In this post, we cover our interview for our "Together Talks" campaign, with Lemonicious Drink Co. and Co-Founder, Curtis Knight II. As parents, every choice we make for our children comes from a place of love and care. Walking through the beverage aisles of grocery stores, they found most of the beverage options contained high fructose corn syrup and a cocktail of artificial flavors, preservatives and chemicals that sounded more like a science experiment than something you would actually drink.
They wanted something simple and natural, a drink made from real ingredients that they could give to their children without a second thought. The taste of real fresh fruit, the purity of nature, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing exactly what we’re consuming.
Out of this desire, Lemonicious was born.
Lemonicious isn’t just a beverage. It’s their promise to families everywhere. An all-natural, delectably refreshing beverages made from real, fresh fruit. A drink that not only pleases the taste buds but also upholds the trust you place in them as caregivers. A drink you can enjoy with your entire family, knowing you’re giving them nature’s best.
Join them on their journey towards a more natural, honest, and delicious future.
"Together Talks" feature # 151: Lemonicious Drink Co. presented by KLS - Dedicated Logistic Services for Excellence -Driven Businesses In The USA
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company? How have you dealt with being the face of the company? What have you learned from being an entrepreneur?
What have you learned as an entrepreneur? What is the next thing you need to develop as a leader? What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most? What is your motivation?
Share a decision you made that didn't turn out the way you expected? What is your why? Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
Story of how it was created?
It wasn't planned or intentional, but a series of events. We have a son who is eight now, but at the time, he was a bit younger. My wife is a really big label reader, she's really particular about the things that we eat and the things that we bring into the home. For us, no high fructose corn syrup, no yellow four, five, six red dyes and all of those types. We are seeing how ultra processed foods have effect on your health, then some of those dyes are attributed to ADHD and behavior problem children. You are what you eat, right?
She was watching a lot of beverages that were being filled with additives or highly processed ingredients. There were fewer and fewer options for our family to consume. With that, she just started making drinks at home. Frequently we would have parties or events and she would make it for the event. Guests were amazed with her concoction. They couldn't believe how good it was and asked where she bought it from. Everyone was shocked when she said she made it. This went on for a while until people were starting to order gallons of it from her. Eventually I suggested to her to try and sell it at a farmer's market or something.
It took about a year or two but she signed herself up and started everything on her own. It surprised me quite a bit because she is from Turkey, English is not her first language. What she has been able to accomplish is remarkable. I was so proud of her that she took this leap for herself to start the company.
The feedback was really great and then after about six months demand was increasing and she started to need some help. I kind of started doing some markets with her and I have IT and corporate background experience for 25 years. I also have my own business as I do some YouTube and content creation. I was familiar with website building and social media and having meetings, so I could contribute to that part of the business.
A few months ago, my brother, who formerly worked at Nestle in operations, came down to help with business and things took off from there. And really, we're still early. We're in about 25 stores or so now. And we hired our fourth person to work additional farmers markets. We do about 10 to 12 of those throughout the Tampa State area here.
What have been the biggest challenges?
We are going on two years in business, but for us production and keeping up with demand because people really love our beverages. They're is just a fundamental difference how they're made and there's really nothing like it. When people have it, one of the main things they say is I've never had anything like this before because there's really nothing like it on the market. People tend to get crazy and they'll buy in a good way, right? They'll buy five, six, seven bottles and empty out a retailer quickly. I started the MVP program to highlight those individuals who will come to a market and buy 20 bottles. Our record right now, is 26!
We're at a premium price point, so only source the best ingredients available. We're not, and I want to make this very clear, we are not trying to help your gut. We're not trying to help give you a boost of energy. We're here to just make the most delicious beverage that you've had and using premium ingredients to make the freshest products. We're going for taste. We're going all in. That might be counterintuitive to where the market is moving right now, but we are committed to quality over everything else.
Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?
It's really all planned out. The current bottles as you see them is something that I designed and it's pretty basic, no frills. I don't do anything that's just basic or plain, I try to elevate things as much as possible. I brought on an award-winning designer, who has done the Folger's rebrand, Tropicana's rebrand.
We are planning for the rebrand sometime in 2025 and the excitement from our partners already has been overwhelming positive. We are looking forward to how it helps us propel forward and continue to grow. Once our design is complete we plan to start pursuing additional retailer partnerships. We're just going to keep working and keep growing, but we won't rush. Some companies chase growth and exposure, but we are in a great space. We are very profitable and possess healthy margins. We're trying to look at different models where we take it slow and keep growing at our own pace.
How have you dealt with being the face of the company?
We are taking a different approach and we've made our consumers the face of our company. We haven't worked with any influencers. We simply share our customer's thoughts and reactions to tasting our product on our Instagram. Our brand is fueled by them and their love of our product.
What have you learned as an entrepreneur?
I think I've always been an entrepreneur but didn't call it being an entrepreneurship, people would just say hustle. That's from being a kid and going to the store and buying candy for 10 cents and then selling it for 50 cents at school. On website I employ five writers, two editors, as well as four content creators on your YT channel which ahs over 270,000 subscribers. That is in addition to my work as an Engineer. Fortunately all of these experiences and tools I've learned along the way I've been able to bring to Lemonicious. It has lined up perfectly for me to add my impact and value while having the opportunity to learn a completely new business and industry.
What is the next thing you need to develop as a leader?
I learn something new every day. I'm new to CPG, which I'm grateful for because it means I have ample opportunity to learn. I'm very open to knowing what I don't know and learning about the different ways to approach those situations. That is why I accept almost every meeting because I love to listen and learn.
The more I learn the more value I can bring to the company to help it succeed the way we envision it. I'll talk with my brother because he handles the operations side and we constantly are amazed about how much goes into a CPG company. If I don't have the chance to talk with someone, I constantly am consuming podcasts. One of my favorite ways to learn is when companies talk about mistakes made. I think there is tremendous value in hearing about pitfalls and how it could have been avoided or minimized. Also you hear many of the success portion of their business and it can bring some validation whether you're on the right path or not.
We receive great feedback. I believe we have a billion dollar product, just an amazing product. We want to get it in everyone's hands, but we fight that temptation because we understand the importance of remaining true to our strategy. We will remain patient and consistent with our growth plan. Our diligence as difficult as it is to be patient sometimes, we believe it is the right approach for us to remain profitable and successful.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
I appreciate all of it. I think it's amazing because I still do a lot and have my full time job as an engineer. The biggest thing I can say is that no matter what I do, I could have the best week ever or I could have saved the company, millions of dollars, at the end of the week my paycheck is going to be the same exact amount. It is a fixed result. But with Lemonicious, you see the immediate results to the bottom line, you can impact and influence those numbers instantly you see the results and how hard work can pay off. I love that, your hard work is rewarded immediately when it comes to your own business. And it's the more work you put in, the more successful you are. That direct connection to it versus being at a nine to five, I could have the worst day, I can have the best day and my check is going to be the same.
What is your motivation?
I love the struggle. I love the grind and working towards a goal. I'm obsessed with it. One day Lemonicious is going to be bigger than Snapple. People may laugh at that. I might not even reach that goal in my lifetime. Maybe it'll be my son that carries that goal on. We believe what we have is special. We have consumers try our products and tell us they are obsessed with it. I think that is awesome, it makes us so happy and we genuinely enjoy it. Knowing we possess something that special is very unique.
Share a decision you made that didn't turn out the way you expected?
Forecasting. Not knowing what forecasting is or not doing detailed forecasting was something we had to learn. We quickly understood how supply and demand works to make sure we didn't run out of inventory. In the beginning we were selling out quickly, we had to find that balance of how much product to have on hand to accommodate the demand of our consumers. To keep our product on the shelves we ended up having to get a different bottle mold just to keep the shelves filled. It wasn't a huge eye sore, but it isn't what we wanted. There was a stretch where we had our product in the market with two different bottles. Not ideal, but we didn't want to lose out on those sales so we had a decision to make. This taught us about forecasting and how to make sure everything is aligned to avoid having this situation again.
What is your why?
I think back to old videos of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg workign towards create something that didn't exist before. I firmly believe if you put it out there and believe it and work towards it, you can actually achieve it, but embracing that goal and everything that comes with it is what drives me.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
I always love when people see us somewhere and recognize the brand. I just put video up a couple weeks ago, someone is walking by with his buddies he's like, "wait this is that drink I was talking about!" He brought his entire group over and we had a lovely conversation about our product and all of his favorite flavors. Those moments just mean everything to us, that connection we are building with our customers.
The thing I am most proud of is my wife. She did all of this on her own in a country where it isn't her first language. The amount of difficult she had to overcome is just incredible. The way she could navigate all the legal stuff and creating a company is just super impressive to me. I couldn't be more proud of her for that. Watching her do this and then succeed at it was a wonderful moment for me.
Your biggest obstacle?
This is going to be an uphill battle or even a war of real versus fake. And I think that a lot of people don't realize that about natural flavors and it's kind of an unspoken thing. I was joking my brother the day. It's almost like steroids, right? Everyone is doing it and it's kind of like a hush hush thing because you can do so many things with natural flavors that you can hide under that. You can change the mouthfeel of the beverage, you can trick people and boost the flavor. Let's say they do agave they have things called an agave booster, which it doesn't add sugar, but the natural flavor will boost it to make it taste sweeter than what it really is. It'll make your mouth feel a certain way, an aftertaste or a mask. You can mask the bitter chemicals in there, by adding another chemical to change the taste.
There's so many things you can manipulate under that banner of natural flavors All type of chemical things that are created in a laboratory and no one talks about that because they're all doing it. The next time you go grocery shopping just read the labels. I bought some beef broth the other day that have natural flavors, ice cream would natural flavors, most beverages would have natural flavor. When you see a beverage especially and it's say peach mango kiwi flavor, you read the label and none of those are included, well that is all natural flavors.
When creating a natural flavor versus the real ingredient, I feel you can taste the difference. The people, consumers, can taste the difference. For us it is sad that children don't understand what things actually taste like due to how much consumption they have of these fake, created flavors. I think that's the failure of society, parenting, and all that, what your kids don't even know what real fruit tastes like. That's what we're up against. I know a lot of people aren't going to like it because they're all using that steroid because it's, it's so easy and convenient, but outside of a cold pressed juice, the majority of beverages are water, some form of sweetener and fake flavors.
We are up against these large companies who can mass produce the product for incredibly cheap and sell it due to their marketing and brand presence. We have a longer road, we may burn some bridges along the way, but we believe that people want the best and we are offering that. Once a consumer tries real flavor, they don't want to go back.
Piece of Advice?
I would say it is really just hard work. It doesn't come easy. I think that a lot of times with social media it makes it tough because you can see people showing their wins or success. But rarely do you see the grind they went through to reach that level. Especially this younger generation, they want everything right now, but they don't always want to work. They want to live life instead of work, which I get and support. But my generation we knew we had to grind and work hard and over time the results would follow. Some just want to get by and take the easiest route. But I would say that if you go ahead and put yourself in uncomfortable positions to grow and stick with it consistently you can reach levels you didn't think were possible. Go ahead and always do something extra to get ahead, I learned that from my father.
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In Closing
KLS wants to thank Lemonicious Drink Co. and Co-Founder, Curtis Knight II., for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!