This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, and welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau, approaching the end of a week. Episode 5.11 for you here, we're gonna talk about making and marketing a beverage. Now this is no small challenge, not just the making of it, but as I said, the marketing. Now we've seen this done before, a few other episodes of people making beverages, but generally this kind of thing falls in the category of, if you can do anything else, why not look at that idea first?
At least if you're trying to grow a business that doesn't require a lot of risk, a lot of upfront investment, a lot of uncertainty, you know, all of the things I generally try to encourage you to avoid. But still, if you have a calling to make cold brew coffee, like the General Mills employee/endurance athlete you'll hear about in today's story, what can you do but answer that calling? So while training for a 24-hour obstacle course challenge and working full-time, this employee turns cold brew into a money-making energizer. Let's say a quick thanks to today's sponsor, and then on with the story. [Music]
Obstacle courses are fun.
They offer exercise, a challenge, and a moment of lighthearted competition. 24-hour obstacle courses, on the other hand, are serious business. Alex French, a corporate employee for General Mills, was training for one of those insane day-long courses. Between training and work, he basically had no free time and needed frequent energy boosts. Alex and his training partner, Andrew Healy, started brewing large batches of cold brew coffee, wherever they could find a few moments here and there.
By immersing coffee grounds and cold water for 12 or more hours, they could create a rich, smooth, cold brew concentrate that they could dilute with water whenever they needed a boost. It was simple, affordable, and much healthier than the energy drink alternatives they'd seen on store shelves. A few months after that legendary 24-hour race, Alex and Andrew came up with an idea. What if they could streamline their cold brewing process to make the beverage accessible to other people low on time, but who still wanted to enjoy good coffee? With jobs in the marketing department of General Mills, Alex and Andrew had access to data and lots of it.
In early 2014, they noticed that the cold brew coffee market appeared to be at the beginning of a huge spike in growth. Sales were picking up for other companies. New products were being launched, so they thought it was time to jump into the black gold rush, and they did. In homage to how busy they both were when they were working full-time and training for the obstacle course, they decided to name the company Busy Coffee, like B-I-Z-Z-Y, or I should say B-I-Z-Z-Y for some of our international listeners. Cold brewing at home was a technical affair.
They would try various ratios, grind sizes. They even collected a drawer full of sieves so they could narrow down their coffee grounds to a specific uniform size. Is that the right way to say that word, by the way, sieves? Now that I've said that, I'm just gonna go with it. The whole trick in these situations is to project confidence.
It's a sieve, there you go. All right, next, Alex started looking at how they could source their coffee beans. There are dozens of coffee roasters in Minnesota where they lived, and Alex had a pretty easy time finding one interested in partnering. Being the busy pair that they were, they opted to use a co-packer, a company that would create and bottle the cold brew using Alex and Andrew's coffee to create the consistent cold brew they were looking for. Now this ended up being the most difficult and frustrating part of the process.
They didn't need the co-packer to be local, but even so, they traveled all over the country on weekends meeting with potential partners and looking at finances. It was exhausting and it was expensive. Some of the co-packers even charged them for a short consultation. By the time Alex and Andrew found a certified organic co-packer in early 2015 that was willing to do smaller, more frequent production runs to preserve the freshness of the coffee, they were almost out of cash. They had a coffee source, they had a co-packer, they had found a printer for their labels and they had established the LLC, but they didn't have enough money for their first production run.
And without money to actually create their product, busy coffee was on the verge of a major caffeine crash. Alex and Andrew applied to participate in a food and beverage accelerator called FoodX. If they were accepted, the accelerator would invest money in the business and give them training and consulting to help get things going. FoodX called back with good news and bad news. The good news was they liked their idea.
The bad news was they asked Alex and Andrew to move to New York City right away. It was an incredible offer, but the timing wasn't right for them to pick up and move their families. So feeling disappointed, they declined and began to consider shelving busy coffee, womp, womp. But then six months later, FoodX called again and asked if they were still interested. The time in the situation had changed for both Alex and Andrew.
This time, both families were ready for a big move. They each submitted their letters of resignation that week, packed up and moved to New York. With the support of FoodX, they were able to create a fully functioning e-commerce store. They also hired some contract help to get things set up for other platforms like Amazon. And they put in the order for their very first run of bottled cold brew coffee.
In May 2016, busy coffee launched via its own website and on amazon.com with a 16 ounce bottle of cold brew concentrate priced at $9. With the might of FoodX's marketing know-how behind them, busy generated a few thousand dollars that month. By the end of June, they had reached $10,000 in sales. And by the end of 2016, after just six months, busy had generated $100,000 in sales. They attribute their rapid growth mainly to Amazon.
By targeting specific search terms in their product descriptions, busy was able to generate a lot of organic search traffic and a lot of sales. Oh, and whenever Buzzfeed mentions busy, like they have three times so far, they see nearly a 500% spike in sales for that day. Outside of Amazon, things didn't work out so easily, at least not at first. They tried influencer marketing, but that didn't seem consistent or profitable. Various e-commerce tricks didn't have the impact they thought they would.
They discovered that with the exception of amazon.com, people usually buy beverages in retail stores, not online. By increasing their bottle size and reducing the price, they were able to be more competitive in stores. This eventually led to producing a lot more cold brew, which meant a lot lower production costs, which then meant those lower price bottles were all of a sudden profitable. Fast forward to 2018. Busy Coffee has now generated over $1 million in sales since its launch two years ago and can be found in over a thousand retail stores across the nation.
And Alex and Andrew aren't done. They didn't want to spill too many beans about their upcoming plans, but they're said to be brewing up three new products over the next few months. When we asked about the long-term goal, Alex said he just wants to be the leading cold brew coffee brand. A big challenge for sure, but don't bet against a guy who runs 24-hour obstacle courses. [Music]
Okay, so this is one of the few stories we feature in which it really is difficult to grow this kind of business without some kind of outside funding or substantial help, like in the form of the FoodX Accelerator these guys found.
So as I said in the beginning, like if you have an idea to do something like this and you can do anything else at all, like if you got three ideas and two of them are much simpler, well, do one of those other ideas, okay? Because remember that Side Hustle School is not about quitting your job to take a big risk. My perspective is that there are all kinds of things you can do to make money. So in the absence of one feeling like you're calling or your mission or the thing that you have to do, why not choose the one that's the simplest or the most likely to see results quicker? And really above all else, the one in which you can say, okay, if it doesn't work out, the worst case scenario isn't that bad.
I'll just try something else. Now that said, in this story, I think they took a measured risk, okay? So when I talk about reducing risk, like there are things in life we do that are risky. And when you believe in something and you're willing to commit to it, you've done a lot of research and you think like, this is what I have to do, well, then it is a measured risk, like it's something that you should pursue. So in this case, these guys worked on the project for a long time on their own.
And then the first time the accelerator asked them to quit their jobs and moved to New York City, they said no, but then later the time was right. So I had this weekly recap recently when I talked about the right time to quit a good job. In this case, the right time came with the second ask. The first time it wasn't right, the second time it was. So generally speaking, I think the right time to quit the good job is right before you get tired of it.
And I'm not saying you have to walk away with no security. In this case, again, measured risk. They've got this accelerator that's investing in them. They had a background in food and beverage. They really believed in the product.
And so they went for it. And it's not to say that it couldn't have been a failure because obviously it could have been. But sometimes in life, if you believe in something, you have to go for it. And here in this case, we can say, okay, they learned some lessons. They adjusted as they went along, like I always encourage people to do.
And now we are what, two years in and they've done more than a million dollars so far. That doesn't mean they've made a million dollars in profit because in the food and beverage world, like profit margins tend to be relatively low 'cause you have all these different costs, the coffee roasting, the co-packing, the distribution, all that kind of stuff. But still, like to be successful, you're gonna need to have sales of at least that level. So they're in more than a thousand retail stores. They're introducing three new flavors.
I mean, it definitely sounds like they've made the right choice and they've got a good thing going. So congrats to them. Good work, Alex and Andrew. I'm gonna check out some busy coffee on Amazon or perhaps in one of my local retail stores. Maybe you should too.
If you wanna learn more about how they made this happen, maybe check it out for yourself. Just come to today's show notes. Those are online at sidehustleschool.com/511. That's a five one one. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
Don't forget inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Speaking of weekly recaps, I've got another one coming up for you tomorrow and then a whole new set of stories next week. Thank you for joining me and don't forget to do something for yourself today. This is a friendly reminder from Side Hustle School. [Music]
