Jetton is undaunted. “If they have an issue with us they can call or send us a letter,” he says.
Jetton says 2,500 bars, restaurants, casinos, and cruise ships are considering a Jevo machine. He's also working with spirits giant Beam Suntory Inc. on promotions. Hennessey’s Tavern Inc., a company with 17 restaurants in California and Nevada, is signed up to be one of Jetton’s first customers. Terry Hermeling, owner of Yur’s Bar & Grill in Portland, is in line, too. “We sell a lot [of Jello shots], but we have to make them by hand,” he says. “I think he’s onto something. I’m a beer drinker, but the kids like them.”
Eric Bowler, owner of two Portland bars, says he’d like to add Jello shots to his menu. He hasn’t yet, though, because he’d need extra hands as well as another refrigerator. Also: “I hear they disappear,” he says; employees see them in the fridge and say, ‘Oh, Jello shots,’ and take one.
Jetton got interested in Jello shots after Williams, an old friend, came to him with the idea for a machine that would crank them out. Williams owned a Portland club called Bettie Ford—a dark reference to the California rehab clinic. There, and at other bars he owned, Williams sold thousands of Jello shots, he says. Making the things was a pain, though.
Jetton pondered the idea. A college dropout and former U.S. Marine, he made his first fortune in the late 1990s by building the largest network of independent ATMs in the U.S., with 9,000 high-fee machines in bars, restaurants, and casinos. In 2000, he sold it to E*Trade Financial for $100 million. Then he developed a system that speeds payment at the end of charity auctions, and sold that, too, five years ago.
He has big dreams for the Jevo machine. After rolling out in bars, Jetton wants to put them in every hospital and assisted-living center in the world. Gelatin is just as good for delivering medicine to hospital patients as it is for getting Ketel One vodka down people’s throats on Friday nights, he says. And demand could be huge because the sick and elderly often have trouble swallowing pills, but they love their Jello.
In January, Jetton completed a pilot project with U.S. Renal Care, providing gelatin cups packed with protein to dialysis patients. They tested the system for ease of use and taste, which is a challenge because protein supplements can taste terrible. A big pharmaceutical company is interested, too. Jetton says he can’t disclose the name yet.
“They have a really good texture,” says Freya Estreller of Ludlows Cocktail Co.
Food industry analyst Phil Lempert says he’s skeptical of the Jevo. “I’m intrigued by the idea,” he says. “But to deliver medicine and to deliver hipster drinks, Jello might be the wrong carrier.” Gelatin is “artificial everything,” he says; hipsters and sick people alike might be put off by that.
And replicating Keurig is tough. SodaStream International, an Israel-based company that makes home soda makers, fizzed for a while. Then the stock faltered in late 2013 when sales fell short of too-rosy forecasts. Impending competition has weighed on the shares, too. This fall, Keurig is rolling out a competing drink maker, called “Keurig Kold.”