YouSaid · the spoken record

Don Vultaggio

lines on the record: 85
first: 2025-09-01
most recent: 2025-09-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I looked at the back of a beverage magazine and it was an ad for a flavor house in New Jersey and I called it and they sent a salesman in and we talked about His background, and I realized that he went to the same high school and graduated the same year that I did. And my wife knew him in high school because I met her in high school. Is this your age?”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, let's talk about getting ready to enter the market because you're almost 40 at this point and you have a lot of experience now in beer distribution, the beverage industry. First of all, how hard was it for you to come up with a recipe for iced tea? How did you do? Did you go to your kitchen and start playing around or did you find a beverage scientist and start working with him?”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Glass bottles were historically more expensive with a lug cap, they run slower. In the beer business that we knew the speeds of cans was faster, plus the fact because we were just looking at pure margin, we said if we can be competitive and get people to buy it, then we'll figure out what we got. I wasn't so focused on, well, are we going to make a killing on it? The question was, can we get consumers to buy it, see it, and buy it? And I thought this was the angle. Bigger can, you know, stood out in the cooler, unique and different. We entered the market with that big can.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So Schlitz had been doing it at Gatorade and a can, and you said, wait a minute, we can sell it for the same price as how could you sell it for the same price if you're offering eight more ounces of product?”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I walked into a 7-Eleven one morning, which I did every morning to buy coffee on the way to the office. And they had Gatorade and a 24-ounce can. And I had never seen that before. I knew that 24 ounce can because John and I delivered Schlitz bowl was in a 24-ounce can. They were the only brewery using that I buy the can. Take it back to the office. I look on the side. It's Reynolds Metals making it. We call up Reynolds. Reynolds says you can put tea in that can because that's what I asked. And I said, now I got the package. This, that. This will be 50% large in and it's 16 ounce snuffle bottle.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, John and I drove to a plant in Trenton, New Jersey, who was making Snapple, and is a man who ran the Peelbury. He was a production manager there. And he asked whether we had a name. I said, we didn't. We didn't have a formulation. And we essentially went through like, what it would take. Well, he said this generic bottles, you know, would a lug cap, there's a paper label. We can find a flavorhouse for you. And then on our way home, we stop at 7-Eleven. And we buy some snapple to look at on the way back to Brooklyn and we kind of talk ourselves out of the tea business because we said, how are we going to get somebody to buy us over Snapple? How are we going to get them or convince them to buy us? Better looking label, but is that enough? It's the same shape bottle. Are we going to get lost in the mix? And we kind of said, you know, something we better stay in the beer business. We know that. Yep.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, really, I mean, you got really excited about iced tea. And you started, I guess you start to look for a plant that could produce those lug, those wide-mouth bottles, just like Snapple. But from what I read, once you did that and you went to that factory, you started to kind of have second thoughts and thought I'm not going to, I can't out-compete Snapple. There's no way this is going to fail.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The brand was started by a couple of window washers from New York. One of them had a health food store, like I guess like a vitamin store. And Snapple was selling. They didn't start the brand, but they saw it there and then they took it over and da-da-da. They became very successful. And I saw it firsthand.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I wasn't really focused on the soft drink aisle. I was focused on a beer aisle until that day. And I said this the other day entrepreneurs could tell you the time when the light goes on. And that's when it went off for me.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was on a store on Broadway and Houston. It was February 1990. Was selling midnight dragon and a snapple truck pulls up. Snapple, I saw it happen in New York because it happened here. It started here in New York. And he starts peeling off like 40 cases of iced tea. So I said, hey. Ice tea is not supposed to sell in a win Number one. Number two is the order he was bringing into that store was far greater than the order I was trying to get on the beer. And I made the decision right there. I said, I'm going into tea business.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a high-priced beer, higher priced with a lot more margin in it. At that time in our lives, it was pivotal to our success into the future.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and we had a lot of Native American things in the house and decorations and stuff like that. It was very cool. And the package was terrific looking. And we went to a trade show John and I and we sold thousands of cases of it without even having a product yet. It was just the package. Then, of course, things happened. To our surprise, it wasn't like we were trying to offend anybody. It was just, you know, we thought it was a cool look and it was because consumers loved it. It's actually what saved our company because prior to that we were floundering with me.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back in when we had been Nitrak and I would work to trade every day. And I saw what was happening in the coolers and we said we want to do like an upscale mall liquor. And I was watching an old Western movie one night and they had, they used to break the bottle over the bar and use it as like a weapon. And I said, boy, that's the bottle. It had a long neck on it because all of malt liquors and actually all the beers in those days had these kind of rounded, not so pretty necks. And then the Indian on the front and the cowboy in the back and a story about the West was what inspired, came from my home. You know, at the time, I lived in a home in Queens that we, my wife, Designed around the southwest.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was a beverage category that was very popular in America. We went at it in a, I guess, a Brooklyn style where we said we got to be a little outrageous because in order to get some attention on a shelf, we have to do something different. And it worked out pretty good.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“liquor in those days was a very popular category in the beer business. And I'll never forget it was actually a beer manufacturer from upstate New York. It came to me with an idea about he wanted to do a more liquor. And he asked RC, he said, you guys know the category. What are you thinking? And he showed me his package and his product and his name. And I thought it was horrible. But I didn't tell him. I said, yeah, all right. But when he left, John Ripe looked at each other and said, why don't we do that? And then we developed a label and a bottle and a product and all that. It started with that one visit from this brewery from Rochester, New York.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, because we lived through a time where we always bought something from a distributor who bought it from the company that made it. We never bought it from the company directly. If we bought Budweiser Miller was from a distributor, and the distributors would have changing views on what they wanted to do. So we'd have a good connection with a guy who sold Budweiser. Then he'd call us one day and says, I can't sell you anymore because Anheuser-Bush said they didn't want us to do that any longer. So we're always on the edge about our future. So we thought if we had a brand that we owned and we can control, it could be something that we wouldn't have the uncertainty that we had buying beer from somebody else and reselling it.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I guess by the early 80s, things begin to shift because you actually decide to buy the license for, I guess, a failing brewing company. And at that time, you and John start to think about launching your own brand, which we'll get to. What you started in just a second, but I wondered why did you guys want to move from distributing beer to making it?”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for the most part, we didn't buy things that were like hula hoops. But back in the beginning, it was selling Schaefer to people who wanted Shafer.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we lived off it, so it was profitable from day one, but we were always reaching further than our finances were able to keep up with us. So, you know, we had some difficult times where there were some sleepless nights about how to pay payroll and how to pay the electric bill. And that went on. I tell people, they say, well, you're an overnight success. I said, yeah, we were 20 years of nights because the first 20 years of our business prior to Arizona was a struggle. It was. Know, we did business, we supported our families, we paid for our homes and things like that, but it was always, we're always on the edge.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was never a gun owner. If you're not Clint Eastwood, Where you can draw quick and shoot straight, you're better off not having one. But my dad told me, you got to respect the gun, right? Somebody holding the gun, you got to be very respectful for what he's telling you to do, otherwise you might be a victim of the gun, right?”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened? What's the story? Well, you know, we were a company and a business that dealt a lot in cash because that's how grocery stores paid. And people who work for us knew that we had a lot of cash coming in. And they told their friends about it over a bar or in a restaurant, and then they would come and stick us up. The time where I was held up, I was. I was in our office and I was held up. And one of the guys I was with pushed the gun away from his head, then he hit him over a head with the gun. And I believe I kind of cooled the situation down by kind of talking to these bad guys in a very fatherly way. And then when they left, they put us in the closet. Then when they left, I said, why'd you do that? He said, I don't like a gun to my head. And I said, who does? Nobody likes a gun to their head.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we were threatened a lot. We were threatened by the Teamsters about, you know, you can't do that's not allowed because the Schaefer delivery guy we were delivering Schaefer. Yeah, that was produced in Brooklyn. But the guy, the Schaefer delivery guy or the Schaefer sales guy didn't like us very much because we were selling beer that he says he could have sold. But there was always a rub because you're buying beer from a distributor who bought it directly from the brewery and then reselling it. In some cases hated you know for that.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because of my experience at Peel's and John's experience working at this distributing company, we said we go to stores and offer them these popular brands of beer at... Not so much a better price, but more convenient. We can deliver on Saturdays, we can deliver nights, that kind of thing. Then at some point later on, you know, we've started becoming more of a what called like a primary distributor where we actually had the exclusive right to certain brands. But back in those days was whatever sold we bought and we sold.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did. But, you know, like anything else, it's like picking a wife. Sometimes the person you pick changes and maybe sometimes you don't change with them. So it's hard because if you say, well, I want to pick somebody today who's going to be great 40 years from now. It's hard. It's hard to think that far ahead, number one. And number two is it's hard because things change and things happen. And, you know, candidly, part of, I call it the romance of the relationship between John and I was the fact that we started out with nothing and then we turned it into something. It was kind of cool.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That mattered. I didn't, but you know, it happened to be that we had things in common. He was a good guy. You know, he was my best man on my wedding. And he was terrific.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I started there, I lived a kind of quasi-sheltered life with my parents, and I wasn't well traveled. I had never flew in an airplane until I was 35 years old. And I didn't, you know, from being in the retail because I worked in that grocery store, I was social with customers and I became comfortable with that. And when I became a salesperson, it just kind of carried over.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, it was a merchandising. I was in a sales department, so I didn't drive a truck there, but we build a display and put the signs up and entice consumers to buy our product.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I worked at a place called Kifood, and my dad didn't want me to be a grocer. But when I graduated in 1970, I had no intention of going to college. And he set up an interview. And that's how it started in the beverage business. It was called Peel's Brothers. And they were in Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he wanted to show me the world that he knew. And I think those things were very important to me in my experience in business myself, of seeing things that happen that most consumers don't recognize or realize.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He used to say I leave and when it's dark and I come home when it's dark. And oftentimes if they had a problem at one of the stores that he managed, he would wake me up and I'd go with him in the middle of the night to see what happened. Somebody broke in or broke a window, that kind of thing.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't very athletic and we didn't talk about sports at the table. We talked about retail. We talked about challenges of being a retailer. My dad worked for the A&P. And so I grew up with that kind of environment. We were more of a focused on real world stuff than like what some athlete was doing.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was a kid, and my mother told me, You're tall, don't do bad things because people are going to recognize you. You're going to stand out in the crowd. You're going to be picked out for bad deeds. I also came to the conclusion back then I said, I'm never going to drink or smoke marijuana or any of that because I'm too big if I'm incapacitated. I'll be too hard to handle. So I better not do any of that stuff. And I think it kind of governs my life, being tall and... Different than most. And I used to be challenged because people thought I was really older than I was”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dragged on for a decade, which we'll get to later on because it's a fascinating story. But for now, let's start at the beginning. Don Blotagio grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and sixties in a working class Italian American family, and Don stood out in no small part because of his size. He's six foot eight inches.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said they ignored the umbrella, they ignored all that golf references and Auto Palmer on the front. But I said, who cares? If they call it George Bush, that's fine with me too.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I came up with this look with Arnold on the front and we introduced it. And I went to a sales meeting a couple of weeks in and one of the sales ladies said to me, I got an order today for four green tea and two George Bushes. George Bush was president at the time, and it looked like George Bush. Not intentional, but that's what it hinted.”
2025-09-01 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Don Vultaggio: AriZona Beverage Company - The Snap Decision That Outsmarted Snapple · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT