Taste Radio

This week, we’re joined by Tommy Kelly and Salim Najjar, the co-founders of Sound Brands, a fast-growing company that markets carbonated, unsweetened iced teas and tea-infused sparkling waters made with herbal and botanical ingredients. Launched in 2015, Sound has been at the forefront of an emerging market for sparkling teas. Hailed by Bon Appetit magazine as “The New LaCroix,” Sound products are primarily distributed in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and also available at several chain and independent retailers across the U.S.  During our interview, Kelly and Najjar explained that while they’ve made several costly mistakes over the years, their perspective that “a failure is really a lesson if looked at properly” has been essential to the brand’s development. “The first year, I’d probably classify it as a bunch of failures, from spending way too much money on an initial product, to spending way too much money on an outsourced sales team,” Najjar said. “They all led us to where we are… and our current strate