Happy Birthday to Bai …

August 3rd, 2010 • 1 comment Uncategorized, antioxidants, coffee fruit

One year ago today, we officially launched the Bai brand with great excitement and optimism. I’m proud to say that our first year has turned out even better than I could have imagined.

What began with a three-person crew has blossomed into today’s Team Bai, which is nine people strong. Our product line has grown from three to eight flavors, including four varieties in the low-calorie Bai5 line, which we introduced earlier this year and which has been extremely well received. From our initial rollout in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area and select West Coast locations, our distribution has expanded throughout the Northeast and into the Midwest and even the Caribbean.

I look back at this past year and feel very blessed by our success. Bai began with a singular idea — making use of the coffee fruit in a healthy, flavorful way — that took root in my own kitchen. It was an idea that was cultivated with the support and counsel of family and friends, and has evolved rapidly into a business that is breaking open a new category in the industry — a functional beverage for health-conscious consumers, powered by a natural ingredient that was largely unknown before Bai hit the market.

I have been fortunate to put together a team of hard-working, committed people who share my enthusiasm for building the Bai brand. Together we have put Bai on a solid path by doing business with good partners and positioning ourselves for further growth if we continue to work as hard as we have over the past 12 months.

As any proud parent would say about watching a child grow, I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone. And as I blow out that candle today (before washing down a slice of cake with a frosty Congo Pear), I am filled with anticipation about what the next year will bring.

BevNet Gives Bai 4 Stars!

July 20th, 2010 • Uncategorized, antioxidants, coffee fruit

BevNet, one of the leading outlets for news and product reviews in the beverage industry, recently sampled several of our Bai and Bai5 flavors. The result was a hit: 4 out of 5 stars for Panama Peach, Tanzania Strawberry, Sumatra Dragonfruit and Kenya Peach.

Check out the full reviews on BevNet. If you’re a Bai fan, hit the site and add your own comments on your favorite flavors.

Here is a sample of some of the comments from the BevNet reviews:

Tanzania Strawberry:

Bai Tanzania Strawberry variety is very enjoyable. The mixture, which includes coffee fruit extract and white tea extract, makes for something that has big fruit flavor (you can definitely taste the pomegranate and strawberry) with a slight note of coffee fruit at the finish. It all goes quite well together, with the tartness of the fruit flavors offering some nice balance to the coffee fruit flavor. … Functionally, the product’s 3,000 ORAC units (antioxidants) are certainly a big plus.

Panama Peach:

Honestly, this is one of the best tasting low calorie products that we’ve ever tasted, with a level of sweetness and lack of aftertaste that’s close to what you’ll find in sugar sweetened drinks. There’s a bold peach flavor to the product, which is the clear result of using peach juice instead of flavorings and filler juices.

Sumatra Dragonfruit:

They’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of the delicate balance of delivering natural sweetness and minimal aftertaste.

The Bai5 Family Grows

June 17th, 2010 • Uncategorized, antioxidants, coffee fruit

I am excited to announce that we are rolling out the fourth flavor in our Bai5 line, Congo Pear. Like the other Bai5 varieties, the new Congo Pear delivers a fresh fruit taste with only five calories — and, of course, packs a major antioxidant punch!

With this new rollout, we now offer four flavors both in our traditional Bai family (Tanzania Strawberry, Jamaica Blue Berry, Kenya Peach and Mango Kauai) and our Bai5 line (Congo Pear, Costa Rica Clementine, Sumatra Dragonfruit and Panama Peach).

This summer is shaping up to be an exciting one for Bai — just as temperatures are heating up, so is interest in our products among consumers, retailers and distributors. I am thankful for the positive responses we continue to receive about Bai, and for the hard work our team has put into making this happen.

Visit our main website to learn more about Bai5 Congo Pear. And drop us a line on our Facebook page to let us know what you think about our newest flavor.

Customer Q&A

June 14th, 2010 • Uncategorized, antioxidants, coffee fruit

With Bai continuing to move into new markets, we have been receiving nice feedback, as well as some good questions, from our customers. I shared one particularly nice note in a previous blog, and below I have copied some some examples of my recent exchanges with our customers, which address questions that many people often ask.

As David Letterman would say, remember, these are actual letters from actual customers.

Q: I love your beverage Bai-5. I buy 10 bottles each time, and stock up at work for my lunches. For the past few months, I’ve been adding nutritional supplements to my diet and was wondering what type of antioxidant is in the drink. I buy your product at Marazzo’s shopping center in N.J.

I told my coworkers about it and now they are starting to drink it as well.  So far, everyone likes the taste.

Please let me know which antioxidant is in the drink because I want to make sure I balance out against the supplements I take. Thanks.

A: Wow, we really appreciate your business!

The antioxidants that are present in Bai are all derived from the fruit of the coffee. Polyphenols are natural plant antioxidants that are abundant in coffee fruit.  The fruit is also rich in chlorogenic acid, Caffeic acid, ferulic acid and quinic acid, all of which are potent antioxidants.

I hope this helps and please feel free to contact us with any other questions and/or comments.

Q: I was introduced to Bai5 today at the Crossroads Coffee House in Cross Plains, Wisconsin, and loved it!  My question is:  In that Bai5 drinks get their big antioxidant boost from the fruit of the coffee berry, is there caffeine in them?  And if so, how much? Will be awaiting word. Thanks, Marcia.

A: Marcia, Good question. We use coffee fruit for its antioxidant goodness, not its caffeine content.

Coffee fruit is rich in polyphenols such as caffeic acid, ferulic acid and chlorogenic acids. These antioxidants make it one of nature’s secret superfruit. Each bottle of Bai contains 70mg of all-natural caffeine (similar to a mild cup of coffee or a cup of green tea).  A majority of that caffeine (59mg) comes from white tea extract and the balance comes from coffee fruit (11mg.). The boost that you will get from Bai is a more balanced boost, similar to a cup of green tea, without the jitters or back-end crash.

Hope this helps and thank you for your interest in Bai. We appreciate your business.

If you have any questions about Bai, feel free to leave a comment here on the blog or on our Facebook page, or e-mail info@drinkbai.com.

‘Getting Bai’ in Italy

June 1st, 2010 • Uncategorized, antioxidants, coffee fruit

What could be a more glorious vacation than springtime in Italy? A good friend of ours sent back some photos from her recent trip, making us all jealous. At least I’m happy to know that she packed wisely, as you can see from her photo and her caption below.

“At Saint Peter’s Square. Waiting in line to get in for audience with the Pope. No time for coffee this a.m. Bai to the rescue!”

Not only did she get a nice antioxidant boost before her visit, she even kept a bottle on hand when she entered Saint Peter’s Basilica. So we can now say that people are “Getting Bai” in all kinds of ways around the globe, from running their daily morning errands at home to visiting some of the world’s most famous sites!

Here are some additional scenes from her Italian “Bai-cation” …

“Jamaica Blue Berry at the Colosseum”

“Inside the Colosseum”

“Costa Rica Clementine in Rome”

“Arrivederci Roma ..”

Team Bai Spotlight: Robert Vitalis

May 24th, 2010 • Uncategorized, antioxidants, coffee fruit

Name: Robert Vitalis

Position: Sales representative, Queens and Brooklyn

Background: I owned a restaurant in the Caribbean and spent 20 years in the luxury automobile industry prior to joining Bai.

Favorite things to do outside of work: I am very family-oriented and devoted to my children. I also love sports — especially the Yankees and the Knicks. I am looking forward to LeBron James coming to the big city!

Why Bai? I have a real passion for Bai. I am focused on life and on healthy, natural foods — Bai represents that same focus. I also have a very personal connection to Bai. When I was introduced to this drink made from the fruit of the coffee bean, it brought me back to my experience growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, where my family had coffee estates. Sampling Bai awakened my memories from years ago of harvesting coffee beans and tasting their fruit. I understand and appreciate the value of the antioxidants in the coffee fruit, so I’m very excited about bringing the health benefits of Bai to others through my work with the company.

California, Here I Come …

March 12th, 2010 • 1 comment antioxidants

I’m heading west this week for Bai’s first participation in the Natural Products Expo West, the major trade show for the healthy products industry. The expo showcases products from around the world and draws more than 50,000 attendees — a great opportunity to introduce Bai to a wider audience of people who care about healthy products and ideas.

While I embrace any opportunity to spread the word about Bai, this event provides a particularly nice forum for highlighting our focus on antioxidants and the unique qualities of the coffee superfruit in Bai. I recently came across the blog for the Natural Foods Merchandiser (the official magazine of the expo), where there have been numerous discussions about the health benefits of antioxidants. So I look forward to spending the next few days talking with and learning from people who are as passionate as I am about finding innovative ways to help people enjoy a healthier lifestyle.

The Natural Products Expo West runs March 11-14 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif. We’ll be at booth No. 5851 — so for anyone who plans to attend, please come on by!

The glamorous life of a CEO

January 23rd, 2010 • antioxidants, coffee fruit

When I was a kid, I knew that Colonel Sanders wasn’t just the face on the bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. In his commercials, the Colonel was right there in the kitchen next to the pimply kid in the paper hat, mixing up the 11 secret herbs and spices. So I learned early on that running a company meant you had to be hands-on. Today was certainly a big reminder.

In between meetings, I swung over to the Bai warehouse to review a shipment of our newest product, Bai5 Peach. As the door to the truck swung open, I was confronted by a simple but painful formula:

Plastic bottles + Poorly stacked 1,600-pound pallet racks = Disaster

You can imagine how thrilled I was to see toppled cases and crushed bottles of my newest pride and joy strewn around the truck. You can also guess how much I enjoyed spending the next few hours picking through the cases to salvage as many bottles as possible to fulfill orders for our clients.

But when life feeds you lemons, there’s nothing you can do but make a delicious antioxidant infusion (you didn’t think I was going to say lemonade, did you?). So I rescheduled my next meeting and spent the afternoon restacking and recounting to fill those orders. And one of the side benefits was that I wound up with a bunch of bottles of the new drink to bring home to my friends and neighbors, who gave it a rousing thumbs-up (and hopefully not just because it was free).

So I made it through another day in the glamorous life of a startup CEO. My solace is that I’m sure even the Colonel had days when his order came out a little too extra crispy –and things turned out pretty well for him.