Odwalla

Odwalla has strived to make and deliver great products while nurturing our relationships with humans and the environment. Our beacon phrase, 'Nourishing the Body Whole,' reflects a fundamental value of caring for all the communities that are touched by our business. Youthful, hip, and fresh, Odwalla, Inc. went from backyard juicer to big business faster than you can say 'Strawberry C Monster.' While an E. coli scandal in 1996 squelched its explosive growth, the company's openness in response to the crisis, won it kudos and it remains today one of the country's leading brands of fresh juice. Other popular varieties of its 'Juice for Humans' include Mango Tango, Femme Vitale, and Serious Ginseng. In 1997 Odwalla converted most of its delivery trucks to run on compressed natural gas, for which it won a Clean Air Award from the American Lung Association. In 1980, 25-year-old George Steltenpohl and two fellow musicians, Gerry Percy and Bonnie Bassett, were in Santa Cruz casting about for ways to make money without much capital. They also wanted to contribute something positive to their community. A business guidebook gave them the idea of selling fruit juices and thus Odwalla was launched in a shed in Steltenpohl's backyard in September 1980. The company's name came from a character in an Art Ensemble of Chicago song-poem called 'Illistrum.' Odwalla delivered the 'people of the sun' from the 'gray haze.' The group set out to do the same with a secondhand, $225 juicer and a 1968 Volkswagen van. Local restaurants were the first clients for the fresh-squeezed orange juice. Business was brisk. The company was incorporated in California in September 1985. It expanded into San Francisco in 1988. Steltenpohl, who earned a degree in environmental science from Stanford University, attributed Odwalla's success to the fact that consumers were becoming more quality-conscious in general. In fruit drinks, this translated to the taste, nutrients, and enzymes available only in nonpasteurized, fresh juice. This utter reliance on fresh produce left the company somewhat at the whim of nature, though, and subject to unexpected losses. Steltenpohl aimed for more than simple enthusiasm through empowerment. 'If you can take wage earners and instill an entrepreneurial drive, that translates into much greater productivity,' he told Nation's Business. People were essentially trained to manage themselves, he said. Employees could also design their own jobs to an extent. Corporate headquarters a couple of blocks from the surf in Davenport, California also was considered a motivator. Odwalla operated 35 delivery trucks in 1993, when sales were about $13 million a year. It invested in state-of-the-art hand-held computers for its drivers, who served as de facto PR reps as they escorted the juice along the 'cold chain' to the 'O-Zone'--the company's distinctive in-store coolers. The company launched its initial public offering (IPO) in December 1993, when it had slightly less than 200 employees. The RvR Securities ('risk-versus-reward') arm of San Francisco investment bank Hambrecht & Quist Inc. had begun investing in the company in 1992, acquiring a 16 percent stake. The group was impressed by Odwalla's strong customer loyalty and its distribution network. Soon after the IPO, the company expanded into the Pacific Northwest via the acquisition of Dharma Juice. It then bought Just Squeezed, based in Denver. In 1994, Odwalla moved production to a renovated plant in Dinuba, California surrounded by produce fields. It moved its corporate headquarters to Half Moon Bay, California the next year. Odwalla by then dominated Northern California's fresh juice sales, holding half the market. Its products were sold in 1,400 locations. Odwalla began selling bottled water in the mid-1990s. It was supplied by Idaho's Trinity Springs, whose aquifer held water carbon dated from the Stone Age, 16,000 years ago. This new line was very much the opposite of its highly perisha