Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kyle Ober. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kyle, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

Most new Food and Beverage brands leverage Co-Packers to scale their product. Some are crazy enough to attempt manufacturing themselves. We’re in the latter group. After nearly four years of operating in shared kitchens and subleased spaces with only one piece of equipment, our juicer, we moved into an 8600 sq. ft. facility. We were lucky that the former tenants had invested a lot of money renovating the building into a small food processing plant but we still had a long way to go towards building an operation that could produce tens of thousands of bottles of juice per day. We cobbled together used equipment sourced from all over the country: a bigger automated juice press from a Hard Cider producer in Northern Michigan, a 50+ year old filling and capping line from Oregon, an 800 sq. ft. walk in cooler from an out of business Walmart in Louisville, the list goes on. Each came with their fair share of headaches but the learnings have been priceless. We now have an intimate knowledge of what it takes to create our beverage at a relatively small scale which will pay dividends when, I hope, we have the opportunity to scale up again!

Kyle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Kyle and I’m the Chief Operating Officer and Cofounder at ríjuice, a cold-pressed juice beverage manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer. Our company is dedicated to making nutrition convenient and delicious. In every bottle of rijuice there is over 1 lb. of produce that is thoughtfully sourced and pressed with great care, yielding an exceptionally fresh juice.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Six months into the business we committed to vending at a large music festival five hours from our base of operations. At the time we were producing only a couple hundred bottles of raw juice per week which had a 3-5 day shelf life. We calculated that we would need 7,000 bottles to meet demand for the 3 day event. It was a logistical nightmare. We spent our entire bank account on renting a refrigerated truck and inventory. Friends and family helped hand label, fill, cap, and pack bottles. We were able to make 4,000 units in a 36 hour production window. After one good day of sales the festival was called off due to torrential storms. We had over 3,000 bottles of juice remaining that were set to expire in 2-4 days. Against vendor policy we took our cart and pushed it through the muddy campsites calling out to anyone and everyone to purchase at a discount. Enough bottles were sold that way to bring us closer to breakeven. The remaining ~2,000 bottles we gave away for free as cars left the parking lot in an effort to spread brand awareness. We returned to homebase demoralized and with bills due but had plenty of raw materials to keep the operation going. That experience propelled us into taking the necessary steps to extend the shelf life of our product and begin wholesaling sooner than we had planned on.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Getting out in front of customers. During our startup phase we worked numerous Farmers Markets and never shied away from sampling event opportunities with relevant organizations. Our focus is now on scaling regionally through the grocery channel but sampling demos within each store still feel to us one of the best marketing tools a Food and Beverage brand can utilize.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rijuice.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rijuice/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rijuice