Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, Paul Underhill, creator of Groove Nutrition, maker of the Rumble nutrition shake, talks about the challenges of creating a new nutrition beverage and getting it to market.
"I was born with cystic fibrosis. With CF your metabolism burns so fast it's hard to get sufficient caloric intake through food alone. Also, with CF you have difficulty assimilating foods. You're looking for foods that are easy to digest.
"I'd heard I should be supplementing my diet with ready-to-drink beverages. A caloric formulated meal replacement – they have artificial ingredients, and they're high in things like corn syrup. I'm also a diabetic, so that's not ideal. I was also using a vegan protein blend that did have a lot of good ingredients in it, but it didn't have the highest protein values.
"Nothing existed that hit the sweet spot of being both tasty and convenient and yet nutritionally balanced. I needed something for myself, but I also knew there was a broader market.
"I bought all natural products I thought might work well in a shake. I worked for six months in the kitchen experimenting, trying different ingredients out. And some of it, to be honest, was horrible. We knew from Day 1 if the product didn't taste good it wouldn't matter how healthy it was.
"I sought out the advice of a friend, Steve Hughes, who is my business partner and co-founder. Dr. Kim McQueen – she's a naturopath – came on board, and we worked closely with local food scientists in Vancouver. She added some antioxidants and added more omega-3s. I got a double lung transplant a couple of years ago. Although Rumble wasn't ready yet, I was surviving on homemade versions of this.
"We had technological hurdles to overcome. We wanted to use organic flaxseed oil, but flaxseed oil is sensitive to both heat and light. We prevent it from oxidizing through the process that we use. To have it work well, you have to have it in a container that's pressurized and opaque.
"Because of the technological challenges of combining these novel ingredients, we needed somebody that had the expertise. Nobody had the ability in Canada to do this beverage, so it's made in the States. At the end of the day, we have a drink that's unique. We're the only one we know of with flaxseed oil.
"We had been looking for $750,000, and we had already lined up one primary investor. In March, we went on Dragons' Den looking for $200,000. We walked off the show with a handshake deal with Arlene Dickinson.
"In the weeks following, she brought in David Chilton. But as they got more interested, Arlene and David wanted to replace that primary investor group we had already lined up pre-Dragons' Den. We had to make a choice, so we decided we wouldn't pursue the deal with the Dragons. We've already concluded an investment deal with a different investment group for $750,000."
