Young entrepreneurs find success in root beer business

With the help of their father Dave Jurena, owner of The Soup Market restaurants in the Milwaukee area, Haley and Annabelle Jurena launched their vanilla root beer business to help them earn money for their college educations. Haley and Annabelle’s Bubbly Beverage Company was started in 2006, but with some recent assistance from The Coca-Cola Company, the girls have launched a new website, a Facebook page and have also released a diet version of their vanilla root beer.
“Last summer, my father sent a sample of our root beer to Coca-Cola,” Haley said. “Apparently they liked it because they brought us down to their headquarters in Atlanta to tour the facility.”
According to Jurena, the entire family was brought down to Atlanta to tour the Coco-Cola facility and the girls walked away with a donation to help grow their business.
“We used part of the money from Coca-Cola to develop the new website, get nutrition analysis done, and develop the diet version of our vanilla root beer which people have been asking for,” Jurena said.
Jurena owns three restaurant locations throughout the Milwaukee area, and started out selling the root beer there.
“It was pretty convenient having three retail locations to sell the root beer right away,” Jurena said. “We’ve slowly expanded the product and it’s now available at various farmers’ markets in the area, and Sendiks Food Store on Downer.”
Cases of the root beer can also be purchased online, he said.
The Jurena’s started out producing only about 40 cases of the root beer, but are now producing more than 100 cases of the root beer.
Shawano-based Twig’s Beverage carbonates and bottles the soda and ships it back to the Milwaukee area for resell, Jurena said.
“They were the only bottling company we could find able to do smaller production loads,” Jurena said. “My produce company gets up there about once a week anyway so it has actually worked out for us pretty well.”
Twenty-five cents of every case sold benefits Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, the rest of the proceeds goes directly to Haley and Annabelle’s college education.
“I’m learning a lot about business,” Haley said. “I don’t get to keep any of the money, It’s all going directly to our college education, so I’m learning a lot about what it means to save.”
According to Jurena, Haley, 13, wants to attend UCLA and Annabelle, who’s only 8, wants to become a chef.
“We’ve probably earned enough money to pay for a couple of books so far,” Jurena said. “But we’ve got a few years to keep saving.”
For more information about the Bubbly Beverage Company visit www.haleyandannabelles.com, like them on Facebook or watch the video interview below.