I tasted more of our Squeezed Nectars. They are great. We’re making a peach lemonade, a mango lemonade, and a cranberry lemonade as well as a regular lemonade and a half-and-half (a half lemonade, half iced-tea mix). They are all made with not-from-concentrate lemon juice. I love the peach and the cranberry.
People often ask how we come up with our flavors. There is no real science in it. We usually just get an idea and try it. It may come from a friend or over a lunch conversation. You never know. We have a lab upstairs where we mix different things. There are two people whose job it is to do nothing but mix and try new things. We have fruits from all over the world. It may be grapes from just down the road or mangoes from India or kiwis from Chile. Every fruit has its unique taste–i.e., Florida oranges taste totally different from California oranges. We don’t use market research. We’ll try things. If they sell, we keep making them; if they don’t, we stop. The key is constant improvement. We call it the Quality Juice Evolution Solution. QJES.
My partner, Tom, and I are also working on a book. We met the writer for several hours yesterday. We met at his house and went through little parts of the history of the company. It is amazing how much you can forget. The little disasters in the early days of the company were a regular part of life. They seemed to occur every day. I relived the period where I was living in my car. I actually enjoyed it. When you are 24 years old, living on Nantucket, it is really no big deal. I never felt like I was actually suffering at all. It was an extended camping trip.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to put together a meeting with Marriott. We have been working on this account for years. It could mean significant business to us. Marriott is a prominent food vendor to colleges, which is our target market. It is also huge. We need to be smart and do it right. This will be our sixth attempt.
Last night a friend (our head of marketing) and I jumped into my plane to fly out to Nantucket. The weather was perfect for a good flight and some good surfing. We left after work and figured we could get in an hour and a half of good time. The first beach we went to was so-so and we moved on to another spot. It was also so-so but we went in. All in all it was pretty good. The water out there is still very cold this time of year, so you have to wear a full wetsuit and booties. Once you’re dressed right, you stay very warm. It is an amazing workout. It’s beautiful out there in the water with the sun going down.
Then we went back to my house and ate ostrich burgers. We saw them in the market and had to try them–pretty good. We got to bed early, got up at 5:00 and hit the water again. This morning was better than last night. But still not great. The waves were very mushy. We couldn’t surf long–I had an 8:30 meeting back in Boston. We flew out at 7:00 and I made the meeting just in time.
