A little less than two years after a life-changing appearance on Shark Tank, you can now find a Central Texas woman's product in grocery stores.
"Bee Free Honee is the first and only honey made from apples. No bees or hives required to make our product.," Melissa Elms, CEO and co-owner of Bee Free Honee, said. "It tastes like honey. It cooks and bakes like honey. It's a little less expensive than organic honey, and it offers a solution to the declining bee population."
That's the pitch Melissa Elms and her partner Katie Sanchez found success on Shark Tank with not even two years ago.
"We were successful, no doubt, but we were growing pretty slowly. We were still making products by hand, hand filling bottles. And with the show and our investors, it launched us. I believe it literally sped up our timeline by ten years," Elms added.
Now, Bee Free Honee has moved all production from Wisconsin to Houston.
"Within a matter of weeks, we went from producing about 5,000 bottles a month to the ability to produce 5,000 cases a day," Elms said.
Bee Free Honee can be found in 320 H-E-B's as well as other grocery stores across the country.
"This is a dream come true. It really is. Look at that, it's beautiful," Elms added while admiring her product on H-E-B's shelves.
Elms shops regularly at H-E-B and said that seeing her product on the shelves never gets old.
"This is a lot of work. A lot of blood, sweat and tears, scars. You know, everything to get here and it's really, really cool," Elms said.
As the business continues to grow, so do their opportunities for more flavors and more products.
"Our new, brand new, product is flower pollen infused which literally has more sustainable and nutritive benefit than raw, conventional honey. So, this is a patent pending product which is going to be huge. It's going to literally change the entire honey industry," Elms added.
In January, Bee Free Honee is expected to launch a new product not from apples.
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