A first year MMM student at the Kellogg School of Management, Kathryn Bernell may not have come to business school to be an entrepreneur, but after winning the first “Shark Tank” Kellogg Venture Challenge on February 1, she has found herself thrust into the whirlwind of balancing school work and a budding start-up: RE-BUCHA.
RE-BUCHA is Kathryn’s version of kombucha, the trendy fermented tea beverage one might find occupying premium shelf space at Whole Foods. Kombucha also happens to be the fastest growing market in the functional beverages category according to the research company MarketsandMarkets. RE-BUCHA differentiates from competition through social impact: RE-BUCHA is infused with the juice from cosmetically imperfect produce, an idea Kathryn developed at Kellogg.
Kathryn’s idea for RE-BUCHA stems from her work in Kellogg’s MMM course “Innovation Frontiers,” where she and her team won an in-class venture competition for an idea of a B2B marketplace for food waste. According to Kathryn, it was in her discussions with farmers that she began to realize just how much produce was composted or wasted on the vine with no compensation. That figure, coupled with food waste streams coming from retailers, restaurants, and consumer homes, amounts to nearly 40 percent of food produced in the United States, Kathryn says. After winning the in-class competition, there was a moment of "Huh, people think this is also important. I’m not alone in thinking that something needs to be done." So she continued to conduct research and test her product concept, which led her to enter the Kellogg Venture Challenge.
Eight student-run startups, four “Sharks” with investment experience, and $10K in prize money, the first Kellogg Venture Challenge Shark Tank – inspired by the ABC show -- offered aspiring student entrepreneurs a platform to pitch their concepts and receive feedback from experts. "I walked in looking at the caliber of the competition and felt like the mitochondria in a shark tank," Kathryn said when asked about the experience.
Kathryn can rest a bit easier as she went home with a grand prize of $5,000 after pitching the “Sharks” and sharing her samples of RE-BUCHA. “It was an exciting win for the product concept,” says Kathryn. When asked what her biggest takeaway was from the experience, she said “the importance of testing and having a deep understanding of the customer.” In fact, it was the leg work she put into testing the concept and her “scrappy” entrepreneurial approach that she feels resonated with the judges.
Although still in the early stages, RE-BUCHA’s momentum has certainly changed. As Kathryn moves forward with product development, she is being offered support from every direction one could expect from a world-class business school. “I have been blown away by the Kellogg alumni,” Kathryn says as she shares a few examples of the numerous conversations she has scheduled this week with professors and former students. “Kellogg has brought to the table an incredible array of resources and connections to move RE-BUCHA forward.”
“The Kellogg community is hungry for people to build and create, and the entrepreneurship community here is really blooming,” Kathyrn says. She may not have come to business school to be an entrepreneur, but thanks to Kellogg, she is a promising one.