Yes Honey: Raw Honey. Minimal Ingredients. Explore our all-natural honeys and 100% honey-sweetened soda alternatives and teas. Because it feels good to say yes.
- KLS
- 3 minutes ago
- 9 min read
For the 177th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Yes Honey and Founder and Head Chick, Heather Mincer. Welcome to Yes Honey, where their journey began with a personal mission. Heather, the founder, and her son were diagnosed with alpha gal, a condition known as the "red meat" allergy. It restricts the consumption of mammalian products including certain sugars processed with bone char. This inspired Heather to explore alternatives, leading her to honey as a natural substitute in recipes that called for sugar.
"Together Talks" feature # 177: Yes Honey presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business? What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
Story of how it was created?
Our family moved to Missouri from upstate New York in 2022. It was always my dream to raise chickens. We started a chicken farm where we pasture raised chickens that were antibiotic-free, no vaccines. We fed non-GMO feed, and we called it Naked Chicks Pastor. That was super fun. I was taking those chickens and some of my other products to Farmer's Market. Along the way, during the course of our health journey, we had switched over from sugars, processed sugars, to just honey and maple syrup.
My husband really enjoyed high-sugar iced teas. I thought, I'm going to brew some tea, and then we're going to put honey in it and see what he thinks about that. That was the beginning of our honey-sweetened sodas. We went to a formulator to commercialize it and they were able to help us get everything canned. I had only planned for it to be a healthy drink for our family, but also it was something that I could offer at the farmer's market. I learned over time a cooler full of chicken isn't really very enticing at the farmer's market. It's always good to have something else available. Once we started selling the sodas, they just really took off. People really liked it. They liked the clean flavor, the clean aftertaste, that it wasn't syrupy, and that's where we got started.
What separates you from your competition?
Most other other beverage companies either use corn syrup or stevia. We don't use any of those. We are exclusively sweetened with honey, there's just a completely different platform for our beverages. Some of the better-for-you beverages that are out there, are focused on gut health. We don't focus on gut health at all. We have our caffeinated drinks that have ashwagandha and L-theanine in them. Our focus is more mental health and stress relief Yes Honey is an overall pick-me-up type of beverage for the caffeinated consumers, and the non-caffeinated ones are just that, just a simple non-caffeinated soda.
What have been the biggest challenges?
I did not launch the drinks until August of 2023. We've just been into this about a little over a year and a half. My brand and my farm was called Naked Chicks Pastor. That is also what I named the drinks. I just thought it'll be an extension of the farm, it'll be fun. Because everybody loved our farm name, it made sense. But when I launched the drinks, and we launched a website, and people just started to question if it had anything to do with chicken.
We unfortunately also received feedback of customers unable to find us when searching online. The first two words of our company produced some less than ideal results. That produced a large challenge for us, our consumers couldn't quickly and easily find our products. Although most people thought they got a chuckle out of it, but I didn't want to be the cause of somebody coming across a negative website. I
In February of 2024, I decided to rebrand. I knew it was coming, The whole issue with the Naked Chicks Pastor, the website, people not being able to find us, was probably one of our best decisions. We weren't even six months old when we had to rebrand, better earlier than later on when you grow huge.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
There was no hesitation, because this was not ever my end goal. It wasn't even on my mind, it was just a progression of changes. I just went along with the flow of it. I continued to adapt and see where we're going next. It was slow enough that it wasn't overwhelming. When we had the first store approach us, it's a cool feeling. I'm super thankful for our direct customers. But when you have a store that's interested in selling your product, that's something very special.
I was very excited about that, they were really gracious about helping me walk through the process. I hadn't experienced the steps of what would be required to wholesale something. I didn't have UPCs for example. There were so many things at that time that I just didn't even know about. They were helpful in the preliminary steps of getting it, what we call "retail ready".
We had been growing at a steady pace but a month after the rebrand, we doubled our sales which was amazing! I think the major reason was changing the name to Yes Honey, it became much more recognizable for people. I had also won a pitch competition through Hy-Vee, which brought a lot more awareness to the drinks in our brand. That was coincided well together.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
When I started, I didn't really have an idea of how I wanted to run a company. I had a farm. I had goals, but I never considered the future of being a boss. At our farm, it is our family and maybe a couple of other employees. I've learned that building a brand is challenging! It's been helpful to look to other brands to pull out what I like and don't like, and has helped develop Yes Honey's unique identity. Everybody's end goal ultimately is money. we all have to make money to live. But how do I want to get there? I don't want to be somebody that is just stepping all over other people.
I'm not looking to get there as fast as I possibly can, instead I want to build a good brand. I envision a good legacy for the brand. That's one thing that I've learned is how to create what you want your brand to be. Another thing, I've had to learn is good time management. Understanding and being able to delegate things to other people that I know are not what I'm best at. Maybe I can do this thing, but it's going to take me an hour or two and somebody else can do it in 20 minutes. Being willing to pay that person or wanting to pay that person for their time and energy Is a better use of my time than me laboring over it for a long time.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
This could cross over into being an employee too, but I really like the time that I can spend with people. We do a lot of events right now, even with my buyers, one of the things that I'm trying to build the company on is relationships. We strive to be very relational and intentional with people. As we grow and get larger, that will have to evolve, but that's important to me. I want to be able to make other people feel that they're important, that they're heard, and that they are a part of our brand.
What is your why?
I really believe two things. One, that God has me in this position. This was never something I would have chosen. Personally, I wouldn't have looked back at my life 20 years ago and thought this would be my career. This is my plan. This is my goal. I have seen so many people come alongside me that believe in what I'm doing and have helped me just out of the goodness of their heart. They have been willing to donate their time or give me advice, just help me in so many ways. I am so grateful for that. Those two things there propel me forward.
I know we're providing a much healthier alternative to people, that is what propels me forward every day! I'm very focused on health and wellness, and I want people to know that there are alternatives. You don't have to drink Dr. Pepper or any sugary drink. You don't have to drink products that have corn syrup and chemicals and bioengineered ingredients. I don't ever want to speak negatively about other companies, but our culture has come into using a lot of consumer packaged products. That's just part of our society now. But there are healthy options. We want to be one of those. That's another thing that propels me forward every day.
Favorite experience watching someone try your product?
When people first try it, so often reactions are, "this is so good!" It doesn't have an aftertaste, they're just so excited. I don't know if I can describe this in words, but sometimes people will taste it and then their face makes me think that they don't like it. But then all of a sudden, they just light up and tell me "This is awesome". Those things sometimes throw me off, because I'm pretty expressive in a positive way. As people are processing the taste and then it comes out, "I love it!". For people to be delighted in the flavor and the taste is incredible.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
When I got the first large account. I had been pursuing a health company that my family had been a customer of for years. From start to finish it took 8 months to close. That was super exciting.
What is alpha gal?
Alpha gal is the fastest growing food allergy in the United States. They say that it's transmitted from ticks to humans, and it's somewhat like Lyme disease in the tick aspect of it. But you end up responding through allergic reaction to mammal, meats, and byproducts. Beef, pork, lamb, milk, gelatin, things like that are things that people with alpha gal can negatively respond to.
There's also something called carrageenan, which is a red algae. It's used as a thickener in foods, which is fine, but people with alpha gal can respond negatively to that. Sauces and syrups for instances may have that. I have alpha-gal, my son has alpha-gal, and when I was first diagnosed, I was going to the grocery store trying to find options. I don't want to say a nightmare, because that's a bit dramatic, but it was really challenging. Because if you live with food allergies, which I never had food allergies, I didn't really understand when people say they couldn't eat something. I wasn't super sympathetic, because I didn't understand, and that's sometimes where that non-sympathy comes from.
But when our bodies started reacting to the mammal meats, going to the store and looking at every ingredient on a product is really frustrating. The fact that you absolutely cannot have this thing kind of levels up the game a little bit. I would leave the grocery store sometimes with just like super minimal things because I just couldn't find what I could consume. I had to go home and actually do research. That was super important to me when we rebranded that our products would be the first to be labeled as alpha gal friendly. While we don't have any meat in our products, carrageenan is an aspect for our honeys because products like barbecue sauces, salad dressings, things like that, will often have carrageenan.
Commercially white sugar can be processed with bone char. If that's in a food or beverage, it can affect you. That's where we just want people to know when they pick up Yes Honey, it's allergy friendly, gluten free, we're free of artificial dyes, colors, flavors. It can appeal to anyone, in fact it does appeal to everybody.
Piece of Advice
The biggest piece of advice that I have, is to learn from everybody. Sometimes I think that we get into a position where we know a lot of things and we're experienced. People come along and we're talking with them, and we can tend to tune them out, choose not to really listen to what they're saying because I might feel like I already know that. But that has not served me well, because there are so many times that people have, a little tweak, or they have something unique in how they say it.
I don't want to push that off, because I think I know more. I'm really trying personally to take in what people say, filter it, and then pull out anything that might be beneficial for myself or that I could share with somebody else. Learning from everybody, because there's something in everything, though sometimes you have to toss it. If I followed every single one of those things, I would never get anything done. I'd just be going in a circle.
Promo Code:
Purchase from their website here, and use the promo code below!
Together10 -> 10% off!
Community Callout
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Yes Honey and Founder and Head Chick, Heather Mincer, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!