We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful De Lonne Kelly. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with De Lonne below.

Hi De Lonne, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Our mission is to provide a flavorfull healthy and simple options when it comes to breakfast lunch dinner or brunch! Our farm fresh full body flavors allows are customer to choose their own adventure with the pop of the top

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’ve been bartending for 22yrs and stumbled into this Bloody game after growing tired of making the same old plane jane bloody mary’s at the bar I was working at in philly…I’ve got ADHD lol! I decided to put on twist on my bloody mix one magical Sunday Funday. I asked a customer if they like a twist on my bloody mix. They said yes I made a Garlic teriyaki bloody Mary and the rest was histroy. It was a hit had people snapping their fingers and licking their lips. Also at that time i started to focus a lot more on health which led me into reading the ingredients of the food i was purchasing. One day at work I read the ingredient’s of the tomato juice we were using to make bloodys and was like “not today satan!” If it’s nothing something I’d put in my body why would I put it in someone else’s!? Felt like bloody marys should be loaded with fresh ingredients that can actually help your body recovery from the night before or just recover in general if you haven’t been keeping up with eating your vegetables. So instead of having a Tomato juice company dictate the nutritional content and taste of the bloody marys that i was creating. I decided to do it myself and came up with Fairy blood a nutritious flavorful organic locally sourced farm to bottle bloody mary mix that’s packed with over 13 fresh ingredients and made from 24 all natural ingredients! Instead of heat levels Fairy Blood offers flavor profiles like The Sweet Hot Fenicx ( Roasted Garlic Honey and Sriracha) Fiery Ice Unicorn (Thai basil, horseradish and jalapeno) Mild Mannered Mary (Everything you want from your bloody plus a little magic.) The farm fresh ingredients along with flavor profiles allows Fairy Bloody to be extremely versatile when it comes to the kitchen. Its a juice on the go, dinner on the fly or party in a bottle! From Soup marinade or micheladas you can choose your bloody adventure without worrying if your making the “healthy choice.” Not only do I source from local farms also work on the farm that I get my juicy heirloom tomatoes and most of my produce Tutti frutti Farms. They put the same love into growing their produce that I do making my mixes.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

I am the manufacturer of Fairy Blood!. Had not clue what I was doing when I first started producing fairy blood! It took a lot of failures and closes calls to gain the knowledge that I have now and there’s still a lot more to learn. Surprised I did not loose more bottles to spoilage, had no clue about the science behind canning when I started producing Fairy Blood. Just thought you had to submerge the jars in boiling water long enough for the vacuum to seal the jars… Boy was I wrong. As i began looking into legitimatizing my business I also began learning more about canning and water baths. Learned a lot about time temperature controls and the acidity levels needed to insure fairy blood was shelf stable. Its a continuous learning lesson when it comes to manufacturing you can never have all the answers there’s always some sort of tweak to stream line the process just got to keep thinking outside and soak of knowledge like a sponge

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

After 4 years producing fairy blood in Philly. I decided that it was time for my 22yr adventure of living on the east coast to come to an end and moved back to Cali! The growing season is a lot longer in California Built some great relationships with the farmers that I sourced my ingredients from when living in Philly. Had to start all over when i moved back to Cali but knew exactly what I had to do when I got to Cali. Spent the first 6 months trying to meet every farmer i could by checking out every farmers market possible along the 101 from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles ! I’d purchase ingredients to make Fairy Blood and return the following week with bottles for the farmers so they could taste the fruits of their labor. This simple gestures helped in building the relationships that I have today!

Contact Info:

• Website: fairbloodmix.com
• Instagram: fairyblood_
• Facebook: Fairy Blood Bloody Mary Mix

Image Credits
De Lonne Kelly