This Thanksgiving, when I’m giving thanks for family and friends, I’ll also be thankful for the agonizing conflict I’ve just put behind me. It was about food, specifically almond milk, but the real subject of this week’s blog is the inner turmoil that came with deciding whether to go into business with it. That led me to make an excruciating decision. For months I struggled with this decision as passion was pitted against reality. I’d like to share this journey with you. Then I’ll give you the secret to making perfect Thanksgiving nut milk, a drink that pleases any palate and works with any diet, vegan or non-vegan.
I’ve always been an incurable entrepreneur—it runs in the family. I am compulsive about perfecting my products, and when I began to blossom as a creative chef, I was driven, as always. Over the past year, I became obsessed with making my own nut milks to perfection. When I had developed the best vanilla almond milk on the planet, I seriously contemplated turning it into a business.
If you’ve tasted store-bought almond milk, it may be hard to imagine this beverage becoming the ultimate smoothie in flavors like pumpkin spice for Thanksgiving, turmeric chai latte, espresso latte, matcha latte, dark cacao, vanilla bean with rose essence, and fresh strawberry. My homemade nut milk is infinitely better than commercial brands, which have very few nuts and are mostly water with chemical thickeners. I use a high percentage of almonds or cashews—the choice of nuts is up to you.
A couple of years ago, my friend Addy (a fictitious name) and I talked about how much fun it would be to make Greek yogurt from goat’s milk. Our vision was to hire people to sell it at farmers markets or in food carts, and this would serve as a test market. If people responded favorably, we would expand into retail stores and restaurants. We thought we could do it for fun and then let our kids take over the business. The problem was finding the goat farm to supply us with goat’s milk. We found a goat farmer in San Luis Obispo who expressed an interest, but she was preparing to retire and decided to sell her goats.
When we couldn’t find a goat farm that would commit to supplying milk, Addy became discouraged. I decided to take control of the source of milk by making my own “milk” from nuts. And so began my journey of experimenting with nuts to develop the ideal formula for almond and cashew milk.
After trying dozens of ways of making almond milk from scratch, I finally perfected everything from texture and consistency to flavor. The crowning touch came when an executive chef friend gave me his trade secrets. Everyone who tasted it said it was the best almond milk they’d ever had, and they thought I should market it. So it came as no surprise to those close to me that I decided once again to turn this into a business. Normally, I would immediately set off at 100 miles per hour on the track to a trademarked name, packaging, and business plan, and I would be setting up every detail to prepare for taking the product to market. But this time something made me take pause.
I realized that in order to sell food I would need a commercial kitchen and permits from the state and city. It was a challenge to find a kitchen that would share space because the city would not approve just any kitchen for beverages. And the web of other government requirements and regulations forced me to recognize that this business was not in my complete control. I could not move forward legally until I had certain licenses and permits, which made me put on the brakes. I began to feel a little frustrated that I didn’t have the elements required to move forward. I’ve developed and sold businesses, but now I had to think on an entirely different level than ever before.
It was torture to rein in my passion when I had the perfect product and a limitless market for it. But over the past few years, with my illness and my children leaving the nest, my life has changed dramatically. I have come face to face with the ultimate questions we ask as we confront a life-altering disease and look at our children and think about their future. I wondered if I would be around for them. When we are young, the entire future is before us and can try various directions until we figure it out. I simply do not feel I have that luxury any more. The question “what do I want to do with my life” now calls for careful contemplation.
I consulted trusted friends for their thoughts. I found it very interesting that men gave advice based on the bottom line and women urged me to follow my passion. A Wall Street friend told me he did not see how this could be profitable unless I had a huge capital investment. Obviously, I would have to find a way to extend the shelf life of the milks, which is currently three to five days. To extend the shelf life I would have to add preservatives or pasteurize, which went against the very reason these fresh milks are so good. Plus, the ingredients were costly; I would have to charge $8 to $10 for a 16-ounce glass bottle of flavored almond milk. This would severely limit my customer base. I could dilute the almonds with more water, but that would diminish the quality of the drinks—not an option!
My girlfriends encouraged me to do a test pilot at farmers markets for three months and see how it went. They understood my passion. But did I really want to get up in the middle of the night, load a truck, arrive at the outdoor market by 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m., and set up a tent and later take it down? Would the business really have legs under these circumstances?
It was actually a gift that I was forced to take a pause from my compulsiveness. In the end, I realized that once my obsession with nut milk became a business, I’d be dealing with mass production, distributors, trucks, employees, bottling, sourcing, public relations and marketing, and all the other elements of running a business—and I would no longer be making and creating my milks in a kitchen where I can daydream in my safe space.
As a serial entrepreneur, I work all the time and never stop to ask if I have the energy. But now I realize I do not have to create a business out of every idea I become excited about. I see that the love of sharing all this with family and friends is a long way from being a manufacturer of nut milks. I will be happier writing this blog and continuing to create new flavors and textures and exotic recipes as an enthusiastic food artisan in my own kitchen. And I feel good about this decision.
You can bet that over the holidays I will be making many flavors of my incredibly delicious nut milks—to share with whomever is around during the three- to four-day shuffle before expiration!
Feel free to share your thoughts about my nut-milk business idea. I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Sherry Plum
Nothing can beat your own homemade almond milk. In honor of Thanksgiving, here’s my secret recipe for one of the best vanilla almond milk I’ve ever had. It’s a perfect complement to pumpkin pie. But what would Thanksgiving be without eggnog too? If you want to try an experiment, see if you can make the eggnog with your freshly made almond milk.
