Buda Juice, Inc. LD Micro 20th Annual Main Event Conference

Thank you very much. This is the last session of the day. Bringing Ultra Fresh to every grocery store in America, we have a nice story to tell here. Let's get started. Here we are. We have the forward-looking statements. We began in a little coffee shop in Plano in 2014. We put a little fridge in a coffee shop to see if anyone would buy our juice, $12 a juice. We were doing $500 a day, built our own stores, 25 stores, nice brand, beautiful products, great cult following, and losing a lot of money. We got into H-E-B, and it changed our game because all of our—if those of you who don't know H-E-B, they have more people going through H-E-B in one month than going through Disney World in the entire year. It's huge. We got on the shelves, people buying our products.

It's like, what are we doing opening our own stores? We started closing stores, COVID hit, and then we pivoted from our own retail stores to 100% wholesale. It changed our lives, transformed our business. As many of you know, in this day and age, people don't go to the center aisle of the grocery store anymore. They go to the grocery store to buy fresh. We don't believe the center aisle is the place to be in the grocery store. We believe the vision is where fresh is, and that's where we focus. But fresh is very hard to do. We've created a cold chain from farm all the way to the end consumer, which we called Fresh35°, because we keep it at 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

The shelf life, we've got the shelf life now up to 14 to 21 days, and that's our badge of honor. It's very important to have fresh product. Did anyone try the products? You did? Okay, good. Just out of interest, how much do you think this bottle costs retail? I'll tell you, it's $1.28 at Walmart. It's really good value, and I'll come into that a little more later. We started out with juice. It's a $57 billion a year market. We introduced our own products, and some of you tried today. We have the top, which are the beautiful fresh lemonades. We have shots down at the bottom. Basically, the difference, what are we doing that everyone isn't doing? We're doing fresh. So much so that we had to create a category called fresh because everyone thinks these guys on the left are fresh, and typically they're not.

You've got Ultra Fresh, which is pascalized. You've got Naked and Suja and Bolthouse and all these products, and they're on the shelf there, and they're all paying slotting fees, end cap fees. They have long shelf life. Whereas we're down here where the action is, where the fresh is, where the freshly cut fruits, where the freshly cut vegetables are, and where the short shelf life is. We have a different distribution than the guys on the left because they are kept in the warehouse and then the stores order against their products. Where down here, we're doing four deliveries a week to the distribution centers for H-E-B and Walmart and our customers. So they keep everything stocked.

Has to look like that because people are coming by and buying these. Now, these are the big bottles of this little guy, and they're 52 ounce, and they sell for $5.98 to $5.99. Very good value because those little guys on the left that are not fresh are still selling for five bucks, six bucks. I don't know if any of you bought the juices there. They're very expensive. We've got a product that not only is fresh, but it's also value. Great value. Our plan right now is we did our IPO in January of this year. We've expanded from 20,000 feet to 40,000 feet in this year in Dallas. We have about a $55 million a year capacity in that plant. We plan next year to open an East Coast plant to be able to basically duplicate what we've already built in Dallas.

In the following year, probably Phoenix or Nevada, we'll build another plant so we can do another, hopefully, capacity of $55 million. Right now, we have 600 stores. What's really key here is we have Executive Chairman Bryan Herr. He took an apple, he sliced it up, he put it on the shelves, and he created a whole new category, where you have freshly cut fruits and vegetables. They have like, what, 15,000 points of distribution, 12 plants around the country, in gas stations, Walmart. We're all over. They have the same cold chain, except they have five days to seven days, and we have like 14 plus or minus days. We're in the same distribution network as they are, and that's our playbook. Bryan is the owner of Country Fresh, and he is also on our board, and he's our Executive Chairman.

The CEO of Country Fresh is also on our board as well. As is Marie Quintana, who's here. She used to be PepsiCo. We have some other great board members, too. We have three customers today. We have H-E-B. We've been there for eight years. Walmart's a new addition, and Kroger as well. We're just in about 246 stores of Walmart now in nine states. We're looking at expanding more products, more distribution, and the same with Kroger. Back to Country Fresh. They're one of the national leader. They have the 35-degree cold chain in place, which is what we have as well. They have the retail distribution. They're kind of the playbook for what's the vision for Buda Juice. It's to be on every grocery store in America and to use the same playbook as Country Fresh. You have an experienced management team.

We have Don Short, who was the former President and CEO of Minute Maid, the largest juice company in the world. We have Marie Quintana, who headed up Tropicana, second-largest juice company in the world. We have great corporate experience there in our category, well, in juice category. We have Doug Burris and Bryan, the entrepreneurial spirit. Mo Hiatt, who brings all the corporate governance experience, and my Co-Founder, Bernard. Of course, Clint, our CFO, myself. Why invest in Buda Juice? We have a different platform from everyone else. We have this cold chain, so from picking the fruit all the way through to the end consumer, it's kept at 35 degrees. That's really critical to be able to have the shelf life.

Because I do not know if you have a squeezed orange at your house, orange juice, and after an hour or 2, it does not taste so good. Leave it in the fridge, it is okay. We can deliver fresh orange juice that tastes unbelievably fresh and delicious, 14-day shelf life. This guy has 21-day shelf life. We have nice growth, and it seems to be accelerating more and more. In the first, let us say, 6 weeks of Q3 of this year, we are experiencing 40-plus% growth, of which 20% of that is organic growth, meaning same-store sales and same SKUs. We have 8 years of experience at H-E-B, and they are expanding the category, and we are the category. We call it Ultra Fresh. We also have the 30 years' worth of experience of course, Country Fresh with Bryan and Doug helping us expand.

We are looking at a $55 million annual revenue capacity right now in our plant, which we have now expanded since the IPO. We have put in more cooling. We are putting in more automation. We have put in 3 new lines for a new line of business. What happened is we started out with just these shots on the shelves, and then the customers saw everyone buying them and experiencing this fresh side of the business they did not have before. They say, "Can you do orange juice for us?" We said, "Yes." "Can you do lime juice, lemon juice, lemonades, limeades?" We started expanding, and they started giving us all the fresh business. It is like, "Well, can you do dressings as well?" This is the same customer, same produce department, same logistics, same cold chain, same buyers. It was a natural yes.

That is why we are now building 3 more lines for this dressing line, which we are very excited about. Then we have the capacity to scale. We have gone through financial strength. We have no debt. We are profitable. We have $20 million in the bank. We have a great, exciting plan where customers want our product. I have left a lot of time, so I am sure I have a lot of questions. Please, fire away. Yeah. What do you think the strengths of this?

That is such a great question.