Simple Again

two businesses – PFC and swiig. PFC designs, builds and supplies natural whole foods-based shake and smoothie bars. swiig, also known as Stuff With Infinite Goodness, is the retail arm; offering the same natural products as PFC but through an online portal available to anyone. Simple Again isn’t a franchise model, instead they have what they call “a handshake kind of contract,” where there is no pressure on their customers. According to Young, “This philosophy has worked really well for us. We still actually have Bally’s, our first customer, and in normal times have only a 4.5 percent attrition rate.” Business continued to grow for Simple Again and its companies into the early months of 2020. They were on track to have their best year yet, when COVID-19 hit, effectively bringing sales to a screeching halt. Young recounts, “On March 13, 2020 the nation shut down its health clubs, and health clubs represent over 90 percent of our business. In addition, food and beverage was hit pretty hard and, of course, we are food and beverage people; so, we lost 95 percent of our business in one day and we were left scratching our heads wondering what to do next.” Young and Hocker originally decided to ride out the wave, hoping the shutdowns would only last two weeks as the country ‘flattened the curve’. They used the profits from January and February to help maintain their staff of 50, but as the pandemic raged on, they knew they would have to find a new source of revenue. So they turned to Bevolution, one of their largest smoothie suppliers. “After a bit of spit balling ideas, Bevolution agreed to retool their plant from creating juices, and purees to making hand sanitizer,” says Young. “We picked a target launch day, put together our sales team, and we immediately began selling hand sanitizers. Within 30 days we sold about $3 million worth of sanitizers, not only to our existing customers but to new ones, as well. It was a whole new lane.”