Michele Gazzolo and Beth Denton thought that the carbonated fruit-juice drinks on the market were far too sweet and way too boring.
Instead of just griping about it, or swearing off carbonated fruit drinks, they invented their own formulations and are selling them under the brand name of Fruitbelt.
No one will ever accuse their tonics of being too sweet or too boring. Their drinks come in three flavors — apple-dandelion, tart cherry-ginger and elderberry-elderflower — and they belt you with tartness and with flavor. Merchants who carry their drinks say customers particularly like them as tonics to be mixed with alcohol.
They launched their company, based in the tiny village of Harbert in the far southwest corner of the state, south of Benton Harbor, in 2016, and slowly built a following, delivering cases to farm markets in Michigan and Indiana and slowly gaining a following that has grown to retailers in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Kansas, Wyoming, Missouri, Iowa and Idaho.
A big early break came in Chicago in 2016 when the founders met Julie Blubaugh, a buyer for Whole Foods, at the Good Food Accelerator, a program that helps food-related entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
Blubaugh said that Whole Foods seeks out locally sourced innovative food products and began carrying Fruitbelt tonics. Since then, Fruitbelt has expanded its presence to all 62 Whole Foods markets in the Midwest.
"First of all, the product is delicious," said Blubaugh. "Beyond that, Fruitbelt was a great fit as a local brand for Whole Foods as it is made with Michigan apples and cherries. We've seen customer interest in Fruitbelt, and we're happy to share that we recently launched Fruitbelt's new elderberry tonic flavor."
Last year, Fruitbelt made a big stride toward increasing sales and distribution when it picked up a statewide distributor, Imperial Beverage of Kalamazoo. Starting in December, they had ready access to stores across both peninsulas.
Gazzolo and Denton hope the Whole Foods' imprimatur and the backing of the sales team of a major distributor will help convince investors to join a round of financing of $500,000 to $1 million they want to raise later this year to ramp up production and increase the product line.
Carolyn Cassin, the founder and general partner of the Detroit-based BELLE Michigan Impact Fund, an investment fund with 51 women partners who invest in women-owned businesses around the country, may end up as one of those investors.
Cassin said she first came across Fruitbelt two years ago but didn't think the company was ready for an investment, yet.
"They weren't this far along, at all. They were carrying their own four-packs around and going to farmer's markets," said Cassin. "And, we had never invested in anything like this."
Cassin is scheduled to meet with Gazzolo and Denton in March to hear their pitch for investment capital. Cassin said the fact that they are in all those Whole Foods and have a statewide distributor are big validations.
What's more, she said, BELLE has since that first contact two years ago made an investment she very much likes in another beverage company, Cask & Kettle, a Battle Creek firm that offers a Keurig-like single-serve cocktails. The company sells its product in packs of five, each with one ounce of a distilled spirit, coffee and other flavors. You pop one into your coffee maker, add some water and you have a nearly instant hot cocktail.
"We were almost the first money in the company two years ago, and now it's in all the Meijers," said Cassin. "We dipped our toes in the food and beverage battle and liked it."
Elissa Sangalli is president of Northern Initiatives, a Marquette-based nonprofit that provides loans to small business owners and entrepreneurs who might have difficulty getting traditional bank loans. She said she is in the process of closing on a loan for Fruitbelt.
"Fruitbelt is a new customer of Northern Initiatives," she said. "We especially love that they are a woman-owned business, sourcing Michigan ingredients and turning them into value-added beverage products."
Tim Braun is brand manager at Imperial. He said Fruitbelt's juices are the right product at the right time. He said customers in recent years have moved away from sweet drinks and mixes, the trend being toward less sugar and more tartness, and Fruitbelt checks both those boxes.
"They reached out to us. They were self-distributing and trying to get their name out there, but they didn't have the manpower," he said. "We liked what we saw and decided to take it statewide."
He said they had their first meeting early in the fall. By mid-December, Fruitbelt was in stores across the state.
"We launched a marketing plan with our sales team, with volume goals for each region. It's been a big focus for our sales team and our 85 account managers around the state," he said.
Imperial has offered case discounts to get stores to buy in volume and perhaps put up displays.
"The feedback has been really positive. Fruitbelt has the advantage of being local and being really distinct," he said. "People are really paying attention to what they are putting in their bodies and being healthier. Consumers want something drier and tarter. That's a direction sales have been going the last two years.
John Langham is grocery manager at Traverse City-based Oryana Community Co-op, a popular two-store co-op that began as a small buyers' club in 1973 for those seeking local and organic products.
He started carrying Fruitbelt last summer. "I really liked it and thought it could do well. We put in a big display and had it on sale for a dollar off a case, and that kick-started it."
But delivery was sporadic. A driver would bring some up on occasion from Harbert, but Langham said he couldn't always use enough cases to make the trip worth the driver's time.
"Customers asked for it. It created a following. The trend is for more nutritional foods, to get away from heavily-sugared drinks. And away from sodas to sparkling waters and teas," he said.
Those loyal followers can get Fruitbelt from the co-op regularly now that Imperial makes deliveries twice a week.
"We're happy to have bought in Fruitbelt and it's doing well."
The apple drink is 25 percent fruit juice, made from Michigan heritage apples supplied by King Orchards in Central Lake, northeast of Traverse City. Other ingredients are organic honey, extracts of lime and caraway, and bitters, which include dandelion and chicory roots, propolis, aronis berries, quassia and cherry bark.
The elderberry drink is 15 percent fruit juice, supplied by an elderberry farmer they found in Missouri, with elderflower extract and bitters.
The cherry tonic is 20 percent fruit juice, from Montmorency tart cherries, also supplied by King Orchards, with ginger extract and bitters.
Propolis is an aromatic, resinous substance produced by bees to cement their hives and is considered to have anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties. It is fitting the company uses both honey and propolis, given that Denton is a beekeeper.
Gazzolo said she has been talking to Michigan farmers about supplying gooseberry and Saskatoon berries, which look like blueberries but aren't as sweet, with a nutty almond flavor. Despite being in one of the best blueberries regions in the world, Gazzolo said they don't have a blueberry drink because the berries are just too sweet to work.
"We aim to bring forgotten fruit crops back to Michigan and the greater Midwest landscape," said Gazzolo. "By working with farmers who are willing to grow them and fruit processors who are willing to convert the fruit in small batches, and by heralding the unique taste and benefits of these fruits, we hope to encourage the widespread revival of indigenous crops, enhancing biodiversity and restoring the soil."
She said she'd also like to add tonics made with black and red currants.
Fruitbelt's genesis was a trip Gazzolo made to the U.K. in 2012. She went into a grocery and bought a carbonated fruit drink that, to her surprise, was neither too sweet nor bland. "I jumped out of my skin," she recounted. "I came home and thought, 'We live in a fruitbelt. We're surrounded by fruit.' I wanted to make a drink I would like."Gazzolo has been a serial entrepreneur. In 2009 she founded Intelligent Generation, a clean-energy software company in Chicago, and helped it raise $1.5 million in startup funding and turn it into a revenue-producing company before leaving in 2012.
In 1995, she founded Inhabit, a women's retail clothing store in Union Pier, Mich., and was CEO until 2003. The company found emerging designers in central and eastern Europe, Japan and Korea for its lines of higher-end apparel.
Since July 2004, she has also been an organizer of a campaign called Friends4Ibrahim, named for Ibrahim Parlak, a Turkish Kurd who was granted asylum by the U.S. in 1991, based on his fear of religious persecution in his homeland. The popular owner of a Kurdish restaurant in Harbert named Cafe Gulistan, he became a cause celebre in 2004 when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security claimed he had once been a member of a Kurdish terrorist organization and started deportation proceedings, which started a long court fight.
In 2018, a federal judge ruled that his deportation would amount to a death sentence after he arrived back in Turkey and said he could stay. Last February, the Trump administration said it would renew efforts to deport him, but he remains in Michigan.
Back in Michigan from the U.K. and sure she wanted to start a company, Gazzolo enlisted close friend Denton as her partner. Gazzolo has the title of CEO and Denton the title of head soda muse.
Why Denton? "Beth can do anything. She's an Ohio country girl who can butcher a goat. She grows her own food. She can figure out anything. She just knows how to do things. Any thing you ask her to do, she can figure out."
In the 1990s, Denton managed a real estate firm in Illinois and then was a school teacher.
In 2003, she started the Sunshine Farm in Galien, near Harbert, doing what is called community-supported agriculture, a farm where a group of members receive weekly shares of food.
From 2010-2013 she was volunteer coordinator of Chikaming Open Lands, a land conservancy group based in Sawyer, near Harbert.
Denton headed up the experimenting with various fruits, bitters and other ingredients before settling on drinks they both thought tart and interesting enough. Their product launch was in 2016, with market acceptance coming grudgingly. They struggled with distribution. They also struggled to find a bottler. Michigan bottlers wanted minimum case runs that were far in excess of what they needed or could pay for, and they finally found a bottler in Pennsylvania.
Once they had the formulations of ingredients to go with their fruit concentrates, they needed to find a commericial formulator, which they found in Wisconsin.
King Orchards sends fruit to Pennsylvania and the formulator sends the magic mixtures that make the drinks pop.
Their first run was of 3,500 cases, and it took them a year and a half to sell out.
They had 6,000 cases bottled last year, a record, and it is nearly sold out.
With Whole Foods and Imperial on board, now, it should be another record-breaking year, and time to raise some equity capital.
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