Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Miller.
Hi Megan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My husband/business partner and I met while we were both bartending at a distillery in New Orleans. We got started making flavored simple syrups for the drinks there. We shared them around to friends and family, and eventually people started asking to buy bottles to take home for their own drinks. We make all our syrups with fresh fruit, herbs and raw cane sugar, without the use of any preservatives or natural flavoring, which was impossible to find on the market at that time. We realized if we could create the same product at scale, we might have something people would be really excited about. We grew slowly, from having a booth at a farmer’s market, to selling in a few local stores, to now becoming a nationally distributed company. In that time we moved from Louisiana to Virginia, but the product has stayed the same.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely not! Our biggest challenge has always been finding a reliable place to produce. We started out at a local non-profit cannery, working alongside their staff to bottle the syrup once a month. When COVID hit, the cannery shut down and we had to scramble to find a new place to produce. We found Hatch Kitchen in Richmond, a small food business incubator, and worked out of there for over three years, storing and shipping our product out of various storage units once we outgrew our guest bedroom. We searched for years to find a space in the city that we could convert into our own production facility, and finally found a great spot in Shockoe Bottom at the end of 2023. It took more than six months to outfit it for what we needed, but we finally moved in in July of 2024. It was a long journey but having our own space has been so helpful!
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Crescent Simples is a line of fresh fruit and herb, raw sugar simple syrups made without the use of preservatives, additives, or natural flavoring. They’re great for cocktails and mocktails, but also for coffee, tea, soda, lemonade, really any drink you want to add flavor to! I am most proud of our independent brand growth. Over the past six and a half years, we have gone from a farmer’s market booth to being in over 350 retail accounts across the United States, plus used in drinks in dozens of restaurants, coffee shops, and distilleries. We operate out of our own facility and still own our production, so we can guarantee our syrups are made with the best, freshest ingredients every time. We’ve done all of this entirely self-funding. It’s been such a fulfilling ride and I can’t wait to see where we are in the next five years.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
We released our newest flavor, Cranberry Ginger, last fall. Each batch contains 15 lbs of hand-peeled ginger and over 10 lbs of fresh cranberries. The only other ingredients it uses are raw organic cane sugar and water. Using just the necessary fresh ingredients makes for a clear, delicious taste you can feel good about adding to any drink.
Pricing:
- $11-30
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.crescentsimples.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crescentsimples/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crescentsimples/
