Interview With The CEO: Attitude Drink Company (ATTD) - Roy G. Warren

67 WALL STREET, New York - March 19, 2012 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Restaurants, Food and Drinks Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This special feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Shift Toward Healthier Food Options - Consumer Spending Patterns Polarize - Emerging Market Expansion - Baby Boomers, Millennials and U.S. Hispanic Preferences

Companies include: Attitude Drinks (ATTD); BJ's (BJRI); Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE); Pepsico's (PEP); Smucker's (SJM); and many more.

In the following brief excerpt from the Restaurants, Food and Drinks Report, expert analysts discuss the outlook for the sector and for investors.

Roy G. Warren is CEO of Attitude Drink Company. He was a founder of Bravo! Brands in 1996 and its President and Director. Appointed to CEO in 2000, he remained in that position until April 30, 2007. When appointed CEO, Mr. Warren redirected the company and focused the company's attention and resources toward developing domestically branded, single-serve flavored milk. Mr. Warren is credited with having the vision to identify milk as a beverage rather than a food, and was leader of the Bravo! Brands team who pioneered shelf-stable milk in America. In August 2005 he successfully completed a master distribution agreement with Coca-Cola Enterprises. Mr. Warren founded Attitude Drink Company in May 2007.

TWST: Please begin by giving our readers a brief summary of Attitude Drinks.

Mr. Warren: Attitude Drinks (ATTD) was formed about four years ago to really exploit the ongoing trend away from refreshment drinks, if you will, in favor of functional beverages. We've been monitoring what's been going on in the beverage community for a long, long time, and beginning in late 2004 we saw significant declines in sales volume in the bubbly refreshment soda business, the Cokes and Pepsis of the world. And we at the same time witnessed a climb in what many people call "new-age beverages," that is things that are functional, do something for you either experientially or nutritionally. We've seen things like the AriZona iced teas and Nantucket Nectars, and the Fuse and Vitamin Waters and Red Bulls and Monsters, more than overcome the decline in bubbly refreshment drinks. The interesting thing about the strategy that we've undertaken is that milk, for the most part, is kind of the last frontier in the beverage area. That is, you had these big names and other beverage companies, but there are other beverage categories, but you've never really had a big dominant player in milk, especially functional milk. And I think there are two reasons for that. One is that up until very recently, most milk products required refrigeration. The refrigeration chain is controlled by the dairies, and most dairies operate their businesses like manufacturers as opposed to drink developers. They'd much rather do big volume and less products. So our objective has been to sort of move milk from a food into the beverage area. And the beverage industry for the most part - the Cokes, Pepsis, Dr. Pepper, Snapples - they don't like to handle products that they can't produce, and they don't have any processing capability for dairy products. There is a big opportunity, we call it kind of the last frontier in the beverage industry, to really develop products that are exploiting the goodness of milk. We developed Phase III using modern day technology and state-of-the-art processing up in Buffalo, N.Y., that is taking advantage of lots of new things that are available to processing dairy products, including ultra filtration and modern day sterilization process, and modern day packaging and things that really knocked down the entry barriers for milk. Attitude is really all about exploiting the new scientific advantages of milk and doing it in a very consumer-friendly way.

TWST: Would you talk a little bit about branding and how you go about promoting the Phase III name?

Mr. Warren: Well, Phase III is the first product that we've introduced in the fitness area; in fact, it's the only product we're handling at the moment. We recognized there was a real advantage to post-exercise recovery aids from milk. Back in 2005, there was an article written by Dr. Joel Stager, who was head of the nutritional department and studies at Counsilman Center at Indiana University, and he basically wrote about milk, the next sports drink. And he was discussing the advantages of feeding your tired muscles within 40 minutes of when you workout and how chocolate milk was a terrific way to do that. We started to look at that science and recognized that there really are three phases of exercise, from a nutritional point of view. That's before, during and after, and milk is a perfect solution for the post-exercise, thus the Phase III name. What we've done is looked at what was good, what was bad about milk.

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