First Production Run

We've completed our first Vital Energy production run!

We found out at the last minute that our production run would be a week sooner than we originally scheduled. Since we had such a short notice, Jake was unable to make the trip with me (mike). So I brought my girlfriend Cathy along for the trip.

We arrived the night before and spent the night at my buddy's house in PA. The next morning we were at the co-packer's plant by 830am and prepared for our production, while wearing awesome lunch-lady-hairnets!

They were already mixing up our Tangerine flavor, so we only had to wait 45 minutes to sample the product and make sure it tasted like our control samples we had brought with us. It tasted delicious! Quality control supervisors completed some initial tests and gave the go ahead for the bottling to begin.

The plant had several bottling lines, but we were only allowed to take pictures of our product for confidentiality reasons.

It was extremely hot and humid in the plant/warehouse. I was dripping from head to toe. I can't imagine working there I think I lost 10lbs of water weight!
(check out our video of the process here!)

Since we were a new product, several issues came up during the process, including a broken labeler machine, as well as an assembly line problem. So our Tangerine flavor took almost 8 hours to finish! Luckily Cathy was patient and we hung out the entire time waiting for our Acai production to begin.

We were able to sample and approve the Acai blueberry Flavor by 530pm and it was completed just before midnight that day. We've since shipped 22 pallets of Vital Energy to NY and are in the process of distributing it throughout Rochester. Jake will be blogging about our experiences selling our drink in the next few days.

Until next time...
-Mike

Stop and Restart

So we found out fairly recently that our apple flavor was never shipped due to the flavor house running late waiting for their own ingredients. Mind you we found this out right before our 'scheduled' run (last week).

So after some rigmarole we talked to our bottler and proceeded to wheel and deal with them to set up a new production run date so that our order was not postponed until next month. :(

After a week of back and forth emailing and phone calls we finally nailed down our run date to today, but without our Raspberry Apple punch. Although frustrating, it will allow us to focus with the 2 remaining flavors and come back in a few months with a new product flavor to launch come fall!

All in all we wanted to make sure everyone was aware of things that can and will go wrong with starting up a company. Even though we stressed, have been delayed and are launching with 2 flavors it is all coming together and teaching us something new all the time.

Mike is getting back tonight from Pennsylvania and we should be unloading our truck this Friday! He should be posting some pictures and write a little bit about it soon.

As always, feel free to send us comments or questions about our product/business or about starting up a company of your own.

later
-j

How to set up an improv meeting at Park Ave:

This weekend was Park Ave festival and we were merry.

Luckily we had access to prime real estate on Park Ave and decided to grab a table, some paper and set up a sample station. People are really cautious about getting sold something so we had to make sure they understood that we were giving away free samples! Not just free, but totally 100% free.

Seeing as we didn't register, pay a fee or tell anyone we were going to be here, it didn't take long for someone working the festival to come over and grill us with questions. Not realizing this curious lady was with the festival I started yammering on about the company, our drink and waxing poetic in general. All of a sudden she pulls out this shoe box (new balance) and opens it to reveal a series of lists with all the vendors, their location, and what they are selling. She then squints at me asking why we are not on the list... I was crushed. Here I thought she was interested in my company and I, but instead was part of the Spanish Inquisition and was now calling the higher powers on her cell phone (also in the shoe box... with a bag of Cheetos and who knows what other goodies).

After the run in, we figure we have about 20 minutes before we are shut down, so we press on. We hand out a few more samples until one unassuming guy in shorts and a t-shirt takes a sample, enjoys the flavor on his palette, thanks us and then announces that he is in charge of the festival and is shutting us down (at least he tried a sample first!). Seeing as we are such stand up guys and completely understanding how strapped for cash a start up can be, Joe gave me his card and said to give him a call anytime we want to be in a festival and he would help us out on the fee. Turns out he runs 20+ local festivals including 10 Ugly Men.

So it turns out that if you want to meet the big man of a festival, just set up shop, act like you know what your doing, deny accusations, pose some counter accusations and then wait until they come to shut you down. If you are polite, you just got yourself a 5-10 minute meeting! No calls necessary ahead of time. :D

After that whole thing Mike managed to land our first sale... on consignment with a deli right down the street. Now we just need to see how they did during the festival with selling to strangers.

End of next week we will have many beverages. Looking for local storage right now. Pictures to follow.

-jake