It’s late already, 4:45 pm, I had scheduled time at 10 am today to write this newsletter and already the day has flown by. With a small delivery in Ventura, some errands, and a short detour to the boat for another coat of varnish, the day is slipping away. And in the middle of all of that, I’ve signed Tom and I up for another boating class as we prepare for some longer voyages. After being tethered to LOL for 11 years, it’s hard to think about anything else and being anywhere else at this time. We are just now hitting our stride, (knock on wood) with everything going pretty smooth as we wind down a bit for fall. Though, I have to admit that last year we did not see that dip in sales during the winter as we had in the past. I am not sure why yet, except that we have built a fantastic customer base that is very diverse and has increased our reach through customer referrals and our great distribution team. The fiscal year-end lull is real for me. Definitely the frenzied pace of summer is starting to let up and since I live for the adrenaline, it’s a difficult time. I start to question everything, starting the 12th year is about becoming debt free as a company, looking more at what we can do to support a larger mission, and still living the adventurous life that I want for myself away from l
lemonade land. While I say that mostly I push words around on the computer screen as my job, it really is the time away from my computer during our adventures in Baja, sailing, driving in my lemonade cube with the music blaring like a rock concert, or out on the trail that I find my inspiration for what we need to do next.
One thing I know is that I was energized last weekend with Pier Under the Stars an event we have been participating in for years serving our lemonades as one of the vendors donating our product to help fundraise for the restoration of the pier. Its the first event since we were all locked down and it was especially great this time to see all of our customers come back and say hi :) It never gets old when people ask to take a photo with me or ask about our story, surprised at how we started – I love that people share our lemonades on their most important life occasions – I have no words for how this makes me feel – We continue to source the highest quality organic ingredients for the recipe we have been making for over 25 years –
And with that, I am finishing up on the order of the hundreds of pounds of fresh frozen lemon juice, organic cane sugar, bottles, caps, trays, labels,
and a few other items as we prepare to bottle again in a couple of weeks. Not soon enough as Wild Strawberry is out again!
Our mission is simply to make the most delicious lemonades for you to sip and share –
Thank you,
Lori Volk, Chief Believer Lori’s Original Lemonade
since 2011
It’s a warm and sunny afternoon here at the LOL Headquarters for writing the 4th edition of our weekly Newsletter. I am pretty amazed that I am sticking to my writing goal as my concentration and follow-through have been seriously lacking these past few months. Even though it is a beautiful day out there as I look through my office blinds, I don’t think I would rather be anywhere else right now. My desk is strewn with papers filled with numbers, profit and loss statements, sales summaries, and my calculator working over time as we close our 11th year as a beverage manufacturer. As I review the numbers I graphed them to just see visually our story over the last decade of the most intense times I have ever had. The highs the lows, and they show on the chart. My body feels pain as I look at the lines across the chart dip deeply in 2019 when we had a distributor take more money from us in erroneous fees that we couldn’t stop. We were spinning out of control, I was losing my company, with each order I sent out to them. I couldn’t pay my utilities at the office, so I started getting out my personal credit cards (again) to literally keep the lights on in the cold month of January. I was desperate. My co-packer said, “Just keep believing”… I was losing faith, I was hopeless – but I changed everything with one call – one early morning to the buyers, and with that one call I would forfeit over 360 stores that I had so proudly won. I would go on to let go of another 500 stores in the next 24 hours that weren’t making us any money. That was the deepest dip in the lines on the page I just printed. But, the next year we started coming back, and I see the line climb higher than ever, sales soared, but more importantly, I learned how to be profitable, and how to make money. It wasn’t a “hobby” anymore (I won’t forget that when someone told me that after 7 years of hard work) I was making money now and have been ever since. And in that desperate moment, we found another important person for LOL, Doug from Economic Development Collaborative. I thought we needed money, an investor, something.. but we were given Doug as a referral. And Doug who donates his time generously to this organization has helped us move from disaster to success and answers my call every month… always so that I can spend an hour plus talking about our wins and complain about my challenges. But, Doug has helped us navigate the most difficult times of my life as I build this company to be sustainable and learn more and more about how to run a business. Doug has helped me keep myself accountable to me and my goals for LOL. Many thanks, Doug, we couldn’t have gotten through this without your continued support. So, as I keep this small “Believe” stone that my youngest daughter gave me years ago on my desk, today it reminds me who I am – the Chief Believer –
Tonight I am comfortably sitting in our small apartment still adjusting back to land life after moving off of our sailboat home of 10 years. After deliveries today and loading up for deliveries to a new Albertsons in Goleta tomorrow (Thanks so much to Ahmed a wonderful customer of ours from Albertsons Calle Real), I remember even though I feel so alone most of the time that there are so many people that brought us to the 11-year point in business. One of my favorite stories and serendipitous moments is the opening of Whole Foods Oxnard, CA. We had only been selling into a handful of Whole Foods stores at the time, I would load up my car and make regular deliveries to a select number of Whole Foods stores that were willing to give us a chance. One of the receivers in the Venice store said to me, “I will know that you really made it when you aren’t delivering your own product anymore”. I remembered that for a long time as I would load and unload hundreds of pounds of lemonade, drive hundreds of miles every month, fight to keep my shelf space that I had fought so hard for, and hope that one day I could “make it” and have someone deliver our lemonades for us too.
It has been almost three months since Tom and I spent most of June exploring the Society Islands of the South Pacific on a trip we have waited too long to take. We set up our businesses to be taken care of by a competent team of amazing and hardworking people, packed our bags, charged our cell phones, and headed on a journey of more than 4000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to a small chain of islands located in the South Pacific. While we have spent most of our time exploring Baja and mainland Mexico over the last four decades, we hadn’t ventured out much further, except when I went to meet my Dad in Tonga while he was sailing solo around the world. We took modest vacations, mostly camping while we raised our three kids in Ojai, CA, venturing out only one time with them to Hawaii. After that, we spent the last several years paying off all of the Parent Plus Loans we took out to help our kids through college. Oh, and did I forget “Covid” took a couple of years as well?
It’s another extra hot day this morning as I write this sitting from my familiar and comfortable space at the LOL Headquarters in Ventura. I am feeling grateful, but out of sorts as we have now officially moved off of our sailboat to our spacious one bedroom space on the water. After over 9 years that we have been aboard our current 41′ cruising sailboat, I do believe we have gone to the other side making it hard to transition from the sea to land. Although the conditions at the dock and surrounding area were less than ideal, we were born into this sailing business and with the wanderlust that was handed down by my sailing Dad who solo circumnavigated the world for 7 years, I was always called to the sea as the place of comfort and calm. But, during the last few years, our paradise was changed as I wrote last week. So, on to the next adventure, and I am counting my blessings as we now have a land space that we can retreat into when the world just gets to be too much. Lucky for us we still feel at home as we watch boats sail by, the sea lions bark (still all night) and know that we can still get down to our sailboat anytime we want, mostly to work about boat projects and get out sailing, out to the islands and beyond. And now, I can spend more time concentrating on LOL and our next big projects. Mainly plotting and planning how to expand our reach to get to more of our customers.
at the beach than I ever remember in prior years. I’ve got my hot cup of coffee, turned on the small space heater and sitting at the dinette table typing to you this morning. This Sunday we are still recovering from a very bad cold/cough that has taken me down for nearly two weeks now, and Tom just a few days in. I can’t remember the last time I was this sick, but the time down has forced me to slow the pace of life, reflect and take time to just enjoy my time on the boat without any schedule to adhere to. 
Its been a whirlwind last week trying to make sure that all of our supplies get to the plant for bottling at the end of this week, the first of 3 bottling runs that will restock all of our flavors including our new, Baja Lemonade Tea! We found this drawing from 2012 when we first bottled in what was the “Snapple” bottle that was widely available at that time. Turns out, with the severe shortages in the pandemic, we have had to source out this same glass again as we pivoted to get into whatever was available to get product back on the shelves again asap! Our entire supply chain team worked and our still working tirelessly to get everything we need for these hard deadlines. I was just told last week that our labels will be traveling by van from Nevada to get to our co-packer on time for the 4 am bottling run on Friday, August 20th. We have a table full of orders from all of our distributors waiting to be filled! Beyond grateful we are so excited to bring you (finally) this new Baja Lemonade Tea early September!! Thank you again for allowing us to serve you the most delicious, organic and unique lemonades for you to sip and share.
