Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Waldman
Hi Ashley, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory was helping my mom organize a garage sale with our two neighbors, and how it exciting it was to see the customers shopping and answering their questions and ultimately getting the sale! The very next weekend I just started grabbing anything I could find from around the house — my parents expensive clothes, shoes, blenders — and set up tables in the yard. I remember my parents coming home in a panic as all their valuables were flying off in strangers cars.
Entrepreneurship might be in my blood. Both of my parents are entrepreneurs. My mom owned a chain of bicycle stores in the Dallas area for 20 years. My dad had a tech business he sold to former Apple CEO John Sculley, then a chain of fast casual Italian restaurants and finally a tea and non-alcoholic beer company he’s run for the last 20+ years. Funny story: He bought the tea company on eBay.
I didn’t jump into entrepreneurship right away. I went to school for journalism and worked as a professional journalist for 6 years for a New York Times paper in California , then I was an Editor for the Austin Business Journal for 3 years. After ongoing layoffs, I decided to pursue an industry with a little more job security: tech. I joined a Groupon copycat company at the height of that platform’s IPO as a product and sales manager. Ironically, they lost out on some funding and laid off most of the company after about 8 months. I wasn’t laid off, but saw the writing on the wall. So, I left for another tech startup where I was a content marketer.
Over the next 5 years with that startup, I grew to be the marketing and research director managing a team of more than 20 people at 27. I got divorced, started dating a coworker, and fast forward 11 years, we’re married and have two toddlers (Annie, 3, Maggie, 4). That startup was acquired by Gartner, after which I joined the parent company leading product strategy for their Gartner Digital Markets division. The CEO of the original startup has been one of my greatest mentors, and is still someone I call for advice. He’s a big part of what gave me the confidence to finally bite the entrepreneur bullet.
After Gartner, I was a product and strategy consultant for Accenture for 5 years, working exclusively on the Google account the last 2 years. One of my clients hired me into YouTube, where I’ve been for the last 4 years working as a product manager. I’m currently focused on AI safety. Also, during my time as a consultant, I launched a wedding venue and glamping site in San Marcos called Camp Terralak (https://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2017-09-29/day-trips-camp-terralak-san-marcos/). It was an INCREDIBLE property. It has a massive barn that was finished out with bedrooms and a loft, plus two cabins and an airstream. We added a stage, freestanding bath house and teepee. It was an dream.
I would have kept growing the venue, but my husband and I were struggling with fertility challenges. It really rocked us, and our mental health started to suffer. We needed a massive change. So, we followed another dream we had to move to Chattanooga. We lived there for 3 years, during which a pandemic happened and I had two babies via IVF. That’s also where the seed for current company, Jubilee’s, hatched.
I was weaning my first daughter off breastmilk thinking “what am I going to give this girl to drink?” I’m a huge beverage person, consuming 6+ different drinks on a regular basis (kombucha, cold brew, probiotic sodas, tea etc). I started looking at what was on the market and was SHOCKED by how much sugar we’ve normalized giving our kids in drinks. It should be criminal. I noticed there were really only a handful of alternatives out there, and thought “well dad did it, so can I!” Plus, I’d just read Kara Goldin’s story (the founder of Hint water) and we had a ton in common. I thought “if Kara can do it, so can I!” I called my dad. He spent an hour telling me why beverage is the hardest business to be in, and I shouldn’t do it. I was sold. I like hard.
I started to talking to moms about what they might want in a low sugar drink, and that’s when a very important figure gave me some incredible advice (she’s actually the wife of the mentor I mentioned earlier): “you’re just telling me what’s NOT in it (sugar). You’re not telling me what it does offer proactively from a health perspective.” This was right before functional beverages really started to take off, but being the tastemaker she is, she already saw the trend. So, I went to a professional formulator with this charge: (1) it’s for kids, so it has to taste delicious, (2) it has to have low sugar, (3) it must offer nutritional benefits (a lot of them!), and (4) it’s not juice — that’s where all the low sugar offerings are right now.
This led to using milk as the base, just based on it’s differentiator from juice and it’s naturally very nutritious. The American Academy of Physicians, the American Heart Association, the American Dietary Guidelines all recommend that kids get 2-3 cups of milk per day, but as it stands they’re getting less than half that on average. The formulator also suggested vegetable juice, Acerola cherry extract (natural source of Vitamin C), and a special plant-based vitamin D source. I suggested the dessert flavors: banana cream pie, strawberry shortcake and chocolate chip cookie.
Then, the pandemic hit. The supply chain was f****. I sat on it for two years until the manufacturing environment improved. Fast forward, I move back to Texas– the whole family (3 month old and 2 year old), 15 hour drive, all in one day. Insane. I hit the ground running with Jubilee’s in January 2024. I still wasn’t thinking I’d call it a flavored milk… I thought maybe a smoothie. But since I first. had the idea, two things happened: (1) my oldest daughter started drinking flavored milk religiously, which I welcomed because she’s autistic and really struggles with a lot of textures and flavors in food… at least milk had a lot of nutrition, and (2) I found out the flavored milk industry is worth $57.6B: https://www.datamintelligence.com/research-report/flavored-milk-market. Flavored milk it is!
I spent this year finding my manufacturer and all my ingredient suppliers (you can’t buy drums of beet juice at Walmart!), building a website and social media accounts, getting my organic certification, and creating the packaging with a local artist (https://dangrissomart.com/, he mostly does band posters for the likes of Kings of Leon, Metallica, Wilco, but he also did Radio Coffee’s branding). I also ran two pilots at factories in Denton, TX and Buffalo, NY so that I could test samples with real families. They LOVED it. Fun fact: the name was originally “Rise’n’Shine” but I changed it because too many people said it sounded like a breakfast drink in user testing panels. I used AI to come up with Jubilee’s. (-;
Our mission is to relieve some of the stress parents of picky eaters experience every single day worrying about their kids nutrition. Jubilee’s is the ONLY flavored milk with 0 added sugar. All of the sweetness comes from fruit and vegetable juice (the only flavored milk that does it this way!), which also adds to the nutritional benefits: 8gs protein, 100% vitamin D, 45-100% vitamin C and 20% calcium.
We go to market at the end of January on Amazon and our website, with a goal of expanding into local coffee shops and independent grocers in Q1, then larger brands (Central Market, HEB, Whole Foods, Sprouts) in the second half of 2025. I COULDN”T BE MORE EXCITED!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’m working full time, raising two kids and training for the Boston Marathon. So, my biggest struggle is just persevering when the only time I have to work on this is after my kids’ bedtime from 8-11 pm, during naps and my lunch break. What keeps me going is reminding myself how long I’ve dreamed of doing this, and that I know I can die happy knowing at least I tried to make this happen. My kids also keep my going. I want to make sure they’re set up for the rest of their lives since it’s very possible my oldest daughter needs substantial support her whole life.
A little more tactically, when I ran my first factory pilot, one of my ingredients didn’t show up and one supplier didn’t send enough of the other. I was at risk of losing the entire day, and the $20K I’d invested in the project. I decided to go ahead with the missing ingredient, and I raced around to every grocery store in town to buy all their carrot juice to get enough volume to keep the run on.
It ended up being a productive run anyway because (1) I found out I didn’t really need the missing ingredient, which was great because it’s expensive, and (2) one of the strawberry flavors completely flashed off in the heating process. So, I found out I needed to replace that. So, it went from an “OH F***!” morning to “wow, this actually turned into a really productive day.”
As you know, we’re big fans of Jubilee’s. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We make the only flavored milk with 0 added sugar! We’re also the only flavored milk sweetened with fruit and vegetable juice instead of sugar. We have up to 5x the nutrients of standard flavored milk e.g, 100% vitamin D and 45-100% vitamin C.
What makes you happy?
Spending time with my family — it’s the tiny everyday moments that surprise and delight you. We got a puppy a couple months ago, which meant we had to start going outside a lot more at night to let her go to the bathroom. My youngest daughter started really liking this ritual. We kind of live in a canopy of trees down a hill, so you can’t really see the sky super clearly, unless you walk up to the street. We walked up to the street one night and my 3-year-old looks up and gasps “MOMMY! LOOK AT ALL THE STARS!” It occurred to me she’d never really seen them! I thought, OMG what is she going to think of the moon. I said “Annie, look look over here! It’s the moon!” She literally squealed and said “Mommy, mommy it’s up so high!” And she started reaching up trying to grab it and said “Mommy, it’s too high! We need to get a ladder!” It was the highlight of my entire life. The next night, we got a ladder out. We never did reach that moon, but I will never forget that moment.
Being productive and exercising also makes me really happy. You will rarely see my sitting completely idle. I crave forward momentum and self improvement.
Pricing:
- 12-pack is $34.99
- Single is $3.49
Contact Info:
- Website: https://drinkjubilees.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkjubilees/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Jubilees-Flavored-Milk/61561575503700/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@drink.jubilees
Image Credits
Photographs by Propagator Photography, Randy Gardenhire
Art by Dan Grissom
