Rowdy Mermaid Sees Rapid Growth as Series A Begins
Colorado-based kombucha maker Rowdy Mermaid is on the fast track following a successful $350,000 venture capital raise. The company has since doubled in size and is now launching a $2 million Series A, founder and CEO Jamba Dunn told BizWest last month.
Dunn has big goals for the brand, which he said sets itself apart from other kombuchas by being transparent about ingredients and sugar on the label. The company recently made the move from a 900 sq. ft. production facility to a 6,000 sq. ft. facility, and has now added another 6,000 square feet on top of that. Dunn plans for Rowdy Mermaid to see even bigger growth in the next three to five years with a $40 million value projection.
“It’s surreal even saying these numbers out loud,” Dunn told BizWest. “It felt like just a little while ago I was in my garage. And just a couple months ago it was only a few of us working for the company, where three of us shared one plastic desk with two computers.”
New York Times: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business
“The United States is becoming a cold-brew nation.”
That’s what The New York Times’ Oliver Strand declared last week in an expose on the coffee trend that is filling innovation pipelines and conveyor belts throughout the beverage industry. With sales driven by the millennial demographic, there’s no question that cold brew is, in fact, hot right now. Speaking to companies, including Blue Bottle Coffee and Slingshot Coffee Co., Strand took a deep dive into the popular product for the Times’ food section, dissecting the taste, downsides, and business opportunities.
Among the risks and downsides, Strand notes that some coffee enthusiasts are still not sold on cold brew’s flavor qualities. What many brands market as an upside — less acidity, smoother texture — some consumers see as a flat, one-note flavor. Yet, even with detractors, there’s still chances to win converts, and there’s no doubt that as summer rolls around sales will continue to go up and up.
Massachusetts Coffee Shop Offers ‘Covfefe’ Blend
The ever meme-able U.S. President Donald Trump had Twitter abuzz shortly after midnight on May 31 when he tweeted out an apparent typo, telling his followers: “Despite the negative press covfefe.” While press secretary Sean Spicer later defended the tweet as intentional, many online had fun with the cryptic word, including several allusions to its phonetic similarities to “coffee.”
Now, Lalajava, a Massachusetts-based coffee shop, is offering up Covfefe Coffee, a smooth coffee blend sold in bags featuring President Trump’s likeness and the slogan “Coffee that isn’t fake.” Shop owner Scott Boyers told Mass Live that the coffee is sold online and has been shipped as far as California.
The Covfefe blend is currently a bestseller and Boyers did not mention for how long it will be on sale. Boyers frequently releases products, including t-shirts, that play off of recent headlines.
Study: Drinking Diet Soda During Pregnancy Increases Child’s Risk of Obesity
A new study by the National Institute of Health suggests the children who women who drink at least one diet beverage per day while pregnant have a higher risk of developing childhood obesity by age 7.
Published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, the study found little difference in childhood obesity risk between mothers who drank sugar-sweetened beverages and artificially sweetened zero-calorie beverages. Mothers who drank water saw their children’s obesity risk reduce.
The researchers used data collected between 1996 and 2002 by the Danish National Birth Cohort, which has studied the pregnancies of more than 91,000 women in Denmark. Approximately nine percent of participants reported drinking at least one diet beverage a day and their children showed a 60 percent increased risk of having a high birth weight and were twice as likely to be obese at age seven.