Entrepreneurial
Entrepreneurial
Making Plant Milk Dispensers | Uproot Co-Founder & CEO, Kevin Eve | Alternative Milks, Oatmilk, Soymilk, Peamilk
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
Kevin Yves is the co founder and CEO of uproot, which makes plant milk dispensers for cafeterias primarily at colleges. Kevin and I met at Brown University five years ago, when we got a small summer grant to work on our businesses. Tell me about your products. So you mentioned dispensers, what are your products? And could you tell us more about your milks? So right now, Pruett offers a dispenser program for plant based milk catered towards mostly college cafeterias. But really any cafeteria, we provide a dispenser to these cafeteria locations it goes on the counter, and it serves up root products. So we do an oat milk, a soy milk and a chocolate pea milk.
Kevin Eve:And yeah, students generally it's an all you can eat dining hall, students can grab 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 Gly phosphate or other pesticides on there. And we do a really delicious chocolate pea milk. It's made with a ton of cocoa powder. No like, yeah, you read it likes it. Yeah, no fake chocolate flavor, just a ton of cocoa powder. It's really delicious. And then the classic soy milk, a little bit of vanilla, eight grams of protein, same amount of protein is dairy milk. When students go back to school this fall, I think they'll probably be like maybe a quarter million students that it feel like you've took the entire enrollment of
Rhaime Kim:the or you said a quarter million.
Kevin Eve:I mean, that was that was back of my hand. But I mean, we have some some very large accounts. I know I you Bloomington 30,000 People in northwestern 50,000. Students. Yeah. Vanderbilt 50,000 students, and it's about 40 accounts. gets up there.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, that's so cool. And like, I just feel like even back then I was working on this like crypto idea. Love it. But even back then, like I felt. I mean, I just think it's amazing that you've been able to have the patience to just like push through. And what was that process? Like?
Kevin Eve:It's definitely been a test of patience. And it's definitely been something where I thought they would go faster. Yeah, definitely, if you asked me summer of 18, where we would be in five years, I would have thought we'd be much farther ahead. A lot of it, I think was due to COVID. COVID is pretty much a two year setback for us. And that was the biggest test of patience. But I always believed in what we were doing. And I believed that we could deliver value. And I'm very happy I stuck with it. And I'm very happy that you know, our investors continue to put money into the business to keep the keep going. And we're now 13 months of exponential growth. For our dispensary business. Just super exciting. finally seeing the fruits of this finally, you know, we have reputation. We have built trust in our customers and yeah, uproots it's getting out there.
Rhaime Kim:I wish I had that because not to shade some of the other competitors out there. But I became lactose intolerant while I was at Brown, which sucks cuz I still eat cereal every day. Um, but I learned the hard way I was lactose intolerant. And I just feel like if I had that variety of like milks, it would have been great, because the alternatives that we had were, I mean, they I feel like there's just a lot of sugar they just didn't, you know, weren't very palatable. So it's super cool. But um, how have you thought about like, the offering different pot plant milks versus offering different flavors?
Kevin Eve:Yeah, I mean, I think it comes back to the way, you know, uproots b2b. And so we think about milk plant based milk more as a service to these cafeterias rather than the product rather than an oat milk or soy milk. So what we wanted to do is create an all in one solution for these cafeterias to meet the needs of their students. So it's a it's a service that we provide. And it was very clear that there is a demand for different varieties of plant based milk. I mean, I enjoy soy milk. I think it tastes good. And I like the protein. And it's that's what I drink. But obviously, oat milk is super popular, it's probably better than coffee. So we knew from day one that we needed to have a variety. And we actually started out also offering coconut milk and almond milk. And then we paired it back because we got some feedback that a lot of cafeterias are scared of allergens or not scared of allergens, but it is I mean, allergens are scary anaphylaxis is scary. And if you can, people wanted to remove allergens, so we dropped those varieties and that's how we ended up where we are.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, cool. We do plant milks. Why are you interested in cooking? Are you lactose intolerant? Like me? Like what got you into the plant milk business to start with?
Kevin Eve:I started drinking plant based milk. Probably when I was like two my brother.
Rhaime Kim:What a year. Is that? Is that? That's right.
Kevin Eve:Yeah. My brother and I were like Sick toddlers and a homeopathic doctor told my mom to take us off dairy. We were getting ear infections. And she did 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 milk at the time, I was not a fan of the taste of soy milk. And yeah,
Rhaime Kim:yeah, cuz, I mean, I mentioned I was like, okay, that must have been in the 90s. I guess you mentioned late 90s. And I was was it easy for you know, your mom, you know your parents to like, find plant based milks? What were I
Kevin Eve:mean, it was it was like gen one, there was like a token there was like an ice cream sandwich. And there was some like, kind of like Kraft Singles cheese, like really wasn't very good. My mom would make we make together like a vegan yogurt with like chickpeas and there was like a powder, like a packet of like powder that went in it. So that was pretty tasty, but it was very hard to find. And if you're traveling, like you're pretty much out of luck, I think pretty quickly. I learned that you can have cereal with water, and to almost stop drinking milk.
Rhaime Kim:That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. But I've done that. Yeah, it's
Kevin Eve:totally doable. And it's a pain in the butt. At least back then. When plant smoke was not a thing. Yeah. So I kind of gave up. But yeah, I was always as a kid. whipping up stuff in the kitchen. My mom liked to cook, she would cook dinner for my brother and my dad and I and every night and so I would help her cook. And then to mess around. I would put like chocolate chips and stuff in a bowl and melt it and make it a little concoction. So I was always I was drinking plant based milk and I was making food stuff. My entire life.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, that's cool. And I think it's it's hard like I 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's like cheese ice cream. And like, you don't want to be that person. It's like, oh, I'm lactose intolerant. It's like no, like, trust me like you don't want, like it's a real thing. So 2018 Your Are you a senior? a rising senior then? Yeah, I was a rising senior. Yeah. And how did you take what you learn from the summer and then start like building the business and like build it into your full time work? Well,
Kevin Eve:so I was a rising senior in this, or I was I was a senior in the spring of 2018 When I got the inspiration for a brute, but then I graduated in June. So when I was working in the lab, I was actually already a graduate. Okay, yeah. I had already teamed up with Philip Matthew, who was my friend and collaborator at Brown. I studied engineering, we worked on a extra curricular team that built a race car. So it was very entrepreneurial. We were used to building stuff, kind of inventing stuff. And we it's the same
Rhaime Kim:race car. Yeah.
Kevin Eve:Yeah, thing we've been kicking, usually jokingly around different startup ideas. And then I was struck with this idea of bringing better plant based milks to food services. And actually, we actually started thinking about how to do it in the home with dispensers. Over the summer in the lab, I realized that most homes don't go through enough milk toward a dispenser. But looking at our dining hall, which is very close, I thought, oh, there's a location that uses a lot of plant based milk. And so started calling a bunch of college cafeterias. And they all are the ones that spoke to me said, yeah, hey, we need to a better plant based milk. And so that was how we settled on that idea. And at the end of B Lab, kind of the big project for me was building a business model to try to figure out, okay, how big is this business? How much could we sell in five years? And can we make money doing it? And at the end of that, I decided that yeah, like, this isn't this is a good business. There's a lot of colleges in the US. There's a lot of kids drinking plant based milk. And if you offer a great product, I think colleges would pay a lot for it. Yeah. So I said, Alright, let's give it a go. And Philip was on board. And so we started working on it. I mean, I fortunately had some savings. I mean, essentially my parents money, but I had some savings. And so we bought equipment and started renting space in the kitchen and started making milks.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, I mean, I love that. I think it takes a lot of courage to run with your idea. I think especially coming out of a institution like brown. I'm sure you had some folks just go into traditional pathways and I think It's really awesome that you guys like cobbled it. Like cobbled up what you had and initially getting off. Like I remember back in the day, you mentioned that it's one thing to play around with recipes and understand things better. But cooking bigger batches is a totally different. It's just different to make things bigger batches. So what were the initial, like, hard parts of your business? And I guess you kind of thought about your business model, and were able to make progress there. But was there anything about the product itself that you had to learn or connections you had to build?
Kevin Eve:I mean, it was I knew nothing about the food. I knew about making small batches, like you said, in my kitchen, but I knew nothing about how food gets made at scale. So it was just a lot of googling early on. There were some very helpful people, we were renting kitchen space at this place called Hope in Maine, near Providence, Rhode Island. And so there were some folks there, that really got us started, you know, I took these like food safety classes, they kind of pointed me in the direction of different ingredients, suppliers, but I mean, it was a lot of googling a lot of just kind of like, spending hours and hours and hours researching and trying to figure out you know, how can we make soy milk? How can we make oat milk? What's in the, these products? But yeah, I mean, the information is all out there. It was just a matter of grinding it out and getting it done.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, for sure. was a big part of your research. Also speaking with people though, or once you knew were you able to rent kitchen space and kind of test out like whether it's like boiling certain things, like test out kind of what you learned in practice.
Kevin Eve:I'm gonna think the actual process So originally, it was like, Alright, I'm gonna make we made I mean, soy milk. Yeah, the way you would make it at home. So we got soy beans, and we blended it up and we boiled it. And then we had soy milk we made almond milk by by grinding up almonds. We made oat milk by grinding up oats,
Rhaime Kim:which I tried. I remember I think like once we were doing a potluck or something and you brought something with like a like a Tupperware with like a red tarp and like, like, these are milk. Oh my God, it was really good. But I remember seeing like the being kind of like a note there being like the grinds, basically. Yeah. The whole process.
Kevin Eve:Yeah, but then. So we very quickly realized that. I mean, it's a ton of work. And you grind it with your hands. In a blender. You stick it on a blender.
Rhaime Kim:I guess like my blenders are like cheap blenders. They can't blood like any like, probably can't even do eyes properly. So, but I guess you can get a food processor. And yes, like, Well,
Kevin Eve:shall I actually, I was an intern this summer before at SharkNinja, which makes me so I actually got her a blender for free among a host of other appliances. Nice. So shout out to them. But yeah, it was. Thank you, Ninja. But yeah, it was a blender that I pilfered from SharkNinja Yeah, but yeah, the biggest unlock was realizing that there are food suppliers that provide ingredients that are kind of pre processed to make milk a lot easier. The food industry is very kind of split up, because that's more efficient. Like there's one factory that processes soy beans and kind of splits it up. And then you can send it to the many different final products, one of them being plant based milk. So yeah, we started buying an almond butter, and soy flour and oat powder, and pea protein and cocoa powder. And those companies also will they'll give you formulations and recipes for plant based milk. So that was kind of the biggest unlock. And then yeah, talking to the folks at the kitchen to figure out how to pasteurize it and how to cool it down fast enough that it's food safe. And talking to the health inspector. Yeah. And that got us to pretty good formulations and processes that we could use in the rental kitchen.
Rhaime Kim:How long did it take from y'all having the ideas you have they're doing in the spring of 18? You're working on it full time by the summer, from the summer onwards, like how long did it take until you had one or all the flavors down?
Kevin Eve:Yeah, I mean, so you're a part of this. We were doing. I was thinking I was working 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 I was, yeah, I was full time on up here. But yeah, for whatever you said during the week, I would do kind of more of the like, computer work and then the weekends I would spend the time blending up different things and then I would host the tasting parties to get feedback. We had everything ready to go by late 2018. I think we were hoping to get some customers going that semester. We did not but we had everything in place. Yeah. And then when school came back in 2019, we had dispensers at Johnson and Wales and brown.
Rhaime Kim:I mean, that's really quick turnaround. Right. So I guess it took about a year until the products were in clients hands, or at least less than a year.
Kevin Eve:Yeah. I mean, because when I had the idea, I mean, it was kind of a different idea. In the idea that I had in the spring of 2018 was, yeah, I mean, that was not what we ended up doing. That really only happened in B Lab. So we were able to go from like, what was that July? Originally, it was going to be for the home, it was going to be a plant milk and maybe other beverage dispenser for the home. Yeah. And realized that, right, it didn't make any sense. Because homes didn't use enough beverages to make a dispenser worthwhile. So yeah, we really only kind of identified what we're gonna do in the summer. And then yeah, it was about less than six months to mark. It. Was pretty fast.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, it really is. And it's so cool. So brown is in Providence, and Johnson and Wales is also an is in Providence, Rhode Island. Yep. So it's, it's really cool that you're able to like then see it in action, you know, so how Wait, how, how long? Did you live in Providence? And was Philip also living with you for a
Kevin Eve:year? I mean, we didn't live in the same. Yeah, actually, we did we live together for the summer during the lab. So summer.
Rhaime Kim:A lot of us did that went together.
Kevin Eve:And then. Yeah, so the, I mean, the rest of the story in the fall of 2018. Once we kind of had, actually now, I mean, I forget the actual, the dates, I think in the fall, or maybe I think we applied for more funding from Brown for the brown venture prize, which
Rhaime Kim:did you have your customers, and then you applied?
Kevin Eve:I don't think we had customers when we applied, okay. And the same. I also applied for the Rhode Island business competition. And I think it was both, like around the like, final pitch. And the final round of interviews is when we finally had the first customers finally had, like a great time and we had the photo of the upper dispenser in the cafeteria, we had some good numbers coming out of Brown University. And that was enough. I mean, I think they like to see our hustle. And so we've won both of those. So then, yeah, we had that was about $100,000. And that was our first funding. Yeah. And yeah, that let us produce the product for that spring and serve those two customers. And it also paid. Yeah, a little co founder salary.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, that's so cool. Was that? So you mentioned it was a brown grant. And were those two were they grants or were they like investments? Both? Both grants? Yeah, that's great. And must have made you feel like a lot more. Like you could? Because, like, 100k for two people, like when you're in Providence, like you must have been like, okay, that gives me a bit more runway. It
Kevin Eve:gave us a lot of runway. Yeah, at that point. I wasn't on a salary. My co founder was on a salary. Yeah, I think we only spent like $20,000 on the product. I mean, we probably I think we sold like$15,000 of milk that first semester. Probably sold.
Rhaime Kim:No, probably I probably zero to 15.
Kevin Eve:Yeah, yeah. And a few months. Yeah. I mean, that money lasted us, probably until almost the end of 2019. But yeah, it gave us the confirmation and confidence to keep going, I think, yeah, I think we hadn't gotten that money. And I mean, our our first pilot was a success. But it wasn't like a full success. There was a lot that wasn't right about it. And yeah, who knows if we would have kept going? Yeah. Because it was helpful. Yeah, very helpful.
Rhaime Kim:It sounded like you had conviction from the very beginning. So did you always like have that conviction that it would like, like, why were you so convinced that this was going to work out?
Kevin Eve:I mean, I knew that I wanted to drink plant based milk. Yeah, in my cafeteria, I knew that plant based milk was only getting more popular. And I knew that the solution out there was not good. was missing on a lot of factors. And I yeah, I just had conviction that if we work hard, we can deliver a great product like we worked really hard, and we came up with a fun name. I mean, at least I liked the name upgrade. And so memorable came you know, we worked really hard on the branding. We wanted to connect with young students. We wanted to be upbeat and natural. In modern. We wanted the milk that tastes really good. We spent a lot of time doing that. We wanted to nutrition to be perfect or not perfect, but we want the nutrition to be good to have as much protein as dairy milk, so people feel satisfied. So I felt confident that we could deliver a great product. And I didn't think any buddy else, that many other people were kind of stupid enough or had the same conviction that I did. I didn't, you know, it's a niche market. I don't think a lot of other people see could see what I could see. And so I had some conviction that if we could get it going, we would have a lot of success.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah. And that makes sense. Because it's, you know, being lactose intolerance and trendy, it's like a real like, thing. Yeah, I guess people up until now probably just avoided dairy if they had GI issues. Yeah. And so it totally makes sense in that gap. Like, I guess you're like, hey, there's just a gap in this market. So we're going to do the create the right thing, and you know, it's gonna work out is your would you say your products are like more your milks are the dispenser? And like, all the supply chain? Like, I think all those things are important. But how do you view the business?
Kevin Eve:I mean, I view it as a service. And when we talk to our customers, we say we have a plant based milk dispenser program. So I think it's a program. It's not just the milks, it's not just the dispenser, but it's the fact that they all integrate together. It's the fact that we make sure that our products are available in the right distributors. And it's that we have good customer service. I think that a lot of other players in the space few other players in this space. I don't think any other no other players in this space can do all of those things well, so do the branding, the product development, getting it made the customer service, getting good dispensers, getting them placed in the cafeterias getting the distribution set up, nobody else, I think does that really well. You have like CPG companies that are taking their products and their brands and their supply chain from retail, and trying to bring that into food service to get some incremental revenue, or maybe some exposure, but they often don't have the sales force or the customer service. And they don't, yeah, but oftentimes they don't really care, I think I see is what we found. And then maybe you have some of the more like white label the food service players, and they maybe have more sales force, and they kind of know the business, but they're not as savvy on the brand side or the product development side. So they couldn't really deliver like an authentic, high quality plant based milk to college customer. I don't think you'd ever make that connection. But yeah, uproot can where, you know, Jacob and I, my co founder and I are our 27 year old, plant based milk evangelist. And so it's really natural for us to go into these cafeterias and bring them up.
Rhaime Kim:So your co founders, Jacob,
Kevin Eve:yeah, so it's a little complicated. At the start, I was, I started working on operate with Philip Matthew, my friend from Brown, before we won the grants at the end of 2018. We had overlapping skill sets for both physics and engineering graduates. So we both kind of wanted to be doing the same jobs. And for whatever reason, started having some disagreements. And I also think personally, he wanted to go in, I mean, he's now in academia. And I think he saw upward and realized that it wasn't as sciency, as he expected. At the, you know, early on, were thinking of being more hard tech, where it really went towards sales and marketing, essentially. And so he decided that it wasn't for him, and he wanted to move on, and thankfully gave me three months to find a replacement. So that was, like December of 2018. He said, he wanted to move on. And I had three months to find somebody. And so I texted all my friends and said, Hey, do you want to work on a plant based milk business with me? Or do you know somebody who does? And fortunately, one of my friends said, Yeah, I know, the perfect person. He lives in San Francisco. He's vegan. He just finished working on his brother's cookie delivery business. And he's a great guy, you should talk to him. So I had a few calls with Jacob. He was interested, he flew out to Providence to meet me and check out the business. And actually he then moved, you know, moved into my part for a little bit. And it was a great match, fortunately, yeah. And it's been, yeah, four years of working with Jacob and very fortunate to have found him.
Rhaime Kim: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 like a lot of like, different philosophies or realities that people have when it comes to like, who they get into business with, but I think like, maybe because it was a friend of a friend, you probably trusted that person's judgment, but it's so good that that serendipitously, like worked out right now a brute for full time employees. Is it you and Jacob, it's just Jacob and if that like, I guess Jacobs that huge part of like, uproot and So that's really cool. And were you like, close with that friend? Like, how did you? Did you expect? Yeah, I mean, he flew over that's like a lot,
Kevin Eve:ya know, I I think it speaks to Jacob, you know, I think you have to be a little fearless to be an entrepreneur. And he has that fearlessness. And he did it. And yeah, I think we're both I'm super lucky that Jacob I mean, Jacob is a great guy. I mean, he's, he's good to work with, but I think like the quality of his character is is very high and thankful to have met him.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, you and Philip both have like engineering backgrounds. And I'm curious how you and Jacob as a two person team, how do you divide the work?
Kevin Eve:Yeah, thankfully, it's a much more natural division of duties and interests. So Jacob studied. I think he studied marketing and finance, but he was working marketing previously. He's super social. So he loves sales. And he does. So he does more of our sales, marketing, and operations stuff. I like to do more numbers and blend stuff up in the kitchen. So I do our accounting, financial planning, analysis, and more of the technical side of the operations work. So working with CO packers and figuring out our formulations and things like that. But we still, I mean, we collaborate on almost everything we sit next to each other, at least four days a week in the office. And yeah, pretty much. Yeah, get back on, you know, be give feedback and working together on everything.
Rhaime Kim:Because I'm in your office right now. And it's it's really, it's has a great panoramic view. It's beautiful. But it's really just you told me you guys are literally like next to each other. And you're right, you guys are literally next to each other. I don't really see other desks that look like they're used every day. So this is really like you and Jacob, this just four days a week, like next to each other hearing all the calls, like you're just you're there together.
Kevin Eve:We're there together. Yeah. No, I mean, I couldn't do it without him. I think we were remote during COVID. And I really did not like working alone. I mean, yeah, in a startup stuffs always going wrong. And you're always putting out those fires and feeling badly about Yeah, maybe not have, you know, been more proactive about something or done, you know, bad work or been wrong about something. And so I think those can be like gut punches. And when you're alone, it's brutal. But if you have somebody to take those punches with and to pick you back up again, it's it makes it it makes it doable. The day he arrived, it was Philips last day, then like two days later, we won the Rhode Island business. Everything happy. Yeah. Then we want to the $40,000. Is that a grant? That was yeah, that was one of the two grants. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, it's kind of funny. 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. We needed to announce we flew back to San Francisco, packed his things up, went to Boston, and then had to run the Boston Marathon. Because he was planning to that Boston there. Yeah, super fast. Yeah, we're both avid runners, but he's super fast. So he Yeah, he destroyed the Boston Marathon and then came down and came right into the kitchen. And we kept cooking up milks,
Rhaime Kim: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:I mean, it was it was probably, it was a couple calls over probably a month before his week long visit. Then he came out and visited for a week. And then it was like six weeks later, he arrived in Providence, and we were full speed ahead.
Rhaime Kim:I love that so much. And I guess it goes to show that he was building a startup before. Right. And that you know, this brother, so I guess like maybe that mentality and desire to create something was there.
Kevin Eve:Yeah, for sure. He's one of four brothers, two of his other brothers. Two, his brothers have startups. That's one of them. So yeah, it's kind of a long story about the San Francisco startup. But yeah, it was not a success, unfortunately. But his other brother is running a venture funded startup that's doing quite well and like 3d renderings. So they're very Yeah, an ambitious and capable group of Connery brothers. Yeah.
Rhaime Kim:Okay, so Jacob moves to the east coast to Rhode Island and that
Kevin Eve:essentially we after our pilot in Rhode Island with brown and Johnson and Wales there was good response to the product because they're making the product by hand was not going to work. And the type of dispenser we were using required you to like clean it and that we didn't require our customers to clean it and we didn't like that. It was just like messy. So we kind of were like, Okay, this is good. We need to do it in a bit of a different way. Yeah. At the same time, we need more money to pay for bigger manufacturing runs second, because manufacturing that stuff is expensive, super expensive. Right? You have to pay for it. But you also need to. Yeah, I mean, you end up with a lot of inventory. Yeah, you end up with a lot of inventory, especially if you're doing a big manufacturing run. But thankfully, a we applied to a food accelerator in New York City, and got in at the end of 2018. Yeah, what is it called Big Idea ventures. We still work out of their office. That's where we are right now. We joined the accelerator, they helped us find a manufacturer. So we moved into a different processing, shelf stable. So back to plant based milk, it was didn't need to worry about refrigerating didn't need to worry about so stuff going bad in 20 days. And we now use a dispenser where there's a bag and there's a tube attached to the bag already. And there's no like food contact parts in the dispenser, which is great for food safety. We so we've pretty much 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 colleges in the Northeast that wanted our product. So we launched and got that going Wellesley College, Roger Williams, brown Johnson and Wales. And yeah, it was cool. But then, yeah, I think like mid February, I started seeing stuff about COVID. And I was 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, or probably a little bit before then, march 12. I think pretty much every college in the country came out and said, We're sending students home. And I think that we were we had done like a small kind of trial manufacturing run like a quite small amount. Yeah. And we were about to do a larger run. And we like called up the manufacturer. Like don't do it. Yeah, he had. Yeah, but hey, yeah, I mean, I forget exactly how big the run was. But it Yeah, it probably was going to be more than$50,000. So product, no, don't do. And at first, the guy was like, Oh, they already started batching it up, and then called back and said actually, no, it's okay. I mean, I think everybody at that point was, you know, nobody was gonna blame us. I mean, if we, thankfully they didn't end up making the product. And but yeah, it was. Yeah, it totally upended our business. Because we yeah, we suddenly had no business and no customers.
Rhaime Kim:Had you been servicing those seven colleges for some time before, like you had to pull from that big order.
Kevin Eve:It was like two weeks. We've been selling product for two weeks. Yeah. So for
Rhaime Kim:five of the seven accounts, like you had been in business with them for two weeks. Yeah, I
Kevin Eve:think maybe some more than two weeks. Oh, it's terrible.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, the timing was good. And then it got like, fucked up, basically.
Kevin Eve:Yeah. No, COVID It was awful. And our demo day. So the big idea ventures, we were the first cohort. Their Demo Day was March 14 2020. Oh my god. It was that was like
Rhaime Kim:was it in person? Yeah.
Kevin Eve:Yeah, it was. It was very sad. It was. I mean, that was like a POC. Right? Yeah, it was. We were like all checking your phones. Like when is the city gonna lock down? That was
Rhaime Kim:in New York City, like, Were you in the city for a bit longer? Like, what did you end up doing?
Kevin Eve: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 to my parents place in San Diego. started feeling feverish. So then I was quarantined for a week and my parents. Yeah, but yeah, I realized I was not going to be having any fun with my two roommates in our small Brooklyn apartment. So I got out of New York. And yeah, had a great time in San Diego, and to kind of lick our wounds and figure out what we were going to do next.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah. And you mentioned at this point is Jacob. He's not in San Diego, or was he? No,
Kevin Eve:so this was when we were remote during Cobra, he stayed in New
Rhaime Kim:York. Okay. And whereas Jacob from
Kevin Eve:or where he's from LA, he's from Orange County. So both I see. So cowboys, yeah.
Rhaime Kim:What did you do? What did those accounts say? I don't know what the contracts look like with colleges. But at that point, when you called up the different accounts, like what did they tell you?
Kevin Eve:I mean, we make money when a college buys milk from us or buys our milks, and they weren't gonna be buying any milk that's for sure for those dispensers. They They were going to be shut down for the foreseeable future. They did say that there was a, you know, there was a chance when they came back in the fall that students would be it would be on campus and dining operations would be grab and go. So there'll be an opportunity to sell them some single serving cartons of plant based milk. Yeah,
Rhaime Kim:it makes sense. Was it easy to pivot and pursue something else? Or?
Kevin Eve:It was, it was pretty easy. I mean, we'd already done the development for the bulk bags to plant based milk cartons were easier. I think I was already in touch with a manufacturer who could have potentially been making the bags for us. And we knew that they did single serving cartons, so we emailed them, we found some great graphic designers to help do the packaging. So that was pretty seamless. The issue was that it was COVID. And so there was supply chain backups, and it's kind of a nightmare. So we ended up having to wait to get linetime And everybody wanted to make single. So we couldn't get on the manufacturing line for the single service until I believe March a year later. So March 21.
Rhaime Kim:So stressful. Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Eve:I mean, it was stressful. I mean, yeah, we weren't doing thankfully, we weren't doing that much. I mean, I was like, running a lot. And I would, I would just, yeah, I would work from like, 7am pacific time until like, two or 3pm when the East Coast went off. And when I go and ride my bike, I tend to forget it's a pretty normal. Yeah, right. But it wasn't, I mean, it was like there wasn't a ton to be doing. I mean, you still wanted to feel like I was working hard. But I mean, in reality, there wasn't a lot to do. So in some ways, it was kind of a sabbatical of ya have like eight months, but we made a lot of eminent we did a rebrand of app route. So the current Catholic identity was all done for those cartons. It looks so great. Thank you. We still you know, we were doing a lot of sales. We were emailing accounts for people. So progress was made. But yeah, between yet March of 2020, and March of 2022, was not a lot of progress when you compare that to the rest of uproots life. So we made the single serving cartons, and they were we had modest success. We had some success on Amazon. And we had some like really big corporate customers. One of them was Microsoft's headquarters was buying, you know, a decent volume of these cartons, but we were still waiting for the cafeterias to come back because we wanted to do the dispensers. That's still where we saw the main opportunity. But yeah, then salt in the wound was that through no fault of ours, the manufacturer, which also made products for Oatly, and Premier protein, and big protein shake company, and many, many others ended up recalling all of the products that they had produced full stop.
Rhaime Kim:It could not be worse. Yeah. And I am happy that you're doing great, you're in business, you're better than being in business.
Kevin Eve:It was it was even better by the day before I had crashed my bike, and I got nine stitches. Oh my God, my chin and like maybe a little concussion the day before. And you got a concussion. So I was lying. Yeah, I was lying on my couch with like an iron mask on. And I got a call from our manufacturer. And they were like, hey, just so you know, we're about to, like recall your products like it's going to be publicly announced in 24 hours. Get to work, buddy. And I was like, Oh, great. It was pretty.
Rhaime Kim:Cat even?
Kevin Eve:Yeah, no, I mean, and we've had we had another we were making a very large batch of chocolate pea milk in October of 22. And there was a mishap and somebody dumped in an ingredient that needed to be added slowly and kind of clogged some lines. It was apparently chaos like a hatch got like vacuum in like vacuum sealed shut. They couldn't get it open. And they needed to get like a crowbar. I mean it was it was pandemonium pandemonium and resulted in 1000 gallons of chocolate peanut going down the drain.
Rhaime Kim:That's so annoying. And are you responsible or is it just slows down? Like you're not able to serve as some query
Kevin Eve:we ran? We briefly ran out of stock. I mean, fortunately we had so it was like scramble into action. What are we going to do? We checked we had enough ingredients there to do a small run. So we said okay, ditch that product. We know that there's enough to do like 1500 gallons. Yeah, they ran that and And that was enough. 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 enough inventory cushion. But I mean, we're like, very this is our second run, ever. So we didn't, you know, didn't have a lot of flexibility in terms of finances or manufacturing time. But yeah, I mean, now we know that we need to have like, six weeks of inventory on the bat, you know, after any manufacturing run in case 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 the manufacturer did cover the ingredients that were used, and yet, stuff goes battle.
Rhaime Kim:Yes. And like, how do you react to that?
Kevin Eve:I think if it's when it's not your fault, when it's not my fault, it's a lot, I think it's a lot easier to stay level headed and be like, alright, let's just find a solution. And usually there is like, you know, we were able to make a small run of chocolate milk, and we recalled the card. And so you know, that's, that's life. Yeah. If it's not your fault, I think stuff like the manufacturer messing up a run or Yeah, actually calling cartons and she was like, alright, let's just solve the problem. Yeah, I think it was your fault, then you feel more badly about it. And it's harder to stay level headed. But still, I think it's always like, Alright, we are where we are. Let's just act as logically and try to stay as level headed as we can.
Rhaime Kim:What are examples of like, no areas where you feel like you've messed up is it and like, maybe something you promised a client or just things that you just forgot about? Or didn't prepare? Maybe as best as you could have?
Kevin Eve:I mean, part of me feels like the, the original iteration of the product where we were making the making it by hand and using a different model of dispenser, that. I mean, now, I wish I could have seen that that wasn't going to work before. Yeah, we also I mean, that was kind of instrumental. That was like, three months or four months. Yeah, as a quick turnaround, we, you know, we quickly realized that it wasn't going to work. And that, you know, we were able to spin that up with with very little money. And that allowed us to raise to get those grants to continue building output. So in a lot of ways, it worked for approval. But looking back, I, you know, I wish I could have seen that it wasn't going to be a smart idea.
Rhaime Kim: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 figure out the solutions yourself. So during that journey, so like you and Jacob, this is like, you know, the Power Team, but like, big idea ventures sounds like they have played a significant part. Have you had like different mentors or friends, like, who have given you like 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:Yeah, there's been a lot. I mean, they've kind of rotated through Yeah, from B Lab, there was a guy by the name of Richard Katzman, who was our like, B LAB advisor, and he, and he didn't know anything. Well, he wasn't a specialist about food, yet. He had good business sense. 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. And you're like, I think this is a you know, you need somebody that is like, this is very obviously like a bad eye. Like you need to kind of like Screw your dispenser. Yeah. Or just like, like anything, I think if we would come down with these kind of wild things, and he'd be like, this makes no sense, you should probably reconsider. And he was he was usually right.
Rhaime Kim:What's his general background? He
Kevin Eve:he was in Manufactured Home Goods, okay. My most valuable veteran now is a founder of a coffee brand. And he's kind of in a similar business. And so he's instrumental and all these like little things. I've tried to figure out how to manage relationships with manufacturers, how to plan the business, but I mean, mostly, yeah. I mean, the the calls and advisory calls were were more common early on. Yeah, we're kind of, I don't think there's a lot of people that know more about selling, dispense plant based milk that Jacob and I right now, obviously, we still have a lot to learn in a lot of different areas. But for the most part, it's just been putting the heads down and getting to it.
Rhaime Kim:Microsoft, you end up onboarding as a client. So it's not just cafeterias for students, although the college setting is still your target audience for the dispenser business in general, like how have you found your clients early on,
Kevin Eve:it was definitely cold outreach. And the process was essentially built off of doing customer research and Bua trying to figure out if it was a good, good business. So we found out that most of these cafeterias put the name and the contact information of the food service manager online and if you write a good cold email, then they'll respond and for Generally,
Rhaime Kim:a lot of you don't get any response, right guys awesome.
Kevin Eve:Yeah, thankfully, these guys were looking for dispense plant based milk. And so we would put in the subject plant based milk dispenser. And we got feedback, especially, I think the other smart thing. It was being local, like, it was like Providence, like, Hey, I'm at Brown down the street. I think that goes a long way with trust, I think, yeah, people you're more willing to trust somebody who you're close to? Yeah, definitely like the first 20 customers, we're all outreach like that. We are now finding that outreach is less effective. It's a lot of work. You have to do kind of a lot of it. And yeah, early on, I think we were getting, like yield maybe of like 30%. But obviously, it doesn't keep up as you kind of scale. Yeah. And now thankfully, we're getting kind of this flywheel of having a booth dispensers in the field and having happy customers and a different college will go visit their peer college and see up route and say, Oh, that's cool. Can we find them now? Yeah,
Rhaime Kim:exactly. No, my brother, the other managers. Yeah, exactly.
Kevin Eve:No, we had a good yeah. Yeah, like a lucky. We went to a trade show. And the trade show was okay. But I think we were the trade show was in Baltimore. and Maryland has upgraded dispensers. And they actually did like a visit where they took a bunch of chefs to like University of Maryland. So it's a beautiful dining hall. And so they showed all the chef's, the beautiful Maryland dining halls, and they were all like, oh, upper. It's cool. Like, we should get that. So things like that have been very effective. But yeah, we're talking to generally executive chefs or foods, you know, they get there's a lot of different names, but it's yet the folks that manage the cafeterias at hospitals and colleges.
Rhaime Kim:Now, it's 2023. Like, what's the size of your business?
Kevin Eve:We're, we have almost 50 customers. Yeah. And we're going to have 100 dispensers by next month, approaching a $1 million run rate. Hoping to do it's, yeah, it's a very seasonal business with the college semesters. But yeah, hoping to sell well over $100,000 next month. Yeah,
Rhaime Kim:that's so exciting. What do the I'm sure it depends on maybe like the now but like, what do the margins look like in your business?
Kevin Eve:For us right now? Not good? Yeah. But that's because we're very small and food factories. It's all about scale. Yeah. Because downtime is very, very expensive. And these facilities can can move quickly to get the costs low. But you need to be doing big runs to achieve that. Right. And we aren't quite there. So yeah, the biggest thing is, is the cost that we pay the manufacturer to fill the bags, but there's also some savings to be had in ingredients. So yeah, right now, isn't all that? Yeah. So right now our margin is, I mean, between five and 10%, which is not good. But at least we're not losing money. That's for us. That's the gross margin. I think. I mean, you can look at a publicly traded food company, I think, a company that looks like ours, a healthy business, you'd have a gross margin around 40%, and maybe a net profit margin of around 10%. So that's what we're shooting for at our current pricing and what we know the long term cost of goods will be that that is totally within reach. But we're not there yet. Yeah, soon, soon. Yeah, we're making it happen. And we're getting there.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah. In terms of positioning and pricing, would you say that you're a premium brand,
Kevin Eve:we are a premium brand. We want to deliver on on nutrition on protein, we want to use high quality ingredients. When we can be as natural as possible. Use organic ingredients use cocoa powder. I mean, it's it's like we wanted to make the plant based milks that we want to drink. And almost necessarily that is premium.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah. I'm seriously I'm so jealous. I need to stop saying this. But I'm so jealous that the students get to drink this like amazing milk like ever they want what what advice would you give yourself? Maybe let's say it's you've been in this business for like five ish years. Now, if you look back, and you could just kind of tell yourself
Kevin Eve:stay the course. Yeah. It did that. But I did say I stayed the course I think. Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't have any huge regrets about things that I did wrong. Yeah. But the other things that I've learned that are very important is work hard, I think, yeah, for the health of the business. And for me to be happy, I need to be doing good work. Being honest, being straightforward. Taking responsibility for when things go wrong. Yeah, all very important. Building relationships with customers super important. I think that's one of the things that we learned is that especially when things go wrong, if a customer has a relationship with you, they'll just give you a call and text you and you can get it figured out. And I think if we have customers where things go wrong, and they don't know us, and they, they don't even know who to call, then they try to deal with a problem where they can't fix it, or they just get frustrated. So that has been very important. Don't be afraid to reach out to people, I think, generally, I you know, I was willing to reach out to suppliers and try to get some ingredient or talk to these manufacturers, but doing that more and checking in with them to see when things change. I think that would have been helpful. But no, I've been very lucky. I mean, it definitely took me a while to learn a lot of things took us a while to figure out food, it took us a while to figure out how to raise money, still not very good at raising money. But so far, it's been a it's been a rewarding and enjoyable process.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, I mean, you've really staying the course like the first day, you've really persevered. Because I mean, you went through that, like the timing of like things were just picking out but then COVID just changes everything. And then you finally get the single serve cartons and have like a solid business, and then it's just like goodbyes. So I think it's pretty crazy. But
Kevin Eve:that's the other thing I would tell myself is that it's it's going to take longer, and things are going to go wrong. And you're just going to have to keep fighting. But I think that's kind of the case with I think every founder knows that. But they think it's not going to happen to them.
Rhaime Kim:Right. Do you have other founder friends?
Kevin Eve:I'm not that many.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, I'm not too surprised. I guess I feel like maybe in a few years. I wonder if it'll become more or less common? Yeah, I
Kevin Eve:mean, hit me up. More founder friends. Yeah.
Rhaime Kim:Do you ever get jealous of that? Or do you can you not imagine yourself being in that position that you mentioned, you did do an internship at SharkNinja? Before? Like, do you ever think about like when things are tough? Or? I mean, you guys are on the up right now. So maybe that's like, totally out of the question. The idea of working corporate?
Kevin Eve:Yeah, I mean, the office job definitely was appealing or is appealing. I think the Yeah, the hardest thing is that I don't really have 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:very show right here four days a week, because,
Kevin Eve: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 be hard to, like get better without feedback. And a lot of times, yeah, so yeah, I mean, I get feedback from my brother or friends or other people. And that's, that's harder to do that. And if it's just your boss who's paid to your stuff, in sometimes, especially when things weren't going well, you're like, I'm an idiot. And this is a failure. Why am I wasting my time? I don't know how to do anything. Obviously, when things are going better, and people are happy with their product and we're making them or you know, revenue is growing quickly, then, I think okay, maybe I do know what I'm doing. And we have done some good work here.
Rhaime Kim: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 your first client and the check, you got like, what were some of the key?
Kevin Eve:I mean, this month has been the best month for approved ever go. We're going to add, you know, almost 40 active dispensers. That's between Oh, exciting, which is, you know, we started the year we had 30 active dispensers. Yeah. And then, you know, we had a big college email us this morning saying, Hey, we have you know, it's like 40,000 undergrads. Hey, we have three cafeterias. Interested in your milks? We signed another one of the UC schools this morning.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah. So because those are big, right,
Kevin Eve:those are big. Yeah. And seeing the revenue. I mean, it's it's scary to tell investors like hey, we think the revenue is gonna go and we we sell almost nothing in the summer. So our revenue went from like, 10,000. And yeah, we've Sold $73,000 this month so far. And so when that actually comes in, you're like, I'm I like it happened. But so yeah, that's been it's been super gratifying and then to continue to have have more sales interest that it seems like we continue this kind of tripling year over year growth is super exciting. And our customers are more happy than ever. So I think the Yeah, these are the, the exciting moments. Yeah, the best moments is winning customers. Yeah. And having happy customers.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, they're giving you feedback that way, but five years. I mean, I guess anybody who's listening, I mean, five years. That's so like, I mean, you were grinding for five years, this is the result of that. So that shows a lot about like your character and like who you are. And you mentioned running that's like, you know, you're a runner, Jacobs a runner, like, does that help you like 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 do you see like this as part of your passion? So it's not like there's necessarily like, okay, weekends, I'm not going to work at all or after 5pm going to try to not work like, how do you take care of yourself? Because it's like, this is a lot of perseverance and like, bad shit happens. And you know, the answer is the most you can always ask for help. So,
Kevin Eve:yeah, I mean, so I got into running during COVID. Yeah, as the business obviously wasn't doing well. So I had more time. But also I've, you know, I like the feeling of having success and getting better at something and working at something. Yeah. And the business was not something that I could put effort into and get results out. Really. So yeah, running is it's amazing. I mean, it's super fun. You can go, you train, and you get faster. And it's like this really fun wheel. So it's been great to have that to destress. And to have something where I can improve and get results if the business is not doing well. I've Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I have a great group of friends. So it's also kind of a social outlet for me during the week, little run group, and then do some long runs on the weekend with friends. 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 better and work harder. Yeah. I, yeah, I mean, I know Jacob and I are not not grinding, we're generally 830 to six in the office four days a week, remote on Friday, and then a little bit of work on the weekends. So it's definitely not crazy, we probably could, and maybe should be pushing ourselves harder. But we don't, we don't have a lot of busy work, we're not wasting our time with calls, we don't really have to, like get approved. You know, it's kind of just go and like, let's work on the hard stuff. 100%. So it's hard. I think it's hard, at least for me to do more than Yeah, 910 hours of like hard work per day.
Rhaime Kim:I totally get that. Because when I was, you know, working, I remember when I was working at that startup for two years during COVID. people be like, oh, like, because I'd be like, Well, I'm working so hard. And people like oh, like what are your hours? That's like the first response. But I don't think those two things are really correlate because like, let's be real, like we're all people you can only focus for. So I agree. I mean, when you're doing that 830 to six to me sounds long. But when you are working, like what if you're working during that time, that's an intense workday. So I mean,
Kevin Eve:yeah, I know, I think we we make Yeah, we try to work hard. And
Rhaime Kim:last but not least, do you have any, you gave me some advice you would tell yourself five years back when you're getting started? Like, what would you tell any entrepreneurs who are grinding right now, but maybe they're not at the scale at which it's sustainable, or just any advice you'd give to entrepreneurs who are kind of on that early journey or thinking about starting something of their own?
Kevin Eve:I feel like it's tough, because every business is different. So the advice I'm going to give is kind of uproot specific, but I think my advice is, stay curious, like, do a bunch of research might learn everything you can about what you're doing. Use your common sense. A lot of times you're working on something that's kind of a bad idea and might be staring at you and you need to like find the good idea. And 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 something that you're kind of the best at.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, I mean, like especially the last thing you said it's it seems easy, but you have to go back to principles because it's easy to get mucked up when there's so many whenever like there's 100 fires like you have to think about the principles is like the customer matters like don't Forget that. Okay, so for approved, like, are you guys raising? Like, is there anything that you know? Are you trying to get in touch with more investors any way that the audience could help you or you're looking for? Yeah,
Kevin Eve:we're working towards raising a price to seed round at the start of next year. Hopefully from top tier VC who works with food companies, we want, you know, the right partner to grow the business. If you know, any cafeterias that need better plant based milk. Let them know that awkward exists. Follow us on Instagram. Shoot me a note if you want to my email is Kevin at upper milk.com.
Rhaime Kim:Yeah, okay. Awesome. And then one last thing. So in terms of capital, have you raised institutional capital?
Kevin Eve:If you define the accelerator round from Big Idea ventures as institutional capital then yes, okay. If not, no.
Rhaime Kim:Okay. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. Actually, I've been wanting to interview my friends for entrepreneurs for so long, literally eight, nine years, and I never did it. So you are helping me you know, make kind of my dreams come true. So I really appreciate your time.
Kevin Eve:Of course I was it was an enjoyable interview. And thank you for interviewing me. I have not had many opportunities to share my story. So it's good and happy to get it out there and hopefully, I can report back in two or three years and I bet it will be 100 times as big