So You Want to Start a Bottled Beverage Business: What It Really Takes

Everyone says your recipe is the best, and you should market it. But you have no idea how to start a food business. I will tell you what it takes to create an artisan food business.

From Tea Enthusiast To Professional Tea Maker

As a nurse with nutrition knowledge and a tea enthusiast, I was highly disappointed with the plethora of artificially created bottled teas. So, I came upon the idea of making real bottled iced tea—natural bottled tea freshly brewed from premium tea leaves and bottled immediately afterward. I aimed to retain all the nutritional value inherent in real brewed tea from tea leaves.

After a year of research and development, I created MaryAnna’s Tea, placing my first bottled tea on retail shelves. The more I researched tea, the more I discovered natural tea, and I loved it. I started as a tea enthusiast, probably like many of you, drinking supermarket-grade tea from tea bags. Oh, what I didn’t know!

What do I mean by "real tea"?

Discovering Specialty Tea expanded my love of tea. I had no idea what I was missing until I tried high-grade loose-leaf tea. It’s a whole new world of tea!

I started my tea business with this discovery — a personal venture in which I challenged myself to make the best bottled tea on the market.

MaryAnna’s Tea in my opinion is the best bottled iced tea I’ve ever had.  There is no chemical aftertaste and you get the bonus health benefits of drinking real tea.

Deborah Smith, The Jersey Shore Cookbook

In 2012, my first flavor, Summer Sweet Tea, came in First Place at the North American Tea Championships. In 2013 & 2014, my Tea & Lemonade ranked third at the North American Tea Championships.

Professional tea masters and chefs judge the tea championships. Upon entering, I was up against many well-known national bottled tea brands (you know who they are) and placed my bottled tea ahead of them!

Establish an Artisan Food Niche from a Need

One day, I grabbed a bottle of tea in a convenience store and thought it would be delicious. The minute I tasted it, I was disappointed. The chemical aftertaste was horrible, and it tasted nothing like naturally brewed tea.

My niche was tea. Beyond that, I focused on bottled tea, also known as ready-to-drink tea (RTD). Although 80 percent of Americans drink tea, most is iced and bottled. I also knew that the majority of bottled teas on the market were not really brewed tea.

Most commercially produced bottled teas are made by taking shortcuts to match the flavor of natural tea, which usually includes artificial ingredients that have scientific names no one can pronounce. There is nothing healthy about this process.

I knew I could make better tea. I also knew people wanted a better product, a naturally brewed tea without artificial ingredients. Why wasn't anyone doing this?

I soon found out why. It costs more to make a product with real food than fake food. But I decided to start a food business because I know our bodies thrive with real food and authentic beverage products.

Finding a Test Lab to Start a Food Business

I’m a registered nurse by profession. Although I had plenty of nutritional knowledge, I had no idea how to start a food business. In hindsight, maybe that was a good thing. Knowing how competitive the beverage world is, I may have never started.

First, I found out if my recipe could be bottled and shelf-stable without using artificial flavorings or preservatives. Cornell University has a Food Entrepreneurship program. I sent them samples of my recipe in glass jars and the exact gram measurements of all my ingredients.

Cornell tested my bottled tea and returned a formulation or a scheduled process of my recipe to produce in a commercial setting. This included everything required to make it a safe and shelf-stable product, including the type of packaging, temperature controls, and pH parameters.

Research and Development for Artisan Food

I took courses on Food Entrepreneurship at the Rutgers Food Innovation Center in Bridgeton. They are very knowledgeable, and I recommend them to anyone who wants to start a food business.

After that,  I needed a place to test run my product. At the time, the facility in Bridgeton was still in the building phase, so they referred me to the Center for Advanced Food Technology in Piscataway for production.

Preserving the natural tea flavor, nutrients, and antioxidants inherent in freshly brewed tea was essential. The more food or beverages are processed, the more nutrients are lost. My goal was to create 100 percent natural, non-GMO bottled tea.

I spent the next six months researching and developing a shelf-stable product. I painstakingly sourced premium commercial ingredients. Glass bottles preserve food better and longer without the unwanted side effects of chemicals leaching into the product. Glass is 100 percent inert and endlessly recyclable.

In June 2008, the Center for Advanced Food Technology produced my first run of 1,000 bottles of tea. I quickly sold out to several local specialty stores on the Jersey Shore.

I had officially started a food business. Now I needed a co-packer.

Finding a Co-packer

Co-packers or contract packagers produce most food products in this country. Finding a small-scale beverage co-packer is difficult, especially in the beverage business. You can also produce on a smaller scale in a commercial kitchen.

The Center for Advanced Food Technology helped me find a reputable co-packer to produce my bottled tea. They had already audited the facility, so I knew it complied with good manufacturing processes.

Understanding FDA Regulations

Before starting a food business, you must know that each food product requires different FDA regulations. Creating a product with proper labeling, packaging, and safe production guidelines is imperative.

The FDA is particular about labeling. Most stores want your labels to be FDA-compliant and will not carry your product if they are not. Nutrition labels are not necessary when starting, but consumers look for them.

The Center for Advanced Food Technology ensured all my packaging and labels were 100 percent compliant with FDA labeling and nutrition regulations.

Recipe Protection

A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is also essential to protect your recipe since you cannot copyright or patent a recipe. Only a recipe's manufacturing processes or literary expressions, like a cookbook, can be protected.

Many people are exposed to your recipe during the manufacturing process. Hence, a simple NDA reduces the risk of anyone sharing your information to ensure no one else replicates your formula.

Marketing and Distributing Artisan Food

Distribution and marketing are probably the most crucial parts of starting a food business. How will you sell your product?

In my case, I went to the owners or buyers of each store that I thought was a good fit. They sampled my products if they liked my bottled tea, and didn't have a competing beverage contract, they ordered.

The big food and beverage companies will always out price you and over distribute. You can't compete against them so don't even try. Instead, focus on providing a better product for the consumer and better service for the retailer.

Distribution is critical. I began small in my hometown. To spread the word, I did a lot of tastings in stores, farmers' markets, and local fairs. Now, I have a very loyal local following throughout my home state. I self-distribute, so my products remain local.

Of course, you also want to get as much media exposure as possible. Social media is an excellent way to do this. So are local media outlets, bloggers, and magazines. Once the word gets out about your product, media outlets may start coming to you for stories.

I've received a lot of press this way. A few years ago, New Jersey Monthly did an excellent write-up called Shelf Life about food entrepreneurs in the state, including MaryAnna's Tea.

I produce my artisan teas in small batches by microbrewing from specialty tea leaves with a co-packer.

Resources for Artisans Who Want to Start a Food Business

Like I am passionate about tea, many food artisans are passionate about their products too. Our Western world can be too complicated at times. Especially in our beverage world, it continues to become saturated with overly complex, artificially created, and extremely unhealthy beverages.

I know consumers crave simple and authentic food products. I hear this all the time. Simplicity does not mean the loss of quality, just the opposite.

Here is a list of some of the many websites, books, and facilities available to help you on your way to starting a food business. Of course, there's much more to it than I've talked about here, but this will help start your artisan food dreams.

• The Specialty Food Association
• Small Food Biz  
• From Kitchen to Market by Stephen Hall
• Cornell Food Venture Center 
• Center For Advanced Food Technology
• Rutgers Food Innovation Center
• Culinary Incubators 
• Specialty Foods Co-packers Directory
• Specialty Foods Co-Packers Useful Information
• How to Make a Profit Creating & Selling Your Own Specialty Food Products

It’s a Hard Road To Start A Food Business

There’s no sleeping on trying to build a brand. You wonder if people will like it as much as you and your friends and family do.

I discovered how completely saturated the beverage market is. However, I also learned that people want authentic food and high-quality products. The margins are minimal with processed food, and food production and distribution are costly.

You have to ensure you control your cost of goods and that your final price to consumers is reasonable enough for them to buy, but high enough for you to make a profit.

While running my tea business, I’ve learned a great deal about commercial food, the beverage business, and specialty tea. I started this blog, Life Is Better With Tea, to share what I’ve learned about tea. Throughout this journey, I’ve continued to explore the related issues of nutrition and health.

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Thank you to all who have supported me on this tea journey and helped make my bottled tea successful.

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