Just Go Grind #280: Jordan DeCicco, Co-Founder of Super Coffee, a Company Valued at Over $200M, on Building a Successful CPG Business, From Bootstrapping to Raising $60M, Renovation Versus Innovation, and Being One of Three Founding Brothers
Jordan DeCicco is the co-founder of Super Coffee, an enhanced coffee company that now offers a variety of products, from bottled coffee to creamers, grounds and pods. Their products are non-GMO, Gluten-Free, Lactose-Free, Soy-Free, Low-Calorie, and have no added sugar and zero-artificial-ingredients.
As a collegiate student-athlete, Jordan was tired. His campus store offered energy products with empty caffeine, excessive sugar and harmful chemicals. He wanted a drink that promised powerful energy and delicious flavor from healthy, organic ingredients. Not one to settle, Jordan turned his dorm room into a culinary kitchen and got to work! Determined to solve his energy crisis, he consciously blended organic Colombian coffee with grass-fed milk protein, and healthy fats from coconut oil to create an unparalleled source of focused energy. This side project became his passion and now purpose as he and his two older brothers lead the youngest, hungriest team in the business. They believe in positive energy for positive change because if you can change your energy you can change your world.
Some of the Topics Covered by Jordan DeCicco in this Episode
- What Super Coffee is and what spurred Jordan to start it as a freshman year student athlete in college
- The steps Jordan and his brother took to get the business started
- The decision to drop out of university and give up his athletic scholarship in order to pursue Super Coffee full time
- Raising capital first through a friends and family round, then angel investors
- From getting their product into their local Whole Foods to 50 Whole Foods stores in the first year while doing their own production and deliveries
- Learning what it takes to be a good manufacturer and distributor
- Their experience on Shark Tank
- Working with his two brothers as co-founders
- Scaling manufacturing, retail, and distribution
- Going from 100 stores to 35,000 stores and 500 distributors in 4 years
- Getting into e-commerce as a viable channel for their product
- How they evaluate resource allocation and prioritizing retail versus D2C
- The biggest challenges they've faced in scaling the business
- How Jordan and his brothers have approached product development
- Jordan's view on the competition
- How Jordan prioritizes his own physical and mental health
- Jordan's book recommendations
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