Subreddit: r/Entrepreneur
User: u/Nearby-Inside5445
Original Post:
Do yall think this is a good idea?
The idea: Create an energy drink, just pure natural ingredients, optimized for pure performance. The catch/uniqueness? Its horrible tasting. Id market around that, the fact that it tastes horrible, but it is literally the best drink for performance, no artificial crap, just pure pure pure performance. It'll be like only true athletes emrbace the pain or smth like that? If ugs could comment any ideas or additions I could do to this that would be amazing!
My Answer:
Hi, consulting food scientist here.
I have designed many performance beverages in the past. Nootropics and nutraceutical compounds all have a very bitter and awful taste. You could try, but every drink I’ve made, consumers cannot stand even one iota of off-flavor or bitterness. Even for drinks that are targeted at the health-conscious crowd, they will not tolerate a certain threshold of poor taste.
If you have to try producing this product, your best bet is to connect with a beverage formulator, which should run you between $12,000 to $30,000 to give you a fully functional formulation with associated production data, shelf-life stability testing, nutraceutical specification sheets, relationships with suppliers, and bench top analysis.
This does not include any clinical or consumer trials to actually determine if your product does what it claims to do. And clinical trials are very expensive, potentially running you between $100,000 to $300,000 depending on the number of subjects and statistical power.
From there, you would throw in another $50,000 to $150,000 for an initial production run with a co-manufacturer or a co-packer. Could be more depending on how complex your formulation is.
Start shelling out to retailers and distributors, which can run you a pretty penny. Any unsold stock? You pay the price for taking back the refund.
Total time to launch: 1 to 3 years
Good luck.
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