Produce stickers beginning with the number 9 line the fruit baskets and crisper drawers of more Americans than at any time in recent memory, but finding new organic options on the go is still pretty difficult.
For most people, making their own organic juices or foods at home is the only option.
In Michigan and especially the Detroit area, finding cold-pressed organic juices seemed like an impossibility: until five sisters began raising money on the Internet crowd-funding site Kickstarter, that is. That crowd-funding project led the opening of their first juice bar, Drought, in Plymouth.
Three years later, they’ve opened a third location in Royal Oak, Michigan, and expanded from their original suburban (Plymouth) location to bring the healthiest organic juices to a place many have called a “Food Desert:” Detroit.
Drought Juice’s sisters and co-owners.
Five Sisters on a Mission
Co-founder Caitlin James, an avid fan of organic juicing, originally wanted to leave the Detroit area as so many health conscious and well educated young people do. But the Kickstarter campaign was a huge success, and now business is booming.
“While my goal was to get out of Detroit, and I did that, I found metro Detroit was the best place to start a business. And my sisters were the best people to have as business partners.”
Drought’s branding expertise on display: simple, crisp colors and glass bottles.
“Detroit is an attractive place for food entrepreneurs,” she said to Crain’s Detroit after being named a on of the top young businesspeople in their 20’s.
About $13,000 raised through the crowd funding platform Kickstarter was all it took to get the unique business off the ground. Now things are growing “very, very rapidly,” she said, and Drought has a location in the city where cold-pressed organic juice was once an unknown.
The company is “growing very, very rapidly,” James said in 2013, and serves as a shining example of how individual entrepreneurs can bring healthy, organic and non-GMO foods to more people, and to the general consciousness, with a little resourcefulness.
The James Sisters made it all happen before they even had a physical product, and now they’re so popular that even “juicing celebrities” (well one, anyway) like Joe Cross of Fat Sick and Nearly Dead fame have visited for a cold one.
Check out the video below from COIN to see the story of how Caitlin and her sisters pulled it off:
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About Nick Meyer
