welcome to new hampshire business. i'm fred kocher. in a minute, we're going to talk to the newest start-up business in new hampshire, but first, look at this graphic from the kauffman foundation, a national group saying that business start-up activity in the us rose for the first time in five years during 2015
difference between dark roast and medium roast coffee, with the largest year-over-year increase in the past two decades that's amazing. here in new hampshire, the sba in concord the small business administration office in concord says that their retired executives, the score chapter,
has helped about 257 businesses/start-ups in new hampshire last year, and private investors have helped about 198 business over the last three years so we have a lot of start-up activity in new hampshire but here's the newest one in new hampshire - take a look! vera roasting company on the seacoast. they make coffvee c-o-f-f-v-e-e. we'll talk about that in a minute. coffee beans infused with resveratrol from red wine resveratrol is a natural antioxidant. minus the alcohol.
and the first production is sold out and they're producing more with me to talk about this are mark galvin the managing director of the new england innovation center mark, welcome! and glen miller founder of the vera roasting company on the seacoast, and also a professor of organic chemistry at the university of new hampshire. thank you, fred. where did you get this idea? wine into coffee. as you mentioned, resveratrol is a potent antioxidant in red wine
and there's been a lot of work over the years linking red wine to heart health in particular. folks may be aware of the french paradox where the french as a population have a low incidence of coronary heart disease despite the fact that they have a diet that's rich in saturated fats and this is widely attributed to red wine. in the last 10 or 15 or 20 years, there have been literally hundreds of studies about the health benefits of red wine, and those studies all seem to point the finger at resveratrol. and we're gonna drink some coffee in a minute and we're going to show how you put this together.
but mark, glen is based in your new england innovation center in portsmouth and what did you do to help glen get this business started becuase you've done it for a number of businesses. we're really trying to help get the new hampshire economy going i met glen at the new hampshire innovation and commercialization center which i started with unh back in 2010 on a prior company we worked on together and when he came up with this idea, he showed up at our doorstep and collaborated with the team at our center.
and you provide expertise to a new company plus funding right? ya, not so much funding - we help get funding when its necessary, but what we do is we basically fill in all the gaps in the start-up team. ok glen, let's walk through this. here we have grapes, we have coffee beans, right here in my hand and we have the finished product in this thermos and in our cups. just talk about how this all comes together. so grapes are found naturally in several places, but one of them i said grapes, i'm sorry resveratrol is found naturally in several places, one of them being the skins of red grapes.
so, the resveratrol can be extracted from the skins of red grapes and we've discovered a method to infuse it into a coffee bean and they're these coffee beans right here and then you roast it, you roast the coffee beans well the beans are roasted first and then the infusion process takes place oh, its afterwards? yes, its after the roasting and then you arrive at the final product, coffvee which we sell in either a medium roast or a dark roast.
coffvee, c-o-f-f-v-e-e the "v" for vera roasting and the "vera" from resveratrol now you've had you first production run, which is sold out and you've now had some more production. where are you selling this? we're selling it online at veraroasting.com let's drink it! lets drink some coffee! i want to taste it right here and tell the audience how good it is! that's delicious! that's delicious! and that's the mild...
that's the medium roast that you're drinking. the medium roast but you also have french roast, right? we have a dark french roast as well our medium roast, in a double-blind taste test, beat the leading medium roast five to one and our dark french roast beat the leading dark french roast seven to one. quickly, what's the potential market for this in about 10 seconds? coffee is a $40 billion dollar industry ok, that says it all!
ok, glen miller, who is the founder of vera roasting company on the seacoast and mark galvin, managing direct of the new england innovation center thanks! and good luck with this. you're going to be selling this at christmas time? ya, we just wanted to let you know that if orders are in by monday at 2:30 in the afternoon, it will be delivered in time for christmas
at veraroasting.com thank you! thank you very much! if you want to see this interview again and watch us sip some coffee you can go to wmur.com, click on "news", the click on "project economy".
