To Jeff Jetton, the four hours it takes to make Jell-O shots is an eternity — and an opportunity.
Bars love selling the jiggly, alcohol-infused confections because they’re moneymakers. But no bartender or sous-chef likes boiling water, mixing the powder, adding the booze and … waiting. Making more at midnight after you sell out isn’t an option, so you end up leaving money in partiers’ pockets.
Jetton, a serial entrepreneur who has started and sold two companies, said he and Tyler Williams, a former bar owner, have the answer: a high-tech machine the size of a large microwave that turns out a tray of 20 shots in just 10 minutes.
It has taken them three years — and $3 million of the $4.2 million in venture capital they have raised — to turn slow-setting gelatin into fast food, but they’re just about ready for launch.
They aim to ship the first commercial machine in March.
“There was no innovation around gelatin,” Jetton, 49, said at his office just south of Portland, Ore.
On the other side of a glass wall, one of his eight employees fiddles with tubes, wires, clear-plastic containers and batteries, simplifying the prototype machine for production.
“We started with a yellow pad of paper,” he said.
Jetton and Williams say their machine, called the Jevo, will do for gelatin what Keurig did for coffee — and make them a fortune in the process.
Keurig, now called Keurig Green Mountain, became the envy of the food-and-beverage business in about 2009 when sales of its single-serving brewing system took off.
The company sells coffeemakers yet makes most of its money on the little plastic K-Cups, which caffeine fiends pop into the brewers by the billion each year.
In the fiscal year that ended in September, it sold 9.8 billion K-Cups, reaping $3.6 billion in revenue.
Jetton’s company, Food + Beverage Innovations, plans to make money, like Keurig, on gelatin flavor “pods,” not the machines.
A pod, enough to make 20 shots, is about the size of a single-serving yogurt. Just drop one in the machine, add water and booze, and hit a button. Ten minutes later, you have a tray of chilly gelatin shots.
Jetton plans to make his shots without Jell-O brand gelatin.
Jetton is sourcing his gelatin through Jel Sert, which produces Otter Pops and Royal Gelatin and makes Jevo’s powdered mix in 17 flavors.
Kraft Heinz, maker of Jell-O, isn’t a fan. Spokesman Michael Mullen said “Jevo” is an infringement.
“Kraft Heinz (is) not associated with this company, and they are using our trademark without our consent,” Mullen said in an e-mail.
Jetton is undaunted: “If they have an issue with us, they can call or send us a letter,” he said.
Jetton said 2,500 bars, restaurants, casinos and cruise ships are considering a Jevo machine.
He’s working with spirits giant Beam Suntory on promotions. Hennessey’s Tavern Inc., a company with 17 restaurants in California and Nevada, is signed up to be one of Jetton’s first customers.
Terry Hermeling, owner of Yur’s Bar & Grill in Portland, is in line, too.
“We sell a lot (of Jell-O shots), but we have to make them by hand,” he says. “I think he’s onto something. I’m a beer drinker, but the kids like them.”
