First article and sales in Buffalo...

First things first, we interviewed with the Democrat and Chronicle earlier this week and it looks like we may be in the paper tomorrow! We took a picture of the three of us in my basement with around 3 pallets of drinks around us. To put this in perspective, we have a total of 26 pallets in Rochester at the moment. I figured it'd be a good time to write a blog and welcome some new readers (hopefully!).

I also thought it would be nice to re-post a video of our first production run we completed last month.


Jake and I are road tripping to Buffalo tonight and will be spending the next few days making new sales there. On Sunday we drove 60 cases to our friend's house near the University at Buffalo, and are using it as a 'Buffalo basement warehouse'. We have a lot of friends and family in Buffalo and thought it would be a perfect place to expand to. We'd like to be available in more places in Rochester, however Coke, Pepsi, and Rochester area distributors control what goes in most of the stores, unelss we can get our hands on some mini coolers! (we're working on this one :)...)

Our sales have been ok in Rochester, some stores are selling out, while others are moving slow. Judging from the positive reviews of customers, we feel this is more a function of our drink not being well known than anything else.

Let's see, before I leave for Buffalo in a few minutes, what have we learned this week? We've hit some bumps, experimenting with different marketing techniques. Our main bump occurred because we put fliers up and handed out poster stickers at a college campus. We were completely unaware that you had to have wall fliers approved by the public safety office at the campus. Of course we wrote a formal apology and will rethink our methods for next time.

It's tough to market on a shoe string budget, but we're pressing forward. We've seen positive results in terms of website traffic and store sales in the areas we have hit with some kick a$ guerrilla marketing (or so we think haha).

Right on,
-Mike