Jess Rosen: Co-Founder of Raw Generation

Episode 689

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we’re joined by Jessica Rosen, Co-Founder of Raw Generation—the wellness brand helping people detox, reset, and feel their best through the power of raw, plant-based nutrition. Since launching in 2012, Jess has grown Raw Generation into a go-to solution for healthy weight loss and cleansing, offering cold-pressed juices and flash-frozen products that are as effective as they are convenient.
In our conversation, Jess shares the personal health journey that led her to start Raw Generation, how she scaled the brand without outside funding, and what it’s really like to balance motherhood with building multiple wellness ventures. We also get into her new projects—Little Sippers, focused on children’s nutrition, and Functional Mother, a soon-to-launch brand supporting postpartum women. Jess brings a unique blend of creative vision and purpose-driven hustle, all rooted in helping people feel better with real, whole foods.
Whether you're a wellness entrepreneur, a parent looking for healthy solutions, or someone curious about how to turn a health mission into a thriving business, this episode is packed with insight and inspiration. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Super excited to have my next guest with me here today, Jess Rosen, who is the co founder of Raw Generation. Love, love, love this brand and everything that they’re all about. It’s a brand dedicated to helping people detox, lose weight, reset with cold pressed juices and all natural plant powered products. And wow, are their juices so good. I was just telling Jess that I had the carrot one today. I had the sweet greens yesterday. I mean, just so so good, and they come frozen, so you remove it from the freezer and leave it in your refrigerator to thaw. And it is. It’s so so good. So love everything that she is doing with Raw Generation. She’s also the force behind a company called Little sippers, which we’ll get into. And she’s also doing something that I think is so fun, building this company with her father. So not everybody it can can do that or or chooses to do that, I guess I should say, but, but Jess is definitely doing that, and we’re going to dive into how Raw Generation came to life, what it takes to scale a brand these days in the frozen space, and the power of raw nutrition In an over processed world. I love that so, so excited that you’re here. Jess, so welcome.

Jess Rosen 2:25
Thank you, Kara, thank you. That was such a great introduction.

Kara Goldin 2:29
Very excited. Okay, so let’s kick it off. How would you describe Raw Generation, the brand, to someone who maybe has not had a chance to taste your product or see your product.

Jess Rosen 2:43
So the foundation is raw, cold pressed juices and smoothies, but it’s just so much more than that, because of the nutritional benefits of the ingredients that go into it. So a lot of people come to us for weight loss, for detoxification, to improve their gut, skin health, you know, skin issues, energy issues, kids, nutrition. Now we have little sippers for kids, which is, you know, cold pressed juices that fit 40 fruits and vegetables into seven different bottles. So you have a bottle each day. So at the end of the week, you’re getting 40 different fruits and vegetables and vegetables into your kid. And so we’re really just all about how you can use the power of real food plants to improve your health and your weight and your energy and just overall well being.

Kara Goldin 3:39
Love it. So what was the back story? When did you decide to start Raw Generation, and was there a personal turning point that sparked the idea?

Jess Rosen 3:50
Yeah, so I was in my late 20s. I was probably 27 ish, and I had lost both of my grandparents, both of my grandmothers, to cancer. My mother’s mother had had cancer my whole life, so I grew up, and that was kind of just normal. She was able to live her life and go through the treatments, and she lived with cancer for decades, and then she had passed. And then shortly after, my dad’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, and it was pancreatic cancer, which, if you know anything about it, is devastating, because you go from, you know, normal to very, very sick. And you know, she had passed, I think, four months after the diagnosis. So, um, it was one day I took her to her chemo appointment, and I was sitting there, and they had a table full of books, and I was just, you know, we were talking, and then there was a quiet period, and I was just looking through the books, and I found a book that was titled something like foods to fight cancer, and that was really the first, the first time I had ever even given a thought to like how foods could help you become healthy or make you sick. And that really. It was the spark that that led me down this path. So my grandmother had, my second grandmother had passed, and it really just sent me into, you know, you know, I was just actually having anxiety attacks about how, you know, I’m living my life. I’m going out all the time, I’m not eating healthy, I’m not sleeping. I’m, you know, it’s just like not living a healthy life. And I was, I saw the the writing on the wall, and so I just started educating myself, and, you know, read every book I could find. And then shortly after that, enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition to become certified as a health coach. And around that time, I was working with my dad. He’s an entrepreneur. He’s my co founder and current partner. We’re still working together, 13 years later, and so I was working for him at one of his businesses, and he said he wanted to start a new one. And I said, Yeah, I would love to but, you know, it has to be something that I’m really passionate about. So we, he, we had talked about a couple different ideas, juicing being one of them. And, you know, another side story is my his father had been a long time juicer, and always, you know, grew up with him making this his green juice every day, you know, and having us try it and it was disgusting, and, you know, I had that, you know, to fall back on. But I was really like, yeah, I would love to do this, because at that point, I really believed in the benefits of raw foods, and specifically juicing and but I was like, we have to make it so that it tastes good. It has to taste good, otherwise. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 6:45
and what were you doing before you decided to launch this?

Jess Rosen 6:49
So, um, I went to college for architecture, and I, since that, like, I got out of the out of grad school, and decided I didn’t want to be an architect. So I had a couple different design jobs. I designed men’s clothing, I did graphic design. I, you know, had a couple business ideas that didn’t really ever leave the ground, because I just wasn’t, you know, passionate about it. And then I was working for my dad, helping him systemize one of his businesses, and so it kind of was always in the design world. But, you know, so when we started Raw Generation, it was just the two of us, and we started in his kitchen, and I was the website design, designer, marketing, salesperson, and he did all of the, you know, production and fulfillment. And it was that way for quite a long time where, you know, we had a couple, we had a couple employees who then would like make the juice, but it was me doing the marketing and sales and everything for several years until, you know, we could afford to, like, start building a team. What

Kara Goldin 8:04
was the biggest challenge that you faced, and you didn’t have the experience to build a, you know, direct to consumer company, and you know, you’re not using preservatives. I mean, it’s, it’s raw. So, Raw Generation. So what, what was the, the biggest challenge and kind of eye opener for you in those especially in those early days, yeah,

Jess Rosen 8:30
so I think in the beginning, there were two challenges. The first was, how do we get the product to the customer without it spoiling before it gets to them, or, you know, shortly after, um, so that very before we, even before we launched the company, we pretty quickly realized, um, you know, freezing was the only way to preserve the nutrition without destroying the product. And also it also, it also preserves the flavor, which was a huge thing for me. So, you know, from the very beginning, I was like, we’re not doing preservatives, we’re not doing any chemicals. This is going to be 100% real food ingredients. And so freezing was, I think, the first challenge coming up with that, you know, that solution. And then after that, we launched first with a two green juices, and that did not sell at all. It was like crickets for, I don’t know, six months. And then I had, you know, I had a thought. It was like juice cleansing is becoming popular. And this is back in, like, late 2012 and, you know, becoming popular in, but mostly in major metropolitan areas. So, um, the very beginning of 2013 I shut down the website. I created a couple new flavors, rebranded the two green juices and plus the the other juices as the skinny cleanse. And then we got connected with someone at one of the deal sites that they were just becoming really popular, like the Groupons and the. Results. So we were connected with deal site and ran a sale for a week, and I think that week, we sold like $8,000 of product. And yeah, we were like, oh my god, that was huge back then, yeah. So that was our first big win. And then, you know, the skinny cleans has been our number one product, number one selling product since we launched it. So yeah, those that was initially the two biggest challenge was like, how do we get it to the consumer, and then, you know, figuring out something that was going to sell. And luckily, you know, the second iteration actually worked. Um, but I think had we not found the, had we not launched on the deal sites, probably would have been a different story, because that was like a, you know, a market in and of itself. And this was wait, this was before Amazon was huge. So that was really the catalyst to, um, to our growth initially.

Kara Goldin 10:59
So was that the moment that you really knew it was gonna work, like you, yeah, you just said, I just have to figure out more of those kind of opportunities to get trial, I guess.

Jess Rosen 11:10
Yeah, pretty much. So I after that, I, I think I spent the next three months literally all I did was I, like, harassed the deal sites, all, every one of them that was open, I was just persistent about, you know, getting on their calendars. And so that was February of 2013 we did the, the first real sale. And then by I think, June or July, I think was July, we were up to $100,000 a month in sales. So it was really, it was pretty rapid, you know, once we launched on the deal sites, and then, you know, that was, that’s ancient history now, because that was like 2013 but that was really the catalyst to

Kara Goldin 11:52
knowing that it was going to work. Yeah, yeah. So, can you walk us through the process for cold, fresh, Flash, frozen, raw. What’s different about your method versus others that people may see on the shelf?

Jess Rosen 12:08
Okay, so all the juices that are in stores on the shelves have either been pasteurized or HPP high pressure, processed to increase the shelf life. Essentially, you know, the the main reason is so that it increases the shelf life, because it reduces the bacteria. So, you know, it also, it also affects the flavor. And that, like, in the beginning it tastes great, but then, like, the longer it sits on the shelf, it the flavor really becomes compromised. Um, and some, you know, the ingredients that we’re using, like, spinach, kale, collards, like, they don’t lend themselves well to being, you know, anything but fresh. So really, our process is, you know, we wash the fruits and vegetables. They get juiced or blended and then bottled frozen, and they remain frozen until they, you know, get shipped to the customer. That’s pretty much it. It’s like one, you know, one step removed from the whole plant,

Kara Goldin 13:06
and then you freeze it and, and then you ship it and, and I think also the nutrients. I mean, if you want to talk a little bit about that, like a lot of these products that are out there, you think you’re buying a green juice, but you’re not really getting the nutrients that maybe you think you are.

Jess Rosen 13:25
Yeah. So, I mean, there’s a whole range of products out there from, like, you know, I don’t want to name names, but there’s, like, the the naked juices of the world that are really, like, if you look at the ingredient list. It’s, it’s not really healthy. I mean, it’s not the same we’re it’s not in the same ballpark as what we’re doing. You know, I believe that, like the you know, it’s, it’s common knowledge now that we are living in an ultra processed world, and it’s really hard to find healthy, convenient foods. And so that was one of the, you know, one of the driving forces behind starting this, was that, you know, you can take it with you in a bottle, and it’s literally, like liquid vitamins, because it’s just fruits, vegetables, you know, nuts, seeds and spices like, those are the only ingredients that we use. And it’s, you know, the the nutrients that are like if you picked a carrot out of the ground, it’s the same nutrition that you would get in the bottle. So it’s just the it’s really the easiest way to get a lot of nutrition in quickly. The other thing that’s really easy that juicing solves is leafy greens, which are like the number one most nutritious food group and probably the number one lacking food group in people’s diets. So leafy greens, like spinach, kale, collards, you know, spirulina, stuff like that. They. Are super high in minerals. Which minerals are essentially the food for, you know, getting our bodies to work properly. So, you know, it’s while a lot of people come to us for weight loss via the skinny cleanse, the secondary benefits that they you know, that they say they experience are incredible. Like, your skin clears up, you have energy. You sleep better. Funny, like, quick story. When I first started this, you know, I hadn’t been to the dentist in like years, because I was like, Yeah, whatever. It’s like, the last thing on my list to do, and but I remember, I was in college, I went to the dentist, and he was like, you know, your gums are really, really terrible. We have to do this procedure. And I was like, no, no, I’m not gonna do that right now. And then a couple years later, after drinking all this juice and like, putting the dentist off, I go to the dentist again, and I’m like, How are my gums? And she was like, Oh, they’re perfect. And I was like, Excuse

Kara Goldin 15:59
me, what like, How’d that happen? And that

Jess Rosen 16:03
was, like, the only thing that I had changed, really, was I just started drinking, you know, green juice every day. So, you know, the benefits, the health benefits, are endless. It just, you know, gives your body the nutrients it needs to work properly. So

Kara Goldin 16:17
you are a direct to consumer company. You also sell on Amazon. You were not in retail. How did you make that decision not to go the retail route? I’m sure you, you know, you saw many other products that are out there that sort of appeared to be in your space. But how did you decide that you were really going to focus in on, on what you’re doing,

Jess Rosen 16:43
yeah, so, um, it’s a question we come back to every once in a while, because there it is, you know, it’s, uh, it’s enticing, the opportunity to be in retail and, you know, be on all the shelves nationwide. Um, the reason we don’t do it is because we would have to pasteurize or pressure process our juices for the shelf life. And, you know, we have such a good thing going on with with direct to consumer that it just hasn’t, it just hasn’t, you know, been worth it to make that jump. It would just be like a completely different product, in our opinion. So as of right now, we’re staying true to our core, direct to consumer. Well,

Kara Goldin 17:29
I think that that’s, you know, I always say that, as the founder or co founder, you’re the one that’s got to hold the reins, right? Because you get so you get distracted by so many people saying, oh, you should go do this. You should go do this. And you really have to understand where you can, you know, continue to grow, or where you can grow that you haven’t been but also when you start butchering the product in some way and going away from what the mission, the purpose. And in your case, then I think that, you know, it’s, it’s not good, and people do it all the time, but it’s, it’s, it’s not, not a good thing. What’s the what’s been the biggest brand evolution moment where you had to maybe pivot or reimagine or go deeper?

Jess Rosen 18:19
So there’s been two actually, COVID was a huge disrupter for us. You know, the week that the world shut down, it was like early March 2020, our sales, I think, dropped by like 30% like week over week. And so before that, we were very weight loss focused, and that’s what people came to us for. And at that time, we were like, we don’t think anyone cares about weight loss right now, everyone’s concerned about their health or family’s health. So that was a huge pivot for us, where we shifted. I mean, we still sold the products that we sold, but we we went into hyper drive of creating new products that we could, you know, easily create with the ingredients that we have that address the health, so people’s health. So we had immunity shots. We did a fruit and vegetable Fresh Fruit and Vegetable delivery box, you know, for the people who had everything stocked in their house, except for you can’t stock fresh fruits and vegetables, so we would deliver that nationwide to people’s houses. We did hand sanitizer at one point, we were like, we can make that. Like, let’s make it because there was a shortage. So that was a huge shift for us, and a huge period of growth. I mean, we went from, I think we, I think we doubled in 2020 in sales, and then maybe another 50% in 2021 it was huge. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but um, so that was, that was the first major change. And then. And coming out of COVID, we had seen a little bit of a downturn in our sales. And so then we were like, Okay, well, you know, where’s the market at now? And we realized, like, people were, you know, like everyone, everything was going back to normal, and people were going to other houses, and, you know, it was right before the summer. And we were like, we think people are actually going to have a summer this year, you know what I mean? So we started to shift back into weight loss messaging and, you know, really highlighting our all of the benefits. Like, because it was, it was clear that the shift to people’s interest in health was not going away. So I think it like opened more doors for us in that sense. But people were more, you know, inclined towards, you know, coming to us for weight loss as well. So that was, you know, two pretty major shifts. The first, the biggest being, for sure, the week that the world shut down during COVID.

Kara Goldin 21:04
Do you feel like word of mouth is is super important for you as a brand? And I mean, how do you feel that people are learning about Raw Generation?

Jess Rosen 21:18
Yeah, so word of mouth is, is so important, I think, especially for food brands, because it’s such a subjective, like, in in terms of, like, the way things taste, it’s so subjective. But like, if you have people like, if you have people saying, like, this is, tastes really amazing, especially the people who are into juicing and they know, like, the the range of terrible tasting too, like amazing tasting. So, like, there’s, if you have people like that, like our, we call them ambassadors, the the people who really love our product and and, you know, tell everyone, it’s just, it’s, you can’t get anything better than that, better than word of mouth.

Kara Goldin 22:01
No, definitely. So when you’re a female founder in the wellness space, what has that journey been about? For you? About resilience? I mean, I think it’s great that you have a co founder that that any co founder right, having somebody that you can talk to you about the hard challenges, but I think a lot of people don’t really realize, especially in the beverage industry, how challenging it can really be. And you know, sometimes it’s pretty lonely, right? You’re sitting here doing your thing, you’re building, you can’t really describe it to your friends who aren’t entrepreneurs, like the stuff that you’re working on every day that you’re thinking about. But what has that journey taught you about resilience? Well, I

Jess Rosen 22:49
mean, if looking back, I don’t know. I think it was the it was the fact that I was so naive about everything that goes into a business like this that that actually made it possible. I think if I had known, I don’t know if I would have gone for it. But resilience, I mean, you know, so along the way, I’ve had a couple health challenges that have made, you know, brought everything into perspective. It made things difficult for a while, but then, you know, overcoming it and putting things into perspective, it’s just, it’s challenging, it’s lonely, but it’s also very fulfilling to, like, have an idea and have it come to life and, you know, just keep pursuing what I’m interested in.

Kara Goldin 23:33
Yeah, definitely. How have you funded the product? To the company today?

Jess Rosen 23:38
So we bootstrapped it. You know, we’re still privately owned. We started in my dad’s kitchen, and when we were bursting out of his house, we got our first facility, and now we have, you know, two facilities that we’ve pretty much just, you know, self funded. What advice

Kara Goldin 23:59
do you have for founders who are bootstrapping their way to try and scale an idea or a company,

Jess Rosen 24:07
the thing that I did in the beginning, that I think was one of the keys to our success, was I focused most of my time on money generating activities like I figured. I you know, I figured out what I thought was going to make us money. In this case, in my case, it was, you know, getting on the deal sites, calendars for sales. And I focused probably 80% of my time on that. Because a lot of the time, you know, you’re working on something that you think is important, but really in the grand scheme of things, it’s not going to move the needle. So I think really getting clear on, you know, finding, finding the things that are going to generate sales, and focusing on that, especially in the beginning, and then, you know, there’s a lot of other things that that seem fun or or may seem like they’re necessary, but they’re really not.

Kara Goldin 24:52
How many skews do you have right now? Oh, gosh, um,

Jess Rosen 24:57
well, I we have. We. Between 25 and 30 flavors, and then those are combined into different SKUs. So I think we have like nine different, nine different bundles, so like cleanses or resets, or, you know, combinations of juices. And we also have the build a box, which is all of the flavors. You can pick the, you know, pick your size of box, and then you pick the flavors that you want, and you can get your own custom box of juices,

Kara Goldin 25:25
which is awesome. And what’s your favorite? It’s like asking you who your favorite kid is, right? So that’s what I always say.

Jess Rosen 25:33
My favorite is the sweet greens. It’s the first flavor I created, and it’s still my favorite. 13 years later, I drink it pretty much every day.

Kara Goldin 25:42
Do you see any trends that have changed since you launched Raw Generation that people are really focused on?

Jess Rosen 25:50
Yeah, every couple years there seems to be a new trend. There was celery juice, which is still a trend, which I think is actually there’s like, trendy trends, which is, like, is this really, this is really even, you know, efficacious. But then, you know, celery juice, in this case, I think is one of those things that actually is very beneficial for people. There’s the whole keto trend, which I know is on the not as popular as it was a couple years ago. I mean, there’s like 100 different diets, so, yeah,

Kara Goldin 26:21
it’s, it’s so true, yeah, with hint, we used to say that we could be with any diet. So which I would imagine Raw Generation is kind of the same, that you’re able to fit into a lot of different diets.

Jess Rosen 26:34
Yeah, we can, um, pretty much. The only one we don’t fit into is if you’re, like, truly, strictly keto, and you’re, you know, you’re not doing many, many carbs, but, um, you know, every other, every other diet could benefit from having juices, especially green juices, added to it.

Kara Goldin 26:51
So Jess, thanks so much for joining us today. I love hearing all about Raw Generation and how you started and and really you built it from nothing into something quite remarkable. So with, you know, real and results driven and just such a great, great product. So and of course, your passion for why you did this is just super, super inspiring. So we’ll have all the info in the show notes, Raw Generation.com, but just thank you so much for giving some color to the brand and really, really love it. Thank you, Kara. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.

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