Newspaper boost

After the awesome piece of press in the local paper earlier this month, we went on to sell out at the farmer’s market (140 bottles sold that day). We were thrilled to be back in action, speaking with customers, and sharing our story.

We know the article gave us a nice boost because several people came up to us telling us they read about us and wanted to come out to try and buy our root beer. Besides the article, having my beautiful wife offer free samples is a major driver of sales, giving us the 20 seconds we need to introduce the brand story and often sell a bottle or six pack.

Does this look slimming?

We bought a few new recycling cans not only to use at our farmer’s market drop off point, but also to share with our first restaurant partner to collect bottles right behind the bar, rather than relying solely on the larger round can back in the kitchen. We’re hopeful this helps their staff efficiently collect bottles. As we learn from this first partnership we’ll be better informed on what to offer other restaurants, bars, and venues that may want (and pay for) a similar glass waste pick up service at a later point.

Achievement unlocked

We made our second “official” farmer’s market trip (besides the small pilot in the Fall) this weekend after missing the prior week due to equipment issues.

Emily and I spent a couple extra evenings at the commissary kitchen to build up enough inventory to ensure we didn’t miss sales. So the official objective this weekend was “don’t sell out”.

Inventory on hand: 252 bottles.

Official sales: 103 bottles.

Success!

For the first time, we left the farmer’s market with some inventory on hand to either bring back next week or test a new event or sales channel. We’ll determine in the next few days how to use it.

Cool Circular Economy stuff we’ve seen

A friend who works for local government in waste management pointed out a couple of other cool glass recycling projects elsewhere in the country that are worth checking out:

• Ripple Glass out of Kansas City collects glass from local businesses as well as public pickup containers. They crush it down and ship it to a glass manufacturer to be recycled.

• Glass Half Full out of New Orleans collects glass and grinds it down to sand for coastline remediation.

I’ve been looking around and started to watch other circular economy initiatives beyond glass as well. Making physical production more circular is going to an important trend in developed countries and beyond in the coming decades, starting with designing products and packaging with their “end” in mind, to movements (like ours) that re-purpose “waste” rather than just chucking it into a landfill.

Thanks for following along our journey so far at these beginning stages!