Huntington Beach-based Hub’s Family Juice has a name in the juice business.
The company is named for Hubert Hansen, whose juice company gave birth to what’s now Corona’s Hansen Natural Corp., a maker of juices and Monster energy drinks.
Hubert Hansen’s granddaughter, Maureen Hansen Todd, owns Hub’s Family Juice with husband Gary Todd. The company makes fruit and vegetable juices under its own name and also for companies such as San Clemente-based Sambazon Inc., which makes drinks based on Amazon fruits.
It faces a couple of big rivals: PepsiCo Inc.’s Naked Juice and Coca-Cola Co.’s Odwalla.
Hub doesn’t have the reach of its big-name rivals. Small distributors sell the juices to catering truck commissaries in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
They’re also sold at small markets and in the Newport Mesa Unified School District. The company sells 50,000 bottles per week and generates about $2 million in yearly sales, according to Gary Todd.
Hub has 15 workers and one delivery truck.
Hubert Hansen started his fruit juice company in 1935. Sons Vincent, Gene, Tom and Dick helped run the business from processing plants and warehouses in Los Angeles. The family sold juice to Hollywood studios and local businesses.
Hubert Hansen’s grandchildren eventually joined the business. Gary Todd joined after he married Maureen.
Tim Hansen, Maureen’s brother and Hubert Hansen’s grandson, started his own juice company in 1977. He got a license to use the family’s name and started Hansen’s Food Inc. in Los Angeles. The company later moved to Anaheim and made juice and natural sodas.
Hansen’s Food went bankrupt in the late 1980s. It later was bought by South African immigrants and Orange County residents Rodney Saks and Hilton Schlosberg in 1992.
The Todds stayed with the family’s original juice company until it went through a series of buyouts in the late 1990s.
The Todds decided to start over. They wanted to get back to Maureen’s family roots and make juice the way her grandfather and father had, she said.
Starting over was tough. The Todds leased an office in Huntington Beach and spent $1 million building a processing plant behind it. They hired a few workers but did most of the work themselves. It took more than a year to install coolers and machinery, hook up electricity and set more than 8,000 floor tiles.
“We put everything into this business,” Gary Todd said, “my energy, my wife’s energy, my children’s energy, our money, our house. Everything went into this place.”
The Todds named their juice company after Maureen’s grandfather to celebrate his legacy and to give their company a “small town, family feel.”
The focus is on fresh juice that’s affordable, according to the Todds. A 16 oz. bottle of juice sells for less than $3, sometimes half that of the big-name juices.
The Todds said they hope to be in grocery stores by the end of this year.
Exchange Students
Barely out of school themselves, the founders of Irvine’s Global Student Experience put together study abroad programs for college students.
David Diamond, James Kowal and Travis Carruthers started the company in 2004 while they were students at the University of California, Irvine. Diamond and Kowal are 24. Carruthers is 26.
Global Student Experience generated $1.5 million in 2006 revenue and is targeting $3 million in sales for the 2007 school year, according to Diamond, the company’s chief executive.
The founders have 17 people working for them and plan to hire two more in June, Diamond said. The company typically hires recent college graduates who have studied abroad, he said.
Global Student Experience works with universities and creates programs where students can complete college courses in Spain, Argentina, Italy, England, France and Australia.
The company offers quarter, semester and yearlong programs that include university enrollment, tuition, registration, official transcripts, housing, health insurance, cell phones, transportation passes, cultural events and day trips.
Programs cost $3,000 to $13,000.
It competes with universities themselves and other providers of study abroad programs, such as the American Institute for Foreign Study in Stamford, Conn.
The founders started Global Student Experience after they completed a month-long study abroad program in Barcelona, Spain. They started the business out of Diamond’s Newport Beach apartment.
Learning how to run a business, attracting customers and earning credibility at a young age was challenging, Diamond said.
Now the company’s young profile is a competitive advantage, he said.
“It keeps us fresh and up to date,” Diamond said.
Custom Voicemail
Irvine’s YouMail Inc., an offshoot of New Zealand’s Zeacom Ltd., has raised $1.9 million in funding for its Web site that allows users to create custom voicemail messages for wireless phones.
Among YouMail’s investors: Mark Madsen, a former player with basketball’s Minnesota Timberwolves. Others include Tech Coast Angels and private investors.
As part of the financing, the company brought on Alex Quilici as chief executive. He’s cofounder of Quack.com, which Time Warner Inc.’s America Online bought in 2000.
Ken Brickley cofounded YouMail more than a year ago while at the U.S. headquarters of Zeacom in Irvine. Zeacom makes software used in call centers.
YouMail’s site allows users to record a variety of greetings for different callers, access and control voicemails and forward messages. The site even offers “ditch mail,” a function that disconnects unwanted callers.
YouMail competes against Fremont-based Grand Central Communications Inc. and Got Voice Inc. in Kirkland, Wash.
The company plans to come out with an updated Web site in May, Brickley said. YouMail plans to generate revenue through advertisements and subscriptions, he said.
