WENDELL — Joe Laur was forewarned.
Failure strikes more than 90 percent of new businesses, but he had confidence in his product, which has found its way into nearly 50 retail locations since May.
Laur and his wife, Sara Schley, own MapleMama, maker of non-alcoholic craft maple spritzers. The company incorporated in May 2015 and rolled out its first products a year later.
“It’s growing. People are loving the product. I, just this morning, dropped off four cases at Whole Foods in Hadley and four cases at the Wendell Country Store,” he said recently, adding that the company is pitching from Brattleboro, Vt., to Springfield, Mass. to “create a lot of local buzz and awareness and, hopefully, demand.”
MapleMama sells maple spritzers in two flavors — cold brew coffee and vanilla. The coffee spritzer bears the aroma of a cafe and a prominent but pleasant note of roasted coffee. The other beverage consists of a delicate vanilla taste reminiscent of a favorite ice cream stand. A pinch of malic acid, which is found in fruit, gives a little brightness to the flavors.
“The goal in the next year or two is to get up to about 500 cases a week,” Laur said in the same kitchen where his maple experimenting began years ago.
Laur and Schley moved onto the their 10-acre property tucked away in Wendell nearly 20 years ago, when nearby Diemand Farm sold maple syrup from sap tapped from trees on the land. The farm gave the family jars of syrup every year until it ceased its sugaring operations. Laur eventually borrowed 12 buckets from Diemand Farm and boiled his own maple syrup on his kitchen stove, steaming up the entire house and turning it into something of a maple sauna. He and Schley started using the syrup to make naturally sweet drinks for their children, Maya and Sam. Pretty soon, there were 100 buckets on the property.
The Wisconsin native started boiling in a friend’s sugarhouse until his friend decided to take a break from sugaring. Laur then built his own sugarhouse, which still stands on his property. Though he still produces about 40 gallons a year, Laur gets his organic maple syrup from one supplier in Vermont and another in Quebec. He said MapleMama is now produced at the Ginseng UP Corporation in Worcester and he gives away his own syrup to friends and family. Laur delivers the products in a new van and MapleMama is in a trial with Bayside Distributors in Bridgewater and in conversations with Chex Finer Foods, a family-owned distributor in Mansfield.
The homemade maple spritzers were introduced to the public at Wendell Old Home Days when Maya and Sam reached “lemonade stand age.” Laur and Schley equipped the children with a small table and some syrup, sparkling water and different flavorings and they started whipping up spritzers on the spot for people.
“(They were) pouring them in cups and selling them and people loved them. They came back for seconds and thirds,” Laur said. “And the kids went back every year and they were making money hand over fist, as much as anybody on the green.”
Laur eventually poured a glass for his brother-in-law, Dan Schley, who has developed many businesses over the past 40 years, and it was a huge hit. Dan advised them on how to start small and Laur already had clients in the beverage industry through the sustainability consulting practice he operates with his wife.
MapleMama is now available throughout the Pioneer Valley, as well as two locations in Vermont and one in West Swanzey, N.H. One of the local carriers is Millers River Cafe, owned by Jeanie Miller and Kris Burns inside Trail Head Outfitters & General Store at 1 South Main St. Miller and Burns said they focus on local environmentally friendly products and MapleMama was a perfect fit.
“Right away, I was impressed because he’s clearly going to be a customer service-oriented person. And I made it really clear that we’re small and I really like his response. It impressed us,” Miller said. The cafe ordered a case of each flavor and started carrying MapleMama on Nov. 9. “The fact that it’s a healthy alternative to the sugary drinks is really important to us.”
Miller and Burns said the products have been selling fairly well at $2.50 for a 12-ounce bottle.
Sara Schley, a Brookline native, said she has had fun with MapleMama so far.
“We’ve worked with companies that are trying to do right by the environment, people, the community, and so it feels really good to be creating a company that’s doing that,” she said. “Our hope is that we support the community by creating some jobs and also (making) a healthy beverage for the moms and kids and taking care of the environment, because we only use natural ingredients.”
MapleMama used Dean’s Beans for the coffee maple spritzer and Madagascar vanilla from an Illinois distributor for the vanilla one.
Laur said the maple spritzers are low-glycemic beverages. Each has 54 antioxidants and 70 calories. He said he calls them spritzers because they are less sweet than a soft drink but have more flavor than a seltzer. He explained all the minerals the maple trees take from the soil are concentrated into the syrup, which contributes manganese, potassium, calcium, iron and zinc to the spritzers.
“There’s only 48 (minerals) in sap. The cooking process actually creates some antioxidants, some of which are found only in maple syrup. One is named quebecol after Quebec,” he said. “Quebec is to maple syrup what Wisconsin is to cheese.”
Laur and Schley said both spritzers serve as great mixers and they are actively looking for a mixologist who could help them develop a book of drink recipes. They plan to distribute an original maple flavor within three to four months. Laur said the company is selling more vanilla spritzers, with a roughly 60 to 40 split.
More information is available at maplemamabeverages.com. The company also has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest profiles.
You can reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com