We were lucky to catch up with Sheetal Bahirat recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sheetal, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I was doing my Master’s in culinary arts and science, when I had to make guacamole for my entire class. After peeling and pitting a whole case of avocado seeds, I had a small bowl of guac and a huge bowl of seeds and peels that were supposed to be thrown away.
Being a food waste researcher – I wondered what we could do with these seeds and peels and when I got into the research my mind was blown.
1. Avocado seeds go directly to the landfill since they don’t compost well
2. We throw away 15M lbs of avocado seeds into the landfill each WEEK in the us!
3. Avocado seeds have lots of uses – from being able to be used in beverages to cosmetic ingredients to even being able to pull heavy metals from water
So I started the company to utilize these avocado seeds in a productive way – keeping them out of the landfill, utilizing them for health and wellness and then composting them at the end.
Our first product is Reveal – the world’s first avocado seed brew – a delicious beverage that has 3x more antioxidants than a green tea, prebiotics and has all the same health benefits of a kombucha without the sugar, bubbles, and food waste!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I started my career as a personal stylist and though my work there realized that people were coming to me with problems that fashion alone couldn’t solve. I found that my clients that started to eat healthier and incorporate an exercise routine changed their lives completely and I fell in love with the power of healthy food to change lives.
From there, I started a cold pressed juice company to help people get more nutrients, and quickly discovered how beautiful fruits turn into a “pile of trash” when they come out of the juicer. This made me wonder what I can do with them and it kickstarted my journey into studying sustainable and upcycled foods though my masters in culinary arts and science. My master’s thesis was on the avocado seed!
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
Creating a beverage from avocado seeds means we had to answer a lot of different questions:
1. What does an avocado seed brew even taste like? What did we want it to taste like? How can we use packaging to set expectations? We had to go through a whole exploration process to understand what customers expected, and how to wow with a formula. It was a really fun journey with over 400 hours spent in front of customers taste testing the product and many more in the lab and kitchen formulating!
2. We had to create a whole avocado seed supply chain from scratch. From figuring out how many avocado seeds fit in a box, to how many fit into a kettle, how to wash them at scale and how to store them. We spent a lot of time running around the streets of NYC with a cart collecting seeds from restaurants. It was a fun journey and we are finally able to get our seeds at scale!
3. When we first started, we only had worked on bench top formulation (with regular house hold equipment) and had to learn how to scale up our process so we could make many bottles at one time!
The biggest lessons are to go one step at a time, write down all your questions and make a list of ways you can find answers, and then tick them off one by one. The most fun part was getting to work with amazing people who helped us along the way!
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Initially I got some funding by applying to competitions, requesting professors for funding to complete lab work, learning how to do things myself instead of paying for other people to do it and then eventually started applying to accerlator programs and angel investors. Fund raising is never easy and you just need to spend enough time and talk to anyone and everyone you know about what you are trying to do, and be relentless in tracking people down.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.drinkreveal.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkreveal/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/51691774/admin/
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