Becoming A Heartland of Home-Grown Businesses
Most great business models don’t emerge in a freeze-dried state. They develop progressively. The Starbucks business didn’t begin in Seattle; it began with Horn & Hardart, a food services company, followed by Chock Full o’Nuts. 
Well, maybe Whole Foods is going to be supplanted by the New Jersey business Raw Generation, which was founded in 2012. It was the brain-child of a father and daughter team, Jessica Rosen and her dad, Bill Geier.
Rosen’s interest in living a more healthy life began as a result of her grandmother’s death due to cancer. Her grandmother always emphasized taking all her vitamins.
Rosen’s business is raw juice, basically a fresh shift in the way healthy Americans may be eating in the future. But it was going to take more than a cup of roasted beans: Rosen got her father to help her in 2012 to invent this new product made up of tasty and healthy raw juices.
The idea was to sell this product online back in 2012, but as Rosen told reporter Meg Fry, success didn’t come without some “hiccups.”
“In 2012, we sold virtually nothing,” Rosen said. “We started in August, launched our website and heard crickets for about six months.”
Rather than throw in the towel, Rosen decided to try selling Raw Generation products on a now defunct deal site, Lifebooker. That’s when the sales started coming in. And come in they did: within 4 months, they were doing $100,000 a month.
Now Raw Generation is a multi-million dollar operation with more than 40,000 loyal customers.
But their ‘organic’ growth spurt did require that they learn how to scale their business in order to serve the greater capacity.
According to the article, Raw Generation is projected to generate over $4 million in revenue this year while employing 20 people.
Their products include cleanses, juices and smoothies, which are free of preservatives and artificial ingredients. They market to the consumers through their own website and, of course, through Amazon and Groupon.