Minute Maid better watch their back, ’cause Mikaila Ulmer is coming through with her Me & The Bees lemonade, and she’s got some major backup.
From heavy hitters.
The Houston Chronicle reports current NFL players—Arian Foster, Glover Quin, Duane Brown, Jonathan Grimes, Omar Bolden, Bobby Wagner, Darius Slay, Sharrick McManis, EJ Manuel and Malick Jackson—banded together to invest $810K into Mikaila’s lemonade stand-turned-grown-woman biz. (Me and The Bees lemonade is on Whole Food shelves, y’all)
“She’s so humble,” Foster told the Houston Chronicle. “You always have to be open and willing to learn, and she is. I’m learning from her, too. It’s a cycle. You have to keep an open mind and continue to grow.”
“Of course, any time you invest in anything you look at if it’s going to be profitable,” Foster said. “We look for companies that match our main focus of developing a good product, but are also good people and do it for the right reasons. It’s more than about money to us. We believe that investing in small black businesses is extremely important.
The beverage tween and Austin native, met Arian Foster and Glover Quin at “Been Brilliant Entrepreneur Day” at Holthouse Boys & Girls Club in Houston Thursday.
“It’s awesome that I get to work with and around these two,” Ulmer said while sitting next to Foster and Quin, according to the Houston Chronicle. “They’re very smart. I learned a lot from them in the past couple of hours. I’m very happy that I’m able to work with them and they invested in my company and them helping us and mentoring us and believing in our mission. I think we have a better chance of achieving our goals. That keeps me pumped and excited every day.”
Mikaila, who also charmed $60,000 out of those temperamental sharks on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” using her great-grandmother’s recipe of flaxseed sweetened with honey.
What really makes Mikaila our queen bee is her donating a portion of profits to preserve honey bee colonies.