BEE-ON: Sports Drinks Suck, We Made One That Doesn't
- KLS
- May 1
- 6 min read
For the 179th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with BEE-ON and Co-Founder, Caleb Vander Esch. A sports drink built by label-readers for label-readers who want to feel and perform their best!
"Together Talks" feature # 179: BEE-ON presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Story of how it was created?
It all starts during my senior year of high school, playing high school football and lacrosse. I had always dreamed of playing Division I football and your senior season is an important time for recruiting.
I started cramping up. I was missing considerable game time, sometimes an entire half. I wasn't sure why. At first, we figured it was due to me hitting my growth spurt. I ended up playing Division I football at the University of South Dakota, the cramping continued, and I still wasn't sure what was going on. We started doing medical testing, all sorts of stuff, in and out of the hospital, trying to figure out what was going on with these cramps. I would always start cramping about an hour and a half into a session. Finally, I ended up doing a sweat test where they measured the dehydration levels in my sweat, and it turns out I just dehydrated really quickly.
I was dehydrating and depleting myself of electrolytes. My body was losing a lot of sodium and hitting the threshold for when cramping starts. Learning this, I dove into the world of hydration. I started looking at good replenishment options. Growing up, it was always the big ones, like Gatorade or Powerade. I learned that drinks like those are filled with colored dyes and artificial ingredients. I was, and still am a health-conscious individual and I knew that those things weren’t going to help me. On top of that, nothing had enough electrolytes to fully replenish what I needed.
I learned about what the actual composition of my sweat was: how many electrolytes I was losing and what types of electrolytes? That's when I started messing around with my own concoctions and mixing in electrolyte packs. I knew I needed a sugar source to help maintain that energy throughout the workout and to help the electrolytes to absorb better. We use honey at BEE-ON as the cleanest source of glycogen we could find to help aid in the replenishment and the absorption of those electrolytes. That came from when I started making my own concoctions like a scientist in the locker room, just mixing. It was fun. I'd have a jar of honey in my backpack at all times, going in and out of meetings, spilling all over the inside of my backpack. That's how it initially started, making my own concoctions in college and playing football. And it solved everything. I stopped cramping. My performance even increased because I could last the entirety of games and felt good and hydrated the whole time. We know that once hydration starts to wane and you start to get a little bit dehydrated, your performance decreases quickly.
And that's how BEE-ON was born.
Fast forward a few years, I met my business partner Tommy at a football camp in Arlington, TX in the fall of 2022 before the XFL season the following spring. We have since been roommates for the past two years in Dallas, our apartment is. He played football at SMU and Cornell and had inflammation issues that turned out to be caused by his diet. He started to be ingredient-conscious and his pain and inflammation disappeared. We joined forces and started working on bringing BEE-ON to the rest of the world about two years ago. We launched in February 2025 and it's been a wild ride so far.
What separates you from your competition?
We are a sports drink for label readers. We care about the ingredients. We have no color dyes. We don't have any artificial ingredients. We have no preservatives. We have eight ingredients: honey, organic lemon juice, organic monk fruit extract, filtered water, the electrolyte blend, and natural flavors. That's it. We eliminated all of the unnecessary junk. We want you to feel good while you're drinking this. We want to give you the optimal electrolyte ratio and the optimal amount of electrolytes to help you perform and feel your best on the court, field, the gym, and in life. We don't want you to cramp up, or your energy to wane off towards the end of the workout.
What have been the biggest challenges?
It's been challenge after challenge. We're bootstrapped and we're putting everything we have into this. We don't have a huge capital backing at the moment. We're self-distributing. That means we're packing up the boxes and shipping them out ourselves. We're delivering them to the retail stores and we have our hands on most every single step. It is a lot but we are learning a ton and I think that is going to be a major advantage for us.
How have you dealt with being the face of the company?
I had to drop the ego and be willing to put myself out there. It’s knowing I’m not going to always look or sound the best on camera. I've never been one who has loved being on camera. But I understand that we need to get all the content out there and we don't have a huge marketing budget. That forces us to get comfortable being on camera and putting it out there for the world to see.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
How I handle stress is the name of the game. There's always going to be stress, and no matter what, there's always going to be fires that come up. But how I react to it, how I handle it, makes all the difference in the world.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
I appreciate most the opportunity to believe in and bet on ourselves to execute our own ideas without having to go up a corporate ladder or try to persuade someone else to do it. We have our ideas, we have our team, we must trust each other. We trust each other. Being able to come up with an idea and quickly execute on it to see if it works and get instant feedback. It's immediate, which allows you to go back and learn. We get to see what we’re really made of.
What is your why?
I truly believe in the product. I believe in what we're doing. I know everyone in the sports or hydration world would benefit from our product. I just want people to try it. I want people to feel good. I want to give people the best product it could possibly be.
Favorite experience when customers try your product?
It's always fun to go out and do tastings. A lot of people think, given how clean it is, it won't taste good. They go into it with that mindset but then they try it and are surprised that it tastes great. Seeing people's reactions of truly enjoying it is a huge highlight for us.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
There are a lot of moments. Something that comes to mind immediately is that we just got into Berkley's Market in Dallas. It's a local retail store, coffee, groceries, food, a really cool spot. We just stocked them this weekend in their two locations in Dallas. It was kind of mind blowing seeing the bottle on the shelves in a place that we would go to on a regular basis. Having our product on real shelves and seeing people actually go in and buy it, I'd say that would be that moment.
Piece of Advice
The biggest thing through this entire process that Tommy and I believe is that even when we really don't know when or understand why things happen, it has ended up working out for the best down the road. We just trust that things are working out for us, that we’re pursuing what we're meant to pursue, what feels right to us. Because we're doing that, things are going to work out. We don't always see it immediately. But down the road, we realized it was extremely beneficial for us that it worked out that way.
You think it's going to be a straight line to get from point A to point B, but sometimes it is a bumpy path. Turns out, that bumpy and curved path is 10 times better than that straight path you envisioned. You can reach a spot that you didn't even think was fathomable before, because you had those bumps. If I had to give one piece of advice, I'd say just trusting that everything is working out. If you're putting in the work, the right things are going to happen.
Promo Code
Purchase from their website here and use the promo code below!
BUZZ10 -> 10% off
Community Callout
Our Parents
Berkely's Market
In Closing
KLS wants to thank BEE-ON and Co-Founder, Caleb Vander Esch, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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