Los Angeles, California (The Hollywood Times) 12/21/2020 – Kill Cliff is on the fast- track with its clean energy drink company, led by John Timar who serves as President & COO. John engineered the brand’s breakout growth and led the launch of Kill Cliff CBD beverage. John served as a U.S. Navy SEAL. Kill Cliff has proudly partnered with the Navy Seal Foundation. Now, they launched Flaming Joe in collaboration with Joe Rogan who is a big CBD advocate to create a sweet and spicy pineapple beverage.
Kill Cliff CBD is the first and largest national brand to introduce a CBD beverage. Share your background.
Our business started with a low caffeine clean energy drink created by Founder, Todd Ehrlich. The business literally started in his garage and, as with many startups, going direct to consumers and businesses. The products and the brand almost immediately became popular in the functional fitness community and spread like wildfire to independent gyms, especially CrossFit boxes, all across the country. Our original beverage line, now called Energize & Recover, provides sustained energy in a low caffeine format. Ingredients like b-vitamins, taurine, plant extracts, enzymes, and ginger deliver energy without a crash, while also providing essential elements to help the body fight inflammation and recover from stress. Because of its great taste and low calories, Energize & Recover has emerged as an all-day drink/soda replacement and has actually become a popular mixer at bars and restaurants as well.
What led you to launch Kill Cliff CBD?
We have a military background. Both Todd Ehrlich and I served in the SEAL Teams. We also have other employees on staff that served in the SEAL community and as Army Rangers. So many of our original consumers have a service background or commitment to those communities. Enter CBD. Military veterans are dealing with numerous mental and physical challenges currently and are big consumers of CBD. The CBD industry writ large is the wild west and there is a lot of chicaneries out there. Consumers are being duped, which is bad for everyone. We felt obligated to serve the needs of our consumers by creating a healthy CBD-infused product of the highest standard. We use nano-encapsulated CBD from 125mg of broad-spectrum hemp, per can. This approach yields 25mg of CBD and enables rapid absorption with up to 90% bioavailability. This blows away any comparison to tinctures or other popular methods to consume CBD. In short, we launched CBD to take care of our own, but it has since become something way bigger than anything we could have imagined.
You offer Kill Cliff Clean Energy Drinks, Ignite, and Kill Cliff Clean Hemp infused drinks. Why do people love these so much? Please share a few favorite flavors.
Our brand is irreverent and bold, and our lineup of products is like a flavor cannon. We seek to entertain our consumers with incredible content while serving up tasty beverages for numerous need states. We don’t take any shortcuts either, which I think is a big appeal to many. We are committed to premium ingredients and will not launch a drink unless it tastes incredible. Artificial sweeteners are unfortunately the most commonplace answer in the market to the rising demand for low-to-no sugar beverage options. We think that’s a copout and focus our innovation on creating drinks that are all-natural and taste fantastic without sugar or artificial sweeteners. Personally, I love the Cherry Lime Grenade and Smashing Citrus Ignite. I’m also a big fan of our Flaming Joe and GOAT CBD drinks as well as our Lemon Lime Lightning Energize & Recover. They all taste great…I think I’ve already said that, but if I were planning to be stranded on a desert island, those would be on my loadout list. My favorite flavor name so far is our Gangsta’s Berry-Dise. That’s a definite lifestyle accessory that everyone should keep in their fridge!
You are a Navy Seal. Thank you for your service. Kill Cliff has partnered with the Navy Seal Foundation. Tell us about the great initiatives being made by the foundation and why this is so important to you and citizens of the US to give back.
Supporting the Navy SEAL Foundation is an honor for us. It is the community that we came from, that our best friends in the world came from, and where many people we are close to still serve and are in harm’s way. The Navy SEAL Foundation is a tremendous, top-ranked charity focused on providing numerous programs to the families of the Naval Special Warfare Community, ranging from family programs and educational assistance, tragedy and survivor support to transition assistance programs. The story often obscured in the media is what it takes to operate at such a high level in support of the country’s most important missions across the globe. The men and women in the Naval Special Warfare Community make a tremendous personal sacrifice for us, so our goal is to ensure that we create a sustainable funding source through our company to help with the programs provided by the Navy SEAL Foundation.
You recently launched Flaming Joe “Spicy Pineapple.” Where did the inspiration come from this drink?
The Flaming Joe is a collaboration with Joe Rogan. He’s a power user of Kill Cliff products and a big advocate for CBD. We started with the idea of a spicy and sweet beverage which manifested as a Spicy Pineapple after about 16 iterations and 3-4 months of work. It’s not as easy as you would think to maintain the flavor of the fruit while turning up the dial on the heat, especially when you are committed to only using all-natural ingredients without sugar or artificial sweeteners. We are very proud of the outcome. The drink tastes amazing and the heat level is very enjoyable. It’s comparable to eating a handful of those small red hot candies, but the heat does not overpower the pineapple.
You have well-known Badassadors. How can we get involved?
Kill Cliff is a lifestyle. We are launching our Kill Cliff Cult Club in early 2021 which will empower our consumers to help us build the brand. We will also be launching our streaming media app for Kill Cliff TV, which will feature original programming and live streams with some of the biggest sports and music personalities. The best way to get involved is to support our brand on social media and as micro-influencers in our nascent Cult Club. We are always evaluating potential influencers and celebrities to be part of our brand. There’s a request form on our website. What I’ll say is that we work with people who authentically love what we are doing and how we are doing it. The most important part of our brand is authenticity.
Tell us about your contest to win a year’s supply of Kill Cliff.
Absolutely. Follow us on social media to win. We are running our 12 days of Christmas special and giving away a one year’s supply of our drinks to winners selected daily.
Share your vision for Kill Cliff in 2021.
We are working hard to make the brand and products as accessible as possible. In 2021 we will provide content to entertain you and beverages to sustain you on your devices and in your neighborhood stores. We are the undisputed clean energy drink champion in American and Beyond. We will continue to create immeasurable distance between us and the other guys…whoever they are.
Please share your social media links.
https://killcliff.com/
Please follow our company @killcliff on every handle.
You can check me out on Instagram @jt.hammer or on LinkedIn under my name.