51:58)
Yeah.

No, that's the big ones, my most recent writing. Again, just, you know, I really am just trying to figure out like, why are these things happening and who are they happening to? And, you know, when it comes to these trends, just encourage people to stay curious and getting into the weeds is a good thing to do, you know, never like.

Jessie Ott (52:10)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (52:26)
You know, a good example is if somebody says they care about health in a survey, does that mean they're healthy or that they have a health problem? And I think that a lot of people just assume, oh, it means they're healthy, that they're doing exercise and they're going out and, you know, eating healthy and doing all these things right. I tend to think it's, you know, just as likely to mean that, you know, somebody who cares about health has a health problem. And that, you know, when we see young people saying they care about health, uh, and you look at the statistics like

obesity rates have tripled among people aged 15 to 25 over the last 30 years. So when young people say they care about health, it might actually mean they have a health problem. And so that is really important to understand because it doesn't mean they're doing things that are healthy. So it's this weird disconnect, I think. So again, remaining curious and asking, what does that mean?

Jessie Ott (53:08)
Yep.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (53:24)
why is that happening and who is it happening to is a much more useful question as a follow-up than anything else. So just always dig one layer deeper and see what you find.

Jessie Ott (53:36)
Yeah. Well, I certainly like the way you think because it is different, you know, because it's more academic, which we don't have enough of in our industry. And so you definitely really stand out because of your methodologies and how you, you know, come to these conclusions. And obviously people are wanting, they're wanting to learn and want the information, right? I mean, it's...

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (53:46)
Yeah, I'd agree.

Jessie Ott (54:04)
We're a curious people because we're all trying to figure it out, right? To some degree, based on, know, whatever research, you know, is out there. And, and so I applaud you for, thank you for, for, for doing it, for doing the work, for digging in.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (54:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate it. It's a ton of fun and I really enjoy hearing feedback from the industry on these things and your listeners want to reach out to me. They can and tell me whether I'm wrong. That's the best thing I can hear. I love being told I'm wrong because it makes me think about these questions differently. One example would be somebody

somebody I really respect, looked at my report and I made this assumption that we talked about, which is that if alcohol isn't a part of young people's lives, it's gonna be less important later on, right? Just like if you never read fantasy as a teenager, you're probably not gonna be that into fantasy books when you're in your 30s. It's not certain, it's just less likely. And they said, don't buy that necessarily. And it triggered me to think about that problem through like,

Okay, if I was wrong, what would it look like? And then just thinking through, okay, what is an experience that would cause somebody who started drinking younger to be less likely to drink later in life? And it's like, well, if underage drinking is bad for you and hurts your development, like, you know, and opportunities, maybe you're less likely to go to college and less likely to graduate from college and less likely to be successful in life. And therefore, by the time you're 30, 35, you have more money and you have

a better job and you can spend more on alcohol, you have more stability in your life. Or maybe your first experience alcohol sucks. What about vomiting into your parents' cabins, like your best friend's parents' summer home when it's empty, throwing up into the toilet makes you want to do more of that. None of it. So there is a question of like, there is...

Jessie Ott (55:49)
Hahaha.

Yep.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (56:05)
I could be wrong and I want people to tell me I'm wrong so I can think of ways in which I can ask new questions and discover a new topic.

Jessie Ott (56:14)
Yeah, I think that's good. know, because sometimes if you come at it with a different angle, you know, if you change maybe a methodology or, you know, a part of that, you learn, you peel back the onion or you learn something else about that topic, which I think is really interesting. It's just, it just seems like these, this new generation of non-drinkers is very, very, very interesting.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (56:31)
and

Everyone is interesting, right? It's this thing where it's like everything in the world is interesting. You just need to find a question to ask. And to some extent, I think, and again, I'm being very preachy and kind of let's talk about thinking about thinking, but to some extent, you know, what are the most, my favorite things, somebody said came from Nate Silver, who's kind of vilified by both the left and the right. He's a scientist.

Jessie Ott (56:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (57:04)
data scientist, journalist guy who's famous for making political predictions. And he got in a lot of trouble in 2016 because he said it was a 70 % chance of Hillary Clinton winning and Donald Trump won. But the New York Times had like a 2 % chance. And so it's like really like he was a lot closer to being right and was much more comfortable with uncertainty.

And like, why are you better at predicting things than other people? And his answer wouldn't be, well, I'm better at math or I'm better at, you know, statistical models. His thing would be that the, you know, if you're out there trying to, you know, build a concept of the world and, and, and build a model for what's going to happen, you should spend 95 % of your time asking questions and 5 % of the time building models to answer those questions. And I think his perception was that.

most people, at least with the skill sets to build the models, do the inverse, where they spend 95 % of the time talking about the methodology and the careful way that they constructed these models, and 5 % of the time actually asking the relevant questions. So even if you're not good at econometrics and computer programming, spend more time asking questions. And I think you'll

be better off asking the right question than building the wrong model for the wrong question.

Jessie Ott (58:26)
Yeah, that stuff. Really interesting. Yeah, because, you know, surveys are really important and, you know, I think they're also hard. Yeah. And I mean, you know, when you see some of the, you know, papers or, you know, articles that are written and it's such a small sample, it's like, well, how is that predictive? You know?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (58:35)
And also, yeah, and flawed.

Well,

there's also a big gap in what an academic person would say between stated and revealed preference. Stated preference being what you say you'll do and revealed preference saying, revealed preference being what you actually do, right? And everyone's saying, I wanna cut back on how much makeup I buy in the year ahead and then you buying just as much makeup as you did this year or saying, I wanna drink less alcohol and you doing exactly the same amount of alcohol drinking as you did that year.

Jessie Ott (59:04)
Yeah. Fair.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (59:20)
Right, so people saying things is easy, doing things is hard. And so there's usually a really big gap between those two. And so the job of somebody doing a survey is to figure out how to get people to answer questions honestly ⁓ in ways they actually know the answer, right? Because if you ask somebody, for example, in a survey, how much did you drink in the last month?

Jessie Ott (59:35)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (59:42)
Nobody knows. If somebody asks, what did you drink? Did you have any alcohol today? What did you drink? You can answer that question, right? And so figuring out how to build those surveys, don't say like asking very, very direct questions that are asking for little tidbits of information that people can answer is really important, but also just like, how do you ask that question, right? Do you say, I'm building an internal survey for,

Jessie Ott (59:48)
You ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:00:10)
our team and for our management. And one of the proposed questions is like, you know, we do a good job. Our bank is, you know, does a great job of hiring diverse candidates, right? That's the original question. And then, you know, the alternative wording would be, company doesn't hire enough women.

Right, and how you frame that will dramatically change what their answers are, even if the question is what the information you're trying to get is exactly the same. And so building instruments that actually elicit not just accurate responses, but neutralize the bias inherent in the way you're asking it is just really hard. And it's just not that kind of work. It requires way more money than most surveys are willing to do.

Jessie Ott (1:00:50)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:00:55)
and journalists in the industry don't have the time or the knowledge to really filter that information through that lens.

Jessie Ott (1:01:07)
Yeah, no, a hundred percent. You know, it's time, it's building community. You gotta have those emails or whatever it is. And that's why there's very few companies, I think, that have that reputation of, okay, this is something that we can follow.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:01:17)
Yeah, for sure.

Jessie Ott (1:01:25)
So how would you like for people to reach out to you?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:01:30)
All right. Yeah.

So we have a podcast called Liquid Assets. You can find it on wherever you get podcasts. You're listening to a podcast or watching a podcast, so you know how to find them. But Liquid Assets, you know, we mostly talk about the kind of stuff I'm talking about now. It's a lot of fellow, it's a few of fellow analysts with the same job I have, but also we invite, you know, we've invited somebody from

Jessie Ott (1:01:42)
Hehehe

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:01:57)
Campari to talk about how do you build brands in the on-premise? We have economists come on to contextualize, you know, what is happening with the Trump administration and what to expect going forward. We had an episode recently with some former people in charge of negotiating distribution contracts to talk about what is actually inside distribution contracts and what is an optimal approach to distribution contracts look like. How can you negotiate them and things like that? So I think there's a nice mix of

very, very practical advice that is immediately actionable and high level kind of thought pieces that might frame how you approach problems that, you know, you can do yourself. So the podcast is a great starting point. And then, you know, you'll see my name in the episode description, just reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'll get back to you that way. I don't have any social media anymore.

Jessie Ott (1:02:48)
Okay.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:02:49)
I used to have a blue check on Twitter, social media is bad for you, or at least it's bad for me. And so I've just said, hey, I will just send somebody a text message when I need validation of my feelings instead of posting them on the internet.

Jessie Ott (1:03:02)
Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I think it's just, you know, we just, post family stuff and pictures of babies and puppies and you know, I follow babies and puppies and that's about it.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:03:11)
I leave my...

Yeah,

my I've the thing of quitting social media is now it's the burden of my wife to share all the pictures of our baby and ⁓ you know, make sure everyone knows that we're still alive. I would otherwise basically be a non entity to everyone in my former life. So yeah, it's it's harder to keep up with people if you're not just able to post a video and be like, I'm alive. So yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:03:21)
Hahaha!

Yeah, yeah, it is harder.

But to your point, they're just a phone call away.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:03:38)
Yeah, I always feel like a weirdo. I'm like, I'm just call me. I don't want to text you, just be like, hey, do you want to go out and meet up, especially with other parents who are playing like a play date? I'll just call people and be like, do you want to do it or not? Because I don't want to like sit in limbo for an hour now and know what I'm going to do that evening. So I am pro, pro phone call, but also I'm a weirdo. And I try to understand that. I, me being weird is not by any means like.

Jessie Ott (1:03:43)
Hahaha!

Hehehehe

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:04:04)
I don't understand Gen Z. I don't understand what it means to be obsessed with becoming a creator or social media star. I don't have the same heroes. so I think, you know, helpful to just ask people who do have that experience. you know, if you're a company, hire people in their 20s to do your social media for you. Put guardrails around them, but just don't do it yourself. So that's really, you know, that kind of thing.

Jessie Ott (1:04:06)
Heh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:04:31)
But yeah, no social media for me. So you'll have to find me on LinkedIn, which is the closest thing I do to social media, which is a reluctant one. And then, you know, things are weird on LinkedIn, but there's also, yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:04:41)
They keep changing things and

I don't care for the logarithm right now.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:04:46)
I just get a lot of political content and then like a really dumb video of a baby like trying to feed itself like mashed potatoes and failing and being like, here's what a Fortune 500 CEO can learn from this one year old. And it's just like, you're just sharing a baby video. Like stop, stop trying to like, that's a cute baby. It has nothing to do with your leadership capabilities, but those posts get like 10 million likes and people being like, so true, so true.

Jessie Ott (1:05:02)
Yeah!

I know.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:05:14)
So it's

pretty cringe to be honest, but it is nice when you see people actually posting stuff that's interesting. you know, it's good.

Jessie Ott (1:05:17)
Yeah, I'm with you.

Yeah, no,

I agree. But the frustrating part is why can't I see more of that? They control...

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:05:28)
I don't know. keep telling it to stop

showing me those weird things and they keep doing it. So it's, it's, it's, it is very frustrating that they're there. You know, it is, I don't think anyone's looking at LinkedIn and being like, this is better than it used to be. Like, but they, like every other company are showing that what they're, they do is they are in the business of attention. They want to keep your attention and they want to keep it as long as they can so they can serve you more ads and more content.

Jessie Ott (1:05:33)
Yes, it's so frustrating.

Hehehehehe

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:05:57)
reason it's free is because they monetize your attention and so they're trying to keep it. And it turns out people watch baby videos more like enthusiastically and more consistently than Burkhard being like, well, technically, if we look at gen C's and their demographic like characteristics, you know, it's just, you know, show me a picture of a baby, you know, please. I would much rather have that. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:06:20)
Yeah, babies are always going to

Yeah, for sure. Well, are there any mentors or resources that kind of helped you or that are go-to for you?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:06:32)
Resources, I mean, it's just so hard. know, there's just not that much information out there in the public sphere. There's no like books to read necessarily on how to grow. When it comes to reading, I would just say have fun, know, read stuff that you like, not stuff about the industry. Because if you, you know, if you spend too much time only reading industry sources, you...

You accept the bullshit that other people, I shouldn't swear, but like you just don't want to, you know, drink the Kool-Aid. So always trying to keep an arm's length and finding ways to borrow from other segments, but also just not only ever thinking about your business, because then you forget that like, there are other things going on in people's lives. In terms of a mentor, I used to almost, I used to get choked up every time I talked about my boss, Steve Ranacleeve. because, you know, I'm a very...

Jessie Ott (1:06:59)
Yeah.

You're good.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:07:25)
unusual candidate to work for a bank. I have ADHD, I trouble focusing at work, I can go months without publishing something because I'm trying really hard to do so, but can't find the inspiration or can't get myself to put pen to paper. And three months of the year, I'm the best at my job and nine months out of the year, I'm not that good at it. And finding people that

accept that and find ways to work with it and still know that I can be a valuable member of this team and of this community is something I'm really deeply thankful for and also recognize is something that, know, like is a privilege, right? It's something that I can show up. look the way I look and I, you know, have a degree from an Ivy league school and people just assume like, well, this guy's got to be credible.

Like he's got to be smart, he's got to be like, he deserves to be here. And then I promptly demonstrate that I'm not, and I shouldn't. And so I do get all these opportunities that are element of just, that's what privilege means to me is that I've just been very lucky for people to give me all those chances. ⁓ And I don't want to take that for granted, but more than anything, just continue to see that, you know, somebody with my profile continues to get opportunities, even though they aren't as consistent, they're not as focused, they're not as determined and

Jessie Ott (1:08:31)
Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:08:45)
and professional, right? I'm pretty unprofessional in lot of ways, but I just appreciate the opportunity to keep being myself in those spaces. And a big, part of that is my boss, Steve, and my other boss, Roland Fumasi, who just continues to be a pugnacious fighter that turns all his energy towards protecting

his flock and the people who work for him rather than the other way around of using that energy to punish those who aren't doing what he wants. I've been very lucky to find a very accepting home because I think toxic workplaces are traumatizing to people. ⁓ And there are the kind of things that give you nightmares and recurring dreams. And I just am so glad that I've been able to

Jessie Ott (1:09:27)
Yes.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:09:36)
find repeatedly workplaces that accept me for who I am, they know what I'm good at, and don't punish me too hard for the things I'm not.

Jessie Ott (1:09:47)
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, you know, it's always really a great feeling to know when you're home, you know, and you kind of, kind of becomes a family and that's really important. That's really cool. That's really awesome. Actually. We, we saw, ⁓

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:10:00)
Yeah, pretty lucky. So

don't let toxic people run your company. Stop letting toxic people have leadership jobs. That's the only thing I would say. It may not be illegal. It may not be like discrimination, but toxicity is something that should not be acceptable. And I think we need to do a lot more as an industry to have a bit of a movement and a bit of a push to make sure those people aren't ruining people's lives.

Jessie Ott (1:10:06)
Yes. Please.

Yes.

Yeah, I'm with you a hundred percent. Yeah, we've all experienced that from one time, one time or another. It's not fun. Not fun at all. What about, what pain points are you seeing in the industry that, you know, just overall is kind of affecting?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:10:31)
Yep. Nope.

I mean,

rather than talk about pain points, because everyone who works for a beverage alcohol company knows how hard it is out there. me, I'm not independent from it, but like, I'm not missing sales targets every day like you guys are. Like, I'm not scared that bankruptcy is an option for me working in a bank. You know, it's like not something I have to deal with. So.

Jessie Ott (1:10:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:11:08)
rather than talk about like that stuff, which I recognize I just can't directly relate to. It's not something that I experience in my daily job. I would just say like, what is your big opportunity here? Like what is the shortcut to growth that is like cost effective at this time? And I would kind of just say like hire people in their 20s that look like the consumers that you're not good at targeting. Give them some power, give them the keys and

put some guardrails around them so they don't do anything illegal. But generally, at least in the wine business, I haven't seen anyone try that strategy. I haven't seen anyone go out there and actively try to, know, like I'm half Venezuelan. I have presented to hundreds of people in the wine business. I've met one person that's Latina in

the wine business that's like a meaningful part of a corporate marketing apparatus, right? So I was like, go hire young people that look like your audience and give them some power. Even if just to be, you know, one of the most useful things I've ever experienced in my job is having a 22 year old assistant to my boss at the time and being like, talk to me about this thing. I don't understand it.

And they would just like talk to me about their experiences. And it was super informative because surveys aren't going to do that job. Like you should be doing focus groups all the time. And the easiest way to do it is just surround yourself with people who you can just ask, you know? And that's like a really cool way to think about that is like, I don't have to ask what 20 year olds or 22 year olds are up to. I just have one next to me. You know, I don't have to ask about how like,

Jessie Ott (1:12:30)
Right.

True. Good point.

Hehehe.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:12:50)
Latino celebrate Christmas differently than white Christian people because I can just ask, I don't have to wonder, I can just ask the 22 year old who grew up opening presents at midnight from the Nino Jesus instead of Santa Claus, right? And those kind of things are really great inspirations for creative and ideas, but also for just understanding the consume.

Jessie Ott (1:13:11)
Yeah, no, I like that a lot.

What about your outlook in the next year? Bad. Okay. We kind of talked about that. okay.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:13:16)
Negative, bad, not good. Yeah, it's not gonna

get better, so plan for the worst and survive as best you can.

Jessie Ott (1:13:26)
Yeah, it's survival of the fittest out there at this point.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:13:28)
Yeah, or the most interesting. I'm not sure what the right analogy is, but yeah, go out there, make sure you're in business in five years and let's go from there.

Jessie Ott (1:13:39)
So are you ready to play a game?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:13:41)
Yeah, I love games.

Jessie Ott (1:13:42)
Okay, this is rapid fire game. And I'm going to ask three questions and just pick whatever comes to your brain. Don't overthink it.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:13:50)
I

have ADHD overthinking is like literally the thing I don't do. So, let's go. Let's do this. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:13:55)
Okay, I'm borderline too, so I sympathize.

I leave the cupboards open in the kitchen and I can't, I lose my phone about four times a day.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:14:04)
Do you ever

have the experience of going to grab something, forgetting why you went there, coming back with not that thing, going back and then... There have been times where I've gone to get something from the kitchen three times before I remember finally got the thing I initially went to get. yeah, it's cool. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:14:09)
Yes, yes.

Sorry, puppies.

Yeah, I feel your pain. mean, I'm not

diagnosed or on medication or anything, I do do that. Focusing is hard. Obviously I have all these businesses and whatnot,

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:14:38)
look, it's

a real thing, figuring out what you're capable of versus what you are consistently doing or really hard. And for anybody in any sphere of life to try and figure out matching their disposition to their aspirations and adjusting appropriately from there and being nice to yourself, knowing that you're not gonna be as productive as your colleague, but maybe you're gonna be as more creative.

or maybe, you know, more, you know, fun, maybe. I don't know what it is, but, you know, trying to valorize what you can do, but also limiting yourself to, but, you know, being nice to yourself, knowing that you can't do everything the way other people do.

Jessie Ott (1:15:21)
Right. Fair.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:15:22)
At least that's

what I would tell myself, even though I usually fail to be nice to myself about those things.

Jessie Ott (1:15:29)
Well, you know, you need to give yourself some grace, you know, at least from time to time, you know, we're not perfect. We're human. So that makes us imperfect. But yeah, let's do it. Okay. If you, if you were a beverage, what would you be?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:15:32)
Yeah, grace. Grace is the word. Yeah.

So hit me with these three rapid fire questions.

I would be that cold water you drink straight from the faucet when it's 2 a.m. and you don't have a cup and you're super thirsty. That would be what I would be. I'd be like a 2 a.m. furtive little like sip of, know, a cheeky little sip of water straight from the faucet in the bathroom that is like literally the best thing you ever drank. That's what I'd want to be.

Jessie Ott (1:16:11)
Yeah,

that's cool. That's funny. That is not predictable, but very fun. I like it. What's your favorite place to travel?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:16:19)
favorite place to travel.

Hmm. I would say, well, I love going to visit my wife's family in Barcelona. So they're Venezuelan and refugees and live in, you know, three generations living in one house. But they're my wife, our daughter, her sister, her daughter, her other sister, her daughter and her grandmother. And it is a ton of fun, but also I am the only boy in that environment. And so it's also.

Jessie Ott (1:16:45)
hahahaha

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:16:46)
very,

it's very hard to be said boy and be scrutinized as such being like, why is he doing this thing? And it's like, I'm just a boy, I'm sorry. But that's, that's it. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:16:55)
I'm a boy that's what I do man.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:16:57)
Yeah, sorry. Sorry I like

snack more or, know, aren't, you know, didn't wipe down the, I didn't empty the, the dish drainer the way I should have, things like that. I did the dishes, which I understand is like a low bar, but you know, still.

Jessie Ott (1:17:13)
You're trying.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:17:14)
I am trying. I work hard.

Jessie Ott (1:17:17)
And what's your favorite food?

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:17:18)
my favorite food, you, you, you, I mean, American barbecue is just legitimately one of the best things in the, in the universe. it's, know, Americans did jazz well, you know, and, and, barbecue, those are really the things that we do better than, than anybody else. but, good, like pistachio gelato is up there.

Jessie Ott (1:17:26)
Yeah, I would agree with that.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:17:40)
⁓ And Japanese fried chicken. It's pretty dope, karage. So that's it. Yeah, those ones. And ⁓ my...

Jessie Ott (1:17:41)
Mm, me too.

Yeah, it is.

Ha

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:17:57)
yeah, that I'll, I'll leave it there. That's, that's the best. That's the best food.

Jessie Ott (1:18:00)
Okay.

Yeah, you picked some good ones. I'm with you. Definitely.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:18:06)
What's yours? What's your favorite?

Jessie Ott (1:18:07)
Well, probably pizza. I just love pizza. I don't know why I love pizza.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:18:10)
come on. Okay.

What is the best kind of pizza then? it, the interesting version will be what is the best version of pizza? And like get in the comments if you disagree that deep dish Chicago style pizza is not the best.

Jessie Ott (1:18:17)
Okay.

I, well, you can only eat one piece of those. There was my, in my hometown, we had the best pizza when I could eat gluten. And, and now that I don't eat gluten, like I'm limited and where I can go, but, ⁓ there's a spot, the momos in Dallas that's like,

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:18:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jessie Ott (1:18:45)
just a few miles from my house and they make and then they have this pesto sauce that they drizzle on it and it's pepper. I'm a pepperoni girl. I love pepperoni, cheese, onions, mushrooms. Those are my go-to's.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:18:51)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Momos?

Jessie Ott (1:19:02)
Momos in Dallas, yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:19:05)
Okay, let's see if this looks any good. Okay, it looks like very, it looks like generic pizza pizza. Like it's not trying to be anything. It's just good. It's like pizza, baseline pizza. It's not like, if you ask Momos, like what kind of pizza is it? They're like, what do you mean? We make pizza. Neapolitan, like, yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:19:16)
I don't, yeah, it's baseline pizza probably.

It's yeah, it's not that it's not

that, but, the gluten free version that they have is really good. And so since I'm, limited on where I can, you know, I'd love to have a real Neapolitan pizza. Cheese curds are also high on my list.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:19:44)
You'd really like something we eat up around here, would be, might actually be gluten free, is poutine. So, if you had poutine, it's very good. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (1:19:52)
yeah. Yeah, I've had poutine. ⁓

it just depends on the gravy. Sometimes they'll put wheat in it to thicken it. just depends. Yeah. Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:20:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Just use starch, you know, a different starch. can do that.

Great Venezuelans have arepas, which are, you know, little. So they're the they're always I love meeting people who are gluten free and introducing them to arepas because they're they're a vessel. They're like like they are, you know, you put anything you want into them. And so if you're, know,

Jessie Ott (1:20:10)
I love arepas.

Yes.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:20:25)
gluten-free and lactose intolerant. You can just not put cheese in it. But you can, they can be vegetarian. You can use black beans if you want, if you want something, you know, more kind of protein rich. strongly, strongly recommend to all you gluten-free people out there. Venezuelan arepas, better than Colombian arepas, if you ask me. ⁓ But go get arepas.

Jessie Ott (1:20:34)
Yes.

I haven't had, I

don't know that I've, I've only had Cuban arepas that I know of. There was a place in Dallas, but it's gone now because of the downturn. No, because of the hurricane. We had a hurricane rip through our neighborhood. So I'm, I think she was just American. don't think she was, had any South American heritage, but we have a place called Cubans on the run here. It is so good. And they, they put.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:20:52)
Okay, I'm and I have yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jessie Ott (1:21:14)
mozzarella cheese in between two pieces and, it's so good. I love arepas.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:21:18)
Yeah, sounds

awesome. Yeah. Well, I hope you go and get some soon.

Jessie Ott (1:21:24)
Yeah, I might call my wife to just have her pick it up on the way home. It sounds good. Anyway, well, I will let you get back to it, but thank you so much for coming on and sharing your analysis of our industry from a more academic standpoint. I know it maybe wasn't exactly what you had set out to do, but the industry thanks you for what you're doing.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:21:28)
Yeah.

I appreciate it. It was fun to not talk about business for a little bit. know, so I appreciate the thing you're doing here. It was a great conversation for me anyways. I enjoyed it.

Jessie Ott (1:22:01)
Yeah. Thank you. Me too. Well, I'll let you go and we'll be in touch. Maybe we'll, do you ever go to industry events? Okay. Yeah.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:22:06)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, some of them, but not all of them. I'll be at Bar Convent

in Brooklyn. That's the next one I have on my calendar, but other than that, I'm not sure.

Jessie Ott (1:22:16)
Okay. Yeah, I was thinking about going to that one, but I don't think I'm going to make it this year. Next year. I'll get out of the, ⁓

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:22:20)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's one

of the cheaper ones, know, it's only 200 bucks or something. So very much like that.

Jessie Ott (1:22:26)
Yeah it is. Yeah.

Yeah. For sure. Okay. Well, I'll wave and I'll let you go. Get back to it. Okay. Bye bye.

Bourcard Nesin - Rabobank (1:22:34)
All right.