Gorilla Lemonade Roars Into Mass Production

Brian Burkett-Thompson heard the words ​“4,800 boxes” and shook his head in wonder at how his homegrown beverage business was about to take off.

Burkett-Thompson made the remark while seated this week at a conference room table at Unicorr Packaging Group on Sackett Point Road in North Haven minutes before that first run of boxes of fresh-fruit-flavored Gorilla Lemonade would commence on the manufacturing floor one level below.

“It’s happening,” Burkett-Thompson remarked.

Along with partner Kristen Threatt, Burkett-Thompson launched the New Haven-based lemonade line earlier this year as part of their Eat Up Foundation. The nonprofit has as its goal ​“to work with the people and organizations in our local community to help feed those in need.”

Over six weeks this summer, Unicorr’s design team transformed a local artist’s representation of Gorilla Lemonade, hand-drawn in Sharpies on one side of a carton, into a design that both cohered with Eat Up’s vision and met Unicorr’s manufacturing parameters. Now, with boxes ready and distribution deals in place, Gorilla Lemonade is poised to hit stores statewide.

Since its founding earlier this year, Gorilla Lemonade has taken New Haven by storm, with celebrities and public officials alike singing its praises.

The plan, Threatt said, is to make Gorilla Lemonade into a global phenomenon, with 50 percent of each bottle sold going to the Eat Up Foundation to support its initiatives, which have included backpack drives, Thanksgiving food drives for people experiencing homelessness, and Christmas toy drives. 

“We’re going to give the world a taste of New Haven and help our city at the same time,” Threatt said.

Making Change Out Of Lemons

Gorilla Lemonade arose out of repeated requests from customers to serve drinks with the dishes from the duo’s Eat Up Catering business, which offers Italian-inspired soul food.

“A lot of our customers told us they love lemonade,” Threatt said. ​“So Brian got in his kitchen and worked his magic, and here we are.”

They chose the gorilla as a ​“symbol of strength, intelligence, and gentleness, a special combination that is all too rare in the world. We are strong Black African-American men, but also gentle to the needs of our people.” 

On Feb. 25, they released the Gorilla Lemonade beverage line in lemon, pineapple, strawberry, and blueberry-flavored bottled beverages at Andalouse Freshop on Howe Street. It took off, with sales in the first three weeks nearing 3,000 bottles, according to Threatt.

The following month, with Andalouse owner Ammar Chekhess donating all proceeds from lemonade sales to Eat Up, Threatt and Burkett-Thompson used those profits to help a woman displaced by a fire. (Click here to listen to an interview with the pair on WNHH FM as the business took off.)

An endorsement from food critic and television personality Daymon Patterson (Daym Drops), star of Netflix’s ​“Fresh, Fried, and Crispy,” followed. At the opening of Phillys Cheesesteak on Chapel Street in June, Mayor Justin Elicker was pictured slaking his thirst with a bottle of Gorilla Lemonade. Then came a letter from U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro. ​“Your drink might end up being the hit of the summer,” she wrote.

In the midst of all this, Threatt and Burkett-Thompson were working to get the lemonade out on a larger scale. 

“We weren’t missing a beat,” Threatt said. ​“We were pushing for everything to drop in August, but we were also learning that it takes time to get something right.”

In early summer, they connected with Joe Evans at Norwich Beverage Company, a juice manufacturer in Norwich.

“Joe understood our vision right away,” said Threatt. ​“He told us what we had to do to get onto the shelves of stores.”

They followed his advice. Soon after, they signed on with Jogue, Inc., a full-service flavor company based in Plymouth, Michigan.

“The biggest challenge to a small operation like Gorilla Lemonade becomes: How do you scale up in such a way that you can bring that product from something you make in your kitchen to something that can be on shelves of stores?” said Jogue regional account executive Rick Gienapp. ​“That’s where we come in.”

The samples of ingredients that Jogue sent back ​“tasted very natural,” Threatt said. ​“Even more natural than when we were doing it out of Brian’s kitchen.”

After going with Label One in Old Saybrook, per Evans’ recommendation, for bottle labels, the duo reached out to Unicorr. ​“Joe plugged us in with them too,” Threatt said. 

The first meeting with Unicorr happened on Thursday, July 7, at Maison Mathis on Elm Street.

Before then, ​“we knew we wanted a certain look for the box,” Threatt recalled. ​“We needed to have something to show them.”

A few days before the meeting, he and Burkett-Thompson contacted longtime friend Tyreece Gary, a graphic artist with New Haven’s TLG Artistry. The three have attended the same church, United House of Prayer for All People, and played in a band, ​“The Kings of Harmony,” for years. 

“Kris had a box with him,” recalled Gary, who created the Eat Up logo and the label on the Gorilla Lemonade bottle. ​“He said he was going to meet up with some people in a few days and he needed a design. He told me to take this brown box and go crazy.” 

Shifting between Sharpies and Prismacolor markers, ​“I drew everything out on this brown box,” Gary said. ​“Ideas were just flowing to me. I’m telling myself: ​‘Finish the preliminary sketches and the gorilla on the same day,’ and the next day, I colored all the rest.”

Threatt was thrilled. ​“I was like ​‘bro, man, what?’” he recalled. ​“It was beautiful.” 

At the meeting with Unicorr later that week at Maison Mathis, Threatt presented the box to Lindsay Mondrone, the company’s sales account manager. 

“A work of art,” she recalled.

Mondrone took the box back to Unicorr’s design team.

“Everyone was impressed,” Mondrone said. ​“For them to have a local artist give them something that they normally don’t have to work with was great. The challenge was how to get it onto a box within all our production parameters.”

Further meetings took place at Maison Mathis, with Mondrone working with the Eat Up guys on fonts and colors, and producing ever more refined versions of Gary’s design. 

“Lindsay was amazing to work with,” Threatt said. ​“From the start she and her team got our vision.” 

In mid-August, Mondrone texted: Everything was ready to go. The first run would be Monday, Aug. 29. 

Ordinarily, when Threatt and Burkett-Thompson are together, Threatt does the talking. But Threatt had to work Monday, so Burkett-Thompson regaled the group with stories about his late father inspiring him to go into cooking, about his plans to attend culinary school to learn how to train kids to cook. 

Unicorr Director of Operations Nick Perkins, who represents the third generation of the family business, discussed a partnership with Eat Up down the road, particularly for their Chili Cookoff Competition and the hot meals and care packages at Thanksgiving.

“We can get creative,” he told Burkett-Thompson. ​“We can supply you with what you need to convey all that stuff to people.”

Head designer Gary Lenkeit described the challenge of translating artwork hand-drawn with a Sharpie in eight colors into an image they could mass-produce on boxes.

“We photographed the box and redrew the artwork,” said art director Mark Stetson. ​“We tried to pay close attention to the art style and we made sure the original artist is credited on the carton.” 

Threatt’s impulse to produce an eye-catching box was spot on, according to sales manager Bernie Baszak. 

“The boxes have become a lot more of a marketing tool,” he said. ​“Used to be this is how you get the product from here to there and now people are putting these directly on the shelf at Home Depot, Lowe’s, all over the place.” 

At that moment, Mondrone’s phone beeped. ​“They’re ready for us,” she said, as she passed out ear plugs and offered safety glasses. 

From there, it was one flight of steps down to the manufacturing floor. 

“Speechless,” Burkett-Thompson shouted to members of the Unicorr design team over the roar of the machines, as vertical stacks of boxes printed with Gary’s Gorilla Lemonade design streamed along a conveyer belt in rapid, thrumming precision. ​“I feel like I won the lottery.”

Onward

The day after he watched the boxes printed at Unicorr, Burkett-Thompson picked up the bottle labels from Label One and dropped them off at Norwich Beverage.

The first run of production is set for Sept. 8. 

“We’ll be mixing the formula per their instructions and pasteurizing, chilling, bottling, labeling, and putting them in a case and giving it back to them,” Evans said. 

Meanwhile, Threatt was meeting with Robert Ellis and Reorn James of DEJ Logistics in Hamden. The plan is to wrap their trucks and vans with the trademark fluorescent yellow Gorilla Lemonade graphics, fulfill their pre-orders, and then, in the coming months, head down South. 

“What’s dope about this lemonade is that everyone who’s involved wants to stay a part of this,” Threatt said. ​“Everyone feels our passion.”