Lehman's Crash Led Hillary Lewis To Darden & The Startup Life

Hillary Lewis with the wide load truck that brought a 35,000-pound high-pressure processing machine into your startup

THE $9.99 FIND

Now to figure out what that was …

Lewis was shopping at a Charlottesville Whole Foods in April 2013. She spotted a juice company from New York that she recognized from her days on Wall Street. They were selling 16-ounce bottles of high-pressure-processed juice for $9.99 — in Virginia! She bombarded the buyer stocking shelves with questions. She found out that the store could barely keep them in stock.

Lewis couldn’t believe it. She bought five juice bottles. “That was like a moment of truth in the Whole Foods shopping aisle,” she recalls. “It was the most expensive trip to Whole Foods I’d ever made.” She brought them to Darden Professor Casey Lichtendahl, a beverage industry veteran who co-founded Tradewinds Beverage Company, which was acquired by Nestlé Waters North America. Lewis explained her business proposition and pointed to the bottles as proof of the market. She would start her own high-pressure-processed juice business right there in Charlottesville. If a New York City company could do it, she could too. Lichtendahl was impressed. He jumped on board as her first investor.

‘THAT MADE THE STAKES A LOT HIGHER AND THE INTENSITY STRONGER’

Lichtendahl advised her to produce the juice in-house and urged her to get the high-pressure processing machine and a manufacturing facility, an old AutoZone warehouse in Charlottesville. “That made the stakes a lot higher and the intensity stronger. At the end of day, I had to sell product and I had to make money because I had a lot of people counting on me, and we had to cover our costs,” she recalls.

Lewis and Lichtendahl both knew she’d landed on a golden opportunity that wouldn’t wait. As a second-year MBA she plowed ahead with her business — sinking every last second into getting it off the ground. “When everyone was enjoying their final six to eight weeks of school and all the fun trips before they started their post-Darden jobs, I was working seven days a week, 16-hour days,” she recalls.

But it was a race to get a presence in a booming sector. “The faster I moved, the faster I could be one of the first to market …. Suja started in May 2012 with a pretty hefty sum of private equity money behind them, and also their CEO was a former executive from Coco-Cola, and I didn’t necessarily have those things to help me along,” she recalls.

The next six months were a whirlwind. “November 7, 2013, I was on right the shelf next to … the competition that inspired me,” Lewis recalls. “So it was six months from idea to fully integrated manufacturing facility to a juice on the Whole Foods shelf.” Lewis says Darden proved pivotal in the shaping of her business. Even the classes that seemed blow-off at the time proved key. “Everyone makes fun of leadership organization and interpersonal communications classes in business school, and they’re like why is this important … but leading organizations and understanding interpersonal communications are the most important elements to business I think.”

‘I’M LITERALLY THE WORST PERSON WHEN IT COMES TO MAKING LISTS’

For guidance, Lewis relied on Yael Grushka-Cockayne, an assistant professor at Darden who specializes in decision making and project management. “I’m the literally the worst person when it comes to making lists; I work best when I have a ton of things to do,” Lewis says. Grushka-Cockayne kept her on track and pushed her to map out a 12-week plan to bring Lumi to life.

With Grushka-Cockayne’s planning prowess and Lichtendahl’s beverage acumen, Lewis managed to pull it off. She launched Lumi on the shelves of the same Whole Foods that had inspired her idea. Within the first six weeks, Lumi Juice appeared on the shelves of 13 Whole Foods. “All the buyers thought I was crazy because I was going in there in November and December to sell the product, and what’s in a cold case in November and December? Eggnog and pumpkin spiced latte stuff. The refrigerator is full of holiday items,” she says. She pressed her case: The New Year’s resolution crowd would be looking to shed their holiday baggage soon. The buyers bought it — and Lumi.

Now, Lumi Juice is in all 42 Whole Foods stores in the mid-Atlantic region, 43 Safeways, and some 100 Fresh Markets across the U.S. The juice averages $7.99 for a 16-ounce bottle and $4.25 for a 10-ounce. Lewis already has her eyes on other Whole Foods and nationwide grocery chains; she aims to eventually expand into more health-food items, such as smoothies.

SAFE ARRIVAL

As for the botched crane delivery, Lewis’ don’t-panic approach paid off. She eventually found the right company, which apologized for losing her reservation and sent the equipment out immediately.

“I was just sitting on the loading dock and taking some deep breathes, and I look down the road and all of a sudden there’s the crane and the machine on the flatbed truck directly behind it … it couldn’t have been better timing,” she recalls. “I just smiled at all the guys, and I was like, ‘See, it was no problem; it’s totally fine.'”

Later, she and the Spanish team bonded over beers. The guy who’d asked for the man in charge told her he’d been really nervous that the crane wouldn’t arrive. Lewis admitted she’d experienced her own doubts. “I was really nervous too, but I couldn’t let that show. You have to operate like it’s going to get done, that’s how a lot of things happen.”