Founder Feature: BJ McCaslin of Holy! Water

The Startup CPG Podcast

Startup CPG

Startup, Food, Business, Beverage, Cpg, Entrepreneurship

4.9 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, Grace Kennedy speaks with BJ McCaslin, co-founder of Holy! Water.BJ shares the story behind Holy! Water, a functional beverage brand built on the belief that health is sacred. Drawing on his deep experience in hospitality and beverage entrepreneurship—including a successful exit to Vita Coco—BJ discusses how Holy! Water was developed to meet multiple consumer needs with formulations that include ketones, functional mushrooms, and nootropics.

They explore the evolution of the non-alcoholic and functional beverage categories, the challenges of product development, retail strategy, and navigating distribution. BJ also opens up about his approach to brand-building, investing in people, and what it takes to succeed in a highly competitive industry.

Whether you're a CPG founder, investor, or industry enthusiast, this episode offers valuable insight into the grit, creativity, and strategy behind bringing a beverage brand to life. Listen now!

👉 Try Holy! Water at enjoyholywater.com with code ALWAYS30 for 30% off!

Listen in as they share about:

Holy! Water Overview
Product Line & Unique Ingredients
Distribution & Partnerships
R&D Process & Challenges
Marketing & Sales Strategy
Positioning & Category Insight
Brand Philosophy & Culture

Episode Links:

Website: https://enjoyholywater.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjmccaslin/

Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.

Show Links:

Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
Join the Startup CPG Slack community (20K+ members and growing!)
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Visit host Grace's Linkedin
Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
Episode music by Super Fantastics

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, you've got the big retailer.
0:04.0	Haza!
0:04.8	But growth is hard work, and with great power comes great responsibility to your partners.
0:09.6	As you scale together, both of you are going to sleep better at night,
0:12.3	knowing you are EDI compliant with our friends at SPS Commerce.
0:16.6	Solutions from SPS Commerce help you automate order processing,
0:19.9	making sure you're compliant with your big, new, juicy juicy account and the rest of your trading partners and sales channels so you can stay focused on growing your business while the expert team from SPS Commerce handles all the details.
0:30.5	Learn more at SPScommerce.com slash startup CPG. That's SPSCommerce.com slash startup CPG or check out the link in the show notes.
1:02.3	The Holy Water Space for me, it is, I feel like, regardless of how successful the concept is fiscally this year, next year the year after, this brand is going to do great things.
1:07.2	It's going to help people.
1:08.4	It's going to get you a better night's sleep.
1:10.1	It's going to get your gut healthier. It's going to put you in a mindset that you don't need to have that 15th tall boy. It's going to help you focus to get through that day. And that to me is I know, again, it's cliche, but that at the end of the day is why you do it, right? You don't just do it because you're going to run up a $2 billion deal. But the end of the day, we do this because we want to make a great product for people.
1:31.3	So, you know, support us to try it. That's the biggest thing.
1:36.7	Hello, startup CPG listeners. This is Grace, and I'm here with another founder feature.
1:43.2	Today, I'm interviewing B.J BJ McCaslin, the co-founder
1:46.6	of Holy Water. Holy Water is a health and wellness brands that creates multiple beverages to
1:52.3	solve use occasions throughout the day, like hydration, focus, performance, and non-alcoholic
1:58.7	social tonics. BJ is an industry veteran with over 20 years in the beverage space.
2:05.2	We talk all about where he sees the functional non-alcoholic category going,
2:10.3	how he sees holy water fitting in, and why he believes that human capital is the most
2:16.1	important component to success.
2:18.5	I loved this interview, and as always, let me know what you think.
	...

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