Odwalla

Origin

Odwalla was founded in Santa Cruz, California, in 1980 by Greg Steltenpohl, Gerry Percy, and Bonnie Bassett. Odwalla's production facility is in Dinuba, California. The trio took the idea of selling fruit juices from a business guidebook, and they began by squeezing orange juice with a secondhand juicer in a shed in Steltenpohl's backyard. They sold their product from the back of a Volkswagen van to local restaurants, employing slogans such as "soil to soul, people to planet and nourishing the body whole".

The name for their start-up, "Odwalla", was taken from that of a character who guided "the people of the sun" out of the "gray haze" in the song-poem "Illistrum", a favorite of the founders, which was composed by Roscoe Mitchell and performed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago jazz group, of which Mitchell was a member. Steltenpohl, Percy, and Bassett related this to their products, which they believe "help humans break free from the dull mass of over-processed foods so prevalent today".

Incorporation to 1996

Odwalla was incorporated in September 1985 after five years of growth and expanded to sell products in San Francisco in 1988. Hambrecht & Quist Inc., a venture capital firm in San Francisco, was one of Odwalla's main investors at the time, investing several million dollars in the company. By 1992, the company employed 80 people at its company headquarters in Davenport, California, and sold around 20 different flavors of juice for between $1.50 and $2.00 a pint. Odwalla went public in December 1993 (NASDAQ:ODWA); the company had 35 delivery trucks, almost 200 employees, and made about $13 million a year. Soon afterwards, Odwalla expanded into new markets when it bought two companies in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado.

Odwalla built a new production facility located in Dinuba, California, in 1994 in order to better meet production demands. The following year, the company moved its headquarters to Half Moon Bay, California.