The bigger a tree is, the wider its roots need to span so it can survive.
That’s how Ree Dolnick, CEO of Jeca Energy Bars, is trying to grow her company, which makes all-natural, plant-based artisanal energy bars.
“We’re really focused on building a very strong foundation, so that when we face the headwinds at the point of scaling, which we’re approaching, we’re not going to be knocked over,” she said. “We’re constantly assessing and mitigating any risks that’s coming up with scaling.”
With equipment in place, funds raised and a partnership with Whole Foods expanding, Jeca is getting ready to accelerate.
Founded in 2015, the company took time during the pandemic, when people were cooking more and leaning heavily on comfort foods, to double down on necessary logistics like running A/B tests, defining its customer base and determining how to best communicate with them.
That put the business in a good position to expand its partnership with Whole Foods from selling in three regional stores to, starting around this September, 22 locations.
Dolnick, who in July 2017 left her job as a researcher at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center to focus on the business full time, is in talks with a few other national chains. She wants to stay concentrated regionally for distribution purposes.
“We want to win in the Northeast region first, then north-Atlantic and mid-Atlantic so we have everything from say Virginia all the way up to Maine,” she said. “We really want to focus on that.”
After pandemic-related delays in receiving new equipment and designing a piece of equipment in partnership with the Rochester Institute of Technology, the company is preparing to do just that.
RIT’s first working iteration of the equipment increased Jeca’s production capacity by at least fivefold, she said. The company will continue partnering with RIT to create future generations of this equipment, expecting to add units of the piece and work on adding automation to the manual design to make it more efficient.
The business, based at 485 Cayuga Road, Cheektowaga, has doubled gross sales over the last 12 months.
The startup is raising a pre-seed funding round and expects to use funds to get additional units of the RIT-designed equipment and hire some full-time workers. Currently, the team is Dolnick and contractors.
“We’re really focusing on scaling rapidly but in a sustainable way that’s healthy for the business,” she said.
