It took a national juice maker with local ties two decades to achieve overnight success.
Country Pure Foods has carved out serious space in the multibillion-dollar service industry by targeting schools that must meet stricter federal nutritional guidelines.
To add to the challenge, the Ohio-based juice maker had to find a flavor that appealed to students’ palates and school administrators’ budgets.
“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” said Joe Koch, director of marketing at Country Pure Foods in Ellington. The Connecticut site, which employs 125, is one of the company’s three processing plants in the U.S.
Country Pure spent nearly two years developing a tasty, affordable vegetable drink for its V Blend line aimed at school kids when the U.S. Department of Agriculture changed its nutritional guidelines last year.
School districts across the country face new challenges since first lady Michelle Obama and the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed the new guidelines, which put a 650-calorie cap on elementary school lunches and called for fewer fats and lower sodium.
The company’s V Blend of Dragon Punch and Wango Mango fit the federal requirements.
“Children need to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, and school-age children spend much of their day at school,” said Koch.
“Companies like Country Pure Foods need to constantly be looking for ways to help children eat their recommended servings of nutritious food,” said Koch.
Under the new rules, the drinks do not have to be made 100 percent from vegetables and they can be blended with fruit juices, which could give it a sweeter taste — and appeal to students’ palates.
The USDA’s change in April 2012 was just the push the company needed, said Ray Lee, Country Pure president and chief executive.
Up to that point, the company struggled to find a juice mixture they liked.
“We weren’t coming up with anything we liked, so we knew the kids wouldn’t like it either,” said Lee. “When the rules changed in April, we spun into action.”
Company officials developed its newest line in just under six months when it normally would have taken at least a year, according to Koch.
When the juice maker attended industry trade shows last July, it took blank cartons as samples to some vendors since its artwork, packaging and name were not finished yet, said Lee.
More than 31 million students buy 5.5 billion school lunches in the U.S. each year, said Koch.
And even though the USDA requires high school-age students to consume at least five cups of vegetables per week, only three out of 10 kids report actually eating it. Roughly $1 billion a year in food is tossed in the garbage, said Koch.
The company thinks it has finally hit a sweet spot with kids.
“They might say, ‘This tastes good, but oh, if you told me there were vegetables in it, I never would have drank it,’ ” said Lee.
“It’s less of a problem with younger kids. Older kids have preconceived notions of how veggies taste,” Lee said. “These are the obstacles. You want to make it obvious to adults, but not so blatantly obvious to the kids.”
School officials love it too. Most vegetable juices run about $1 per serving compared to V Blend’s 20 cents for the same amount.
[Susan Maffe, food service director for Meriden Public Schools — quote].
The new healthy regulation adds more than $3.2 billion — or 14 cents per meal — to the country’s $11 billion school lunch program. Because there is no additional funding, schools like must eat the added cost.
The company launched its juice product in October, according to Koch. So far, four Connecticut school districts — in Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury and Meriden — have signed on to serve V Blend.
“We believe we have a good-tasting juice product that is kid-friendly,” said Koch. “So far we’re selling in about a dozen states, primarily to schools, and emergency meal and senior feeding programs.”
The Ohio-based Country Pure currently makes its V Blend in Connecticut at its Ellington plant. The company grew last year with its first acquisition since it was purchased by private equity firm Mistral Equity Partners of New York in 2010.
It snapped up Cal-Tex Citrus Juice, a fellow competitor that had more of the school market than Country Pure. The acquisition helped to add more than 100 employees and gave Country Pure entry into the Texas region and surrounding states as well as a manufacturing plant in Houston.
Aside from its healthy blend for school kids, Country Pure Foods also makes more than 300 different juice products in 73 flavors and does business with national brands and grocery chains’ private label divisions.
Lee said the bulk of the company’s business is in single-serve cup of juice or milk-sized cartons sold under the Ardmore Farms or Juice4U brands to schools, hospitals, nursing homes and jails. Lee said he could disclose who the company makes juice for.
The company did about $200 million in sales last year, compared to $45 million in 1995 and $160 million in 2010. It makes more than 1 billion little juice portions a year.
