One of the most common we innovate is through the actions we take through daily life. I like to try new things, take supplements, and to drink with my friends. Through this combination we've come up with Good Morn, a new type of beverage - recovery drinks. Here's how it all happened.
The Start
A popular supplement known for its properties to combat stress, improve recovery after the gym, and bounce back after drinking. The last effect is lesser known. I came to find out about it reading forms on the internet. A supposed method of preventing hangovers. A
few clicks and supplies were on the way from Amazon.
The first test night was a long one out in Boston bars, hopping throughout the city drinking deep past into the night. Excited, I gave my friends the pills. A few skeptic friends turned into were soon joining me in hangover free mornings. It was great. I was was a glutathione dealer.
Passing them out each night we'd all go out. From this, an idea was birthed.
The idea was to "re-brand" the glutathione and vitamin C into recovery pills called Good Morning. Designed to help you bounce back from drinking. I was naturally curious as to how these pills worked, the science behind it, and if it could be improved.
The Research
My background in biomedical engineering and years in the large biomolecule pharmaceutical industry helped me during a long session of white paper review, patent searches, and phone calls. Yes, phone calls. I love cold calling specialists on the phone and asking them questions.
Detective work on white papers, industry leaders, reverse looking up phone numbers through old resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and white paper documentation. People love to talk about things they're passionate about. I was here to learn. Learn about how simple supplements had the power to fight hangovers, why this wasn't a prevalent industry throughout out Country, and more.
I was able to add a few more ingredients onto a list, and ended up with a shortlist of powerful stuff.
I found there was a whole market of hangover prevention drinks (not pills) in South Korea. They're in every convince store and it's a popular drink to pair with alcohol and they work well.
A variety of herbal extracts, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other medicinal supplements all had the ability to assist in the recovery of alcohol. Variations of these ingredients to create these alcohol aid formulas were well documented in scientific studies.
This process took months. I wasn't quick to act, I was taking my time. By the time I decided on a drink format (it's simply way more fun) - I had already left my job and was running an Ecommerce business in sanitation: www.smartuv.shop. This was 2020. We were busy.
I had learned about manufacturing, supply chains, customer support, web development, advertising, product development, and more through a few various business ventures. My first was a bath bomb business and I had a few pop up shops after this and then with Smart UV we sold thousands of lamps and air purifiers throughout the country in months.
It was great, getting experience running a business in real time and providing value to those around us. I wanted to move into something more fun, that would bring more happiness with a fun scientifically studied hangover drink.
I made a lot of friends at a WeWork in Boston and during the spiked seltzer phase I found some like minded entrepreneurs that were in the beverage industry. They put me in contact with a top of the line flavor house (a flavor house is a beverage industry term for making new drinks taste good) and we set out to make our recovery drink real.
We got a first mock formula shortly after.
The Drink
Small enough to drink quickly in a sitting, but still get a great dose and you can mix it too. Some of our ingredients we had to be creative with, as they aren’t naturally water soluble, like DHM.
We found natural ways to get this done as well. We worked with some partnerships to get the flavor right and when we got the samples it was time to start the testing.
The testing was fun, I gave away the drink to friends, family, co-workers, and roommates. The flavor started out poor, but over a few iterations we found a great flavor that helps hide the bitter taste of plant extracts, the worst one being our best ingredients - Hoveia Dulcis or DHM.
This is the extract of a Japanese Rasin tree and if you tried it by itself you would not like it, it smells not so great. Good Morn hides this smell fairly well. The taste is okay, but the effectiveness of Good Morn - the potency is what truly matters. It works great. It works like a charm.
The Market Test
To start selling Good Morn we decided to sell online, grow our user base a bit and continue to work with customers to ensure our product was excellent.
Our first strategy was to get the feedback of a large group of people, so we gave away a several hundred cans. We did this through a giveaway campaign.
People could sign up and invite their friends. We tracked all the referrals with an AWS cloud hosted site. My friend helped me with the code, so I can't speak too much about it. We had different tiers and the more friends that were invited, the more cans we gave away.
This was a great success. We emailed all our friends and past associates and then even sent some traffic from Facebook with huge clickthrough rates at around 8% per ad. We had thousands of signups and gave away thousands of cans.
We ended up putting a time limit on the giveaway because we had only ran a small production run and didn't have too many cans to give away.
Launch
The reviews were great and we got a lot of feedback from customers. We've since continued to sell Good Morn and our journey to pioneer the recovery drink beverage category has just begun.
Try a Good Morn today and see how you like it. Share a few with friends. You'll never drink the same again.
