If you’d told me a few years ago that one day I’d work with my dad, I would have laughed at you. The idea of trading in my career in the music industry for one in beverages would have seemed improbable, to say the least. I’m really more of a chem-class-skipping kind of girl than one who wants to chat about buffering insulin responses or best practices for those titration-thingies. And don’t get me started on the rubber boots and hair nets—seriously my soul dies a little each time…. And yet here I am, experiencing a significant plot twist in the story of my life.
I first heard my dad talk about gnubees about four years ago. At the time I thought that a high-nutrition snack beverage for kids was such a no-brainer that I just accepted and expected its future place in the beverage market alongside his previous products. But as time went by it became clear that the process of creating and producing a beverage outside of the conventional system, as he was endeavoring to do, was a little more complicated than I assumed. In order for his dream to come to fruition, he didn’t have to just formulate superior beverages, he also had to produce them himself and create a facility to produce them in. To further complicate matters, beverage companies don’t typically produce in the small batches my dad envisioned, so a lot of the actual production equipment had to be designed from scratch as well. Suffice to say, this all took a while.
Meanwhile, I was happily consumed with my own life: two kids, one husband, one job, and pretty much running like a crazy person to keep all of them in balance. There were/are quite literally, not enough hours in the day to do everything right, so in my limited free time I scoured stores for convenient food items that could alleviate the time-crunch, without sacrificing our family’s nutrition. Needless to say, the search results were pretty bleak so I kept hassling my dad to hurry up and get gnubees to market so that at least snack time could be a no-brainer.
Time flew by, as it tends to do, and by Spring of 2014, gnubees was getting closer, but there was still a mountain of work to accomplish before it could launch. I found myself frustrated by this as after years of hearing the ins and outs of the project, I was emotionally invested. I felt (and feel) that customers deserve products like gnubees and I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be using my skill set to lend a hand. So, long story short, like any completely rational person, I decided to quit the job I loved so I could work for my dad, for free, in an industry I knew little about. Let’s just say what I lack in salary negotiation, I make up for in conviction and stupidity.
Fast forward to now, Spring 2014, nine months into “bring your daughter to work day”. We’ve officially launched GnuSanté and there is a fresh batch of gnubees in my pantry. YAY! (phew!) The first step in our journey to help bridge the nutrition-vs-convenience gap, has officially been taken. And as one of my favourite felons would say, “that’s a good thing.”
Ps- Spoiler alert. My dad is Ron.
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