Find this ICE Graduate in the Sparkling Beverages Aisle
After graduating from ICE’s Restaurant & Culinary Management program, Danielle Kreuger found herself craving a product that she didn't think existed. So, she created it.
It’s often assumed that becoming an entrepreneur requires endless fundraising rounds, decades of research and a whole lot of luck.
For Danielle Kreuger, a graduate of Institute of Culinary Education, becoming an entrepreneur started with a craving for something she had never seen before. Now, she's the founder of Sunbear sparkling coconut water.
Danielle's business journey started by buying a domain name and cold calling beverage industry professionals to figure out what to do next.
“I would call up people from my Google searches and just pick their brain,” she says.
The conversations compounded. Connections were made. Danielle found herself asking questions about who to reach out to next and what to ask them about starting a beverage business.
“We’d be on calls and someone would say ‘Do you have this person, this person and this person?’ and we’d be writing it down like ‘Oh my God, okay, we need to find a person for this,” Danielle says.
From that learn-as-you-go strategy, Danielle and her boyfriend, who is also her co-founder, have earned themselves a fast-growing brand that can be found in over 100 stores across the country. Their momentum shows no signs of slowing down.
So where did the idea for Sunbear come from? According to Danielle, the business was born of need — specifically, her personal desire for an efficient means of hydration without the off-putting taste of traditional coconut water.
“It’s hard for me to drink a lot of water and stay hydrated, so … I would always gravitate toward something like coconut water because I knew it would be more hydrating," she says." I’ve always wanted to like coconut water but it’s had a bit of an off-taste. So I was brainstorming ways to make it more palatable and thought of sparkling coconut water. I did a quick search and realized it didn’t exist, which was mind-blowing to me.”
It turned out, there was a reason for that. Coconut water, unlike regular water, has certain properties that make it harder to carbonate. Luckily, Danielle’s ‘ask questions now and search later’ approach led her to a formulator that helped with both the process of carbonating the coconut water and with taste-testing.
Rigorous tasting helped Danielle figure out which flavors to launch with.
“[The formulator] basically would ship us these glass bottles every week … and we’d taste it, call her with feedback, and go back and forth until it tasted just right,” Danielle says.
It turns out, ‘just right’ took a year to achieve. Sunbear hit the market with three flavors: strawberry, watermelon and lemon-lime.
Danielle’s personal journey was much longer than that. First, she was a college student in Miami trying to figure out what she wanted her future to look like. Originally from Long Island, she’d spent summers interning at magazines focused on fashion. But even before she graduated, she knew that life in the fashion industry wasn’t for her. It was her father’s idea that she pursue a culinary career.
“My dad came to me and said, ‘you’ve always loved cooking and been so passionate about food, why wouldn’t you go to culinary school?’" Danielle says.
This sparked something in Danielle. In a matter of months she had graduated from college, moved back to New York and enrolled at ICE.
“[When] I toured ICE I immediately fell in love,” she says.
While Culinary Arts was what brought her to culinary school, her inner entrepreneur blossomed there. She thus enrolled to achieve a Dual Diploma in Restaurant & Culinary Management as well.
“I always thought it would be so cool to open my own restaurant,” she says. “I feel like that came before thinking I would be a chef.”
Danielle enjoyed ICE’s Culinary Arts program, and after leaving, worked closely with Dan Kluger at the restaurant Loring Place. She then worked under Hilary Sterling at Vic’s New York, and finally then landed a job at a company that set her up as a personal chef.
While she loved the culinary industry, something told her that her future wasn’t in a kitchen.
Joining the Restaurant & Culinary Management program was a natural choice for Danielle. Her education developed the business acumen she uses in the day-to-day management of her beverage business.
Reflecting on how ICE’s Restaurant & Culinary Management program prepared her for entrepreneurship, she says the financial training was especially valuable. Notable, too, were the guest speakers who visited ICE and spoke to students about their experience running a business.
ICE’s biggest gift, however, was as much personal as professional. Danielle credits her time at the school with giving her a sense of self-assuredness that propelled her forward.
“ICE gave me the confidence to follow my passion,” she says.
Following her passion turned out to be the right move for Danielle. As Sunbear looks to its next production run, which will be triple that of its initial run, she’s still surprised at how satisfying the work is.
“Everyone always says you should love what you do because it will make [life] a lot easier,’ and I really do think that’s true," she says. "I work very hard, but I actually enjoy what I’m doing now because it’s my passion.”
So what advice does Danielle have for those considering pursuing their own dream of becoming a food and beverage entrepreneur?
“If you feel like you have a dream to start a business, it’s actually possible,” she says.
In short, go for it.
