Today we’d like to introduce you to Johnny Fayad.
Johnny, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Eat Your Coffee started when my co-founder and I would joke about eating coffee after running late for our 8 am financial accounting class at Northeastern University. We really didn’t like energy drinks or other unhealthy alternatives when we wouldn’t have time for coffee, so we thought, why not just put a cup of coffee in a snack bar. We started messing around with some recipes in our dorm room with the goal of making a nutritious, whole ingredient, a snack bar that packed a full cup of real coffee, no synthetic caffeine, in every bar.
We would use our friends as guinea pigs in the study room down the hall and eventually started selling them in the library after midnight for people pulling all-nighters. With some early success there, we realized we had something and decided to scale up. We launched on Kickstarter in late 2014, becoming fully funded in under 15 hours and raising more than 4x our $10k goal, and went to retail in early 2015.
Over the past three years, we have sold over 1,000,000 bars, gotten into over 1,000 grocery stores and offices, and officially graduated from Northeastern last year. With our three delicious flavors, we’re continuing our mission of energizing people with naturally caffeinated snacks made with real, ethically sourced ingredients.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has definitely been and continues to be a bumpy road! At each stage of the business, we’ve faced different struggles that come along with this being our first business, especially one in an industry like food where we’re dealing with a real product, holding inventory, shelf life, etc.
In the beginning, the struggles were focused around figuring out how we scale from making a couple of thousand bars in our dorm room to a commercial kitchen to a fully-functioning manufacturing facility. Then it was understanding how many bars we need to produce without over/under-producing (this is an ongoing struggle I don’t think will ever go away).
And now we’re going through the struggles of keeping up with a national rollout and effectively communicating with customers around the country. I could write a chapter on each of these, but the common theme in each of these is the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” which has been something we’ve embraced since day one.
Leaning on our peers, mentors, etc., we’ve always been able to make it through by not being afraid to seek help along the way.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Eat Your Coffee – what should we know?
Eat Your Coffee is pioneering a new category in caffeinated natural snacks. Being the original naturally caffeinated snack bar, we’re focused on creating delicious snacks made of whole ingredients and packed with 80mg of caffeine from real, fair trade coffee.
As a company, I’m proud of a lot of milestones our team has achieved, but the latest one from this year was passing the 1,000,000 bars sold threshold. With every bar we sell, we’re not only providing a clean, convenient caffeine option for someone, but also supporting coffee farmers by sourcing fair trade, paying fair wages to the people who make eating our coffee possible.
Our main competitive advantage is fitting a full cup of real coffee in every bar. We don’t use synthetic caffeine and view coffee as an amazing, antioxidant-rich ingredient that consumers are comfortable with when it comes to caffeine. By using this as our platform and focusing on building out a line of naturally caffeinated snacks, we have been able to carve out a nice niche for us in the sea of other energy/snack bars on the market.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
So many people have touched our business in a positive way along our journey with Eat Your Coffee. From our peers/professors at Northeastern, our awesome team, mentors in the industry, our investors, etc., we have been fortunate to surround ourselves with extremely smart people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help us succeed. To name a few people:
– Greg Dalle-Molle, Bob Lentz, Dan Gregory, and Marc Meyer: Our first mentors through IDEA: Northeastern University’s Venture Accelerator, Greg, Bob, Dan, and Marc each helped us in their own way connecting us with the right people on campus, thinking through our business model, understanding fundraising, etc. throughout the early days of Eat Your Coffee
– Matt Gregory: Working in operations for food companies and being the former Director of Innovation at Plum Organics, Matt helped us through the scale-up process when trying to figure out how to go from making 10 bars/hour in our dorm room to 40k in a day of production.
– SCOUT: Northeastern’s Student-run Design Studio: Founded by Laura Marelic, they designed the original packaging we took to market and helped us get off the ground. Thanks to Laura, Julia, and the whole SCOUT team, we were able to look a bit more professional in the early days.
– Kate Prince: Kate was our first real employee and helped us through a lot of the hurdles we faced in scaling our brand, leading us through a rebrand, and helping us think through how we message the company.
– Our early investors: Asides from funding, each one of them has been able to lend an ear and assist in their own way through advice, introductions, etc. as they’ve watched the business grow since our first year.
– Our team: I can’t say enough about Allen, Meghan, and Joe. It’s a rollercoaster for all of us as we celebrate successes and face new struggles along the way.
There are so many more people I’d love to list. As I mentioned earlier, we were not afraid to ask for help along the way. Starting this as students, we took a learning approach and continue to grow in this way being fascinated with each stage of the business and trying to learn from/surround ourselves with smart people.
Pricing:
- 19,99 for an 8-pack on Amazon
- $34.99 for a 15-pack on Amazon
- $2.49 at a grocery store near you
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.eatyour.coffee/
- Email: info@eatyour.coffee
- Instagram: instagram.com/eatyourcoffee
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eatyourcoffee
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/eatyourcoffee
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/eatyourcoffee
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