FUNCTIONAL FORMULARIES

Through tragedy comes hope

When Robin Gentry McGee applied to BVG, she knew it was a last ditch effort to bring to market a product which she had created for her dying father. After a very sudden traumatic brain injury (TBI) and being given very little hope that he would survive by the medical community, Robin could not help thinking there must be something else that could be done. She then began to carefully and thoroughly research TBI to see if there was things that could possibly improve her father’s health that may have been missed. One of the things she looked at was the liquid “food”, which had been her father’s only source of nutrition after he had been placed on a feeding tube.  What she found was astounding. It seems for months he had been given a steady diet of high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients that in her words, she would not give her dog. Robin began to look for a healthy formula for her father, and to her amazement, nothing existed. Nothing.  

If it doesn’t exist, then make it up

With her background in nutrition and being a chef that had specialized in healthy cooking her entire career, she decided that she would set out to create a formula for her dad. After careful research and a self-immersion course into healing and functional foods, a few weeks later Robin had developed a formula that looked more like your grandma’s stew than the chemical vat of sugar water her father had been giving a steady diet of.  

A formula that provides nutrition and hope

She then felt her mission was accomplished; her father did great on the formula, which fondly came to be known as Liquid Hope in her family.  It seems her work was not yet completed, her father’s vast improvement was noticed by many including his medical doctor. With her new fascination of the healing power of food and an influx of interest from other’s who had faced the same dilemma as Robin, which was a lack of a commercial product, Robin decided that maybe she should explore trying to commercialize her formula. Dipping her toes into the vast wasteland of commercial food manufacturing, it was a rude awakening for her. Although she had been in the health food and restaurant business for many years, what she found was that large-scale manufacturing was absolutely nothing like anything she had faced in her career as a chef.

Bad girls never say, “it can’t be done”

Working with numerous food scientists and research and development companies who basically told her this could never be accomplished with real food, she found herself alone with her idea and vision at the end of the day. Robin would not give up, believing that if someone tells you it can’t be done, that just means they are the wrong person to help you. When a colleague sent her the BGV information, she read it and knew that if she had any hope of getting this product to market, she needed to apply for this program. She applied, and not only accepted with open arms but also with a vast amount of support from her fellow classmates, mentors and BGV staff.

With little more than a recipe and an idea…

Walking in to class the first day, she literally had a recipe scribbled on a piece for paper.  Gaining the knowledge and support she needed to inch her idea forward, Robin won the $25,000 loan award from class two. Two years later, Robin is fresh out of the gate with her product that was commercially launched and brought into full production in January of this year. Robin’s Liquid Hope was nominated and received the coveted Nexty Award in the Functional Food and Beverage category for 2014 confirming her suspicion that in addition to the institutional revenue stream, there is a definite place in the retail world for Liquid Hope. Her product has generated almost $75,000 in sales in less than 3 months of being on the market, all through direct sales and simply word of mouth marketing. She literally receives love letters from her customers almost daily expressing their gratitude and sharing success stories. She feels strongly that none of this would have been possible without Bad Girl Ventures. To see what some of her customers are saying or to find out more, visit her on the web at www.functionalformularies.com