Uproot makes plant milk dispensers for cafeterias, primarily for universities. Kevin shares his 5-year journey creating Uproot, from throwing away 8,000 gallons of plant milk once (due to the manufacturer's mistake) to finally experiencing exponential growth.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:07:20) Origins
(00:16:35) First Customers
(00:19:06) Gap in Market
(00:22:50) Team
(00:29:29) Plant Milk Dispensers
(00:32:27) Covid
(00:34:36) Single-Serve Cartons
(00:37:25) Challenges
(00:43:01) Mentors
(00:44:24) Sales & Customers
(00:47:28) Business Model & Pricing
(00:49:41) Advice to Self
(00:56:02) Work-Life Balance
(00:58:36) Advice to Entrepreneurs
(01:00:15) Fundraising
(01:01:03) Thanks
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Rhaime Kim (00:00):
Kevin Yves is the co founder and CEO of uproot, which
makes plant milk dispensers forcafeterias primarily at
colleges. Kevin and I met atBrown University five years ago,
when we got a small summer grantto work on our businesses. Tell
me about your products. So youmentioned dispensers, what are
(00:20):
your products? And could youtell us more about your milks?
So right now, Pruett offers adispenser program for plant
based milk catered towardsmostly college cafeterias. But
really any cafeteria, we providea dispenser to these cafeteria
locations it goes on thecounter, and it serves up root
(00:40):
products. So we do an oat milk,a soy milk and a chocolate pea
milk.
Kevin Eve (00:46):
And yeah, students generally it's an all you can
eat dining hall, students cangrab as much as they want, they
can drink it, put it in coffee,put it in cereal, or oat milk
has made with organic oats,which is important to some
people because there's no Glyphosphate or other pesticides on
there. And we do a reallydelicious chocolate pea milk.
It's made with a ton of cocoapowder. No like, yeah, you read
(01:07):
it likes it. Yeah, no fakechocolate flavor, just a ton of
cocoa powder. It's reallydelicious. And then the classic
soy milk, a little bit ofvanilla, eight grams of protein,
same amount of protein is dairymilk. When students go back to
school this fall, I thinkthey'll probably be like
maybe a quarter million studentsthat it feel like you've took
(01:28):
the entire enrollment of
Rhaime Kim (01:30):
the or you said a quarter million.
Kevin Eve (01:32):
I mean, that was that was back of my hand. But I mean,
we have some some very largeaccounts. I know I you
Bloomington 30,000 People innorthwestern 50,000. Students.
Yeah. Vanderbilt 50,000students, and it's about 40
accounts. gets up there.
Rhaime Kim (01:49):
Yeah, that's so cool. And like, I just feel like
even back then I was working onthis like crypto idea. Love it.
But even back then, like I felt.
I mean, I just think it'samazing that you've been able to
have the patience to just likepush through. And what was that
process? Like?
Kevin Eve (02:07):
It's definitely been a test of patience. And it's
definitely been something whereI thought they would go faster.
Yeah, definitely, if you askedme summer of 18, where we would
be in five years, I would havethought we'd be much farther
ahead. A lot of it, I think wasdue to COVID. COVID is pretty
much a two year setback for us.
And that was the biggest test ofpatience. But I always believed
(02:30):
in what we were doing. And Ibelieved that we could deliver
value. And I'm very happy Istuck with it. And I'm very
happy that you know, ourinvestors continue to put money
into the business to keep thekeep going. And we're now 13
months of exponential growth.
For our dispensary business.
Just super exciting. finallyseeing the fruits of this
finally, you know, we havereputation. We have built trust
(02:54):
in our customers and yeah,uproots it's getting out there.
Rhaime Kim (02:57):
I wish I had that because not to shade some of the
other competitors out there. ButI became lactose intolerant
while I was at Brown, whichsucks cuz I still eat cereal
every day. Um, but I learned thehard way I was lactose
intolerant. And I just feel likeif I had that variety of like
milks, it would have been great,because the alternatives that we
had were, I mean, they I feellike there's just a lot of sugar
(03:20):
they just didn't, you know,weren't very palatable. So it's
super cool. But um, how have youthought about like, the offering
different pot plant milks versusoffering different flavors?
Kevin Eve (03:30):
Yeah, I mean, I think it comes back to the way, you
know, uproots b2b. And so wethink about milk plant based
milk more as a service to thesecafeterias rather than the
product rather than an oat milkor soy milk. So what we wanted
to do is create an all in onesolution for these cafeterias to
meet the needs of theirstudents. So it's a it's a
service that we provide. And itwas very clear that there is a
(03:54):
demand for different varietiesof plant based milk. I mean, I
enjoy soy milk. I think ittastes good. And I like the
protein. And it's that's what Idrink. But obviously, oat milk
is super popular, it's probablybetter than coffee. So we knew
from day one that we needed tohave a variety. And we actually
started out also offeringcoconut milk and almond milk.
(04:14):
And then we paired it backbecause we got some feedback
that a lot of cafeterias arescared of allergens or not
scared of allergens, but it is Imean, allergens are scary
anaphylaxis is scary. And if youcan, people wanted to remove
allergens, so we dropped thosevarieties and that's how we
ended up where we are.
Rhaime Kim (04:33):
Yeah, cool. We do plant milks. Why are you
interested in cooking? Are youlactose intolerant? Like me?
Like what got you into the plantmilk business to start with?
Kevin Eve (04:47):
I started drinking plant based milk. Probably when
I was like two my brother.
Rhaime Kim (04:53):
What a year. Is that? Is that? That's right.
Kevin Eve (04:57):
Yeah. My brother and I were like Sick toddlers and a
homeopathic doctor told my momto take us off dairy. We were
getting ear infections. And shedid and we got better and so and
so we were dairy free. I mean,you never know like, I don't
know the exact type of allergy.
But I grew up drinking rice milkat the time, I was not a fan of
(05:20):
the taste of soy milk. And yeah,
Rhaime Kim (05:26):
yeah, cuz, I mean, I mentioned I was like, okay, that
must have been in the 90s. Iguess you mentioned late 90s.
And I was was it easy for youknow, your mom, you know your
parents to like, find plantbased milks? What were I
Kevin Eve (05:43):
mean, it was it was like gen one, there was like a
token there was like an icecream sandwich. And there was
some like, kind of like KraftSingles cheese, like really
wasn't very good. My mom wouldmake we make together like a
vegan yogurt with like chickpeasand there was like a powder,
like a packet of like powderthat went in it. So that was
(06:04):
pretty tasty, but it was veryhard to find. And if you're
traveling, like you're prettymuch out of luck, I think pretty
quickly. I learned that you canhave cereal with water, and to
almost stop drinking milk.
Rhaime Kim (06:17):
That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. But I've
done that. Yeah, it's
Kevin Eve (06:21):
totally doable. And it's a pain in the butt. At
least back then. When plantsmoke was not a thing. Yeah. So
I kind of gave up. But yeah, Iwas always as a kid. whipping up
stuff in the kitchen. My momliked to cook, she would cook
dinner for my brother and my dadand I and every night and so I
would help her cook. And then tomess around. I would put like
(06:42):
chocolate chips and stuff in abowl and melt it and make it a
little concoction. So I wasalways I was drinking plant
based milk and I was making foodstuff. My entire life.
Rhaime Kim (06:53):
Yeah, that's cool.
And I think it's it's hard likeI am Korean and I grew up in
Korea for a lot of my childhood.
And I think being in the US,it's really hard to avoid dairy.
So unless you've been Yes, it'slike cheese ice cream. And like,
you don't want to be thatperson. It's like, oh, I'm
(07:13):
lactose intolerant. It's likeno, like, trust me like you
don't want, like it's a realthing. So 2018 Your Are you a
senior? a rising senior then?
Yeah, I was a rising senior.
Yeah. And how did you take whatyou learn from the summer and
then start like building thebusiness and like build it into
(07:36):
your full time work? Well,
Kevin Eve (07:38):
so I was a rising senior in this, or I was I was a
senior in the spring of 2018When I got the inspiration for a
brute, but then I graduated inJune. So when I was working in
the lab, I was actually alreadya graduate. Okay, yeah. I had
already teamed up with PhilipMatthew, who was my friend and
collaborator at Brown. I studiedengineering, we worked on a
(08:01):
extra curricular team that builta race car. So it was very
entrepreneurial. We were used tobuilding stuff, kind of
inventing stuff. And we it's thesame
Rhaime Kim (08:11):
race car. Yeah.
Kevin Eve (08:13):
Yeah, thing we've been kicking, usually jokingly
around different startup ideas.
And then I was struck with thisidea of bringing better plant
based milks to food services.
And actually, we actuallystarted thinking about how to do
it in the home with dispensers.
Over the summer in the lab, Irealized that most homes don't
(08:36):
go through enough milk toward adispenser. But looking at our
dining hall, which is veryclose, I thought, oh, there's a
location that uses a lot ofplant based milk. And so started
calling a bunch of collegecafeterias. And they all are the
ones that spoke to me said,yeah, hey, we need to a better
plant based milk. And so thatwas how we settled on that idea.
(08:58):
And at the end of B Lab, kind ofthe big project for me was
building a business model to tryto figure out, okay, how big is
this business? How much could wesell in five years? And can we
make money doing it? And at theend of that, I decided that
yeah, like, this isn't this is agood business. There's a lot of
(09:19):
colleges in the US. There's alot of kids drinking plant based
milk. And if you offer a greatproduct, I think colleges would
pay a lot for it. Yeah. So Isaid, Alright, let's give it a
go. And Philip was on board. Andso we started working on it. I
mean, I fortunately had somesavings. I mean, essentially my
parents money, but I had somesavings. And so we bought
(09:43):
equipment and started rentingspace in the kitchen and started
making milks.
Rhaime Kim (09:47):
Yeah, I mean, I love that. I think it takes a lot of
courage to run with your idea. Ithink especially coming out of a
institution like brown. I'm sureyou had some folks just go into
traditional pathways and I thinkIt's really awesome that you
guys like cobbled it. Likecobbled up what you had and
initially getting off. Like Iremember back in the day, you
(10:07):
mentioned that it's one thing toplay around with recipes and
understand things better. Butcooking bigger batches is a
totally different. It's justdifferent to make things bigger
batches. So what were theinitial, like, hard parts of
your business? And I guess youkind of thought about your
business model, and were able tomake progress there. But was
(10:29):
there anything about the productitself that you had to learn or
connections you had to build?
Kevin Eve (10:35):
I mean, it was I knew nothing about the food. I knew
about making small batches, likeyou said, in my kitchen, but I
knew nothing about how food getsmade at scale. So it was just a
lot of googling early on. Therewere some very helpful people,
we were renting kitchen space atthis place called Hope in Maine,
near Providence, Rhode Island.
And so there were some folksthere, that really got us
(10:57):
started, you know, I took theselike food safety classes, they
kind of pointed me in thedirection of different
ingredients, suppliers, but Imean, it was a lot of googling a
lot of just kind of like,spending hours and hours and
hours researching and trying tofigure out you know, how can we
make soy milk? How can we makeoat milk? What's in the, these
(11:19):
products? But yeah, I mean, theinformation is all out there. It
was just a matter of grinding itout and getting it done.
Rhaime Kim (11:25):
Yeah, for sure. was a big part of your research.
Also speaking with peoplethough, or once you knew were
you able to rent kitchen spaceand kind of test out like
whether it's like boilingcertain things, like test out
kind of what you learned inpractice.
Kevin Eve (11:42):
I'm gonna think the actual process So originally, it
was like, Alright, I'm gonnamake we made I mean, soy milk.
Yeah, the way you would make itat home. So we got soy beans,
and we blended it up and weboiled it. And then we had soy
milk we made almond milk by bygrinding up almonds. We made oat
milk by grinding up oats,
Rhaime Kim (12:00):
which I tried. I remember I think like once we
were doing a potluck orsomething and you brought
something with like a like aTupperware with like a red tarp
and like, like, these are milk.
Oh my God, it was really good.
But I remember seeing like thebeing kind of like a note there
being like the grinds,basically. Yeah. The whole
(12:20):
process.
Kevin Eve (12:21):
Yeah, but then. So we very quickly realized that. I
mean, it's a ton of work. Andyou grind it with your hands. In
a blender. You stick it on ablender.
Rhaime Kim (12:31):
I guess like my blenders are like cheap
blenders. They can't blood likeany like, probably can't even do
eyes properly. So, but I guessyou can get a food processor.
And yes, like, Well,
Kevin Eve (12:42):
shall I actually, I was an intern this summer before
at SharkNinja, which makes me soI actually got her a blender for
free among a host of otherappliances. Nice. So shout out
to them. But yeah, it was. Thankyou, Ninja. But yeah, it was a
blender that I pilfered fromSharkNinja Yeah, but yeah, the
biggest unlock was realizingthat there are food suppliers
(13:06):
that provide ingredients thatare kind of pre processed to
make milk a lot easier. The foodindustry is very kind of split
up, because that's moreefficient. Like there's one
factory that processes soy beansand kind of splits it up. And
then you can send it to the manydifferent final products, one of
them being plant based milk. Soyeah, we started buying an
(13:30):
almond butter, and soy flour andoat powder, and pea protein and
cocoa powder. And thosecompanies also will they'll give
you formulations and recipes forplant based milk. So that was
kind of the biggest unlock. Andthen yeah, talking to the folks
at the kitchen to figure out howto pasteurize it and how to cool
(13:53):
it down fast enough that it'sfood safe. And talking to the
health inspector. Yeah. And thatgot us to pretty good
formulations and processes thatwe could use in the rental
kitchen.
Rhaime Kim (14:04):
How long did it take from y'all having the ideas you
have they're doing in the springof 18? You're working on it full
time by the summer, from thesummer onwards, like how long
did it take until you had one orall the flavors down?
Kevin Eve (14:20):
Yeah, I mean, so you're a part of this. We were
doing. I was thinking I wasworking on the formulations. In
the late summer and early fall.
A lot. Yeah. In my apartment,mostly on the weekends when?
Yeah, I had. I mean, I wasn't Iwas, yeah, I was full time on up
here. But yeah, for whatever yousaid during the week, I would do
(14:40):
kind of more of the like,computer work and then the
weekends I would spend the timeblending up different things and
then I would host the tastingparties to get feedback. We had
everything ready to go by late2018. I think we were hoping to
get some customers going thatsemester. We did not but we had
everything in place. Yeah. Andthen when school came back in
(15:02):
2019, we had dispensers atJohnson and Wales and brown.
Rhaime Kim (15:08):
I mean, that's really quick turnaround. Right.
So I guess it took about a yearuntil the products were in
clients hands, or at least lessthan a year.
Kevin Eve (15:20):
Yeah. I mean, because when I had the idea, I mean, it
was kind of a different idea. Inthe idea that I had in the
spring of 2018 was, yeah, Imean, that was not what we ended
up doing. That really onlyhappened in B Lab. So we were
able to go from like, what wasthat July? Originally, it was
going to be for the home, it wasgoing to be a plant milk and
(15:40):
maybe other beverage dispenserfor the home. Yeah. And realized
that, right, it didn't make anysense. Because homes didn't use
enough beverages to make adispenser worthwhile. So yeah,
we really only kind ofidentified what we're gonna do
in the summer. And then yeah, itwas about less than six months
to mark. It. Was pretty fast.
Rhaime Kim (16:03):
Yeah, it really is.
And it's so cool. So brown is inProvidence, and Johnson and
Wales is also an is inProvidence, Rhode Island. Yep.
So it's, it's really cool thatyou're able to like then see it
in action, you know, so howWait, how, how long? Did you
live in Providence? And wasPhilip also living with you for
a
Kevin Eve (16:22):
year? I mean, we didn't live in the same. Yeah,
actually, we did we livetogether for the summer during
the lab. So summer.
Rhaime Kim (16:29):
A lot of us did that went together.
Kevin Eve (16:31):
And then. Yeah, so the, I mean, the rest of the
story in the fall of 2018. Oncewe kind of had, actually now, I
mean, I forget the actual, thedates, I think in the fall, or
maybe I think we applied formore funding from Brown for the
brown venture prize, which
Rhaime Kim (16:52):
did you have your customers, and then you applied?
Kevin Eve (16:56):
I don't think we had customers when we applied, okay.
And the same. I also applied forthe Rhode Island business
competition. And I think it wasboth, like around the like,
final pitch. And the final roundof interviews is when we finally
had the first customers finallyhad, like a great time and we
had the photo of the upperdispenser in the cafeteria, we
(17:16):
had some good numbers coming outof Brown University. And that
was enough. I mean, I think theylike to see our hustle. And so
we've won both of those. Sothen, yeah, we had that was
about $100,000. And that was ourfirst funding. Yeah. And yeah,
that let us produce the productfor that spring and serve those
(17:39):
two customers. And it also paid.
Yeah, a little co foundersalary.
Rhaime Kim (17:46):
Yeah, that's so cool. Was that? So you mentioned
it was a brown grant. And werethose two were they grants or
were they like investments?
Both? Both grants? Yeah, that'sgreat. And must have made you
feel like a lot more. Like youcould? Because, like, 100k for
two people, like when you're inProvidence, like you must have
(18:08):
been like, okay, that gives me abit more runway. It
Kevin Eve (18:11):
gave us a lot of runway. Yeah, at that point. I
wasn't on a salary. My cofounder was on a salary. Yeah, I
think we only spent like $20,000on the product. I mean, we
probably I think we sold like$15,000 of milk that first
semester. Probably sold.
Rhaime Kim (18:28):
No, probably I probably zero to 15.
Kevin Eve (18:30):
Yeah, yeah. And a few months. Yeah. I mean, that money
lasted us, probably until almostthe end of 2019. But yeah, it
gave us the confirmation andconfidence to keep going, I
think, yeah, I think we hadn'tgotten that money. And I mean,
our our first pilot was asuccess. But it wasn't like a
(18:54):
full success. There was a lotthat wasn't right about it. And
yeah, who knows if we would havekept going? Yeah. Because it was
helpful. Yeah, very helpful.
Rhaime Kim (19:06):
It sounded like you had conviction from the very
beginning. So did you alwayslike have that conviction that
it would like, like, why wereyou so convinced that this was
going to work out?
Kevin Eve (19:17):
I mean, I knew that I wanted to drink plant based
milk. Yeah, in my cafeteria, Iknew that plant based milk was
only getting more popular. And Iknew that the solution out there
was not good. was missing on alot of factors. And I yeah, I
just had conviction that if wework hard, we can deliver a
(19:39):
great product like we workedreally hard, and we came up with
a fun name. I mean, at least Iliked the name upgrade. And so
memorable came you know, weworked really hard on the
branding. We wanted to connectwith young students. We wanted
to be upbeat and natural. Inmodern. We wanted the milk that
tastes really good. We spent alot of time doing that. We
wanted to nutrition to beperfect or not perfect, but we
(20:02):
want the nutrition to be good tohave as much protein as dairy
milk, so people feel satisfied.
So I felt confident that wecould deliver a great product.
And I didn't think any buddyelse, that many other people
were kind of stupid enough orhad the same conviction that I
did. I didn't, you know, it's aniche market. I don't think a
lot of other people see couldsee what I could see. And so I
(20:24):
had some conviction that if wecould get it going, we would
have a lot of success.
Rhaime Kim (20:29):
Yeah. And that makes sense. Because it's, you know,
being lactose intolerance andtrendy, it's like a real like,
thing. Yeah, I guess people upuntil now probably just avoided
dairy if they had GI issues.
Yeah. And so it totally makessense in that gap. Like, I guess
you're like, hey, there's just agap in this market. So we're
(20:51):
going to do the create the rightthing, and you know, it's gonna
work out is your would you sayyour products are like more your
milks are the dispenser? Andlike, all the supply chain?
Like, I think all those thingsare important. But how do you
view the business?
Kevin Eve (21:09):
I mean, I view it as a service. And when we talk to
our customers, we say we have aplant based milk dispenser
program. So I think it's aprogram. It's not just the
milks, it's not just thedispenser, but it's the fact
that they all integratetogether. It's the fact that we
make sure that our products areavailable in the right
distributors. And it's that wehave good customer service. I
(21:30):
think that a lot of otherplayers in the space few other
players in this space. I don'tthink any other no other players
in this space can do all ofthose things well, so do the
branding, the productdevelopment, getting it made the
customer service, getting gooddispensers, getting them placed
in the cafeterias getting thedistribution set up, nobody
(21:51):
else, I think does that reallywell. You have like CPG
companies that are taking theirproducts and their brands and
their supply chain from retail,and trying to bring that into
food service to get someincremental revenue, or maybe
some exposure, but they oftendon't have the sales force or
the customer service. And theydon't, yeah, but oftentimes they
don't really care, I think I seeis what we found. And then maybe
(22:15):
you have some of the more likewhite label the food service
players, and they maybe havemore sales force, and they kind
of know the business, butthey're not as savvy on the
brand side or the productdevelopment side. So they
couldn't really deliver like anauthentic, high quality plant
based milk to college customer.
I don't think you'd ever makethat connection. But yeah,
(22:36):
uproot can where, you know,Jacob and I, my co founder and I
are our 27 year old, plant basedmilk evangelist. And so it's
really natural for us to go intothese cafeterias and bring them
up.
Rhaime Kim (22:50):
So your co founders, Jacob,
Kevin Eve (22:52):
yeah, so it's a little complicated. At the
start, I was, I started workingon operate with Philip Matthew,
my friend from Brown, before wewon the grants at the end of
2018. We had overlapping skillsets for both physics and
engineering graduates. So weboth kind of wanted to be doing
the same jobs. And for whateverreason, started having some
(23:13):
disagreements. And I also thinkpersonally, he wanted to go in,
I mean, he's now in academia.
And I think he saw upward andrealized that it wasn't as
sciency, as he expected. At the,you know, early on, were
thinking of being more hardtech, where it really went
towards sales and marketing,essentially. And so he decided
(23:34):
that it wasn't for him, and hewanted to move on, and
thankfully gave me three monthsto find a replacement. So that
was, like December of 2018. Hesaid, he wanted to move on. And
I had three months to findsomebody. And so I texted all my
friends and said, Hey, do youwant to work on a plant based
milk business with me? Or do youknow somebody who does? And
(23:55):
fortunately, one of my friendssaid, Yeah, I know, the perfect
person. He lives in SanFrancisco. He's vegan. He just
finished working on hisbrother's cookie delivery
business. And he's a great guy,you should talk to him. So I had
a few calls with Jacob. He wasinterested, he flew out to
Providence to meet me and checkout the business. And actually
he then moved, you know, movedinto my part for a little bit.
(24:18):
And it was a great match,fortunately, yeah. And it's
been, yeah, four years ofworking with Jacob and very
fortunate to have found him.
Rhaime Kim (24:29):
I think it's so great, because there's so many
people who are like, oh, like,you know, there's a lot of like
family businesses. There's likea lot of like, different
philosophies or realities thatpeople have when it comes to
like, who they get into businesswith, but I think like, maybe
because it was a friend of afriend, you probably trusted
that person's judgment, but it'sso good that that
serendipitously, like worked outright now a brute for full time
(24:51):
employees. Is it you and Jacob,it's just Jacob and if that
like, I guess Jacobs that hugepart of like, uproot and So
that's really cool. And were youlike, close with that friend?
Like, how did you? Did youexpect? Yeah, I mean, he flew
over that's like a lot,
Kevin Eve (25:07):
ya know, I I think it speaks to Jacob, you know, I
think you have to be a littlefearless to be an entrepreneur.
And he has that fearlessness.
And he did it. And yeah, I thinkwe're both I'm super lucky that
Jacob I mean, Jacob is a greatguy. I mean, he's, he's good to
work with, but I think like thequality of his character is is
(25:30):
very high and thankful to havemet him.
Rhaime Kim (25:32):
Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, you
and Philip both have likeengineering backgrounds. And I'm
curious how you and Jacob as atwo person team, how do you
divide the work?
Kevin Eve (25:44):
Yeah, thankfully, it's a much more natural
division of duties andinterests. So Jacob studied. I
think he studied marketing andfinance, but he was working
marketing previously. He's supersocial. So he loves sales. And
he does. So he does more of oursales, marketing, and operations
stuff. I like to do more numbersand blend stuff up in the
(26:08):
kitchen. So I do our accounting,financial planning, analysis,
and more of the technical sideof the operations work. So
working with CO packers andfiguring out our formulations
and things like that. But westill, I mean, we collaborate on
almost everything we sit next toeach other, at least four days a
week in the office. And yeah,pretty much. Yeah, get back on,
(26:32):
you know, be give feedback andworking together on everything.
Rhaime Kim (26:35):
Because I'm in your office right now. And it's it's
really, it's has a greatpanoramic view. It's beautiful.
But it's really just you told meyou guys are literally like next
to each other. And you're right,you guys are literally next to
each other. I don't really seeother desks that look like
they're used every day. So thisis really like you and Jacob,
(26:58):
this just four days a week, likenext to each other hearing all
the calls, like you're justyou're there together.
Kevin Eve (27:05):
We're there together.
Yeah. No, I mean, I couldn't doit without him. I think we were
remote during COVID. And Ireally did not like working
alone. I mean, yeah, in astartup stuffs always going
wrong. And you're always puttingout those fires and feeling
badly about Yeah, maybe nothave, you know, been more
proactive about something ordone, you know, bad work or been
(27:28):
wrong about something. And so Ithink those can be like gut
punches. And when you're alone,it's brutal. But if you have
somebody to take those puncheswith and to pick you back up
again, it's it makes it it makesit doable. The day he arrived,
it was Philips last day, thenlike two days later, we won the
Rhode Island business.
(27:49):
Everything happy. Yeah. Then wewant to the $40,000. Is that a
grant? That was yeah, that wasone of the two grants. Okay.
Yeah. And I mean, it's kind offunny. He came for a week to
check it out and said, Okay,I'm, I'll join but he was still
living in San Francisco. Weneeded to announce we flew back
to San Francisco, packed histhings up, went to Boston, and
(28:12):
then had to run the BostonMarathon. Because he was
planning to that Boston there.
Yeah, super fast. Yeah, we'reboth avid runners, but he's
super fast. So he Yeah, hedestroyed the Boston Marathon
and then came down and cameright into the kitchen. And we
kept cooking up milks,
Rhaime Kim (28:30):
that's too much weight. So he knew for how long
by the time that he ended up,just pack it up. And
Kevin Eve (28:38):
I mean, it was it was probably, it was a couple calls
over probably a month before hisweek long visit. Then he came
out and visited for a week. Andthen it was like six weeks
later, he arrived in Providence,and we were full speed ahead.
Rhaime Kim (28:51):
I love that so much.
And I guess it goes to show thathe was building a startup
before. Right. And that youknow, this brother, so I guess
like maybe that mentality anddesire to create something was
there.
Kevin Eve (29:03):
Yeah, for sure. He's one of four brothers, two of his
other brothers. Two, hisbrothers have startups. That's
one of them. So yeah, it's kindof a long story about the San
Francisco startup. But yeah, itwas not a success,
unfortunately. But his otherbrother is running a venture
funded startup that's doingquite well and like 3d
renderings. So they're veryYeah, an ambitious and capable
(29:26):
group of Connery brothers. Yeah.
Rhaime Kim (29:29):
Okay, so Jacob moves to the east coast to Rhode
Island and that
Kevin Eve (29:35):
essentially we after our pilot in Rhode Island with
brown and Johnson and Walesthere was good response to the
product because they're makingthe product by hand was not
going to work. And the type ofdispenser we were using required
you to like clean it and that wedidn't require our customers to
(29:55):
clean it and we didn't likethat. It was just like messy. So
we kind of were like, Okay, thisis good. We need to do it in a
bit of a different way. Yeah. Atthe same time, we need more
money to pay for biggermanufacturing runs second,
because manufacturing that stuffis expensive, super expensive.
Right? You have to pay for it.
But you also need to. Yeah, Imean, you end up with a lot of
inventory. Yeah, you end up witha lot of inventory, especially
(30:18):
if you're doing a bigmanufacturing run. But
thankfully, a we applied to afood accelerator in New York
City, and got in at the end of2018. Yeah, what is it called
Big Idea ventures. We still workout of their office. That's
where we are right now. Wejoined the accelerator, they
helped us find a manufacturer.
(30:40):
So we moved into a differentprocessing, shelf stable. So
back to plant based milk, it wasdidn't need to worry about
refrigerating didn't need toworry about so stuff going bad
in 20 days. And we now use adispenser where there's a bag
and there's a tube attached tothe bag already. And there's no
like food contact parts in thedispenser, which is great for
(31:02):
food safety. We so we've prettymuch we just finished that for
COVID. I mean, it was comical,again, the timing here. We
brought that product to market.
We now had like seven collegesin the Northeast that wanted our
product. So we launched and gotthat going Wellesley College,
Roger Williams, brown Johnsonand Wales. And yeah, it was
(31:23):
cool. But then, yeah, I thinklike mid February, I started
seeing stuff about COVID. And Iwas like, Oh, now we're going to
we're going to be taken down.
And I turned out to be right.
Pretty much March 15, orprobably a little bit before
then, march 12. I think prettymuch every college in the
(31:45):
country came out and said, We'resending students home. And I
think that we were we had donelike a small kind of trial
manufacturing run like a quitesmall amount. Yeah. And we were
about to do a larger run. And welike called up the manufacturer.
Like don't do it. Yeah, he had.
Yeah, but hey, yeah, I mean, Iforget exactly how big the run
(32:08):
was. But it Yeah, it probablywas going to be more than
$50,000. So product, no, don'tdo. And at first, the guy was
like, Oh, they already startedbatching it up, and then called
back and said actually, no, it'sokay. I mean, I think everybody
at that point was, you know,nobody was gonna blame us. I
mean, if we, thankfully theydidn't end up making the
(32:28):
product. And but yeah, it was.
Yeah, it totally upended ourbusiness. Because we yeah, we
suddenly had no business and nocustomers.
Rhaime Kim (32:40):
Had you been servicing those seven colleges
for some time before, like youhad to pull from that big order.
Kevin Eve (32:47):
It was like two weeks. We've been selling
product for two weeks. Yeah. Sofor
Rhaime Kim (32:51):
five of the seven accounts, like you had been in
business with them for twoweeks. Yeah, I
Kevin Eve (32:56):
think maybe some more than two weeks. Oh, it's
terrible.
Rhaime Kim (33:00):
Yeah, the timing was good. And then it got like,
fucked up, basically.
Kevin Eve (33:04):
Yeah. No, COVID It was awful. And our demo day. So
the big idea ventures, we werethe first cohort. Their Demo Day
was March 14 2020. Oh my god. Itwas that was like
Rhaime Kim (33:19):
was it in person?
Yeah.
Kevin Eve (33:22):
Yeah, it was. It was very sad. It was. I mean, that
was like a POC. Right? Yeah, itwas. We were like all checking
your phones. Like when is thecity gonna lock down? That was
Rhaime Kim (33:34):
in New York City, like, Were you in the city for a
bit longer? Like, what did youend up doing?
Kevin Eve (33:40):
I think I got COVID.
I had COVID. And well, actually,I didn't know I had COVID. But
yeah, flew home and got home tomy parents place in San Diego.
started feeling feverish. Sothen I was quarantined for a
week and my parents. Yeah, butyeah, I realized I was not going
to be having any fun with my tworoommates in our small Brooklyn
(34:03):
apartment. So I got out of NewYork. And yeah, had a great time
in San Diego, and to kind oflick our wounds and figure out
what we were going to do next.
Rhaime Kim (34:15):
Yeah. And you mentioned at this point is
Jacob. He's not in San Diego, orwas he? No,
Kevin Eve (34:22):
so this was when we were remote during Cobra, he
stayed in New
Rhaime Kim (34:25):
York. Okay. And whereas Jacob from
Kevin Eve (34:29):
or where he's from LA, he's from Orange County. So
both I see. So cowboys, yeah.
Rhaime Kim (34:36):
What did you do?
What did those accounts say? Idon't know what the contracts
look like with colleges. But atthat point, when you called up
the different accounts, likewhat did they tell you?
Kevin Eve (34:50):
I mean, we make money when a college buys milk from us
or buys our milks, and theyweren't gonna be buying any milk
that's for sure for thosedispensers. They They were going
to be shut down for theforeseeable future. They did say
that there was a, you know,there was a chance when they
came back in the fall thatstudents would be it would be on
(35:12):
campus and dining operationswould be grab and go. So
there'll be an opportunity tosell them some single serving
cartons of plant based milk.
Yeah,
Rhaime Kim (35:23):
it makes sense. Was it easy to pivot and pursue
something else? Or?
Kevin Eve (35:29):
It was, it was pretty easy. I mean, we'd already done
the development for the bulkbags to plant based milk cartons
were easier. I think I wasalready in touch with a
manufacturer who could havepotentially been making the bags
for us. And we knew that theydid single serving cartons, so
we emailed them, we found somegreat graphic designers to help
(35:51):
do the packaging. So that waspretty seamless. The issue was
that it was COVID. And so therewas supply chain backups, and
it's kind of a nightmare. So weended up having to wait to get
linetime And everybody wanted tomake single. So we couldn't get
on the manufacturing line forthe single service until I
believe March a year later. SoMarch 21.
Rhaime Kim (36:13):
So stressful. Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin Eve (36:16):
I mean, it was stressful. I mean, yeah, we
weren't doing thankfully, weweren't doing that much. I mean,
I was like, running a lot. And Iwould, I would just, yeah, I
would work from like, 7ampacific time until like, two or
3pm when the East Coast wentoff. And when I go and ride my
bike, I tend to forget it's apretty normal. Yeah, right. But
(36:36):
it wasn't, I mean, it was likethere wasn't a ton to be doing.
I mean, you still wanted to feellike I was working hard. But I
mean, in reality, there wasn't alot to do. So in some ways, it
was kind of a sabbatical of yahave like eight months, but we
made a lot of eminent we did arebrand of app route. So the
current Catholic identity wasall done for those cartons. It
(36:59):
looks so great. Thank you. Westill you know, we were doing a
lot of sales. We were emailingaccounts for people. So progress
was made. But yeah, between yetMarch of 2020, and March of
2022, was not a lot of progresswhen you compare that to the
(37:23):
rest of uproots life. So we madethe single serving cartons, and
they were we had modest success.
We had some success on Amazon.
And we had some like really bigcorporate customers. One of them
was Microsoft's headquarters wasbuying, you know, a decent
volume of these cartons, but wewere still waiting for the
cafeterias to come back becausewe wanted to do the dispensers.
(37:45):
That's still where we saw themain opportunity. But yeah, then
salt in the wound was thatthrough no fault of ours, the
manufacturer, which also madeproducts for Oatly, and Premier
protein, and big protein shakecompany, and many, many others
ended up recalling all of theproducts that they had produced
(38:06):
full stop.
Rhaime Kim (38:07):
It could not be worse. Yeah. And I am happy that
you're doing great, you're inbusiness, you're better than
being in business.
Kevin Eve (38:15):
It was it was even better by the day before I had
crashed my bike, and I got ninestitches. Oh my God, my chin and
like maybe a little concussionthe day before. And you got a
concussion. So I was lying.
Yeah, I was lying on my couchwith like an iron mask on. And I
got a call from ourmanufacturer. And they were
like, hey, just so you know,we're about to, like recall your
(38:39):
products like it's going to bepublicly announced in 24 hours.
Get to work, buddy. And I waslike, Oh, great. It was pretty.
Rhaime Kim (38:49):
Cat even?
Kevin Eve (38:50):
Yeah, no, I mean, and we've had we had another we were
making a very large batch ofchocolate pea milk in October of
22. And there was a mishap andsomebody dumped in an ingredient
that needed to be added slowlyand kind of clogged some lines.
(39:12):
It was apparently chaos like ahatch got like vacuum in like
vacuum sealed shut. Theycouldn't get it open. And they
needed to get like a crowbar. Imean it was it was pandemonium
pandemonium and resulted in 1000gallons of chocolate peanut
going down the drain.
Rhaime Kim (39:31):
That's so annoying.
And are you responsible or is itjust slows down? Like you're not
able to serve as some query
Kevin Eve (39:38):
we ran? We briefly ran out of stock. I mean,
fortunately we had so it waslike scramble into action. What
are we going to do? We checkedwe had enough ingredients there
to do a small run. So we saidokay, ditch that product. We
know that there's enough to dolike 1500 gallons. Yeah, they
(39:58):
ran that and And that wasenough. I think we did run out
of stock a little bit. I mean,it's, yeah, it's obviously our
fault that we didn't have enoughinventory cushion. But I mean,
we're like, very this is oursecond run, ever. So we didn't,
you know, didn't have a lot offlexibility in terms of finances
or manufacturing time. But yeah,I mean, now we know that we need
(40:21):
to have like, six weeks ofinventory on the bat, you know,
after any manufacturing run incase something does go bad.
Yeah, we have time to fix it.
But anyway, we didn't have that.
We've been in a stock that themanufacturer did cover the
ingredients that were used, andyet, stuff goes battle.
Rhaime Kim (40:41):
Yes. And like, how do you react to that?
Kevin Eve (40:44):
I think if it's when it's not your fault, when it's
not my fault, it's a lot, Ithink it's a lot easier to stay
level headed and be like,alright, let's just find a
solution. And usually there islike, you know, we were able to
make a small run of chocolatemilk, and we recalled the card.
And so you know, that's, that'slife. Yeah. If it's not your
fault, I think stuff like themanufacturer messing up a run or
(41:05):
Yeah, actually calling cartonsand she was like, alright, let's
just solve the problem. Yeah, Ithink it was your fault, then
you feel more badly about it.
And it's harder to stay levelheaded. But still, I think it's
always like, Alright, we arewhere we are. Let's just act as
logically and try to stay aslevel headed as we can.
Rhaime Kim (41:22):
What are examples of like, no areas where you feel
like you've messed up is it andlike, maybe something you
promised a client or just thingsthat you just forgot about? Or
didn't prepare? Maybe as best asyou could have?
Kevin Eve (41:39):
I mean, part of me feels like the, the original
iteration of the product wherewe were making the making it by
hand and using a different modelof dispenser, that. I mean, now,
I wish I could have seen thatthat wasn't going to work
before. Yeah, we also I mean,that was kind of instrumental.
(41:59):
That was like, three months orfour months. Yeah, as a quick
turnaround, we, you know, wequickly realized that it wasn't
going to work. And that, youknow, we were able to spin that
up with with very little money.
And that allowed us to raise toget those grants to continue
building output. So in a lot ofways, it worked for approval.
But looking back, I, you know, Iwish I could have seen that it
(42:22):
wasn't going to be a smart idea.
Rhaime Kim (42:26):
Yeah, it's like, in hindsight, it's so obvious,
right? But when you're in it,this is like, you have to go
through it. Yeah. Just figureout the solutions yourself. So
during that journey, so like youand Jacob, this is like, you
know, the Power Team, but like,big idea ventures sounds like
they have played a significantpart. Have you had like
different mentors or friends,like, who have given you like
(42:49):
advice or just support? Like,who would you say are some of
the people like in your life or,you know, in your kind of
business world that have really,like helped you along the way?
Kevin Eve (43:01):
Yeah, there's been a lot. I mean, they've kind of
rotated through Yeah, from BLab, there was a guy by the name
of Richard Katzman, who was ourlike, B LAB advisor, and he, and
he didn't know anything. Well,he wasn't a specialist about
food, yet. He had good businesssense. And so we would get on
the phone. And he would be like,that's, I think there's a lot of
time when you're very young. Andyou're like, I think this is a
(43:22):
you know, you need somebody thatis like, this is very obviously
like a bad eye. Like you need tokind of like Screw your
dispenser. Yeah. Or just like,like anything, I think if we
would come down with these kindof wild things, and he'd be
like, this makes no sense, youshould probably reconsider. And
he was he was usually right.
Rhaime Kim (43:38):
What's his general background? He
Kevin Eve (43:40):
he was in Manufactured Home Goods, okay.
My most valuable veteran now isa founder of a coffee brand. And
he's kind of in a similarbusiness. And so he's
instrumental and all these likelittle things. I've tried to
figure out how to managerelationships with
manufacturers, how to plan thebusiness, but I mean, mostly,
(44:04):
yeah. I mean, the the calls andadvisory calls were were more
common early on. Yeah, we'rekind of, I don't think there's a
lot of people that know moreabout selling, dispense plant
based milk that Jacob and Iright now, obviously, we still
have a lot to learn in a lot ofdifferent areas. But for the
most part, it's just beenputting the heads down and
getting to it.
Rhaime Kim (44:24):
Microsoft, you end up onboarding as a client. So
it's not just cafeterias forstudents, although the college
setting is still your targetaudience for the dispenser
business in general, like howhave you found your clients
early on,
Kevin Eve (44:39):
it was definitely cold outreach. And the process
was essentially built off ofdoing customer research and Bua
trying to figure out if it was agood, good business. So we found
out that most of thesecafeterias put the name and the
contact information of the foodservice manager online and if
you write a good cold email,then they'll respond and for
(44:59):
Generally,
Rhaime Kim (45:01):
a lot of you don't get any response, right guys
awesome.
Kevin Eve (45:04):
Yeah, thankfully, these guys were looking for
dispense plant based milk. Andso we would put in the subject
plant based milk dispenser. Andwe got feedback, especially, I
think the other smart thing. Itwas being local, like, it was
like Providence, like, Hey, I'mat Brown down the street. I
(45:24):
think that goes a long way withtrust, I think, yeah, people
you're more willing to trustsomebody who you're close to?
Yeah, definitely like the first20 customers, we're all outreach
like that. We are now findingthat outreach is less effective.
It's a lot of work. You have todo kind of a lot of it. And
(45:44):
yeah, early on, I think we weregetting, like yield maybe of
like 30%. But obviously, itdoesn't keep up as you kind of
scale. Yeah. And now thankfully,we're getting kind of this
flywheel of having a boothdispensers in the field and
having happy customers and adifferent college will go visit
(46:06):
their peer college and see uproute and say, Oh, that's cool.
Can we find them now? Yeah,
Rhaime Kim (46:12):
exactly. No, my brother, the other managers.
Yeah, exactly.
Kevin Eve (46:18):
No, we had a good yeah. Yeah, like a lucky. We
went to a trade show. And thetrade show was okay. But I think
we were the trade show was inBaltimore. and Maryland has
upgraded dispensers. And theyactually did like a visit where
they took a bunch of chefs tolike University of Maryland. So
it's a beautiful dining hall.
And so they showed all thechef's, the beautiful Maryland
(46:39):
dining halls, and they were alllike, oh, upper. It's cool.
Like, we should get that. Sothings like that have been very
effective. But yeah, we'retalking to generally executive
chefs or foods, you know, theyget there's a lot of different
names, but it's yet the folksthat manage the cafeterias at
hospitals and colleges.
Rhaime Kim (46:59):
Now, it's 2023.
Like, what's the size of yourbusiness?
Kevin Eve (47:03):
We're, we have almost 50 customers. Yeah. And we're
going to have 100 dispensers bynext month, approaching a $1
million run rate. Hoping to doit's, yeah, it's a very seasonal
business with the collegesemesters. But yeah, hoping to
sell well over $100,000 nextmonth. Yeah,
Rhaime Kim (47:26):
that's so exciting.
What do the I'm sure it dependson maybe like the now but like,
what do the margins look like inyour business?
Kevin Eve (47:35):
For us right now? Not good? Yeah. But that's because
we're very small and foodfactories. It's all about scale.
Yeah. Because downtime is very,very expensive. And these
facilities can can move quicklyto get the costs low. But you
need to be doing big runs toachieve that. Right. And we
aren't quite there. So yeah, thebiggest thing is, is the cost
(47:59):
that we pay the manufacturer tofill the bags, but there's also
some savings to be had iningredients. So yeah, right now,
isn't all that? Yeah. So rightnow our margin is, I mean,
between five and 10%, which isnot good. But at least we're not
losing money. That's for us.
That's the gross margin. Ithink. I mean, you can look at a
(48:22):
publicly traded food company, Ithink, a company that looks like
ours, a healthy business, you'dhave a gross margin around 40%,
and maybe a net profit margin ofaround 10%. So that's what we're
shooting for at our currentpricing and what we know the
long term cost of goods will bethat that is totally within
(48:44):
reach. But we're not there yet.
Yeah, soon, soon. Yeah, we'remaking it happen. And we're
getting there.
Rhaime Kim (48:51):
Yeah. In terms of positioning and pricing, would
you say that you're a premiumbrand,
Kevin Eve (48:57):
we are a premium brand. We want to deliver on on
nutrition on protein, we want touse high quality ingredients.
When we can be as natural aspossible. Use organic
ingredients use cocoa powder. Imean, it's it's like we wanted
to make the plant based milksthat we want to drink. And
almost necessarily that ispremium.
Rhaime Kim (49:17):
Yeah. I'm seriously I'm so jealous. I need to stop
saying this. But I'm so jealousthat the students get to drink
this like amazing milk like everthey want what what advice would
you give yourself? Maybe let'ssay it's you've been in this
business for like five ishyears. Now, if you look back,
(49:37):
and you could just kind of tellyourself
Kevin Eve (49:42):
stay the course.
Yeah. It did that. But I did sayI stayed the course I think.
Yeah, I mean, I don't I don'thave any huge regrets about
things that I did wrong. Yeah.
But the other things that I'velearned that are very important
(50:06):
is work hard, I think, yeah, forthe health of the business. And
for me to be happy, I need to bedoing good work. Being honest,
being straightforward. Takingresponsibility for when things
go wrong. Yeah, all veryimportant. Building
relationships with customerssuper important. I think that's
(50:27):
one of the things that welearned is that especially when
things go wrong, if a customerhas a relationship with you,
they'll just give you a call andtext you and you can get it
figured out. And I think if wehave customers where things go
wrong, and they don't know us,and they, they don't even know
who to call, then they try todeal with a problem where they
(50:47):
can't fix it, or they just getfrustrated. So that has been
very important. Don't be afraidto reach out to people, I think,
generally, I you know, I waswilling to reach out to
suppliers and try to get someingredient or talk to these
manufacturers, but doing thatmore and checking in with them
(51:10):
to see when things change. Ithink that would have been
helpful. But no, I've been verylucky. I mean, it definitely
took me a while to learn a lotof things took us a while to
figure out food, it took us awhile to figure out how to raise
money, still not very good atraising money. But so far, it's
been a it's been a rewarding andenjoyable process.
Rhaime Kim (51:31):
Yeah, I mean, you've really staying the course like
the first day, you've reallypersevered. Because I mean, you
went through that, like thetiming of like things were just
picking out but then COVID justchanges everything. And then you
finally get the single servecartons and have like a solid
business, and then it's justlike goodbyes. So I think it's
pretty crazy. But
Kevin Eve (51:52):
that's the other thing I would tell myself is
that it's it's going to takelonger, and things are going to
go wrong. And you're just goingto have to keep fighting. But I
think that's kind of the casewith I think every founder knows
that. But they think it's notgoing to happen to them.
Rhaime Kim (52:12):
Right. Do you have other founder friends?
Kevin Eve (52:15):
I'm not that many.
Rhaime Kim (52:18):
Yeah, I'm not too surprised. I guess I feel like
maybe in a few years. I wonderif it'll become more or less
common? Yeah, I
Kevin Eve (52:25):
mean, hit me up. More founder friends. Yeah.
Rhaime Kim (52:30):
Do you ever get jealous of that? Or do you can
you not imagine yourself beingin that position that you
mentioned, you did do aninternship at SharkNinja?
Before? Like, do you ever thinkabout like when things are
tough? Or? I mean, you guys areon the up right now. So maybe
that's like, totally out of thequestion. The idea of working
corporate?
Kevin Eve (52:49):
Yeah, I mean, the office job definitely was
appealing or is appealing. Ithink the Yeah, the hardest
thing is that I don't reallyhave Yeah, I don't have the many
mentors. I don't have a boss.
Yeah, we don't our investors,and the bigger the venture
supports us, but they're not,you know, they're not policing
when I come in, you know,they're they are
Rhaime Kim (53:08):
very show right here four days a week, because,
Kevin Eve (53:11):
because we want to, and we're getting paid to and
there's a huge opportunity to,to build something amazing. But
yeah, the the, I think can behard to, like get better without
feedback. And a lot of times,yeah, so yeah, I mean, I get
feedback from my brother orfriends or other people. And
(53:35):
that's, that's harder to dothat. And if it's just your boss
who's paid to your stuff, insometimes, especially when
things weren't going well,you're like, I'm an idiot. And
this is a failure. Why am Iwasting my time? I don't know
how to do anything. Obviously,when things are going better,
and people are happy with theirproduct and we're making them or
you know, revenue is growingquickly, then, I think okay,
(53:56):
maybe I do know what I'm doing.
And we have done some good workhere.
Rhaime Kim (54:00):
Are there like any moments where you're like, I
feel so good. Like any like,whether it's the first time your
dispenser came or like yourfirst client and the check, you
got like, what were some of thekey?
Kevin Eve (54:13):
I mean, this month has been the best month for
approved ever go. We're going toadd, you know, almost 40 active
dispensers. That's between Oh,exciting, which is, you know, we
started the year we had 30active dispensers. Yeah. And
then, you know, we had a bigcollege email us this morning
(54:33):
saying, Hey, we have you know,it's like 40,000 undergrads.
Hey, we have three cafeterias.
Interested in your milks? Wesigned another one of the UC
schools this morning.
Rhaime Kim (54:44):
Yeah. So because those are big, right,
Kevin Eve (54:47):
those are big. Yeah.
And seeing the revenue. I mean,it's it's scary to tell
investors like hey, we think therevenue is gonna go and we we
sell almost nothing in thesummer. So our revenue went from
like, 10,000. And yeah, we'veSold $73,000 this month so far.
And so when that actually comesin, you're like, I'm I like it
(55:08):
happened. But so yeah, that'sbeen it's been super gratifying
and then to continue to havehave more sales interest that it
seems like we continue this kindof tripling year over year
growth is super exciting. Andour customers are more happy
than ever. So I think the Yeah,these are the, the exciting
(55:29):
moments. Yeah, the best momentsis winning customers. Yeah. And
having happy customers.
Rhaime Kim (55:34):
Yeah, they're giving you feedback that way, but five
years. I mean, I guess anybodywho's listening, I mean, five
years. That's so like, I mean,you were grinding for five
years, this is the result ofthat. So that shows a lot about
like your character and like whoyou are. And you mentioned
running that's like, you know,you're a runner, Jacobs a
(55:55):
runner, like, does that help youlike de stress at all? Or, you
know, what do you do to like,what's your, how do you think
about work life balance? And doyou see like this as part of
your passion? So it's not likethere's necessarily like, okay,
weekends, I'm not going to workat all or after 5pm going to try
to not work like, how do youtake care of yourself? Because
(56:17):
it's like, this is a lot ofperseverance and like, bad shit
happens. And you know, theanswer is the most you can
always ask for help. So,
Kevin Eve (56:27):
yeah, I mean, so I got into running during COVID.
Yeah, as the business obviouslywasn't doing well. So I had more
time. But also I've, you know, Ilike the feeling of having
success and getting better atsomething and working at
something. Yeah. And thebusiness was not something that
I could put effort into and getresults out. Really. So yeah,
running is it's amazing. I mean,it's super fun. You can go, you
(56:48):
train, and you get faster. Andit's like this really fun wheel.
So it's been great to have thatto destress. And to have
something where I can improveand get results if the business
is not doing well. I've Yeah, Ireally enjoyed it. I have a
great group of friends. So it'salso kind of a social outlet for
me during the week, little rungroup, and then do some long
(57:11):
runs on the weekend withfriends. And yeah, it's kind of
a win win. Because yeah, I mean,what they say is true. Like, if
you're fit, you can think betterand work harder. Yeah. I, yeah,
I mean, I know Jacob and I arenot not grinding, we're
generally 830 to six in theoffice four days a week, remote
on Friday, and then a little bitof work on the weekends. So it's
(57:33):
definitely not crazy, weprobably could, and maybe should
be pushing ourselves harder. Butwe don't, we don't have a lot of
busy work, we're not wasting ourtime with calls, we don't really
have to, like get approved. Youknow, it's kind of just go and
like, let's work on the hardstuff. 100%. So it's hard. I
think it's hard, at least for meto do more than Yeah, 910 hours
(57:54):
of like hard work per day.
Rhaime Kim (57:56):
I totally get that.
Because when I was, you know,working, I remember when I was
working at that startup for twoyears during COVID. people be
like, oh, like, because I'd belike, Well, I'm working so hard.
And people like oh, like whatare your hours? That's like the
first response. But I don'tthink those two things are
really correlate because like,let's be real, like we're all
people you can only focus for.
(58:18):
So I agree. I mean, when you'redoing that 830 to six to me
sounds long. But when you areworking, like what if you're
working during that time, that'san intense workday. So I mean,
Kevin Eve (58:31):
yeah, I know, I think we we make Yeah, we try to work
hard. And
Rhaime Kim (58:36):
last but not least, do you have any, you gave me
some advice you would tellyourself five years back when
you're getting started? Like,what would you tell any
entrepreneurs who are grindingright now, but maybe they're not
at the scale at which it'ssustainable, or just any advice
(58:58):
you'd give to entrepreneurs whoare kind of on that early
journey or thinking aboutstarting something of their own?
Kevin Eve (59:05):
I feel like it's tough, because every business is
different. So the advice I'mgoing to give is kind of uproot
specific, but I think my adviceis, stay curious, like, do a
bunch of research might learneverything you can about what
you're doing. Use your commonsense. A lot of times you're
working on something that's kindof a bad idea and might be
staring at you and you need tolike find the good idea. And
(59:31):
focus on the customers. I mean,yeah, the Yeah, that is
obviously you know, businesses,you're you're serving customers,
and you need to have somethingthat you're kind of the best at.
Rhaime Kim (59:44):
Yeah, I mean, like especially the last thing you
said it's it seems easy, but youhave to go back to principles
because it's easy to get muckedup when there's so many whenever
like there's 100 fires like youhave to think about the
principles is like the customermatters like don't Forget that.
Okay, so for approved, like, areyou guys raising? Like, is there
(01:00:07):
anything that you know? Are youtrying to get in touch with more
investors any way that theaudience could help you or
you're looking for? Yeah,
Kevin Eve (01:00:15):
we're working towards raising a price to seed round at
the start of next year.
Hopefully from top tier VC whoworks with food companies, we
want, you know, the rightpartner to grow the business. If
you know, any cafeterias thatneed better plant based milk.
(01:00:36):
Let them know that awkwardexists. Follow us on Instagram.
Shoot me a note if you want tomy email is Kevin at upper
milk.com.
Rhaime Kim (01:00:45):
Yeah, okay. Awesome.
And then one last thing. So interms of capital, have you
raised institutional capital?
Kevin Eve (01:00:54):
If you define the accelerator round from Big Idea
ventures as institutionalcapital then yes, okay. If not,
no.
Rhaime Kim (01:01:03):
Okay. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. Actually,
I've been wanting to interviewmy friends for entrepreneurs for
so long, literally eight, nineyears, and I never did it. So
you are helping me you know,make kind of my dreams come
true. So I really appreciateyour time.
Kevin Eve (01:01:19):
Of course I was it was an enjoyable interview. And
thank you for interviewing me. Ihave not had many opportunities
to share my story. So it's goodand happy to get it out there
and hopefully, I can report backin two or three years and I bet
it will be 100 times as big
Kevin Yves is the co founder and CEO of uproot, which
makes plant milk dispensers forcafeterias primarily at
colleges. Kevin and I met atBrown University five years ago,
when we got a small summer grantto work on our businesses. Tell
me about your products. So youmentioned dispensers, what are
(00:20):
your products? And could youtell us more about your milks?
So right now, Pruett offers adispenser program for plant
based milk catered towardsmostly college cafeterias. But
really any cafeteria, we providea dispenser to these cafeteria
locations it goes on thecounter, and it serves up root
(00:40):
products. So we do an oat milk,a soy milk and a chocolate pea
milk.
Kevin Eve (00:46):
And yeah, students generally it's an all you can
eat dining hall, students cangrab as much as they want, they
can drink it, put it in coffee,put it in cereal, or oat milk
has made with organic oats,which is important to some
people because there's no Glyphosphate or other pesticides on
there. And we do a reallydelicious chocolate pea milk.
It's made with a ton of cocoapowder. No like, yeah, you read
(01:07):
it likes it. Yeah, no fakechocolate flavor, just a ton of
cocoa powder. It's reallydelicious. And then the classic
soy milk, a little bit ofvanilla, eight grams of protein,
same amount of protein is dairymilk. When students go back to
school this fall, I thinkthey'll probably be like
maybe a quarter million studentsthat it feel like you've took
(01:28):
the entire enrollment of
Rhaime Kim (01:30):
the or you said a quarter million.
Kevin Eve (01:32):
I mean, that was that was back of my hand. But I mean,
we have some some very largeaccounts. I know I you
Bloomington 30,000 People innorthwestern 50,000. Students.
Yeah. Vanderbilt 50,000students, and it's about 40
accounts. gets up there.
Rhaime Kim (01:49):
Yeah, that's so cool. And like, I just feel like
even back then I was working onthis like crypto idea. Love it.
But even back then, like I felt.
I mean, I just think it'samazing that you've been able to
have the patience to just likepush through. And what was that
process? Like?
Kevin Eve (02:07):
It's definitely been a test of patience. And it's
definitely been something whereI thought they would go faster.
Yeah, definitely, if you askedme summer of 18, where we would
be in five years, I would havethought we'd be much farther
ahead. A lot of it, I think wasdue to COVID. COVID is pretty
much a two year setback for us.
And that was the biggest test ofpatience. But I always believed
(02:30):
in what we were doing. And Ibelieved that we could deliver
value. And I'm very happy Istuck with it. And I'm very
happy that you know, ourinvestors continue to put money
into the business to keep thekeep going. And we're now 13
months of exponential growth.
For our dispensary business.
Just super exciting. finallyseeing the fruits of this
finally, you know, we havereputation. We have built trust
(02:54):
in our customers and yeah,uproots it's getting out there.
Rhaime Kim (02:57):
I wish I had that because not to shade some of the
other competitors out there. ButI became lactose intolerant
while I was at Brown, whichsucks cuz I still eat cereal
every day. Um, but I learned thehard way I was lactose
intolerant. And I just feel likeif I had that variety of like
milks, it would have been great,because the alternatives that we
had were, I mean, they I feellike there's just a lot of sugar
(03:20):
they just didn't, you know,weren't very palatable. So it's
super cool. But um, how have youthought about like, the offering
different pot plant milks versusoffering different flavors?
Kevin Eve (03:30):
Yeah, I mean, I think it comes back to the way, you
know, uproots b2b. And so wethink about milk plant based
milk more as a service to thesecafeterias rather than the
product rather than an oat milkor soy milk. So what we wanted
to do is create an all in onesolution for these cafeterias to
meet the needs of theirstudents. So it's a it's a
service that we provide. And itwas very clear that there is a
(03:54):
demand for different varietiesof plant based milk. I mean, I
enjoy soy milk. I think ittastes good. And I like the
protein. And it's that's what Idrink. But obviously, oat milk
is super popular, it's probablybetter than coffee. So we knew
from day one that we needed tohave a variety. And we actually
started out also offeringcoconut milk and almond milk.
(04:14):
And then we paired it backbecause we got some feedback
that a lot of cafeterias arescared of allergens or not
scared of allergens, but it is Imean, allergens are scary
anaphylaxis is scary. And if youcan, people wanted to remove
allergens, so we dropped thosevarieties and that's how we
ended up where we are.
Rhaime Kim (04:33):
Yeah, cool. We do plant milks. Why are you
interested in cooking? Are youlactose intolerant? Like me?
Like what got you into the plantmilk business to start with?
Kevin Eve (04:47):
I started drinking plant based milk. Probably when
I was like two my brother.
Rhaime Kim (04:53):
What a year. Is that? Is that? That's right.
Kevin Eve (04:57):
Yeah. My brother and I were like Sick toddlers and a
homeopathic doctor told my momto take us off dairy. We were
getting ear infections. And shedid and we got better and so and
so we were dairy free. I mean,you never know like, I don't
know the exact type of allergy.
But I grew up drinking rice milkat the time, I was not a fan of
(05:20):
the taste of soy milk. And yeah,
Rhaime Kim (05:26):
yeah, cuz, I mean, I mentioned I was like, okay, that
must have been in the 90s. Iguess you mentioned late 90s.
And I was was it easy for youknow, your mom, you know your
parents to like, find plantbased milks? What were I
Kevin Eve (05:43):
mean, it was it was like gen one, there was like a
token there was like an icecream sandwich. And there was
some like, kind of like KraftSingles cheese, like really
wasn't very good. My mom wouldmake we make together like a
vegan yogurt with like chickpeasand there was like a powder,
like a packet of like powderthat went in it. So that was
(06:04):
pretty tasty, but it was veryhard to find. And if you're
traveling, like you're prettymuch out of luck, I think pretty
quickly. I learned that you canhave cereal with water, and to
almost stop drinking milk.
Rhaime Kim (06:17):
That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. But I've
done that. Yeah, it's
Kevin Eve (06:21):
totally doable. And it's a pain in the butt. At
least back then. When plantsmoke was not a thing. Yeah. So
I kind of gave up. But yeah, Iwas always as a kid. whipping up
stuff in the kitchen. My momliked to cook, she would cook
dinner for my brother and my dadand I and every night and so I
would help her cook. And then tomess around. I would put like
(06:42):
chocolate chips and stuff in abowl and melt it and make it a
little concoction. So I wasalways I was drinking plant
based milk and I was making foodstuff. My entire life.
Rhaime Kim (06:53):
Yeah, that's cool.
And I think it's it's hard likeI am Korean and I grew up in
Korea for a lot of my childhood.
And I think being in the US,it's really hard to avoid dairy.
So unless you've been Yes, it'slike cheese ice cream. And like,
you don't want to be thatperson. It's like, oh, I'm
(07:13):
lactose intolerant. It's likeno, like, trust me like you
don't want, like it's a realthing. So 2018 Your Are you a
senior? a rising senior then?
Yeah, I was a rising senior.
Yeah. And how did you take whatyou learn from the summer and
then start like building thebusiness and like build it into
(07:36):
your full time work? Well,
Kevin Eve (07:38):
so I was a rising senior in this, or I was I was a
senior in the spring of 2018When I got the inspiration for a
brute, but then I graduated inJune. So when I was working in
the lab, I was actually alreadya graduate. Okay, yeah. I had
already teamed up with PhilipMatthew, who was my friend and
collaborator at Brown. I studiedengineering, we worked on a
(08:01):
extra curricular team that builta race car. So it was very
entrepreneurial. We were used tobuilding stuff, kind of
inventing stuff. And we it's thesame
Rhaime Kim (08:11):
race car. Yeah.
Kevin Eve (08:13):
Yeah, thing we've been kicking, usually jokingly
around different startup ideas.
And then I was struck with thisidea of bringing better plant
based milks to food services.
And actually, we actuallystarted thinking about how to do
it in the home with dispensers.
Over the summer in the lab, Irealized that most homes don't
(08:36):
go through enough milk toward adispenser. But looking at our
dining hall, which is veryclose, I thought, oh, there's a
location that uses a lot ofplant based milk. And so started
calling a bunch of collegecafeterias. And they all are the
ones that spoke to me said,yeah, hey, we need to a better
plant based milk. And so thatwas how we settled on that idea.
(08:58):
And at the end of B Lab, kind ofthe big project for me was
building a business model to tryto figure out, okay, how big is
this business? How much could wesell in five years? And can we
make money doing it? And at theend of that, I decided that
yeah, like, this isn't this is agood business. There's a lot of
(09:19):
colleges in the US. There's alot of kids drinking plant based
milk. And if you offer a greatproduct, I think colleges would
pay a lot for it. Yeah. So Isaid, Alright, let's give it a
go. And Philip was on board. Andso we started working on it. I
mean, I fortunately had somesavings. I mean, essentially my
parents money, but I had somesavings. And so we bought
(09:43):
equipment and started rentingspace in the kitchen and started
making milks.
Rhaime Kim (09:47):
Yeah, I mean, I love that. I think it takes a lot of
courage to run with your idea. Ithink especially coming out of a
institution like brown. I'm sureyou had some folks just go into
traditional pathways and I thinkIt's really awesome that you
guys like cobbled it. Likecobbled up what you had and
initially getting off. Like Iremember back in the day, you
(10:07):
mentioned that it's one thing toplay around with recipes and
understand things better. Butcooking bigger batches is a
totally different. It's justdifferent to make things bigger
batches. So what were theinitial, like, hard parts of
your business? And I guess youkind of thought about your
business model, and were able tomake progress there. But was
(10:29):
there anything about the productitself that you had to learn or
connections you had to build?
Kevin Eve (10:35):
I mean, it was I knew nothing about the food. I knew
about making small batches, likeyou said, in my kitchen, but I
knew nothing about how food getsmade at scale. So it was just a
lot of googling early on. Therewere some very helpful people,
we were renting kitchen space atthis place called Hope in Maine,
near Providence, Rhode Island.
And so there were some folksthere, that really got us
(10:57):
started, you know, I took theselike food safety classes, they
kind of pointed me in thedirection of different
ingredients, suppliers, but Imean, it was a lot of googling a
lot of just kind of like,spending hours and hours and
hours researching and trying tofigure out you know, how can we
make soy milk? How can we makeoat milk? What's in the, these
(11:19):
products? But yeah, I mean, theinformation is all out there. It
was just a matter of grinding itout and getting it done.
Rhaime Kim (11:25):
Yeah, for sure. was a big part of your research.
Also speaking with peoplethough, or once you knew were
you able to rent kitchen spaceand kind of test out like
whether it's like boilingcertain things, like test out
kind of what you learned inpractice.
Kevin Eve (11:42):
I'm gonna think the actual process So originally, it
was like, Alright, I'm gonnamake we made I mean, soy milk.
Yeah, the way you would make itat home. So we got soy beans,
and we blended it up and weboiled it. And then we had soy
milk we made almond milk by bygrinding up almonds. We made oat
milk by grinding up oats,
Rhaime Kim (12:00):
which I tried. I remember I think like once we
were doing a potluck orsomething and you brought
something with like a like aTupperware with like a red tarp
and like, like, these are milk.
Oh my God, it was really good.
But I remember seeing like thebeing kind of like a note there
being like the grinds,basically. Yeah. The whole
(12:20):
process.
Kevin Eve (12:21):
Yeah, but then. So we very quickly realized that. I
mean, it's a ton of work. Andyou grind it with your hands. In
a blender. You stick it on ablender.
Rhaime Kim (12:31):
I guess like my blenders are like cheap
blenders. They can't blood likeany like, probably can't even do
eyes properly. So, but I guessyou can get a food processor.
And yes, like, Well,
Kevin Eve (12:42):
shall I actually, I was an intern this summer before
at SharkNinja, which makes me soI actually got her a blender for
free among a host of otherappliances. Nice. So shout out
to them. But yeah, it was. Thankyou, Ninja. But yeah, it was a
blender that I pilfered fromSharkNinja Yeah, but yeah, the
biggest unlock was realizingthat there are food suppliers
(13:06):
that provide ingredients thatare kind of pre processed to
make milk a lot easier. The foodindustry is very kind of split
up, because that's moreefficient. Like there's one
factory that processes soy beansand kind of splits it up. And
then you can send it to the manydifferent final products, one of
them being plant based milk. Soyeah, we started buying an
(13:30):
almond butter, and soy flour andoat powder, and pea protein and
cocoa powder. And thosecompanies also will they'll give
you formulations and recipes forplant based milk. So that was
kind of the biggest unlock. Andthen yeah, talking to the folks
at the kitchen to figure out howto pasteurize it and how to cool
(13:53):
it down fast enough that it'sfood safe. And talking to the
health inspector. Yeah. And thatgot us to pretty good
formulations and processes thatwe could use in the rental
kitchen.
Rhaime Kim (14:04):
How long did it take from y'all having the ideas you
have they're doing in the springof 18? You're working on it full
time by the summer, from thesummer onwards, like how long
did it take until you had one orall the flavors down?
Kevin Eve (14:20):
Yeah, I mean, so you're a part of this. We were
doing. I was thinking I wasworking on the formulations. In
the late summer and early fall.
A lot. Yeah. In my apartment,mostly on the weekends when?
Yeah, I had. I mean, I wasn't Iwas, yeah, I was full time on up
here. But yeah, for whatever yousaid during the week, I would do
(14:40):
kind of more of the like,computer work and then the
weekends I would spend the timeblending up different things and
then I would host the tastingparties to get feedback. We had
everything ready to go by late2018. I think we were hoping to
get some customers going thatsemester. We did not but we had
everything in place. Yeah. Andthen when school came back in
(15:02):
2019, we had dispensers atJohnson and Wales and brown.
Rhaime Kim (15:08):
I mean, that's really quick turnaround. Right.
So I guess it took about a yearuntil the products were in
clients hands, or at least lessthan a year.
Kevin Eve (15:20):
Yeah. I mean, because when I had the idea, I mean, it
was kind of a different idea. Inthe idea that I had in the
spring of 2018 was, yeah, Imean, that was not what we ended
up doing. That really onlyhappened in B Lab. So we were
able to go from like, what wasthat July? Originally, it was
going to be for the home, it wasgoing to be a plant milk and
(15:40):
maybe other beverage dispenserfor the home. Yeah. And realized
that, right, it didn't make anysense. Because homes didn't use
enough beverages to make adispenser worthwhile. So yeah,
we really only kind ofidentified what we're gonna do
in the summer. And then yeah, itwas about less than six months
to mark. It. Was pretty fast.
Rhaime Kim (16:03):
Yeah, it really is.
And it's so cool. So brown is inProvidence, and Johnson and
Wales is also an is inProvidence, Rhode Island. Yep.
So it's, it's really cool thatyou're able to like then see it
in action, you know, so howWait, how, how long? Did you
live in Providence? And wasPhilip also living with you for
a
Kevin Eve (16:22):
year? I mean, we didn't live in the same. Yeah,
actually, we did we livetogether for the summer during
the lab. So summer.
Rhaime Kim (16:29):
A lot of us did that went together.
Kevin Eve (16:31):
And then. Yeah, so the, I mean, the rest of the
story in the fall of 2018. Oncewe kind of had, actually now, I
mean, I forget the actual, thedates, I think in the fall, or
maybe I think we applied formore funding from Brown for the
brown venture prize, which
Rhaime Kim (16:52):
did you have your customers, and then you applied?
Kevin Eve (16:56):
I don't think we had customers when we applied, okay.
And the same. I also applied forthe Rhode Island business
competition. And I think it wasboth, like around the like,
final pitch. And the final roundof interviews is when we finally
had the first customers finallyhad, like a great time and we
had the photo of the upperdispenser in the cafeteria, we
(17:16):
had some good numbers coming outof Brown University. And that
was enough. I mean, I think theylike to see our hustle. And so
we've won both of those. Sothen, yeah, we had that was
about $100,000. And that was ourfirst funding. Yeah. And yeah,
that let us produce the productfor that spring and serve those
(17:39):
two customers. And it also paid.
Yeah, a little co foundersalary.
Rhaime Kim (17:46):
Yeah, that's so cool. Was that? So you mentioned
it was a brown grant. And werethose two were they grants or
were they like investments?
Both? Both grants? Yeah, that'sgreat. And must have made you
feel like a lot more. Like youcould? Because, like, 100k for
two people, like when you're inProvidence, like you must have
(18:08):
been like, okay, that gives me abit more runway. It
Kevin Eve (18:11):
gave us a lot of runway. Yeah, at that point. I
wasn't on a salary. My cofounder was on a salary. Yeah, I
think we only spent like $20,000on the product. I mean, we
probably I think we sold like$15,000 of milk that first
semester. Probably sold.
Rhaime Kim (18:28):
No, probably I probably zero to 15.
Kevin Eve (18:30):
Yeah, yeah. And a few months. Yeah. I mean, that money
lasted us, probably until almostthe end of 2019. But yeah, it
gave us the confirmation andconfidence to keep going, I
think, yeah, I think we hadn'tgotten that money. And I mean,
our our first pilot was asuccess. But it wasn't like a
(18:54):
full success. There was a lotthat wasn't right about it. And
yeah, who knows if we would havekept going? Yeah. Because it was
helpful. Yeah, very helpful.
Rhaime Kim (19:06):
It sounded like you had conviction from the very
beginning. So did you alwayslike have that conviction that
it would like, like, why wereyou so convinced that this was
going to work out?
Kevin Eve (19:17):
I mean, I knew that I wanted to drink plant based
milk. Yeah, in my cafeteria, Iknew that plant based milk was
only getting more popular. And Iknew that the solution out there
was not good. was missing on alot of factors. And I yeah, I
just had conviction that if wework hard, we can deliver a
(19:39):
great product like we workedreally hard, and we came up with
a fun name. I mean, at least Iliked the name upgrade. And so
memorable came you know, weworked really hard on the
branding. We wanted to connectwith young students. We wanted
to be upbeat and natural. Inmodern. We wanted the milk that
tastes really good. We spent alot of time doing that. We
wanted to nutrition to beperfect or not perfect, but we
(20:02):
want the nutrition to be good tohave as much protein as dairy
milk, so people feel satisfied.
So I felt confident that wecould deliver a great product.
And I didn't think any buddyelse, that many other people
were kind of stupid enough orhad the same conviction that I
did. I didn't, you know, it's aniche market. I don't think a
lot of other people see couldsee what I could see. And so I
(20:24):
had some conviction that if wecould get it going, we would
have a lot of success.
Rhaime Kim (20:29):
Yeah. And that makes sense. Because it's, you know,
being lactose intolerance andtrendy, it's like a real like,
thing. Yeah, I guess people upuntil now probably just avoided
dairy if they had GI issues.
Yeah. And so it totally makessense in that gap. Like, I guess
you're like, hey, there's just agap in this market. So we're
(20:51):
going to do the create the rightthing, and you know, it's gonna
work out is your would you sayyour products are like more your
milks are the dispenser? Andlike, all the supply chain?
Like, I think all those thingsare important. But how do you
view the business?
Kevin Eve (21:09):
I mean, I view it as a service. And when we talk to
our customers, we say we have aplant based milk dispenser
program. So I think it's aprogram. It's not just the
milks, it's not just thedispenser, but it's the fact
that they all integratetogether. It's the fact that we
make sure that our products areavailable in the right
distributors. And it's that wehave good customer service. I
(21:30):
think that a lot of otherplayers in the space few other
players in this space. I don'tthink any other no other players
in this space can do all ofthose things well, so do the
branding, the productdevelopment, getting it made the
customer service, getting gooddispensers, getting them placed
in the cafeterias getting thedistribution set up, nobody
(21:51):
else, I think does that reallywell. You have like CPG
companies that are taking theirproducts and their brands and
their supply chain from retail,and trying to bring that into
food service to get someincremental revenue, or maybe
some exposure, but they oftendon't have the sales force or
the customer service. And theydon't, yeah, but oftentimes they
don't really care, I think I seeis what we found. And then maybe
(22:15):
you have some of the more likewhite label the food service
players, and they maybe havemore sales force, and they kind
of know the business, butthey're not as savvy on the
brand side or the productdevelopment side. So they
couldn't really deliver like anauthentic, high quality plant
based milk to college customer.
I don't think you'd ever makethat connection. But yeah,
(22:36):
uproot can where, you know,Jacob and I, my co founder and I
are our 27 year old, plant basedmilk evangelist. And so it's
really natural for us to go intothese cafeterias and bring them
up.
Rhaime Kim (22:50):
So your co founders, Jacob,
Kevin Eve (22:52):
yeah, so it's a little complicated. At the
start, I was, I started workingon operate with Philip Matthew,
my friend from Brown, before wewon the grants at the end of
2018. We had overlapping skillsets for both physics and
engineering graduates. So weboth kind of wanted to be doing
the same jobs. And for whateverreason, started having some
(23:13):
disagreements. And I also thinkpersonally, he wanted to go in,
I mean, he's now in academia.
And I think he saw upward andrealized that it wasn't as
sciency, as he expected. At the,you know, early on, were
thinking of being more hardtech, where it really went
towards sales and marketing,essentially. And so he decided
(23:34):
that it wasn't for him, and hewanted to move on, and
thankfully gave me three monthsto find a replacement. So that
was, like December of 2018. Hesaid, he wanted to move on. And
I had three months to findsomebody. And so I texted all my
friends and said, Hey, do youwant to work on a plant based
milk business with me? Or do youknow somebody who does? And
(23:55):
fortunately, one of my friendssaid, Yeah, I know, the perfect
person. He lives in SanFrancisco. He's vegan. He just
finished working on hisbrother's cookie delivery
business. And he's a great guy,you should talk to him. So I had
a few calls with Jacob. He wasinterested, he flew out to
Providence to meet me and checkout the business. And actually
he then moved, you know, movedinto my part for a little bit.
(24:18):
And it was a great match,fortunately, yeah. And it's
been, yeah, four years ofworking with Jacob and very
fortunate to have found him.
Rhaime Kim (24:29):
I think it's so great, because there's so many
people who are like, oh, like,you know, there's a lot of like
family businesses. There's likea lot of like, different
philosophies or realities thatpeople have when it comes to
like, who they get into businesswith, but I think like, maybe
because it was a friend of afriend, you probably trusted
that person's judgment, but it'sso good that that
serendipitously, like worked outright now a brute for full time
(24:51):
employees. Is it you and Jacob,it's just Jacob and if that
like, I guess Jacobs that hugepart of like, uproot and So
that's really cool. And were youlike, close with that friend?
Like, how did you? Did youexpect? Yeah, I mean, he flew
over that's like a lot,
Kevin Eve (25:07):
ya know, I I think it speaks to Jacob, you know, I
think you have to be a littlefearless to be an entrepreneur.
And he has that fearlessness.
And he did it. And yeah, I thinkwe're both I'm super lucky that
Jacob I mean, Jacob is a greatguy. I mean, he's, he's good to
work with, but I think like thequality of his character is is
(25:30):
very high and thankful to havemet him.
Rhaime Kim (25:32):
Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, you
and Philip both have likeengineering backgrounds. And I'm
curious how you and Jacob as atwo person team, how do you
divide the work?
Kevin Eve (25:44):
Yeah, thankfully, it's a much more natural
division of duties andinterests. So Jacob studied. I
think he studied marketing andfinance, but he was working
marketing previously. He's supersocial. So he loves sales. And
he does. So he does more of oursales, marketing, and operations
stuff. I like to do more numbersand blend stuff up in the
(26:08):
kitchen. So I do our accounting,financial planning, analysis,
and more of the technical sideof the operations work. So
working with CO packers andfiguring out our formulations
and things like that. But westill, I mean, we collaborate on
almost everything we sit next toeach other, at least four days a
week in the office. And yeah,pretty much. Yeah, get back on,
(26:32):
you know, be give feedback andworking together on everything.
Rhaime Kim (26:35):
Because I'm in your office right now. And it's it's
really, it's has a greatpanoramic view. It's beautiful.
But it's really just you told meyou guys are literally like next
to each other. And you're right,you guys are literally next to
each other. I don't really seeother desks that look like
they're used every day. So thisis really like you and Jacob,
(26:58):
this just four days a week, likenext to each other hearing all
the calls, like you're justyou're there together.
Kevin Eve (27:05):
We're there together.
Yeah. No, I mean, I couldn't doit without him. I think we were
remote during COVID. And Ireally did not like working
alone. I mean, yeah, in astartup stuffs always going
wrong. And you're always puttingout those fires and feeling
badly about Yeah, maybe nothave, you know, been more
proactive about something ordone, you know, bad work or been
(27:28):
wrong about something. And so Ithink those can be like gut
punches. And when you're alone,it's brutal. But if you have
somebody to take those puncheswith and to pick you back up
again, it's it makes it it makesit doable. The day he arrived,
it was Philips last day, thenlike two days later, we won the
Rhode Island business.
(27:49):
Everything happy. Yeah. Then wewant to the $40,000. Is that a
grant? That was yeah, that wasone of the two grants. Okay.
Yeah. And I mean, it's kind offunny. He came for a week to
check it out and said, Okay,I'm, I'll join but he was still
living in San Francisco. Weneeded to announce we flew back
to San Francisco, packed histhings up, went to Boston, and
(28:12):
then had to run the BostonMarathon. Because he was
planning to that Boston there.
Yeah, super fast. Yeah, we'reboth avid runners, but he's
super fast. So he Yeah, hedestroyed the Boston Marathon
and then came down and cameright into the kitchen. And we
kept cooking up milks,
Rhaime Kim (28:30):
that's too much weight. So he knew for how long
by the time that he ended up,just pack it up. And
Kevin Eve (28:38):
I mean, it was it was probably, it was a couple calls
over probably a month before hisweek long visit. Then he came
out and visited for a week. Andthen it was like six weeks
later, he arrived in Providence,and we were full speed ahead.
Rhaime Kim (28:51):
I love that so much.
And I guess it goes to show thathe was building a startup
before. Right. And that youknow, this brother, so I guess
like maybe that mentality anddesire to create something was
there.
Kevin Eve (29:03):
Yeah, for sure. He's one of four brothers, two of his
other brothers. Two, hisbrothers have startups. That's
one of them. So yeah, it's kindof a long story about the San
Francisco startup. But yeah, itwas not a success,
unfortunately. But his otherbrother is running a venture
funded startup that's doingquite well and like 3d
renderings. So they're veryYeah, an ambitious and capable
(29:26):
group of Connery brothers. Yeah.
Rhaime Kim (29:29):
Okay, so Jacob moves to the east coast to Rhode
Island and that
Kevin Eve (29:35):
essentially we after our pilot in Rhode Island with
brown and Johnson and Walesthere was good response to the
product because they're makingthe product by hand was not
going to work. And the type ofdispenser we were using required
you to like clean it and that wedidn't require our customers to
(29:55):
clean it and we didn't likethat. It was just like messy. So
we kind of were like, Okay, thisis good. We need to do it in a
bit of a different way. Yeah. Atthe same time, we need more
money to pay for biggermanufacturing runs second,
because manufacturing that stuffis expensive, super expensive.
Right? You have to pay for it.
But you also need to. Yeah, Imean, you end up with a lot of
inventory. Yeah, you end up witha lot of inventory, especially
(30:18):
if you're doing a bigmanufacturing run. But
thankfully, a we applied to afood accelerator in New York
City, and got in at the end of2018. Yeah, what is it called
Big Idea ventures. We still workout of their office. That's
where we are right now. Wejoined the accelerator, they
helped us find a manufacturer.
(30:40):
So we moved into a differentprocessing, shelf stable. So
back to plant based milk, it wasdidn't need to worry about
refrigerating didn't need toworry about so stuff going bad
in 20 days. And we now use adispenser where there's a bag
and there's a tube attached tothe bag already. And there's no
like food contact parts in thedispenser, which is great for
(31:02):
food safety. We so we've prettymuch we just finished that for
COVID. I mean, it was comical,again, the timing here. We
brought that product to market.
We now had like seven collegesin the Northeast that wanted our
product. So we launched and gotthat going Wellesley College,
Roger Williams, brown Johnsonand Wales. And yeah, it was
(31:23):
cool. But then, yeah, I thinklike mid February, I started
seeing stuff about COVID. And Iwas like, Oh, now we're going to
we're going to be taken down.
And I turned out to be right.
Pretty much March 15, orprobably a little bit before
then, march 12. I think prettymuch every college in the
(31:45):
country came out and said, We'resending students home. And I
think that we were we had donelike a small kind of trial
manufacturing run like a quitesmall amount. Yeah. And we were
about to do a larger run. And welike called up the manufacturer.
Like don't do it. Yeah, he had.
Yeah, but hey, yeah, I mean, Iforget exactly how big the run
(32:08):
was. But it Yeah, it probablywas going to be more than
$50,000. So product, no, don'tdo. And at first, the guy was
like, Oh, they already startedbatching it up, and then called
back and said actually, no, it'sokay. I mean, I think everybody
at that point was, you know,nobody was gonna blame us. I
mean, if we, thankfully theydidn't end up making the
(32:28):
product. And but yeah, it was.
Yeah, it totally upended ourbusiness. Because we yeah, we
suddenly had no business and nocustomers.
Rhaime Kim (32:40):
Had you been servicing those seven colleges
for some time before, like youhad to pull from that big order.
Kevin Eve (32:47):
It was like two weeks. We've been selling
product for two weeks. Yeah. Sofor
Rhaime Kim (32:51):
five of the seven accounts, like you had been in
business with them for twoweeks. Yeah, I
Kevin Eve (32:56):
think maybe some more than two weeks. Oh, it's
terrible.
Rhaime Kim (33:00):
Yeah, the timing was good. And then it got like,
fucked up, basically.
Kevin Eve (33:04):
Yeah. No, COVID It was awful. And our demo day. So
the big idea ventures, we werethe first cohort. Their Demo Day
was March 14 2020. Oh my god. Itwas that was like
Rhaime Kim (33:19):
was it in person?
Yeah.
Kevin Eve (33:22):
Yeah, it was. It was very sad. It was. I mean, that
was like a POC. Right? Yeah, itwas. We were like all checking
your phones. Like when is thecity gonna lock down? That was
Rhaime Kim (33:34):
in New York City, like, Were you in the city for a
bit longer? Like, what did youend up doing?
Kevin Eve (33:40):
I think I got COVID.
I had COVID. And well, actually,I didn't know I had COVID. But
yeah, flew home and got home tomy parents place in San Diego.
started feeling feverish. Sothen I was quarantined for a
week and my parents. Yeah, butyeah, I realized I was not going
to be having any fun with my tworoommates in our small Brooklyn
(34:03):
apartment. So I got out of NewYork. And yeah, had a great time
in San Diego, and to kind oflick our wounds and figure out
what we were going to do next.
Rhaime Kim (34:15):
Yeah. And you mentioned at this point is
Jacob. He's not in San Diego, orwas he? No,
Kevin Eve (34:22):
so this was when we were remote during Cobra, he
stayed in New
Rhaime Kim (34:25):
York. Okay. And whereas Jacob from
Kevin Eve (34:29):
or where he's from LA, he's from Orange County. So
both I see. So cowboys, yeah.
Rhaime Kim (34:36):
What did you do?
What did those accounts say? Idon't know what the contracts
look like with colleges. But atthat point, when you called up
the different accounts, likewhat did they tell you?
Kevin Eve (34:50):
I mean, we make money when a college buys milk from us
or buys our milks, and theyweren't gonna be buying any milk
that's for sure for thosedispensers. They They were going
to be shut down for theforeseeable future. They did say
that there was a, you know,there was a chance when they
came back in the fall thatstudents would be it would be on
(35:12):
campus and dining operationswould be grab and go. So
there'll be an opportunity tosell them some single serving
cartons of plant based milk.
Yeah,
Rhaime Kim (35:23):
it makes sense. Was it easy to pivot and pursue
something else? Or?
Kevin Eve (35:29):
It was, it was pretty easy. I mean, we'd already done
the development for the bulkbags to plant based milk cartons
were easier. I think I wasalready in touch with a
manufacturer who could havepotentially been making the bags
for us. And we knew that theydid single serving cartons, so
we emailed them, we found somegreat graphic designers to help
(35:51):
do the packaging. So that waspretty seamless. The issue was
that it was COVID. And so therewas supply chain backups, and
it's kind of a nightmare. So weended up having to wait to get
linetime And everybody wanted tomake single. So we couldn't get
on the manufacturing line forthe single service until I
believe March a year later. SoMarch 21.
Rhaime Kim (36:13):
So stressful. Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin Eve (36:16):
I mean, it was stressful. I mean, yeah, we
weren't doing thankfully, weweren't doing that much. I mean,
I was like, running a lot. And Iwould, I would just, yeah, I
would work from like, 7ampacific time until like, two or
3pm when the East Coast wentoff. And when I go and ride my
bike, I tend to forget it's apretty normal. Yeah, right. But
(36:36):
it wasn't, I mean, it was likethere wasn't a ton to be doing.
I mean, you still wanted to feellike I was working hard. But I
mean, in reality, there wasn't alot to do. So in some ways, it
was kind of a sabbatical of yahave like eight months, but we
made a lot of eminent we did arebrand of app route. So the
current Catholic identity wasall done for those cartons. It
(36:59):
looks so great. Thank you. Westill you know, we were doing a
lot of sales. We were emailingaccounts for people. So progress
was made. But yeah, between yetMarch of 2020, and March of
2022, was not a lot of progresswhen you compare that to the
(37:23):
rest of uproots life. So we madethe single serving cartons, and
they were we had modest success.
We had some success on Amazon.
And we had some like really bigcorporate customers. One of them
was Microsoft's headquarters wasbuying, you know, a decent
volume of these cartons, but wewere still waiting for the
cafeterias to come back becausewe wanted to do the dispensers.
(37:45):
That's still where we saw themain opportunity. But yeah, then
salt in the wound was thatthrough no fault of ours, the
manufacturer, which also madeproducts for Oatly, and Premier
protein, and big protein shakecompany, and many, many others
ended up recalling all of theproducts that they had produced
(38:06):
full stop.
Rhaime Kim (38:07):
It could not be worse. Yeah. And I am happy that
you're doing great, you're inbusiness, you're better than
being in business.
Kevin Eve (38:15):
It was it was even better by the day before I had
crashed my bike, and I got ninestitches. Oh my God, my chin and
like maybe a little concussionthe day before. And you got a
concussion. So I was lying.
Yeah, I was lying on my couchwith like an iron mask on. And I
got a call from ourmanufacturer. And they were
like, hey, just so you know,we're about to, like recall your
(38:39):
products like it's going to bepublicly announced in 24 hours.
Get to work, buddy. And I waslike, Oh, great. It was pretty.
Rhaime Kim (38:49):
Cat even?
Kevin Eve (38:50):
Yeah, no, I mean, and we've had we had another we were
making a very large batch ofchocolate pea milk in October of
22. And there was a mishap andsomebody dumped in an ingredient
that needed to be added slowlyand kind of clogged some lines.
(39:12):
It was apparently chaos like ahatch got like vacuum in like
vacuum sealed shut. Theycouldn't get it open. And they
needed to get like a crowbar. Imean it was it was pandemonium
pandemonium and resulted in 1000gallons of chocolate peanut
going down the drain.
Rhaime Kim (39:31):
That's so annoying.
And are you responsible or is itjust slows down? Like you're not
able to serve as some query
Kevin Eve (39:38):
we ran? We briefly ran out of stock. I mean,
fortunately we had so it waslike scramble into action. What
are we going to do? We checkedwe had enough ingredients there
to do a small run. So we saidokay, ditch that product. We
know that there's enough to dolike 1500 gallons. Yeah, they
(39:58):
ran that and And that wasenough. I think we did run out
of stock a little bit. I mean,it's, yeah, it's obviously our
fault that we didn't have enoughinventory cushion. But I mean,
we're like, very this is oursecond run, ever. So we didn't,
you know, didn't have a lot offlexibility in terms of finances
or manufacturing time. But yeah,I mean, now we know that we need
(40:21):
to have like, six weeks ofinventory on the bat, you know,
after any manufacturing run incase something does go bad.
Yeah, we have time to fix it.
But anyway, we didn't have that.
We've been in a stock that themanufacturer did cover the
ingredients that were used, andyet, stuff goes battle.
Rhaime Kim (40:41):
Yes. And like, how do you react to that?
Kevin Eve (40:44):
I think if it's when it's not your fault, when it's
not my fault, it's a lot, Ithink it's a lot easier to stay
level headed and be like,alright, let's just find a
solution. And usually there islike, you know, we were able to
make a small run of chocolatemilk, and we recalled the card.
And so you know, that's, that'slife. Yeah. If it's not your
fault, I think stuff like themanufacturer messing up a run or
(41:05):
Yeah, actually calling cartonsand she was like, alright, let's
just solve the problem. Yeah, Ithink it was your fault, then
you feel more badly about it.
And it's harder to stay levelheaded. But still, I think it's
always like, Alright, we arewhere we are. Let's just act as
logically and try to stay aslevel headed as we can.
Rhaime Kim (41:22):
What are examples of like, no areas where you feel
like you've messed up is it andlike, maybe something you
promised a client or just thingsthat you just forgot about? Or
didn't prepare? Maybe as best asyou could have?
Kevin Eve (41:39):
I mean, part of me feels like the, the original
iteration of the product wherewe were making the making it by
hand and using a different modelof dispenser, that. I mean, now,
I wish I could have seen thatthat wasn't going to work
before. Yeah, we also I mean,that was kind of instrumental.
(41:59):
That was like, three months orfour months. Yeah, as a quick
turnaround, we, you know, wequickly realized that it wasn't
going to work. And that, youknow, we were able to spin that
up with with very little money.
And that allowed us to raise toget those grants to continue
building output. So in a lot ofways, it worked for approval.
But looking back, I, you know, Iwish I could have seen that it
(42:22):
wasn't going to be a smart idea.
Rhaime Kim (42:26):
Yeah, it's like, in hindsight, it's so obvious,
right? But when you're in it,this is like, you have to go
through it. Yeah. Just figureout the solutions yourself. So
during that journey, so like youand Jacob, this is like, you
know, the Power Team, but like,big idea ventures sounds like
they have played a significantpart. Have you had like
different mentors or friends,like, who have given you like
(42:49):
advice or just support? Like,who would you say are some of
the people like in your life or,you know, in your kind of
business world that have really,like helped you along the way?
Kevin Eve (43:01):
Yeah, there's been a lot. I mean, they've kind of
rotated through Yeah, from BLab, there was a guy by the name
of Richard Katzman, who was ourlike, B LAB advisor, and he, and
he didn't know anything. Well,he wasn't a specialist about
food, yet. He had good businesssense. And so we would get on
the phone. And he would be like,that's, I think there's a lot of
time when you're very young. Andyou're like, I think this is a
(43:22):
you know, you need somebody thatis like, this is very obviously
like a bad eye. Like you need tokind of like Screw your
dispenser. Yeah. Or just like,like anything, I think if we
would come down with these kindof wild things, and he'd be
like, this makes no sense, youshould probably reconsider. And
he was he was usually right.
Rhaime Kim (43:38):
What's his general background? He
Kevin Eve (43:40):
he was in Manufactured Home Goods, okay.
My most valuable veteran now isa founder of a coffee brand. And
he's kind of in a similarbusiness. And so he's
instrumental and all these likelittle things. I've tried to
figure out how to managerelationships with
manufacturers, how to plan thebusiness, but I mean, mostly,
(44:04):
yeah. I mean, the the calls andadvisory calls were were more
common early on. Yeah, we'rekind of, I don't think there's a
lot of people that know moreabout selling, dispense plant
based milk that Jacob and Iright now, obviously, we still
have a lot to learn in a lot ofdifferent areas. But for the
most part, it's just beenputting the heads down and
getting to it.
Rhaime Kim (44:24):
Microsoft, you end up onboarding as a client. So
it's not just cafeterias forstudents, although the college
setting is still your targetaudience for the dispenser
business in general, like howhave you found your clients
early on,
Kevin Eve (44:39):
it was definitely cold outreach. And the process
was essentially built off ofdoing customer research and Bua
trying to figure out if it was agood, good business. So we found
out that most of thesecafeterias put the name and the
contact information of the foodservice manager online and if
you write a good cold email,then they'll respond and for
(44:59):
Generally,
Rhaime Kim (45:01):
a lot of you don't get any response, right guys
awesome.
Kevin Eve (45:04):
Yeah, thankfully, these guys were looking for
dispense plant based milk. Andso we would put in the subject
plant based milk dispenser. Andwe got feedback, especially, I
think the other smart thing. Itwas being local, like, it was
like Providence, like, Hey, I'mat Brown down the street. I
(45:24):
think that goes a long way withtrust, I think, yeah, people
you're more willing to trustsomebody who you're close to?
Yeah, definitely like the first20 customers, we're all outreach
like that. We are now findingthat outreach is less effective.
It's a lot of work. You have todo kind of a lot of it. And
(45:44):
yeah, early on, I think we weregetting, like yield maybe of
like 30%. But obviously, itdoesn't keep up as you kind of
scale. Yeah. And now thankfully,we're getting kind of this
flywheel of having a boothdispensers in the field and
having happy customers and adifferent college will go visit
(46:06):
their peer college and see uproute and say, Oh, that's cool.
Can we find them now? Yeah,
Rhaime Kim (46:12):
exactly. No, my brother, the other managers.
Yeah, exactly.
Kevin Eve (46:18):
No, we had a good yeah. Yeah, like a lucky. We
went to a trade show. And thetrade show was okay. But I think
we were the trade show was inBaltimore. and Maryland has
upgraded dispensers. And theyactually did like a visit where
they took a bunch of chefs tolike University of Maryland. So
it's a beautiful dining hall.
And so they showed all thechef's, the beautiful Maryland
(46:39):
dining halls, and they were alllike, oh, upper. It's cool.
Like, we should get that. Sothings like that have been very
effective. But yeah, we'retalking to generally executive
chefs or foods, you know, theyget there's a lot of different
names, but it's yet the folksthat manage the cafeterias at
hospitals and colleges.
Rhaime Kim (46:59):
Now, it's 2023.
Like, what's the size of yourbusiness?
Kevin Eve (47:03):
We're, we have almost 50 customers. Yeah. And we're
going to have 100 dispensers bynext month, approaching a $1
million run rate. Hoping to doit's, yeah, it's a very seasonal
business with the collegesemesters. But yeah, hoping to
sell well over $100,000 nextmonth. Yeah,
Rhaime Kim (47:26):
that's so exciting.
What do the I'm sure it dependson maybe like the now but like,
what do the margins look like inyour business?
Kevin Eve (47:35):
For us right now? Not good? Yeah. But that's because
we're very small and foodfactories. It's all about scale.
Yeah. Because downtime is very,very expensive. And these
facilities can can move quicklyto get the costs low. But you
need to be doing big runs toachieve that. Right. And we
aren't quite there. So yeah, thebiggest thing is, is the cost
(47:59):
that we pay the manufacturer tofill the bags, but there's also
some savings to be had iningredients. So yeah, right now,
isn't all that? Yeah. So rightnow our margin is, I mean,
between five and 10%, which isnot good. But at least we're not
losing money. That's for us.
That's the gross margin. Ithink. I mean, you can look at a
(48:22):
publicly traded food company, Ithink, a company that looks like
ours, a healthy business, you'dhave a gross margin around 40%,
and maybe a net profit margin ofaround 10%. So that's what we're
shooting for at our currentpricing and what we know the
long term cost of goods will bethat that is totally within
(48:44):
reach. But we're not there yet.
Yeah, soon, soon. Yeah, we'remaking it happen. And we're
getting there.
Rhaime Kim (48:51):
Yeah. In terms of positioning and pricing, would
you say that you're a premiumbrand,
Kevin Eve (48:57):
we are a premium brand. We want to deliver on on
nutrition on protein, we want touse high quality ingredients.
When we can be as natural aspossible. Use organic
ingredients use cocoa powder. Imean, it's it's like we wanted
to make the plant based milksthat we want to drink. And
almost necessarily that ispremium.
Rhaime Kim (49:17):
Yeah. I'm seriously I'm so jealous. I need to stop
saying this. But I'm so jealousthat the students get to drink
this like amazing milk like everthey want what what advice would
you give yourself? Maybe let'ssay it's you've been in this
business for like five ishyears. Now, if you look back,
(49:37):
and you could just kind of tellyourself
Kevin Eve (49:42):
stay the course.
Yeah. It did that. But I did sayI stayed the course I think.
Yeah, I mean, I don't I don'thave any huge regrets about
things that I did wrong. Yeah.
But the other things that I'velearned that are very important
(50:06):
is work hard, I think, yeah, forthe health of the business. And
for me to be happy, I need to bedoing good work. Being honest,
being straightforward. Takingresponsibility for when things
go wrong. Yeah, all veryimportant. Building
relationships with customerssuper important. I think that's
(50:27):
one of the things that welearned is that especially when
things go wrong, if a customerhas a relationship with you,
they'll just give you a call andtext you and you can get it
figured out. And I think if wehave customers where things go
wrong, and they don't know us,and they, they don't even know
who to call, then they try todeal with a problem where they
(50:47):
can't fix it, or they just getfrustrated. So that has been
very important. Don't be afraidto reach out to people, I think,
generally, I you know, I waswilling to reach out to
suppliers and try to get someingredient or talk to these
manufacturers, but doing thatmore and checking in with them
(51:10):
to see when things change. Ithink that would have been
helpful. But no, I've been verylucky. I mean, it definitely
took me a while to learn a lotof things took us a while to
figure out food, it took us awhile to figure out how to raise
money, still not very good atraising money. But so far, it's
been a it's been a rewarding andenjoyable process.
Rhaime Kim (51:31):
Yeah, I mean, you've really staying the course like
the first day, you've reallypersevered. Because I mean, you
went through that, like thetiming of like things were just
picking out but then COVID justchanges everything. And then you
finally get the single servecartons and have like a solid
business, and then it's justlike goodbyes. So I think it's
pretty crazy. But
Kevin Eve (51:52):
that's the other thing I would tell myself is
that it's it's going to takelonger, and things are going to
go wrong. And you're just goingto have to keep fighting. But I
think that's kind of the casewith I think every founder knows
that. But they think it's notgoing to happen to them.
Rhaime Kim (52:12):
Right. Do you have other founder friends?
Kevin Eve (52:15):
I'm not that many.
Rhaime Kim (52:18):
Yeah, I'm not too surprised. I guess I feel like
maybe in a few years. I wonderif it'll become more or less
common? Yeah, I
Kevin Eve (52:25):
mean, hit me up. More founder friends. Yeah.
Rhaime Kim (52:30):
Do you ever get jealous of that? Or do you can
you not imagine yourself beingin that position that you
mentioned, you did do aninternship at SharkNinja?
Before? Like, do you ever thinkabout like when things are
tough? Or? I mean, you guys areon the up right now. So maybe
that's like, totally out of thequestion. The idea of working
corporate?
Kevin Eve (52:49):
Yeah, I mean, the office job definitely was
appealing or is appealing. Ithink the Yeah, the hardest
thing is that I don't reallyhave Yeah, I don't have the many
mentors. I don't have a boss.
Yeah, we don't our investors,and the bigger the venture
supports us, but they're not,you know, they're not policing
when I come in, you know,they're they are
Rhaime Kim (53:08):
very show right here four days a week, because,
Kevin Eve (53:11):
because we want to, and we're getting paid to and
there's a huge opportunity to,to build something amazing. But
yeah, the the, I think can behard to, like get better without
feedback. And a lot of times,yeah, so yeah, I mean, I get
feedback from my brother orfriends or other people. And
(53:35):
that's, that's harder to dothat. And if it's just your boss
who's paid to your stuff, insometimes, especially when
things weren't going well,you're like, I'm an idiot. And
this is a failure. Why am Iwasting my time? I don't know
how to do anything. Obviously,when things are going better,
and people are happy with theirproduct and we're making them or
you know, revenue is growingquickly, then, I think okay,
(53:56):
maybe I do know what I'm doing.
And we have done some good workhere.
Rhaime Kim (54:00):
Are there like any moments where you're like, I
feel so good. Like any like,whether it's the first time your
dispenser came or like yourfirst client and the check, you
got like, what were some of thekey?
Kevin Eve (54:13):
I mean, this month has been the best month for
approved ever go. We're going toadd, you know, almost 40 active
dispensers. That's between Oh,exciting, which is, you know, we
started the year we had 30active dispensers. Yeah. And
then, you know, we had a bigcollege email us this morning
(54:33):
saying, Hey, we have you know,it's like 40,000 undergrads.
Hey, we have three cafeterias.
Interested in your milks? Wesigned another one of the UC
schools this morning.
Rhaime Kim (54:44):
Yeah. So because those are big, right,
Kevin Eve (54:47):
those are big. Yeah.
And seeing the revenue. I mean,it's it's scary to tell
investors like hey, we think therevenue is gonna go and we we
sell almost nothing in thesummer. So our revenue went from
like, 10,000. And yeah, we'veSold $73,000 this month so far.
And so when that actually comesin, you're like, I'm I like it
(55:08):
happened. But so yeah, that'sbeen it's been super gratifying
and then to continue to havehave more sales interest that it
seems like we continue this kindof tripling year over year
growth is super exciting. Andour customers are more happy
than ever. So I think the Yeah,these are the, the exciting
(55:29):
moments. Yeah, the best momentsis winning customers. Yeah. And
having happy customers.
Rhaime Kim (55:34):
Yeah, they're giving you feedback that way, but five
years. I mean, I guess anybodywho's listening, I mean, five
years. That's so like, I mean,you were grinding for five
years, this is the result ofthat. So that shows a lot about
like your character and like whoyou are. And you mentioned
running that's like, you know,you're a runner, Jacobs a
(55:55):
runner, like, does that help youlike de stress at all? Or, you
know, what do you do to like,what's your, how do you think
about work life balance? And doyou see like this as part of
your passion? So it's not likethere's necessarily like, okay,
weekends, I'm not going to workat all or after 5pm going to try
to not work like, how do youtake care of yourself? Because
(56:17):
it's like, this is a lot ofperseverance and like, bad shit
happens. And you know, theanswer is the most you can
always ask for help. So,
Kevin Eve (56:27):
yeah, I mean, so I got into running during COVID.
Yeah, as the business obviouslywasn't doing well. So I had more
time. But also I've, you know, Ilike the feeling of having
success and getting better atsomething and working at
something. Yeah. And thebusiness was not something that
I could put effort into and getresults out. Really. So yeah,
running is it's amazing. I mean,it's super fun. You can go, you
(56:48):
train, and you get faster. Andit's like this really fun wheel.
So it's been great to have thatto destress. And to have
something where I can improveand get results if the business
is not doing well. I've Yeah, Ireally enjoyed it. I have a
great group of friends. So it'salso kind of a social outlet for
me during the week, little rungroup, and then do some long
(57:11):
runs on the weekend withfriends. And yeah, it's kind of
a win win. Because yeah, I mean,what they say is true. Like, if
you're fit, you can think betterand work harder. Yeah. I, yeah,
I mean, I know Jacob and I arenot not grinding, we're
generally 830 to six in theoffice four days a week, remote
on Friday, and then a little bitof work on the weekends. So it's
(57:33):
definitely not crazy, weprobably could, and maybe should
be pushing ourselves harder. Butwe don't, we don't have a lot of
busy work, we're not wasting ourtime with calls, we don't really
have to, like get approved. Youknow, it's kind of just go and
like, let's work on the hardstuff. 100%. So it's hard. I
think it's hard, at least for meto do more than Yeah, 910 hours
(57:54):
of like hard work per day.
Rhaime Kim (57:56):
I totally get that.
Because when I was, you know,working, I remember when I was
working at that startup for twoyears during COVID. people be
like, oh, like, because I'd belike, Well, I'm working so hard.
And people like oh, like whatare your hours? That's like the
first response. But I don'tthink those two things are
really correlate because like,let's be real, like we're all
people you can only focus for.
(58:18):
So I agree. I mean, when you'redoing that 830 to six to me
sounds long. But when you areworking, like what if you're
working during that time, that'san intense workday. So I mean,
Kevin Eve (58:31):
yeah, I know, I think we we make Yeah, we try to work
hard. And
Rhaime Kim (58:36):
last but not least, do you have any, you gave me
some advice you would tellyourself five years back when
you're getting started? Like,what would you tell any
entrepreneurs who are grindingright now, but maybe they're not
at the scale at which it'ssustainable, or just any advice
(58:58):
you'd give to entrepreneurs whoare kind of on that early
journey or thinking aboutstarting something of their own?
Kevin Eve (59:05):
I feel like it's tough, because every business is
different. So the advice I'mgoing to give is kind of uproot
specific, but I think my adviceis, stay curious, like, do a
bunch of research might learneverything you can about what
you're doing. Use your commonsense. A lot of times you're
working on something that's kindof a bad idea and might be
staring at you and you need tolike find the good idea. And
(59:31):
focus on the customers. I mean,yeah, the Yeah, that is
obviously you know, businesses,you're you're serving customers,
and you need to have somethingthat you're kind of the best at.
Rhaime Kim (59:44):
Yeah, I mean, like especially the last thing you
said it's it seems easy, but youhave to go back to principles
because it's easy to get muckedup when there's so many whenever
like there's 100 fires like youhave to think about the
principles is like the customermatters like don't Forget that.
Okay, so for approved, like, areyou guys raising? Like, is there
(01:00:07):
anything that you know? Are youtrying to get in touch with more
investors any way that theaudience could help you or
you're looking for? Yeah,
Kevin Eve (01:00:15):
we're working towards raising a price to seed round at
the start of next year.
Hopefully from top tier VC whoworks with food companies, we
want, you know, the rightpartner to grow the business. If
you know, any cafeterias thatneed better plant based milk.
(01:00:36):
Let them know that awkwardexists. Follow us on Instagram.
Shoot me a note if you want tomy email is Kevin at upper
milk.com.
Rhaime Kim (01:00:45):
Yeah, okay. Awesome.
And then one last thing. So interms of capital, have you
raised institutional capital?
Kevin Eve (01:00:54):
If you define the accelerator round from Big Idea
ventures as institutionalcapital then yes, okay. If not,
no.
Rhaime Kim (01:01:03):
Okay. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. Actually,
I've been wanting to interviewmy friends for entrepreneurs for
so long, literally eight, nineyears, and I never did it. So
you are helping me you know,make kind of my dreams come
true. So I really appreciateyour time.
Kevin Eve (01:01:19):
Of course I was it was an enjoyable interview. And
thank you for interviewing me. Ihave not had many opportunities
to share my story. So it's goodand happy to get it out there
and hopefully, I can report backin two or three years and I bet
it will be 100 times as big
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