Goldholly: Clean American Caffeine • Meet America's only caffeinated plant: yaupon holly.
- KLS
- 3 days ago
- 16 min read
For the 221st feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Goldholly and Co-Founder Liam Trotzuk. Goldholly Clean American Caffeine is a caffeinated, regeneratively-farmed beverage made from yaupon holly, America’s only caffeinated plant.
Goldholly yaupon offers long-lasting jitter-free energy from caffeine, theacrine, and countless other compounds to supercharge your day — antioxidants, polyphenols, flavonoids, and more.
The best part? Unlike coffee and tea, which are shipped from thousands of miles away to US shores, we source our yaupon from family farms across the American Southeast, supporting American jobs, farms, and the environment.
"Together Talks" feature # 221: Goldholly presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What separates you from your competition? What have been the biggest challenges? Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business? What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur? What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most? Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
Story of how it was created?
My professional background was in commercial aviation. I was working at JetBlue doing revenue management and then network planning.
So very different from CPG, very different from sustainable agriculture, but I had a long-time fascination with sustainable ag, regenerative ag.
I noticed that, you know, in a lot of fields and for a lot of products, there's plenty of consumers who are not willing to pay the so-called green premium.
Environmental causes seem nice, but when it comes to charging a consumer more for a product that is environmentally friendly, a lot of research has shown that the consumer is unwilling to open their wallet more to that extent.
And I had sort of noticed, okay, one of the businesses where there's an exception is food and beverage. People feel closely connected with where their food comes from, the soil, the terroir, the region of origin, and they want to know often that it was produced in a sustainable manner.
And they're often willing to pay more for that premium product. There's also a health component there because, you know, frequently crops or products that are better for the earth, we often find with organic and other categorizations like that, are better for the body.
So I was noticing all this, and I was down in Texas, in Austin, on a work trip for my company at the time, JetBlue.
And I visited, I have this kind of funny habit of every new city that I go to, I visit botanical gardens in that area to kind of check out what the plants are that are from this area.
And so I'm visiting this botanical garden down in Texas, outside of Austin, called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
And I see this plant, yaupon. And there's a placard there that says, yaupon, North America's only caffeinated plant, talks a little bit about the history, how it's been used over hundreds and thousands of years by Native Americans and then settlers.
And not so much in modern times. So later that day, I go back to my hotel room and I think, okay, this is definitely some industry that is really big.
It's just never come across my radar, right? Like there's a lot of competing products out there. It's probably a huge industry for this plant.
I've just never seen it. And so I start researching, and I'm finding a couple cool companies that are selling it.
Don't get me wrong, there's some great companies, especially based in the South, a few smaller ones that are focused on the American heritage or the rustic origins of the plant that are doing good work.
But I saw this and I noticed, wow, there's not one brand that has really made this an accessible nationwide staple to start actually competing with coffee and tea in consumers' daily rituals and really taking that share of a consumer's grocery budget to give them more energy and to get all the health benefits that this plant has.
And that was four years ago. So for a couple of years, I did more research into this space.
I contacted a couple other folks who knew about the industry, who were working in it. Very, very awesome space.
And then about a year ago, I said, okay, this is time to try and promote this. There's a lot of market share out there from tea and coffee.
Even with these existing companies in this space, we can all grow the pie together. And on that journey, I shared this plant with a bunch of my friends who started finding it replacing their caffeine habits.
And from there, I got my two co-founders who came on board, and we all launched it from there.
Best ways to consume?
Our products are sold in containers of 20 tea bags each. We sell three roasts, light, medium, and dark. The lighter is more similar to mate, which is a botanical relative of yaupon.
It's minimally roasted, and you get more floral notes, more bright, crisp notes in it.
Our medium is kind of right down the middle. It's more balanced than the other two, moderately roasted, also has some great floral notes, but a little bit of earthiness.
And then our dark roast has been roasted for the longest time, and that is definitely stronger, more akin to an English black tea with smokier notes and more toasted, richer notes.
Those are in tea bags. So our tea bags, because of the lack of tannins, can steep longer than regular teas.
We recommend six to seven minutes, but especially for the light roast, you can steep it up to 10.
And you really won't get any of the astringent bitterness that you get when you oversteep green or black tea because of the lack of tannins.
They also make a terrific cold-brewed tea. There are two ways to do that. You can either brew it cold by putting a few tea bags in a pitcher of water overnight and letting the caffeine and botanicals diffuse into the water that way.
Or you can brew it hot, let it steep for six to seven, maybe even 10 minutes, and then pour it into a separate container and put it in the fridge and enjoy it on ice.
That means that particularly during the warmer months, and obviously right now it's cold out, this also makes a fantastic cold-weather hot beverage, which is how I'm drinking it now.
It makes a terrific iced tea alternative, really refreshing, really light, but still energizing. You can add sugar or honey to it to make a native spin on the classic Southern American sweet tea.
So a lot of different ways to consume it. In the future, we'd love to look into putting it into a powder or maybe even putting it into a bottle or a can for ready-to-drink.
But right now, tea bags, everyone knows how to use them. They're very convenient, and they get the results our customers are looking for.
What separates you from your competition?
As far as competitors go, there are a couple other products out there, other companies selling yaupon. Great companies, very cool. A couple in Texas, a few in Florida. They've done a bunch of the underlying work to almost scale this plant from zero to one. We took a look and said, okay, they have some very cool offerings. Don't get me wrong. One really focuses on the Texas origins, which Texans are very proud of their state. That's awesome.
Another focuses its branding and messaging on the Native American tradition of drinking it, which is another really interesting part of the history. But we didn't really see many companies talking about health benefits. First and foremost, what we found in the CPG space is the domestic origin story is a nice to have. The sustainability story is a nice to have. The need to have is what is this plant, what is this beverage going to do for me, and how is it going to enhance my productivity, my energy levels, my get-up-and-go more than the existing options on the market? And we said, okay, there are a lot of reasons why this product is terrific from a health perspective. What if we put that at the forefront of our branding? And then the American story and sustainability story are also really nice. But when it comes to driving conversion, it's the health benefits people resonate with most. So we did that with branding, messaging, and marketing, and really tried to pioneer this as almost a new category unto itself. And that is a challenge.
We are competing with long-established product categories, coffee and tea. But we've seen examples where other companies have scaled unknown ingredients through education and savvy marketing. Yerba mate is a great example. It was niche until the early 2000s, when companies like Guayakí brought it to Americans. It's now roughly a $2 billion annual market. They focused on origin, but also on benefits. A different kind of buzz, steadier, more consistent. We've drawn lessons from that, but with a distinctly American spin.
Yaupon has lighter caffeine, encouraging a continuous sipping ritual throughout the day without crashes. It also contains theobromine, found in chocolate, often called the pleasure molecule, which gives a subtle mood lift. And then there's theocrine, which has a longer half-life than caffeine and doesn't interfere with sleep as much. Finally, yaupon has very few tannins, meaning no bitterness, no upset stomachs. All of this creates a lighter, smoother, refreshing, but still energizing alternative that many Americans are looking for. It's an education process, but people are resonating, converting, and repurchasing, which is very positive.
What have been the biggest challenges?
The biggest challenge has been scaling up supply. We were all new to CPG. Sourcing, organic certification, shipping, co-packing, and logistics were all steep learning curves. Every component has to arrive at exactly the right time. We're getting better at it. We've had no major hiccups, which is great. But it's the entrepreneur's job to stay tenacious and solve problems as they arise.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
We've been selling for about seven months. We're growing e-commerce through our website, Amazon, and Walmart. In 2026, we're upgrading packaging, improving quality, scaling marketing, and tapping into renewed interest in American-made products. We're excited to help yaupon break out from a niche into a true caffeine staple.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
I think entrepreneurs always have differing stories, but they tend to align around some key themes.
I think for me, the tipping point was, if we don't try this, who else is going to? So, of course, before that, we did a lot of research.
We said, okay, is there a stable enough supply of this plant to continue producing this and scale? We did a lot of research and found that the answer was yes.
Then the question was, okay, do the unit economics make sense? Is there a viable business here at the end of the road?
So that took a few months of modeling it out to really be certain and say, okay, this does pencil.
If we can do all the scale-up and expend some capital to produce this product and put it into the market, is there a chance that this thing can make money?
And we said yes, it can. So we had to do a lot of that kind of blocking and tackling first, building relationships, learning the lay of the land, et cetera.
But all of that is still, at the end of the day, a little insufficient to take a risk. Starting your own company is risky in any industry, right?
Any industry. It's especially risky if you're trying to sell a product that relatively few Americans have heard of. This is not a proven product category like coffee, like ice cream, like a million other categories I could name. This is its own new category.
And so we said, okay, it probably makes economic sense. It's feasible from a logistical perspective, but is it still worth taking the jump?
And essentially, I looked at how this is going to improve the world if we do it. And I found that the list of answers to that question was pretty long.
It provides jobs to family-run American farms. Love that. That's really awesome. It supplies consumers with a new source of caffeine with a different profile, lighter, more refreshing, that fits a clear market demand from the consumer side.
It is better for health because it's organic, so no pesticides, no fertilizers. Even from the inputs perspective, it's super drought resilient, yaupon, where it grows.
And so you don't even need to do irrigation or anything like that to grow it, which is a bonus.
I love tea and coffee. Don't get me wrong, great products. There's a reason they've been so popular for so long, but every unit of Goldholly yaupon sold is theoretically a little bit less tea and coffee.
And those industries are going to be fine. They're going to be great. They're still going to sell a lot in many years to come, and good fortune to them.
But if it incrementally leads to just a little bit less coffee and tea shipped from overseas, and frequently coffee and tea, not always, there are responsible producers, but frequently they are grown unsustainably.
They're clear-cut on former rainforests. They deplete aquifers. It could lead to a little bit less of that, and it's fewer transportation miles heading into the States.
So basically, any way you slice it, selling one of these cartons is a net benefit.
And I wake up every morning and I go to our Shopify and our Amazon and I see what's been sold overnight.
And that's my favorite part of the day, because I can say every single one of those cartons sold is making an impact.
It sounds like a cliche, but it's really very true. And I was doing that math in the early days when I was deciding to take that leap.
And I said, if I can do this and make these impacts and it may still be a profitable business, I think it's worth it to take this risk.
Because if we don't, I don't know if anyone else is going to. And that was kind of the clinching factor.
And I think my two co-founders feel quite similarly as well. That was ultimately what led them to jump fully into this.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
As far as what I've learned, again, apologies for using a cliché here, but tenacity is everything.
If you know that the underlying business case is solid, and if you are driven by a real sense of purpose, that promoting and getting this product into people's hands is going to yield benefits to them, to me, to the planet, to American farmers, it gives you that energy.
And essentially, to an extent that's hard to understand until you've done it, you need to learn that every obstacle can be overcome through some amount of, it's not just grit, it's creative problem solving, it's having smart people around you to advise you on the routes to take.
It's a number of factors that don't just come down to grit and applying yourself, but basically being undaunted in any challenge you face, essentially, any problem can be overcome with that.
And that I don't think I had fully understood. I thought I knew it, but I didn't really understand it until we were doing it in real time.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
The relationships that you make.
You can make fantastic relationships in a salaried role or a corporate job. You can acquire mentors, you can acquire mentees, you can learn a lot from your co-workers and people above you and below you.
There's enormous learning to be had in a large workplace. Never let anyone tell you different. With that being said, in my experience, within workplaces you are more siloed.
The number of people you can talk to is more limited because you're plugged into a specific, typically job function.
Unless you're C-suite at some big company where you have to make large-scale tactical decisions across the entire business, typically in most large company roles you will have a much more bounded set of responsibilities, which leads to a more bounded set of relationships.
At the airline, there was not often a reason for me to be talking to someone in, I'm going to make up an example, in-flight meal planning.
That was just never really close to my function. Whereas in entrepreneurship, you get this really exciting phase that's most prominent in the first year, but has continued in my experience, where most people want to talk to you.
They are excited about what you're doing. They may have issues with it, and in which case those are great learnings to have as well.
But you sort of have a little bit of an excuse to approach people across not just the industry that you're focusing on, although that's a big part, but also other former entrepreneurs across all kinds of businesses.
I talk to people like you, an entrepreneur in the freight business. I talk to tech entrepreneurs.
Obviously, the economics, the go-to-market, and many of the facets of these businesses are very different, but there's cross-pollination for sure.
There are always lessons to be learned from any industry. And then also within food and beverage CPG, there are tremendous contacts to make.
Almost everyone, because there's a lot of camaraderie within food and beverage, is someone who started out without necessarily having experience in the space.
You pointed that out, and I've noted it to be very, very true, that you get a lot of people who maybe had great careers in other industries, but food is so essential to everyone that they got into the food business or the CPG business because they were inspired by it.
And so there's a real camaraderie in food and beverage CPG. I've been to trade shows where all the brands are just helping each other out.
They're giving each other samples, swapping tips, helping people man their booths.
It's a sense of we're all in this together. We're all feeding, hydrating, and energizing people together.
I have yet to meet someone in the industry, no matter how high or how low, who I didn't feel like I could approach for a friendly conversation and get some learnings.
And so that's really an extraordinary benefit of entrepreneurship. You can just talk to a lot of people.
And at a certain point, talk alone is not enough. You have to do plenty of your own building, but you get fantastic value out of these conversations, and people want to see you succeed in almost every case that I've encountered.
And that's so valuable. It's really, really inspiring.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
I'm going to kind of give a little bit of a cheating answer to your question, and I'm going to give two moments.
Moment number one was when we visited our third-party fulfillers. It's very important to us that every stage of our supply chain be good in some way and give back.
Our 3PL, third-party fulfillers, are a nonprofit up in Poughkeepsie, a two-hour train ride north of New York City, which is where I'm based.
They're a nonprofit that was founded by IBM in 1950 to provide jobs to disabled veterans who had come back from World War Two and who, due to injuries sustained in combat or otherwise, had limited employment opportunities.
This workshop was founded by IBM, which used to be very heavily rooted in Poughkeepsie and still has quite a large presence there, to provide gainful employment for these returning vets.
Since then, they've expanded to include not just veterans, but folks with disabilities of all kinds, and they used to do a variety of work.
These days, their primary bread and butter is third-party logistics, so picking, packing, and shipping goods. We're limited on space here in New York City, real estate is really expensive, and it was not feasible for us to do our own logistics, so we ended up entering a partnership with this organization.
They've been fantastic partners. The day after our goods arrived there, our first production run, we took the Metro-North from Grand Central to the end of the line in Poughkeepsie and walked to this 3PL.
Seeing our first two pallets of production goods there was an enormous moment of pride for me. Prior to that point, it's all immaterial, right?
You're scaling up, you're getting excited, but until you have that production run, it still feels fake in some ways.
That was an enormous moment of pride.
The other moment was when we got a customer review. We started sales in April and received a review in May. We'd gotten some nice reviews from friends and family who wanted to help us out, but this one was different.
I talked to my two co-founders, Andrew and Jeffrey, and we said, I forget what the person's name was, maybe Mary.
I asked Jeffrey, do you know Mary such and such? And he said no, he didn't know who that was.
I asked Andrew, do you know Mary such and such? He said no as well. I didn't know who she was.
This was a random customer whom we had never met, who saw the product, decided to buy it with her hard-earned money, and felt that it fulfilled her expectations.
She said the tea was terrific. It was refreshing. It did all of the things that were promised. It was a great alternative to her existing options.
Seeing that first positive feedback from someone who wasn't in our circle is almost impossible to convey how affirming that is.
I'm sure you've seen the same thing with Klimson, where it might be a referral, a friend of a friend of a friend.
You have no real link to this person, but you provided quality service, they loved it, and you fulfilled their expectations. It was mutually beneficial.
That's why we do this. That's why we form companies, to make customers happy and satisfied.
That moment was unbelievably noteworthy and fulfilling for me.
Piece of Advice
I think that Silicon Valley and the tech startup scene have it right when they say you should not be afraid to fail.
That's related to the tenacity component I mentioned before. If you're not failing, you're probably doing something wrong. You're probably not pursuing a hard enough problem if you're not running into a lot of roadblocks.
If it's the easiest thing in the world to do, other people will do it, and you may be outcompeted.
If it's hard, that is a good sign. Every hurdle you get over is something not everyone will be able to get over.
Failure is also an incredible teacher. You can learn from success, but it's a bit harder.
You may not know what the critical ingredient in the recipe for success was that allowed you to succeed. If you fail, it's typically much easier to isolate the variable that led to the issue, which means that, if you're in a rush, you can apply a temporary patch.
If you have more time, you can address it in a longer-term, more durable way. You're going to want to do that anyway for any problem in the long run.
And you can't let failure discourage you permanently. It can set you back, and that's okay, but you need to have the tenacity to overcome it.
So I think failure is a tremendous teacher. I think entrepreneurs, startup founders, and really anyone, this could apply in a job as well, should be encouraged by failure, because it goes back to that very well-known saying by Thomas Edison. He said, "I didn't discover one way to make the light bulb. I discovered ten-thousand ways to not make it."
And by process of elimination, you figure out what the best path is. In the interim, if you quit, it's all for nothing.
But if you take the learnings and apply them to your next step and keep moving forward, you're going to get more data.
You're going to get more information. You're going to make smarter decisions. And that applies, as you said, to any facet of life.
Promo Code
Purchase from their site, Goldholly, and use promo code below!
CLEAN15 -> 15% off!
Community Callout
They've been great resources.
101 Partners - Guy Chambers
He's the former managing director of Finley's, which is a major. Major tea ingredient supplier. He's been a tremendous resource to us.
Cornell's Center of Excellence in Food and Agriculture - Alysia Ericsson, Bruno Xavier, Mark Scoville
They have fantastic resources for New York State-based food and beverage companies. It's government-funded. Their purpose is to promote and help these companies grow. They've been wonderful.
New York City Hotspot Innovation Center - Ariella Trotsenko, Cira Cardaci, John Blaho Another great government-run program that has essentially allowed a lot of research, kind of university-oriented companies to commercialize their technology, but they also help out a few more CPG-oriented brands like ours. And they've been terrific.
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Goldholly and Co-Founder Liam Trotzuk, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!