I'm thinking of starting a business making basically gatorade-type powder. Seeking advice.
I used to make soap and body products, and I really enjoyed it. I loved making nice-smelling things that people really liked. We were really on the verge of online sales, so we went to markets and sold that way. Didn't end up taking off just because we really didn't get the sales base. Online would have helped.
I was talking recently to my wife about making her some gatorade-type hydration beverage with electrolytes. Because we're trying to save money where we can.
I was looking up what goes into most electrolyte products, and pricing them out. What's annoying is that it would be around $75 to get what I needed. But that would give me around 1000 ½L servings, give or take.
And with that, I went down the rabbit hole of "Why not see if I can package some up and sell?"
At the most basic level, it would probably cost around $1.50 to create a 100-serving jar, which I could probably label and sell for something like $10 - which sounds like huge profit, but I think is probably around a reasonable level. Which would mean around 10¢ per serving to my customers.
As I've been expanding on the idea, I feel I could offer mutiple versions:
- The basic one that has no flavor or sweetner, just the electrolytes
- Flavored cersions with sugar for energy, artificial sweetener for folks like me who don't want the sugar but might want the electrolyes
- Custom blends on demand, i.e. since I have to limit my salt and potassium but could benefit from the magnesium and calcium, I might have a flavored artificial-sweetner one with just two electrolytes. I could have main flavors with color (as it makes them taste better, yay silly brains) but offer no-color blends for those that preferred
Paired with an online shop, I think it might be enough to be interesting to people - being able to offer more flavors than the norm. And things I'm not sure some have though of - being able to add this to a protein shake, so flavors relevant to that might be interesting (i.e. getting to play with some "dessert" flavours that would be weird in a drink).
I've got a ton of research to do - and to see how I could start hopefully under cottage food laws with less registrations and fees.
But I'm curious to know if this sounds interesting, what ideas you have, and most importantly, if you've run your own small hobby style business in any relevant sort of way, what advice and ideas you might have to help me as I look at this possibility.
Basically, I'm trying to keep afloat here, and I'm not picking up business clients as quickly as I need, and I think doing this would not only be fun, but perhaps profitable as well.
It's a nice idea, but how much do you know about formulation chemistry? Milling and mixing powders is actually a fairly complex process, and there are a bunch of potential difficulties or even dangers even in making relatively simple formulations like this.
For instance, different particle sizes will tend to segregate when agitated, with larger particles moving towards the top. If your ingredients have different average particle sizes, this can create a situation where there is varying concentrations of each within the overall batch. Now, if you're simply doing a mixture of sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and flavor (for instance), then a single serving of the product is not likely to be all that dangerous, since even a 'finished product serving weight' of any of these ingredients alone (the theoretical worst case scenario) is still probably going to be within the RDA.
But adding caffeine would potentially be sort of risky. To illustrate: I use an electrolyte powder which has a serving size of 1 tsp (5 mL). If it contained caffeine, and the ingredients got segregated in a worst case scenario I could be dosing myself with 5 g of caffeine (~1g/mL), which is an absurdly high amount - equivalent to 50 cups of coffee. Now, the worst case scenario is rather unlikely, but if the intended dose in a serving is 100 mg, then it's far from unthinkable that segregation could lead to there being, say 3x as much - 300 mg - which is a dose that for a casual caffeine user, sans-tolerance, could certainly lead to a bad time. In my experience, powdered caffeine tends to have a very fine particle size, whereas a lot of off-the-shelf sodium or potassium is pretty chunky/crystally, which makes this sort of powder mixture problem all the more likely.
Companies that make products like this will specifically test to make sure a formulation does not segregate during transport and consumer use. Then, in production, they use carefully designed and validated mixing processes, and perform batch uniformity testing on the finished product. You should be prepared to do something similar to ensure product consistency if you're serious about this plan.
One way around this might be to package individual servings of the product, with the ingredients weighed out on a per serving basis. The downsides of this are increased packaging costs, as well as the inconvenience of not being able to make everything in a big batch.
I used to work as a formulation chemist, so if you have any questions about this topic, feel free to ask... as long as I get a cut of the profits (just kidding).
I had no idea there's a job called formulation chemist but that sounds so cool. Does the job also check how things, once integrated, interact nicely over time and eventually how they expire? I never thought about it but I guess something like baby formula would have all kinds of super strigent chemistry testing hurdles to pass.
What are your personal thoughts on nutritionally complete meal replacement type stuff like holfoods?
How does one go to school for this, to major in chemistry? Do they work in a big central lab that test samples from all over, and or do big companies hire their own in house?
Formulation chemistry is indeed cool. You're right that shelf stability is also major topic - I didn't bring it up here because most electrolyte ingredients are stable and not likely to interact (flavor might, but degradation of flavor is not critical for a hobby business, I'd imagine). But if you look at pharmaceutical formulations, there are often challenges with stability, meaning you might need to change the excipients, pH, process parameters like temperature, or other aspects of the dosage form to keep the active ingredient from degrading.
And you'd bet your ass that baby formula gets tested in every conceivable way before being packaged up and shipped off to the local babies. People always wonder why things like baby formula or electrolytes are so expensive since the ingredients seem like they'd be cheap, but a lot of cost goes into manufacturing controls and quality assurance.
From a formulation standpoint, meal replacement stuff is pretty neat. Usually, the potential problems in a formulation exponentiate as you add ingredients, but most of the ingredients in meal replacements already coexist in food naturally, so there's a degree of safety in that - experience tells us that fats and proteins and such don't have any unexpected interactions, and any degradation products are probably already well-characterized by the food chemists. Really the product seems like it would lean more towards food chemistry than formulation chemistry, though they are adjacent fields. My expertise is more with pharmaceuticals and OTC stuff.
I have bachelor's degree in chemistry, though I didn't get into formulation until after graduating. There are folks who specialize into it during grad school, but I kind of fell into it accidentally and just ended up liking it (for many of the same reasons I enjoy cooking, ultimately). In my experience, most formulation chemists work in-house with a company that sells those formulations, though in some cases there's a 'private label'-type deal going on, where CVS pharmacy for instance pays company X to design a 'CVS brand' deodorant or headache powder or whatever.
Testing samples for active ingredients etc. is more the purview of analytical chemists, and while they often work closely with formulators as part of an in-house team, once the validation of a formulation is finished, it's often handled at the manufacturing site by a different team. If the company is using a contract manufacturer, then it won't even be strictly in-house anymore. And for some companies whose product is made without much chemistry (off the top of my head, I'm thinking cannabis products, for instance, which are grown from the soil, and/or then baked into a cookie, neither of which processes really require much chemistry knowledge), they probably contract the whole QA testing thing to an outside company even from the start.
That must be really neat to enjoy cooking as a chemist :) I got a copy of Modernist Cuisine At Home and I loved learning about the science behind why we like things that taste one way vs another. And how, once we learn how tasty food works, we can tease out which parts of cooking tradition turn out to be
busy worklabour of love, and which parts actually make things tasty, why, and can we do it with more predictability / ease.Re: note on baby formula food safety. We live in such luxury these days were we can expect a million babies to eat the same food made in a lab months ago, and that 0 babies will die from it. I hope safety standards never degrade.
Also, new word for me:
First, thank you for the valuable information and advice.
Second, that's the type of thing I'd be looking at well before dealing with a substance like caffeine. Is basicaly what I vaguely tried to imply saying that I believe caffeine would trigger additonal regulations.
It'd be nice to be able to offer that as I think it's something that would sell - but it's a stretch goal, definitely nowhere near the startup.
But if/when I get there, I will probably poke you for more. If I get to that point, I probably will be needing to be doing the level of work of having people testing the product to make sure it remains well mixed after sitting on the shelf and things like that.
I can say: I would not add something like caffeine without being sure that I was doing it right.
These other ingredients I'm looking at starting with - salt, potasium, manesium citrate, possibly calcium citrate - seem generally safe enough.
Individual packets seem to run about $1 for a box of ten. But the main limitation there is the minimum run of like 5000, which means I'd have to be doing well to be able to offer flavours and options. So I'd be a long way away from that point.
I definitely want to at least start with the possibiliy of custom blends - so that's probably jars. Anddefinitely not caffeine to start with. We'll see about if later. :)
There are companies that specialize in white label food products, where they’ll take care of the testing, manufacturing, packaging etc. and you’re selecting flavors and handling the branding and distribution. That seems like a much more viable route for you than setting up your own manufacturing operation, and might be worth exploring. Margins for you won’t be as large, but you’re offloading significant overhead and risk.
I'm thinking there may be two phases of this - if it takes off at all, which is not guaranteed in the slightest.
Phase one would be smaller, whatever I could do to less regulation. If that succeeds, it might be worth expanding, which would mean something like my facilities or white label.
I definitely do want to make sure I'm focused on safety. Body products worried me enough, this would be even moreso.
But again making sure I'm clear that I appreciate all of this feedback, conversation, ideas, pitfalls
I’m not sure if this is a state law, but I’m pretty sure cottage food law says that it’s for in-person sale only. If you’re going to sell online you will need a business license.
Yep, a consequence of ADHD is not always putting the complete thought. Case in point. It's a multi-prong idea: Start out locally with cottage food laws (I'm investigating to see if I can even do this as it might fall under "supplment" rules requiring registering with the FDA and other crappy requirements).
Possible later expansion would include online sales, but interstate commerce does cause various registration issues at that point.
I didn't articulate it well, but I'm aware of the generalities, basically :)
Because I know you, and because it's a fantastic price, I would buy this product 100%.
But, food laws get really really weird. And then, whenever I watch Dragons Den they always say no to beverages for two reasons: competition against Pepsi and Coke is brutal, and distribution/shelf space is a cutthroat game. As a direct to consumer type of thing like Huel or Solfood, sold as powder, this is easier to get around. But also in this space it's much harder to appeal to enough people who'd put their trust in you, an independent seller.
I am having a similiar problem right now where I can't sell my hand raised happy free ranged eggs at same or cheaper price than cage hen eggs. Because people only trust stores.
The wild ideas I'm having to somehow get my hands on your farm-fresh eggs and daychilde's electrolyte powder... ROAD TRIP!
And if I get to the point of being able to do online sales, I will almost certainly want to start doing candles and soaps and body products (like shampoo, lotions, body spray, bath salts, etc). I would love to have an online store of delightful smells and tastes :)
But on the road trip side… that's Williamsburg or Hampton Raods, Virginia, here :)
No problem! I've got a brother-in-law in Mechanicsville! Just a short drive from there back home to San Francisco.
It would rock to road trip and hang out with @daychilde. If this was a movie I'd be bringing my hens on the road for hilarity lol
Ah, not beverage - and not targetng getting in stores, at least for the forseeable future. I'm wanting to sell this at markets and online, and realy, i want to offer bespoke/custom blend options.
I think you're right in that it's difficult, but I would hope to spread by word-of-mouth. And also, I know food is different from crafts, but at the local farmer markets, all sorts of food poducts sell, and I wouldn't mind listnig out my ingredients. The hardest part about doing this would be putting in the effort and up-front cost. Part of the reason I even thought about doing this was that to get the ingredients for homemade electrolytes, it's like $75 - but that would get me about 1000 servings worth.... lol.
So it's like a restaurant - I'll give you my recipe, but it's not worth your time to make it.
That makes super more sense and yeah it would be a fantastic farmers market product
The main reason I buy supermarket eggs is because its convenient and I can get them with other groceries.
Do you wash (or rinse, idk) the eggs?
I do not wash them. I would if people asked. But yeah people don't want to make an extra trip
I'm going to give you a touch of tough love here:
From a former business owner, running a business is the dumbest, most stressful, time suck of a dumb idea you could come up with. That out of the way, running a business is hard. Running a profitable business is hard hard.
It doesn't seem like you have a bad idea, per se, but it needs a lot of refinement before you should really think of. Top of my head:
Similar as my first paragraph, I'm also ADHD as hell (almost didn't finish this comment multiple times!) and this seems a very ADHD brained plan. My advice? Simmer on it for a week or two, mull over if all the very real work is worth it or realistic. In the meantime, I'm going to go buy all the stuff to start a leather working business! (Read that as a joke ... But also... Maybe I could do it)
Good luck to you either way! I don't intend for this comment to be as negative as it maybe comes across.
That's not tough love; that's not negative; that's what I was asking for.
Until I heard back from the State, I was hopefuly I could be under cottage laws as some very very pre-initial research indicated I might, but they shut that down.
It'snot over - I'll still pursue to see what I can do, if anything.
I've been awake for 36 hours, so I'm a bit punchy, so I'll be revisiting this thread and valuable posts like yours, for which I am grateful - but yeah, this is exactly what I wanted.
These are not negatives, they are challenges, some, most, all of which may well shut down the idea at any of its possible 2-3 stages, depending on how things had worked out.
But yes, thank you. <3
In my "defense" (which is not something I feel it necessary to do, pardon my phrasing, but hopeflly you get what I mean) - although our soaps and body products thing was a bit chaotic, it failed for reasons not related to the product. Mind, not edible, so different. But I know I can pull off all of that side of it. Regulatory / legal is queestionable.
Hopefully you're sleeping soundly by now. In some very ironic ways, "making stuff" is the easy side of business. All the other crap is the hard stuff.
If you have any questions or want any more nightmare scenarios, feel welcome to reach out, I have a fair bit of experience. Can't guarantee it would be helpful but I am always down to help.
One thing is that when you get into food manufacturing, the regulatory requirements get much more intense. No matter how clean your kitchen at home is, no products for sale can really be made there. You would need to rent an industrial kitchen space which is definitely possible as there are industrial kitchens which rent out time slots to lower entry costs for food startups. There are also various food safety certifications that retailers will want you to have before they would even consider putting you on their shelves. This stuff is definitely not insurmountable barriers though.
The big catch is you would need to distinguish yourself from the competition in that space. The base ingredients for all powdered electrolyte beverages are essentially the same and coming up with a recipe that tastes good is not incredibly difficult. The hard part is getting anyone to buy it. Advertising and marketing is how products are differentiated in this space. All the products are basically the same, so it’s marketing dollars that make people think that Gatorade, G-Fuel, and Prime are somehow different things. It’s possible to be successful, but there’s a reason why new drink products usually come from huge multinational companies with huge marketing budgets or social media influencers who can rely on their large online followings to kickstart sales.
Very brief reply, as mentioned in toher replies, very lack of sleep atm, but wanted to give brief
Gonna sound like disagreement, please note other recent replies and apply the huge thanks to you specifically along with everyone.
Brief replies:
Btu again, not intended to be defensive, just quick brief thoughts about your points, which absolutely are valuable and I'm not disagreeing with them per se, just that these two main thoughts I was already a bit onthattrack or had info that suggests it might have been okay --- but again, still early in research.
Hopefully all makes enough sense. :) Again apologies for disjointed adhd + lack of sleep --- and again major thanks to you and everyone.
Your idea actually sounds pretty interesting. I could see a farmers market being pretty cool in that case. I might get some drink powder if I got to choose my own recipe and see it made in person.
A couple points I'm not sure were touched on here: pure caffeine is a pretty hazardous substance, so if you're dosing it into a product you're going to want to have safety protocols that will protect you from inhalation hazards and to have strict measuring procedures (with some level of 3rd party testing confirmation) to ensure you're not significantly overdosing your product.
Other than that, microbial issues will be your biggest safety concern since you're essentially making a ready-to-eat product, so having some level of acidity in the product (that will generate a beverage with a pH no higher than ~3.6 when mixed properly) will ensure no pathogenic risks.
Lastly, other than powder separation already mentioned, moisture control will be the biggest quality issue you'll face which will largely cause clumping and poor mixing. Make sure your packaging will be good at keeping moisture out (and UV light would be good to exclude as well, so probably foil-lined packets).
(food and beverage QA for 20yrs).
Good luck!
Ooh did you hear about the "controversy" with Spring Energy's Awesome Sauce gels? They were completely lying about the calorie content and about independent testing. It was pretty crazy and it was caught by a redditor on /r/ultrarunning.
If you do this I would recommend using the low osmolar oral rehydration therapy specification from the WHO. This is used therapeutically for rehydration when people have severe diarrheal illness, or other causes of volume loss.
I'll abslutely look into that, thank you!
This was kind of along the lines of what I was going to say. You need to be sure of what you're doing with this product. Are you actually trying to hydrate people? Are you trying to just sell to what people think they want/need? Are you just trying to make a good-tasting drink with hydration branding?
There are a lot of misconceptions about hydration. You need carbohydrates to be hydrated. That's just how muscles work. But that doesn't mean every drink needs to have carbs for people to be hydrated after drinking it. It just means it might not be any more effective than water at hydrating you.
But do your customers actually need to be rehydrated? Are you selling to customers who are dying of dehydration?
Are you selling to people who eat well and are probably perfectly well-hydrated just from their normal diet?
Or are you selling to people who eat a shitty diet, never drink water, and complain about headaches?
Similarly, do they need electrolytes? Are they not eating? They should be getting adequate electrolytes from their diet, even if they practice ultra endurance sports.
But it's also possible for someone who's engaging in endurance sports (or just spending a day in the Sun) to drink so much water that they dilute the electrolytes in their system and end up in the hospital with hyponatremia (not enough salt). If you're going to market it as a hydration drink, it's entirely reasonable that someone might chug it without realizing that they're overhydrating. Extra electrolytes are unlikely to hurt—maybe they'll get slightly bloated fingers—so you might as well add them, but it's best to know what you're doing and why.
As mentioned in other reply - just got home, been awake 36 hours, limited reply tonight, but to emphasize, thank you specifically, thank everyone for weighing in, that's exactly everything I needed.
In extreme brief, my view is: My life philosophy is "An' it harm none, do as ye will" with an expansive/progressive/"liberal" (not political but as in extra) definition of harming none, meaning a bit of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (also a bit of not-harm-self but that's different and distracting, pardon for now)......
Meaning that I see multiple things:
So I think I see it as generally at minimum neutral, and hopefully somewhat to moderately positive.
I amstll going to pursue to see if I can do the basic electrolyte mix - we'll see. Probably not at this point, but stil going to pursue.
And hell, might do the soap/smelly stuff - now that I can do online stores.... People loved what I came up with regarding scents and colours and products, it was just hard to manage with undiagnosed adhd.
Anyway, pardon the messy reply, but again emphaszing thanks for ALL these posts.
Oh dude I need daychilde's product yesterday!
Once, I lived in the prairies and experienced headaches like never before. I was also getting nosebleeds which I've never been prone to, and crazy number of papercuts. My now husband asked, how much water are you drinking a day, and I said, I think I had a glass of milk? Or maybe it was yesterday? Being coastal my whole life on a Cantonese diet (read: tons of broths), I've never had to intentionally hydrate before then.
Which prairie was this, and what was the elevation? (Semi-rhetorical question)
Some of the things we look at and think of are technically deserts—high deserts, meaning you get a double dose of dry air + high altitude, which can trigger spectacular nosebleeds in some people. Definitely gotta keep that nose moist!
It was Calgary, so...wait hold on I actually don't know elevation of Calgary. Flat isn't an elevation.
It was certainly a very very dry place. And sunny all the dang time even in winter. It sucked and I'm so glad I don't live there anymore.
Prior to that, I lived at 1m sea level. Lol the city's average elevation is 1m, with highest point being only 12m, and some places -1m held dry by dykes. Is that a big enough change that it would affect nosebleeds and having sandpaper for skin?
The best drink powders I’ve tasted are from GFuel. But they add too much stuff. I’m too sensitive to caffeine to have it regularly so I need their caffeine free stuff. But I can also have issues with excess salts, and all of their stuff is loaded with electrolytes. TBH I’d buy a lot from a company that was just making the best water flavor enhancers.
Oh, and they charge a huge premium. It’s $36 for 40 servings. But they have the best flavors so they can get away with it.
Flavour is one of those things I'm really hope can work out. One of the things I really loved doing was working with smells with the soaps and body products, and I was good - according to friends and customers. I had a nose for good combinations.
I don't know what direction(s) I'll be able to head in with this, but at the simplest level, I'd like to market a very simple no-flavor no-nonsense electrolyte powder. In my testing of the salt levels (since that uses table salt, I made some basically salty lemonade for my wife), the amount of salt won't be too bad for flavour.
But I'd like t experiment with the flavours because it would be nice to offer some things that aren't actually out there commonly. There's companies that sell concentrated flavours - just like the fragrances for soaps/candles… and the idea of being able to offer this at a decent price is hopefully workable. heh.
One big deal: In my researcl so far, packaging for individual sleeve ramps up the cost. It's around $1 for a box of ten sleeves, so I'd need to have a cost of probably something like $5/box I think. But worse, you have to have a run of like 5000 sleeves absolute bare minimum, so I couldn't offer the custom/bespoke formulas for that. So I think that's a future goal.
For now, I'd be offering this in something like four ounce jars that would be 100 servings - with a little scoop to measure it out. Which is not as convenient as sleeves......... but nearly so, dang it. :)
Alright I’m going to ask some stupid questions here so bear with me. What is electrolytes and are they not just a buzzword to get ordinary people to drink more or less unhealthy drinks like Gatorade etc. instead of water?
I remember when practicing football as a teenager it became popular to mix in dextrose (grape sugar) with the water. I have no idea if it did anything more than sweeten the water and fail to see that we really needed anything more than regular water at that level. Of course I can see why you would need something extra if you’re competing on a higher level or doing something extraordinary.
It’s not a dig on you OP just me wondering things and I’m sorry if it’s off topic :)
Edit: Thank you all for your answers. I’ve learned a lot but also been somewhat confirmed in that electrolytes are important if you’re “working your body” but not if your “working your couch”.
I'm not a scientist, but merely someone who has been consuming a lot of exercise science videos lately, since I am working out a lot and trying to take my health a lot more seriously. So take everything I say with a grain of salt (pun intended). ;) But as far as I understand it:
"Electrolytes" is definitely a bit of a buzzword, but they are a real thing, although it's basically just short-hand for sodium (salt), potassium, magnesium, and soluble carbohydrates (sugars). They are necessary for bodily function, and it can absolutely effect performance if you significantly deplete them. Salt is lost when sweating, and sugars+potassium+magnesium are used in muscle activation and when replenishing the glycogen stores in your muscles, amongst other things (like protein synthesis). However, the body usually has pretty hefty stores of all of those though, unless your diet is crap or you have a health condition, so you have to work pretty damn hard to actually deplete them enough with physical activity to notice a performance decrease. Intense athletic activities and strength training can definitely do it over time though, which is why so many people drink "pre-workout" supplements and/or sports drinks when working out or playing sports.
p.s. IMO people who aren't actually doing any intense or prolonged physical activities or sweating heavily that buy sports drinks are just wasting their money and consuming extra calories. Unless you're rapidly depleting your electrolytes most people can usually get more than enough to keep their levels stable from simply eating actual food and drinking enough water.
Also, salt is lost by sweating, but (from what I've seen; I'm not an exercise or nutrition scientist) sweating actually increases the concentration of salt in your blood because it pulls out more water. That basically means you don't need to "replace what you lost"; you need to replace what you're not putting back in your body because you're just drinking water after being in the Sun all day, even though you'd normally eat a whole meal. So it's replacing what you're not getting because you're not eating like a normal person.
Optional absorption of water in the GI tract requires equimolar amounts of sodium and sugar. The best formulation of salts we have that maximize water absorption can be found at the WHO site which was studied multiple times in the setting of sevre diarrheal illness in children, where kids die of dehydration despite drinking as much water as they can.
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-FCH-CAH-06.1
But it's important to note that if you're not rehydrating someone who is so dehydrated that their health is at risk, they probably already have enough electrolytes to be fine and are probably hydrated enough that they don't need optimal electrolytes to allow water to flow through membranes in their body.
The scam is "remember how you drink water to keep yourself feeling good? Well this hydrates you even FASTER!" without giving you the space to ask "I'm already hydrated; why do I need to top up my hydration faster?"
I'm not a doctor but I found out the hard way just how important electrolytes are while hiking in the Grand Canyon. I felt helpless and miserable because I was drinking an insane amount of water but was still slowly dehydrating because it would just go in one hole and out the other (this also meant less water to sweat out for evaporative cooling, which is a very bad combination in the heat of the day), but after adding some Gatorade powder, water retention became a non-issue. It's not a stretch to say that I would have needed to be airlifted out of there without electrolytes.
That said, a lot of people consume drinks like Gatorade unnecessarily. Back when I worked in an office building, I would see people who I knew never worked out drink them every day at lunch, even when they were also eating foods loaded with salt like hot dogs.
Electrolytes are legitimately a thing, and they really are very important to helping your body function. In drinks, they’re generally going to be found in ingredients like sodium chloride (salt) and potassium chloride.
As others have said: they're definitely real. Football practice is exactly the place I'd expect them to be consumed. Really any extensive physical labor when you're sweating buckets.
Cramping during labor is a big indicator that you're body is missing nutrients it needs for muscle activation.
Cramping almost certainly has very little to do with electrolytes. The studies where they found that used electric shock to cause cramping. People who run marathons show no difference between groups who use electrolytes and those who don't. The only thing shown to decrease cramping was weight training, and even that wasn't effective for everyone.
Interesting. My comment was based on my experiences in competitive powerlifting. Athletes tend to complain about cramping at meets in hot/humid climates beyond what they are used to. Hydration is a confounding factor. Just anecdotal, but even in weight classes that aren't doing anything weird to cut weight.
See, if they did enough strength training, they would be strong enough to lift the weight more easily!
I think of stevia as artificial, even though it most certainly is not.
But that is a good point and hits on something I'd thought of in passing but would want to explore further - one of the things I hate is when a product uses a sweetener I dislike. This is my chance to offer aspartame, sucralose, sugar, stevia, or some combination of those, depending on the goal (sugar is good when you need energy; alternatives are good for diabetics or anyone who doesn't need energy, jsut the hydration). :)
I'd absolutely be working in my apartment to start. I take food safety incredibly seriously, though. But I'd be starting up with as little cost as I could. If it took off, I'd be looking at some sort of facility - perhaps a shared kitchen or some other form of shared space. Not sure. Depends on need and what sort of safety levels I can afford.
Caffeine is definitely something for me to look at. I have a feeling that would trigger regulation for sure, though, so it might be a little bit down the road. But maybe it's one of those things I can do like leave a little room in the jar and say "IIf you add caffeine, you might wish to add X amount and stir very thoroughly" or something as a stop-gap measure.
Can't use cottage laws, will be investigating what it would take to be able to start this up, and that wll determine if it's a go or not.
If it's a no-go, I'll publish what I learned so far about amounts and such. Bearing in mind I haven't tested yet, but still.... it looks like about $75 in startup cost for about 1000 servings of the basic no-flavour stuff. That doesn't include whatever container you store the stuff in.