Jul 20, 2017

Jul. 20, 2017 at 4:36 pm More Plant-based, health startup Revere launched last week with plans of bringing personalization to athletes’ pre- and post-workout mixtures. Now, the direct-to-consumer drink mix company has announced it raised $2 million in a seed round led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures prior to the launch. Further terms of the deals were not disclosed. As part of the investment, Ben Lerer, managing partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures, will also join the company’s board of directors. “The Revere team is chasing down a huge opportunity in a completely broken and massive market,,” Lerer said in a statement. “Revere is built for the modern day millennial consumer whose lives are structured around exercise and wellness, catering to the next generation in a way the old guard of retail brands really can’t. We believe Revere has the potential to become a culturally iconic brand for this new consumer.” The concept is simple: Fuel fitness-focused consumers through their workouts by providing healthy pre- and post- workout drink mixes. The company offers a variety of mixes each formulated specifically for the type of exercise and experience level of individual consumers. To see which of the brand’s products will work best for them, consumers answer basic questions about their lifestyle and fitness routines before placing an order. Packets are then available via a subscription service, starting at $34 a month (a base level designed for people who work out two to three times per week). Revere’s launch line features five SKUs, including a pre-workout mixture and four post-workout powders to be consumed after strength-training or cardio. Each powder is made with all natural ingredients, including stevia, sweet potato, beetroot and green tea powder, and is vegan, non-GMO, gluten-free, soy-free and dairy-free. Though the company is still in its infancy, CEO and cofounder Matthew Scott told NOSH that Revere hit its first month revenue target within the first seven hours of launching. He added that the team knows this win is “not illustrative of broader momentum of business,” but that he along with cofounders Alexandra Blodgett and Jasper Nathaniel are pleased with the positive reception. With their new funding, Scott said the company is planning to scale by growing its tech, customer experience and operations teams. Funds will also be used to further product development and increase both marketing efforts both on and offline. Currently, the brand has no immediate plans to expand into other retail channels or launch additional SKUs, but is instead looking to “refine products and iterate on them.” Revere is trying to differentiate itself from other powders with science-backed functionality. Revere’s three cofounders felt they needed to add individuals with a backgrounds in food to supplement their own backgrounds in technology. So, Scott said, they brought on Mike Barwis, a fitness trainer, and Jenn Sacheck, an associate professor of nutrition at Tufts University, to join the team and develop the products to be both nutritionally-balanced and functional. Another contrast is that the company doesn’t necessarily consider itself a CPG or subscription company, but rather a “technology enabled food company.” “We think that the combination of our products–which provide a smarter approach to food– and the service that we have built into the business is pretty central to our value proposition to consumers,” he said. “What Lola is doing for feminine care category or what Ollie has done for the dog category, we want to be the same and are thinking about a different model in a different way to bring our products and services to consumers.” Unlike other CPG entrepreneurs, Revere’s founders don’t believe that the taste of a product is its most important aspect. When asked about a recent Fortune article, which described the beverages as “cloyingly sweet” with a “heavy, slightly chalky, consistency,” Scott told NOSH that while Revere wants customers to enjoy their products, the company did not optimize them for taste. “If you were optimizing for taste, that can bring you down a path that is very disingenuous to our mission as a business. First and foremost, our ethos of our business is creating products that we know work and there is science to prove that they work,” he said. “We want to make sure they taste good, but at the end of the day we think the [other] criterias are slightly more important than just making something that is yummy.” Latest News