Taika: The Next Era of Community Building
Novel x Taika
Taika is the beverage brand behind the world’s first perfectly calibrated matcha and coffee — all plant-based, keto-friendly, and adaptogen-infused. They recently joined forces with Friends With Benefits to create Mateverse, AKA the official beverage of web3.
We sat down with Michael Eyal Sharon, Co-Founder and CEO of Taika, to learn how Novel's token-gated experiences are the natural next step for his community-led brand. We dive into:
How web3 imbues digital assets with real-world utility
Why Taika chose Novel’s platform to deploy NFTs
The role CPG brands can play in the digital realm
“Web3 felt like the next evolution for our community-led brand. Nobody but Novel could operationalize Taika NFTs to provide users with real-world value and utility.”
Entering the Next Era of Community Building
Since its start in 2019, Taika has been structured as a community-driven brand. In fact, early drinkers of the beverage could find two mainstays on its packaging:
“Made for friends by friends” — This slogan became Taika’s de facto philosophy and underpins their mission of fueling creativity
Taika’s SMS Hot Line — Taika’s phone number was prominently displayed on their cans since their earliest designs - intended to encourage feedback, and make the brand feel like consumers were texting a friend
Users enjoyed the bit and began texting in, providing critical feedback that would lead to products like Taika’s matcha and oat milk lattes as we know them today.
As Michael summarizes it: Taika built a community — then the community, in turn, built Taika.
Extending Community to the World of web3
As web3 reemerged as a topic of mainstream discussion across the last two years, the Taika team came to a surprising and exhilarating realization:
This new, decentralized model was perhaps the perfect next step for their community-led brand.
Much like NFTs had become markers of exclusivity, Michael explains, his team viewed the phone number on their cans as a gateway to an unofficial Taika insiders' club.
Phase 1: Choosing the Novel Solution
Michael first linked up with the Novel team when his Taika co-founder Kal and him invested.
Michael had been fascinated by crypto since roughly 2013, when Bitcoin was a less-than-serious asset mainly used to buy in his words” pizza and drugs”.
At the same time, he was anxious to figure out how Taika could enter the crypto sphere in a way that meaningfully differentiated the brand from other web3 ploys.
He later found the answer in his deep tech background:
Michael had launched an early mobile social company in 2005
He then ran mobile, pages, and messaging efforts at Facebook for 5+ years
To this day, his work aspires to make it easier to form communities and connect with the people who care about us, returning to the Taika motto: "Made for friends by friends."
How to Create Offline Value for Digital Assets
With that, the Taika team was most amped by how Novel could open up the NFT ecosystem to virtually any merchant on Shopify.
While NFTs and other digital assets presented an abundance of potential use cases, most teams at that point struggled to apply this online utility to consumers’ physical tangible worlds.
As soon as Michael spoke with the Novel team, he could tell the platform was a step ahead of the pack when it came to actually operationalizing NFTs for tactical value.
Even if the path was undefined, he knew Novel was heading in the right direction: democratizing the ability to create NFTs and provide exclusive value to NFT owners.
“Our whole brand philosophy is ‘Made for friends by friends.’ We eventually realized our next level of community building entails NFTs and web3.”
Phase 1: Choosing the Novel Solution
Michael first linked up with the Novel team when his Taika co-founder Kal and him invested.
Michael had been fascinated by crypto since roughly 2013, when Bitcoin was a less-than-serious asset mainly used to buy in his words” pizza and drugs”.
At the same time, he was anxious to figure out how Taika could enter the crypto sphere in a way that meaningfully differentiated the brand from other web3 ploys.
He later found the answer in his deep tech background:
Michael had launched an early mobile social company in 2005
He then ran mobile, pages, and messaging efforts at Facebook for 5+ years
To this day, his work aspires to make it easier to form communities and connect with the people who care about us, returning to the Taika motto: "Made for friends by friends."
How to Create Offline Value for Digital Assets
With that, the Taika team was most amped by how Novel could open up the NFT ecosystem to virtually any merchant on Shopify.
While NFTs and other digital assets presented an abundance of potential use cases, most teams at that point struggled to apply this online utility to consumers’ physical tangible worlds.
As soon as Michael spoke with the Novel team, he could tell the platform was a step ahead of the pack when it came to actually operationalizing NFTs for tactical value.
Even if the path was undefined, he knew Novel was heading in the right direction: democratizing the ability to create NFTs and provide exclusive value to NFT owners.
“We decided to drop an NFT that could double as a key into this Taika members’ club we’d been dreaming of for years. Novel was the surefire way to do that.”
Phase 2: Exploring NFTs with FWB
Taika’s first official foray into the NFT space was with Friends With Benefits, the global digital community for cultural thinkers and builders.
The actual product? A new take on Club-Mate, the classic Berlin club drink, for web3.
While Club-Mate holds 20+ grams of sugar, Taika held true to their product ethos of "stealth health" — or in Michael's words, "absolutely delicious drinks that are secretly healthy for you."
So the brand’s food science team engineered the Mateverse with a formula of:
Zero artificial sweeteners, instead deriving sweetness from natural yuzu essences
Taika’s usual adaptogens and functional mushrooms to encourage a creative flow state
They then worked closely with FWB to launch both the beverage and an accompanying token.
Phase one entailed hundreds of cans, a few tasting sessions with FWB community members, and then implementing feedback for the next round of production.
However, for phase two, the Taika team knew it was time to go beyond the FWB ecosystem.
They figured it was finally time to implement an idea years in the making: a club for all Taika lovers that came with exclusive perks plus like-minded community members.
NFTs were a surefire way to set that plan in action — and Novel was the perfect tool for the job.
“People struggle to decipher the utility of digital goods in the physical world. As soon as we spoke with the Novel team, we knew they had the solution in mind.”
Phase 3: Onboarding & Execution
Although Novel hadn't publicly released its functionality for token-gated content or Ethereum mints, recounts Michael, the team spun up an MVP for Taika in just a few days.
Even when the initial prototype required further adjustments, the Novel team quickly pulled together a handful of new designs, iterations, and tweaks. As Michael tells it:
“They designed a super slick V2 for our token-gated experience in a very short period of time.”
Beyond this, Novel's CEO himself could be found jumping in to help debug and troubleshoot any of the few issues mentioned in its Taika-Novel Telegram group.
Benefit #1: Tactical Utility for Taika Users
In one use case, the brand’s Telegram for its token-holder community blew up with messages about needing a restock ASAP. Most of them had finished their last cans of Taika mate.
Even more, most of these core supporters were Taika lovers who had bought in from day one. Naturally, the team strove to maximize the tactical utility of all of their NFT experiences.
In the end, Novel came through with a streamlined token-gated site for these long-time Taika fans to claim their next stock of Mateverse.
Meanwhile, the brand and platform are currently working through its next drop that’ll enable FWB token holders to also purchase exclusive Taika SKUs. [Add - they followed up shortly afterwards with an update that allowed FWB (ERC-20) token holders to also purchase this exclusive SKU).
Benefit #2: Bridging URL and IRL Connections
Through Novel, the Taika team has been able to directly translate the online value of its tokens into offline perks and (more unique) experiences.
For instance, Taika NFT owners have been able to enter to win tickets to events like:
The Infatuation’s EEEEEATSCON in Los Angeles
A party co-hosted by FWB and SuperRare to highlight NFTs in NYC
Again, Michael highlights how easily Novel NFTs form a "URL to IRL" connection — imbuing digital assets with real-world benefits — in a way other platforms have failed to replicate.
“I’d log in, click around, and realize, ‘Oh, shit. This is completely new!’ Novel’s speed of high-quality iteration is just super exciting. It’s blown us all away.”
Looking Forward: Novel’s Enduring Impact
Ultimately, Michael looks forward to a long-term partnership with Novel because:
While the Taika team could technically run all of these gated membership experiences without NFTs, they run a small company with limited budgets, human capital, and hours in a day.
“Working with Novel has really helped us accelerate all of that.”
Taika produces beverages, but has always been tech-driven at heart with the brand’s food scientists creating proprietary processing techniques and platforms for beverage production.
Venturing into web3 has been welcomed by Taika’s community as yet another lever for building the direct brand-buyer connection and creating long-term value for consumers.
“I’m super excited about Novel’s token-gated experiences because they allow us to unlock loyalty, exclusivity, and true, real-world utility for Taika’s NFT holders.”
