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Danny Stepper and Robert Downey Jr., who appeared at the first Beverage Forum that took place in Manhattan Beach to launch his Happy Coffee Brand.<\/p>\nby Mark McDermott<\/p>\n
In 1994, Danny Stepper was wearing a uniform and a back belt, stocking Coca-Cola shelves at a Food 4 Less in Pacoima. His boss, Robert Macias, would call the store at 4:30 in the morning over the loudspeaker to check on him. The rules were simple: park in the back of the lot, bring in five shopping carts before your shift starts, and remember the store receiver is the most important person in the building. If it\u2019s cold it\u2019s sold. Eye to thigh placements only.<\/p>\n
But the most important part wasn\u2019t about the beverages. It was about the people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have to like you, Stepper,\u201d Macias would tell him. \u201cIf they don\u2019t like you, you won\u2019t win, college boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stepper would be promoted 14 times in nine years within the Coca-Cola system, eventually running the company\u2019s business with Costco \u2014 a relationship that would lead to more than $1 billion in business for his own companies over the past decade alone.<\/p>\n
Three decades later, Stepper is the CEO and co-founder of L.A. Libations, one of the most influential beverage incubators in the country. He has brokered deals with Molson Coors, Coca-Cola, and Keurig Dr Pepper. He has launched brands with Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Obama, Tom Holland, and Robert Downey Jr. He helped build BODYARMOR from a company shut out of its biggest potential retail accounts to a $1.4 billion-revenue brand that Coca-Cola acquired for $8 billion.<\/p>\n
On April 28 and 29, Stepper is bringing more than 1,300 beverage industry executives, Wall Street analysts, retail leaders, and celebrity entrepreneurs to the Westdrift Manhattan Beach for the 31st edition of The Beverage Forum \u2014 the conference he acquired in 2024 and relocated to his adopted hometown with the ambition of making it, as he puts it, \u201cthe Davos of the beverage industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hotel room blocks at the Westdrift, the Belamar, and the Hyatt House in El Segundo are already sold out. Walmart is sending a jet with 15 people. There will be 150 retail executives in the room from, among others, Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven, Sprouts, and Albertsons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s surreal,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cI\u2019m telling retailers, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, you can\u2019t be on stage,\u2019 even though they\u2019re really important. And they\u2019re like, \u2018I can\u2019t miss it.\u2019 It\u2019s a can\u2019t-miss event.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s even more surreal if you follow the Stepper\u2019s singular career arc, a path that took him from a fairly desperate young college grad to a uniformed Coca Cola dealer and then low-level executive, including an accidental detour as a Hollywood movie producer who brokered an unprecedented global deal, and finally to starting his own company and nearly falling into personal and professional bankruptcy in its fledgling days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stepper, a Manhattan Beach resident whose company is headquartered in El Segundo, is still somewhat astonished by the rapid rise of L.A. Libations as one of the key power brokers in the beverage industry. Nor does he take an iota of it for granted. He\u2019s a man who invented his job, and in the fast-moving world of beverages, it pays to be prepared for continued reinvention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a young man anymore,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cBut I still feel like I\u2019m kind of building the airplane as I fly it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beating the odds<\/p>\n
The beverage industry Stepper navigates is defined by a paradox. Half of all growth in the non-alcoholic beverage sector now comes from brands and categories that didn\u2019t exist five years ago. Consumers are, in Stepper\u2019s word, \u201cpromiscuous\u201d \u2014 constantly seeking what\u2019s new. The infant mortality rate for beverage brands is 98 percent. Only two percent ever reach $10 million in revenue.<\/p>\n
That gap between consumer appetite and brand survival is where L.A. Libations operates. The company functions as what Stepper calls the \u201cemerging beverage category captain\u201d for major retailers \u2014 a term he made up and talked Kroger and Walmart into adopting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2011, it was right as Whole Foods was blowing up,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cI\u2019d walk into Whole Foods as a Coke guy, and I\u2019d be like, \u2018Where\u2019s the Coke?\u2019 They don\u2019t sell Coke. It was kombucha and weird elixirs \u2014 you had to hold your nose to drink it. Our big idea was to democratize Whole Foods. We\u2019re going to take Whole Foods to Kroger and Albertsons and Walmart.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pitched the concept to Mary Ellen Adcock at Kroger: let L.A. Libations serve as the outside advisor telling the retailer which emerging brands to carry. She said yes. A week later, Walmart said yes. Their lives changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe retailer is like, \u2018How in the world do I know what to bring in? I have better odds going to Vegas,’\u201d Stepper said on the BeerNet podcast. \u201cSo that\u2019s where we come in. We vet not only the liquid, not only the branding \u2014 we vet the founder, their access to capital.\u201d<\/p>\n
L.A. Libations has grown to roughly 100 employees and expanded into a vertically integrated platform that includes a marketing agency, a merchandising company, and an early-stage distribution arm. In 2025, Stepper launched Taste Tomorrow Ventures, a $30 million venture fund investing in emerging food and beverage brands, alongside a $330 million debt facility for purchase order financing.<\/p>\n
Danny Stepper and Robert Downey Jr., who appeared at the first Beverage Forum that took place in Manhattan Beach to launch his Happy Coffee Brand.<\/p>\n
The portfolio is a long list of wins and quieter losses. Zico Coconut Water, which L.A. Libations helped drive to its Coca-Cola exit. Core Water, sold to Keurig Dr Pepper for $526 million. BODYARMOR, eventually acquired by Coca-Cola for $8 billion. And a roster of more recent launches \u2014 BERO with Tom Holland, HAPPY with Robert Downey Jr., PLEZI with Michelle Obama and Stephen Curry, ZOA with Dwayne Johnson.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s quick to give us accolades for the good ones,\u201d Stepper said on the BeerNet podcast. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole list of ones that we don\u2019t talk about anymore because they didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, the reason L.A. Libations is such a well-respected name throughout the industry is because it has helped brands succeed at rates far above the industry norm. But the grounds are ever-shifting, and if Stepper has any singular gift, it may be a gift for alertness, one that began during those early mornings in a Coca Cola uniform back in the \u201890s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still fail all the time,\u201d he said. \u201cWe think we\u2019re so smart. That 98 percent mortality rate \u2014\u00a0 our batting average is better than two percent, but it\u2019s not great \u2014 just because it\u2019s so hard. It\u2019s such a blood sport, this game. It keeps us humble every time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stepper talks in the shorthand of his industry, where the central fault line runs between \u201calc\u201d and \u201cnon-alc,\u201d and where those two worlds are rapidly merging. L.A. Libations lives primarily in the non-alcoholic space, but Stepper breaks his own rules often. The company brokered the Topo Chico Hard Seltzer deal that brought Coca-Cola into alcoholic beverages. It has partnered with Molson Coors, one of the world\u2019s largest brewers, since 2019. And the Beverage Forum itself is one of the few major conferences that spans both sides of the divide.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery alc company wants to be a non-alc company, every non-alc company wants to be an alc company, and we kind of sit right in the middle of that,\u201d Stepper said on the BeerNet podcast.<\/p>\n
The convergence is being driven by a seismic shift in American drinking habits. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, only 54 percent of U.S. adults say they consume alcohol \u2014 the lowest figure in the poll\u2019s nearly 90-year history, down from 67 percent just three years earlier. For the first time, a majority of Americans believe that even moderate drinking is bad for their health. The decline is steepest among young adults, whose drinking rate has dropped from nearly 60 percent to 50 percent since 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese kids don\u2019t drink like you and I used to,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cI don\u2019t drink anymore. [Neuroscientist and podcaster] Andrew Huberman is a big cause of it \u2014 he said one drop of alcohol is not good for you. And these kids listen to those influencers. People are just being more mindful, and even the ones that are still drinking drink less frequently and drink less.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stepper pointed to a trend the industry calls \u201czebra striping\u201d \u2014 consumers alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks on a single night out. \u201cWhich, to the way I used to drink, doesn\u2019t make any sense to me,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cI was just like, give me as much alcohol as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result is a beverage landscape in which the old categories are dissolving. Non-alcoholic beer, wine, and spirits sales surged 18.5 percent in 2025, surpassing $1 billion. Functional beverages \u2014 drinks infused with adaptogens, probiotics, and other wellness ingredients \u2014 are up 18 percent. At this year\u2019s Beverage Forum, a panel on the blurring lines of alc and non-alc will feature the head of alcohol for Coca-Cola alongside the CEO of the Tao Group, which operates some of the world\u2019s most prominent nightclubs and is watching its customers drink less and less.<\/p>\n
Still, Stepper is cautious about how far the trend will go. He suspects the pandemic played a bigger role than people realize \u2014 an entire generation missed the formative social drinking years of late high school and college. \u201cThe jury\u2019s out,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s definitely shifted. I\u2019m just not sure it\u2019s shifted as much as we think.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4-Lewis-amilton-and-Danny-Stepper.jpg\")
Danny Stepper and Sir Lewis Hamilton, the British Formula 1 racecar driver for Ferrari, at the Beverage Forum. Hamilton\u2019s beverage brand is Algave, a non-alcoholic blue agave spirit.Confessions of a Coke Dealer<\/p>\n
Stepper says everyone tells him he should write a book. He already has the title: \u201cConfessions of a Coke Dealer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI keep saying I\u2019m still living the third act, so I can\u2019t write it yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The first act began with fear. When Stepper graduated from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, his father had just lost all the family\u2019s money. He moved back home, buried in college debt, and made the only plan he had: find the biggest company he could and outwork everyone. So when Coca-Cola came calling, he jumped on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was on salary, all I did was live on my route,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cWeekends, 12-hour days. They saw that, and they kept promoting me. It\u2019s like you can\u2019t hit a moving target.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coca-Cola put him through graduate school at Pepperdine and sent him to Seattle to become the first fully dedicated Coke employee managing the Costco account. He was restless from the start \u2014 pushing the company to redesign its packaging for the club channel, pioneering the 36-pack that\u2019s still on Costco shelves today, even hiring an electrician out of the Yellow Pages to install vending machines at a Costco gas station in Hawthorne. (\u201cWe almost blew up the city of Hawthorne,\u201d he said. \u201cApparently you can\u2019t do electrical at a gas station unless you really know what you\u2019re doing.\u201d)<\/p>\n
He somehow managed to survive Costco\u2019s combative stance towards the big brands.\u00a0 \u201cThey like to fight, especially big, strong brands,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cBudweiser\u2019s been kicked out of Costco. Starbucks has been kicked out. Coke has surely been kicked out \u2014 but never on my watch.\u201d Jim Sinegal and Jeff Brotman, Costco\u2019s founders, liked him. That was the whole thing. Macias had drilled it into him five years earlier, but it also came naturally. Now it was an operating principle. \u201cThey liked me. And so I never got kicked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Hollywood called. A college friend connected Stepper with the prolific film producer Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs), who wanted to make soccer\u2019s \u201cpivotal\u201d movie but didn\u2019t know how to talk to brands. Stepper had an idea: instead of asking permission, ask them for money.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was before anyone was doing that,\u201d Stepper said.<\/p>\n
While still a Coke employee, Stepper traveled to Europe with Bender, met with Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, and came home with $45 million in financing from Adidas \u2014 the largest brand equity deal in Hollywood history at the time, producing Disney\u2019s Goal! trilogy without traditional studio financing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe goes, \u2018When are you leaving Coke?’\u201d Stepper recalled. \u201cAnd I go, \u2018Dude, I\u2019m not leaving Coke. What are you talking about?\u2019 And he says, \u2018Dude, you\u2019re a movie producer now.\u2019 And I go, \u2018I don\u2019t even know what that is or means.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Stepper moved to Europe and spent four years making soccer movies (the Goal! Trilogy, which were a hit overseas but not in the U.S). Blatter liked him enough to ask him to produce the official FIFA World Cup documentary for the 2006 tournament in Germany. Then he came home. He was flying too close to the sun, he said \u2014 single, with unlimited resources, rubbing shoulders with people (such as Harvey Weinstein) whose behavior set off his alarm bells.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m plagued with enough self-awareness to know this isn\u2019t sustainable, the way I was living my life,\u201d he said. \u201cI missed the people at Coke. I needed some normal people in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
He later co-founded Madvine, an entertainment marketing venture within Relativity Media that brokered deals between Hollywood properties and brands like Evian, Absolut Vodka, and Mondelez. But he was already being pulled back toward beverages.<\/p>\n
He called his old Coke colleague Dino Sarti and proposed starting a beverage company. They named it L.A. Libations \u2014 after their daughters, Lauren and Annika.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty sexy place today,\u201d Stepper said, \u201cbut just talk to our wives about a decade ago. We\u2019ve had some really dark days building this company.\u201d<\/p>\n
The darkest days came in 2019. Coca-Cola had invested in L.A. Libations in its early years, buying 25 percent of the company at a $48 million valuation. \u201cWe thought we made it,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cMan, little did I know, five years later, I\u2019d be in an even worse position\u2026.But, you know, it\u2019s just the ebb and flow of life. How it works.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A series of regime changes occurred at Coke. New leadership didn\u2019t see the value in L.A. Libations and pulled the plug on the services agreement that had been keeping the company afloat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey kind of just pulled the rug out from under us,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cI personally financed the company. If my wife knew what I was doing, I probably wouldn\u2019t be married to this day. I bet it all. All the money that we made in movies \u2014 everything was out there. We never missed payroll. We never let anyone go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Right when they were about to hit the wall, Molson Coors came in. \u201cThey said, \u2018Hey, we\u2019d like to do that Coke deal that you had. Can we do that?’\u201d Stepper said. \u201cThat was late 2019, and we just haven\u2019t looked back since.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Stepper had by that point, more than capital or distribution, was a network of older operators in the industry who had decided he was worth backing. He calls them his wolves. Michael Repole, the co-founder of BODYARMOR, called Stepper when the brand had hit $100 million in revenue but couldn\u2019t get into Walmart, 7-Eleven, Sam\u2019s, or Costco because of a Gatorade exclusivity deal. Stepper called the senior leadership at 7-Eleven, where L.A. Libations had just delivered a huge return on the Core Water exit. \u201cI said, I think this one\u2019s got legs,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI think you guys should not have an exclusive with Gatorade.\u201d The exclusive broke. BODYARMOR got into the chains. The brand went from $100 million in revenue to $1.4 billion before Coca-Cola bought it for $8 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was raised by wolves in this business,\u201d Stepper said on the BeerNet podcast. \u201cGuys like Michael Repole and Lance Collins [a serial beverage-industry founder behind brands including Fuze, NOS, and Core Water, and co-founder of BODYARMOR alongside Repole].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI am just trying to make them proud at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stepper is candid about the stumbles even in the good years. ZOA Energy, launched with Dwayne Johnson, did $80 million in its first year and $150 million in its second, but Stepper says the team had the product wrong from the start \u2014 five SKUs with sugar, five without, in black 16-ounce cans that looked like Monster Energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had it all wrong,\u201d he said on the BeerNet podcast. \u201cIf we\u2019d launched ZOA like it is today, it would be a billion-dollar brand. I have zero doubt in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, ZOA is a big success story, and one that Stepper at first wanted no part of. He took a call from a guy he knew at Jagaurnaut Capital, a private equity firm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to do an energy drink with you,\u201d the guy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stepper was candid. \u201cLook, I\u2019m not sure the world needs another energy drink,\u201d he said. \u201cUnless you have something really special, unique and different, I\u2019m not really sure I want to do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have The Rock,\u201d the guy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in,\u201d Stepper said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ZOA partnership had its own full-circle quality. The connection to Dwayne Johnson came through Jaume Collet-Serra, the director Stepper had given his first major job on Goal II \u2014 and who had gone on to become Johnson\u2019s go-to director on films like Black Adam and Jungle Cruise. Once again, it was something beyond the product. The Rock came to him because he had a friend who really liked Stepper.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSomehow they put together that we knew each other,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cAnd Jaume\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, Danny, he\u2019s the greatest.\u2019 What a small world.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3-Stepper-Family.jpeg\")
Danny and Tara Stepper and their three kids. The Steppers are Tree Section residents.A home game\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Beverage Forum was founded more than 30 years ago by Michael Bellas as a gathering of the industry\u2019s most senior executives \u2014 the CEOs of Coca-Cola, Constellation Brands, Pernod Ricard, all sharing a stage with Wall Street analysts. It was the kind of room where, as Stepper recalls on the BeerNet podcast, a bottle cap salesman once walked up to the CEO of Coca-Cola and tried to pitch him on the spot.<\/p>\n
Stepper first attended the forum in 2019, when Bellas called him and asked him to come. His company was running on fumes at that point but Stepper did what he always does, which is to keep on keeping on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t afford it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had no money. Like, we were done. We were about to hit the wall. But I put the flight on a credit card, and I took Walmart and Bristol Farms, the first retailers that had ever been to the Beverage Forum.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0The keynotes were impressive \u2014 the CEO of Coke, the CEO of Pernod Ricard \u2014 but the audience was half empty, there were no actual beverages at the beverage forum, and the venue was, in Stepper\u2019s assessment, \u201ckind of a cheesy hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m like, man, this could be so much more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A few years later, Bellas called Stepper. He was done. The forum was his legacy, and he wanted it to live on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve shopped it around,\u201d he told Stepper. \u201cNobody wants it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith that\u00a0 sales pitch, I\u2019ll take it,\u201d Stepper replied.<\/p>\n
The first thing he did was move it to Manhattan Beach. The second was to rethink the model from the ground up. Every beverage conference Stepper had ever attended was thrown by a media company \u2014 not by a beverage operator. He decided to create the conference he\u2019d want to attend as a person investing a few thousand dollars and a few days of his time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt better be worth it,\u201d he said. \u201cI better move my business forward. I better get some deals done. The only way that really happens is if there\u2019s a lot of retailers present.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then came an epiphany about celebrities. Every celebrity seemed to have a drink. It was an emerging trend in the industry, and one Stepper, with his unusual career path, was uniquely well-positioned for. If he brought the celebrities, the retailers would follow \u2014 and the retailers were what mattered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked the Rock. He said, \u2018Dude, I love you, but I am not going to the Beverage Forum.\u2019 I asked Gwyneth Paltrow. She said no,\u201d Stepper recalled. \u201cThen I asked Robert Downey Jr., and he said yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Downey came, got on stage, then spent the morning meeting with every major retailer in the building \u2014 Walmart, Kroger, 7-Eleven. By lunchtime, he\u2019d launched his brand, Happy Coffee, into 40,000 doors, meetings that would otherwise have required weeks of private jets, security, and scheduling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe word got out,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cThese agents, they all talk. So now every celebrity that has a drink wants to come to the Beverage Forum.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s program features Jason Kelce, the retired NFL center and co-owner of Garage Beer, in a keynote conversation. Chris Pratt and Jocko Willink will discuss their protein brand Jocko Fuel. Elizabeth Banks, co-owner of Archer Roose Wines, will share a stage with Sprouts Farmers Market\u2019s chief merchant. A Wall Street panel features managing directors from Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Evercore unpacking how tariffs, M&A, and private equity are reshaping beverage strategy. Joe DePinto, the longtime CEO of 7-Eleven, will receive the forum\u2019s Lifetime Achievement Award \u2014 a full-circle moment for Stepper, whose Core Water deal made 7-Eleven\u2019s venture arm its first outsized return on a beverage investment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a ton of sizzle,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cBut don\u2019t twist it. It\u2019s about the steak. If you show people a good time, they\u2019re going to enjoy it, but they\u2019re not going to come back the next year. They\u2019re going to go, \u2018Yeah, it was fun, but I can\u2019t afford it.\u2019 It\u2019s not about the fun. It\u2019s about doing deals, moving your business forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stepper lives in the Tree Section of Manhattan Beach with his wife Tara and three school-age children \u2014 one at Mira Costa, one at Pacific, one at Manhattan Beach Middle School.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Stepper first left his parents\u2019 house after landing the Coke job, he moved to Manhattan Beach because he surfed. With the exception of four years in Europe making movies and a stint in Seattle with Coke, he has been here ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve raised three kids here,\u201d he said. \u201cI just love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision to move the Beverage Forum to Manhattan Beach was strategic but also deeply personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to make it a home game,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cOur office is down the street from the Westdrift. We are not party planners \u2014 we have no idea what we\u2019re doing. I thought, the easier I could make it, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turned out to be a stroke of genius for another reason. \u201cEverybody in the Midwest and the Northeast \u2014 they\u2019ve been freezing all winter,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cThey can\u2019t wait to get to Manhattan Beach in April.\u201d<\/p>\n
He acknowledged that the conference has already outgrown the venue \u2014 he could probably sell four times more tickets if he moved it to a larger location. But he has no plans to leave. \u201cI want to keep it here and keep it intimate, because we got the right formula.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Manhattan Beach has been focused on preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Stepper\u2019s conference has quietly become one of the biggest annual events the city hosts, filling every hotel in town and spilling into El Segundo.<\/p>\n
Richard Montgomery, the four-time former Manhattan Beach mayor, attended the first Manhattan Beach edition of the Beverage Forum in 2024 and came away stunned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no idea the volume of it,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cI had no idea the quality.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Montgomery had seen Stepper around town for years, and at one point just knew him as a guy who made soccer movies, but had no idea what that really meant. He was still on council when Stepper brought the forum to town, and helped him secure the friends-and-family rate from the Westdrift \u2014 the city owns the land beneath the hotel \u2014 and connected him with Manhattan Beach\u2019s Michael Sullivan, the LA Car Guy dealership owner, who donated a Porsche for this year\u2019s hole-in-one raffle. But it wasn\u2019t until Mongtomery saw Stepper operating as the connector at the forum that he really understood his sway in the industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a retail marketing genius,\u201d Montgomery said, noting that if he returns to council again, he hopes to officially name Stepper an ambassador for the city of Manhattan Beach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The economic impact on the city is substantial, Montgomery said, noting that the Forum generates transient occupancy tax by selling out every hotel in town as well as generating spending at local restaurants, shops, and services over the two days of the conference. But its impact is beyond financial, Montgomery said. The forum has a global reach \u2014\u00a0 it also takes place in London and Miami, but calls Manhattan Beach its flagship event \u2014 and reveals a side of the town that is little-recognized: as a place where deals get made.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story of Danny and his success, what he\u2019s done,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cHe\u2019s helped put Manhattan Beach on the map. Not that we weren\u2019t already on the map. Don\u2019t get me wrong. But he just adds to the star quality that Manhattan Beach has.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stepper will be the first to tell you that he got by with a lot of help from his friends. Last fall, Robert Macias retired. Stepper, the college boy who had slept with one eye open waiting for the 4:30 a.m. loudspeaker, sat down to write a tribute to the man who had hired him on October 10, 1994.<\/p>\n
Macias, it turned out, had been pushed out of Coke a few years earlier \u2014 just as Stepper had been, years before that. Stepper brought him into L.A. Libations, where Macias built Relentless Trade Solutions from the ground up. Advantage Solutions eventually came calling. They did a deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday he is the closest thing I have to a father,\u201d Stepper wrote on Linkedin. \u201cWhen Coke was done with him, like they were with me, he of course had a home with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Macias had been at Stepper\u2019s first movie premiere in London. He was at his wedding. He was there when his kids were born. He was at his father\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has such a huge impact on my life and so many people\u2019s lives,\u201d Stepper said. \u201cHe taught me how to wake up in the morning.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
If there is a moral to the tale of Danny Stepper, it has something to do with hard work and the ability to maintain a near boundless sense of what is possible. It also has to do with the help he received and the friends he made along the way, and the resulting sense of gratitude that permeates this stage of his unlikely career \u2014\u00a0 when he has somehow actually managed to create the \u201cDavos of the Beverage Industry\u201d in his adopted hometown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were done,\u201d Stepper said, reflecting on how close his career came to ending seven years ago, and on what it had taken to get to a Tuesday morning in April when 1,300 people were about to show up in his town. \u201cEvery time we think we\u2019re good at something, we just remember \u2014 man, we\u2019re so blessed to even be here.\u201d<\/p>\n