musically inclined

We sponsored our first non-guerilla style events this weekend. First was the Ugly Disco where we set up a sampling table. Jake rocked an afro and put on some dance moves before the psychedelic citizens arrived. Disco Fevers ran high and most people needed a non-alcoholic refreshment to go along with their fun. By midnight beer had taken over as the drink of choice, so we packed up and got ready for an early brunch at the Next Door Bar and Grill.

Lesson Learned – buy a very large waterproof Vital Energy banner for all future events.

We were a Gold Sponsor of the Sweet Dreams Brunch hosted by The Cupcake Dreamery for The Hillside organization. Brunch was held at the Next Door Bar and Grill; the food was delicious, and the cupcakes were orgasmic (props on the warm cinnamon bun mini cupcakes!).

Nota from NBC's Sing Off performed at the brunch and wooed all the ladies.

Tonight we will officially welcome our first employee to the company, Patrick Henderson. WOHOOO! This is a big step for us and we look forward to gearing up for the spring and summer!

-Mike

PS. Check out the Vital Super Snowman we built after the Nor'eastern Blizzard that forced us to take a day off

Dropped a bomb on em.

We released our third flavor Apple Raspberry this week. All night Saturday was dedicated to unpacking and problem after problem. The truck showed up 3 hours late, our pallet jack was to big for the lift gate to unload at our house, the warehouse closed an hour after the delivery, and we had to break down 14 pallets (1428 cases) by hand from truck to house to stacking.

Otherwise it went pretty well.

We have hit almost all of our stores with the new flavor and are waiting to see the response. Next week is getting new stores and preparing for another distribution meeting (#4). They haven't said no, and they are still inviting us back. Its still completely up in the air though.

In other news we finally hit 500 fans on facebook! The 1000th fan will get a case of each flavor! So get your friends to join up. :P

The Ugly Disco is this Saturday and we will be there sampling for the first few hours.

On Sunday is the Cupcake Dreamery's Sweet Dreams Sunday Brunch which will feature some give aways and delicious catered food. Vital Energy will be in all the gift baskets!

To emphasize my point: Starting at 1:00 in.

Enjoy,

-J

That Patrick character

So it is now official!!!!! Scott has made his first blog and I am now doing the same. I gotta start by introducing myself to the Vital community. My name is Patrick Henderson and this is my story.

I have known Mike, Scott and Jake starting as early as 1^st grade. We grew up with each other until our parting days from Pittsford Sutherland High School. (I did not shed any tears, I promise) Since then I have attended St. Bonaventure University and have graduated with a degree in marketing. I have recently reconnected with Mike, Scott, and Jake. (Still the same knuckleheads I knew in highschool) I have joined the vital team and we are ready and excited to introduce our product to the community throughout the spring and summer months.

So you still may have the question of who is this Patrick character and how is he going to be tied to the beverage that I love so much? Well here is my answer. As a former energy drink and coffee consumer, I have switched my drink of choice to Vital. We have introduced a completely new segment to the energy drink market and I have made it my personal duty to expose this segment to you. Be ready because Vital is coming to you. Until next time remember that a Vital will fix u right up.

P

P.S. Sorry Scott but the sandman thing does not do it for me either.

Where is April 15th?

As stated by one Michael Joseph, I’ve been very elusive when it comes to writing blogs. Let’s just say that writing is not my cup of tea… or coffee for that matter. That’s why I drink Vital Energy and focus on the accounting aspects of the business.

Since the first of the year things have become very hectic. Busy season at the accounting firm began as soon as I could get over the New Years Eve festivities. I have been busy performing audits as well as doing taxes for our clients. Although this can be very tedious, it is really good practice and I am gaining a lot of experience working for the accounting firm. These experiences help me to correctly maintain the financial aspects of Enertia.

This past month has marked, yet, another milestone in Enertia’s history (besides my first blog). We filed our first tax return. This return proved to be an interesting one and took a lot of time and effort to make certain that everything was entered correctly. The accounting firm has multiple level reviews which eliminates the chance of errors on a tax return. But, it is much more nerve-racking filing your own tax return because you do not have as many eyes looking over your work and you want to make sure everything that needs to be entered, has been entered. Next, will be our personal tax returns, which may prove to be just as interesting.

Always remember that “A Vital-a-day keeps the Sandman away.” (Jake and Mike in no way endorse this quote...)

- Scott

We're now Bi...weekly blogging

For starters, we've agreed on a schedule to blog regularly. We'll be blogging roughly every Monday and Thursday and you'll now hear from all of us, including the elusive Scott and Patrick.

We made the news at a local campus a couple weeks ago when someone placed our stickers in a bathroom. This was almost certainly in there since last October, so we hope people enjoyed what they read!Jake mentioned we had a meeting with a distributor in the area. We had Adam Podlesh, a 4th round draft pick veteran punter from the Jacksonville Jaguars join us for the meeting. He'll be helping us out with marketing and promotional events throughout the spring and summer - Major Beverage Season kiddos.

So a little about our new label and flavor (coming to a store near you NEXT WEEK...sorry for the delay). Raspberry apple is by far my favorite Vital Energy flavor and I can't wait to pound a few cases down.

Our new label has been up and running on our website for the better part of 3 weeks. We felt we needed a new label to more clearly get across just how much caffeine it contains, as well as the abundance of B Vitamins, and lower sugar to help prevent a caffeine crash. We also had to make sure our label didn't 'look like a generic Vitamin Water product'.

The background of our new label looks like a texture from far away, but in reality it has almost 7 single spaced pages of text large enough so you can read it when you're holding the bottle. It should provide some long and intense reading sessions when you are bored in class or waiting for your boyfriend/girlfriend to meet you for lunch. Every other line on the background says that Vital Energy has as much caffeine as 2 cups of coffee or 2 energy drinks (red bulls). We made them nice and vibrant so that they smack your brain from the cooler door.

We've decided to keep our muscle man bottle at least for the time being because we know people recognize it at this point. Let us know what you think of our label, muscle man, etc...Patrick left us this weekend to go see his girlfriend in West Virginia. Which reminds me, I better start prepping for Valentine's Day, something tells me it's coming soon!

Until next time...
-Mikey J...heyyy

On a Superbowl Roll

Great Sunday today and always keeping busy.

It is amazing when I stop and think about how far we have come from almost a year ago. Having almost no knowledge of the industry other than the things we read in the paper and on the bottle to now talking with distributors and starting to host events and bringing on our first full time employee.

The blog has been an easy and effective way for us not only to communicate with all of you but act as a record of everything that has happened so far. While most of it was painfully annoying and frustrating at the time, a lot of them are just funny to see our reasoning and naivety of some of our choices.

We finally got our 2nd product run completed with the new label and the new flavor (Raspberry Apple). That has caused a series of headaches, which we have come to expect but we made it and just need to deal with the lovely blizzard in Pittsburgh.

We just had our 3rd meeting with a distributor and it went as well as it could with a 4th meeting being set up. I guess I would look at it kind of like a 4th round job interview.

There are a few events coming up this month which should be a lot of fun... namely the Ugly Disco on the 27th, a sampling at Hegedorns in Webster, and hopefully the 24 Teddy Dance at St. John Fisher!

On a side note was thoroughly entertained by the 2nd half of the superbowl. Ballsy move to start it off with an on side kick... and it worked. HA!

Favorite ads:
Snickers
Doritos
Budlight

-J

Welcome back and all of that

So its been about a month and we are back after holidays, the flu, travel and being fat idiots with all the holiday food.

The past month has been almost exclusively trying to get our new label design finished and making sure our new order is on track. Looks like we should be having a new flavor joining us mid February with its new ink.

Right now we are overhauling our business plan and getting ready to meet with a distributor and start planning for the spring and summer.

We have decided to focus ourselves in the Rochester as we approach our 1 year anniversary and really try to secure the area before we continue any further expansion outside of the ROC.

If you haven't come to see us at a sampling its an easy way to get to know us and enjoy some delicious beverage!

Whooha

-J