Heat Solves Manufacturing Crisis

A story about how Hint Water nearly shut down due to preservation challenges until they discovered a heat-based solution for shelf stability.

"We produced the first non-alcoholic water company with fruit that didn't have preservatives in it. When I first started, I kept asking co-packers why we needed preservatives. They said we needed them for extended shelf life to be on Target's shelves.

About a year into being in Whole Foods, when we were in about half the country, we almost shut the company down because we couldn't figure out how to do it without preservatives. My husband Theo, our COO, deserves full credit. I remember him getting up in the middle of the night working in the kitchen, trying to figure this out. He was experimenting with using heat, but it was tricky because of the sugars - it's like a cooked carrot versus a raw carrot, very different. You can't just apply straight heat; there needs to be ups and downs to preserve the fruit's integrity.

We used to go into Whole Foods and stock the shelves, but we actually had inventory in our warehouse and garage. We'd tell them we were out of stock because we were nervous about the product's stability. Theo, who was previously an attorney, had worked on the Odwalla E. coli case where a few kids died, so we were extremely careful. Every single day in the early days of Hint, we were taking our product to a lab to ensure it was safe.

This is why it's been hard for companies to replicate what we do - it's an artisan product that's priced as a mainstream product."