Local Energy Drink Alternative “Unbeetable” Spreads to Multiple States

By Taylor Bush | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Many look to caffeine and popular sports drinks for energy throughout their day, but a local St. Augustine company is gaining popularity with a healthy alternative.

A display for Unbeetable in a St. Augustine 7-11

Unbeetable LLC, a St. Augustine-based company is now spreading into large corporate stores. Unbeetable is an all-natural, caffeine free, sports performance drink made with beetroot juice. The product is less than two years old and has recently made it into four 7-Eleven stores in the St. Augustine area and 25 throughout Florida.

Craig Van Horn, a St. Augustine local, is the CEO of Unbeetable. Van Horn and the Unbeetable team aim to change peoples’ minds about how to attain energy. This product is significant because instead of using caffeine and chemicals it uses juiced beets. Beetroot juice has been clinically proven to increase muscle efficiency, lower blood pressure, and increase regional cerebral blood flow.

Van Horn teamed up with Wake Forest University who did studies on dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. They discovered that beetroot has high concentrations of naturally occurring ingredients such as antioxidants and nitrate. Nitrate is converted in our mouths to dietary nitrite and when digesting, works as a vasodilator, spreading oxygen and blood flow throughout the body and brain.

“There have been several very high-profile studies showing that drinking beet juice can lower blood pressure, but we wanted to show that drinking beet juice also increases perfusion, or blood flow, to the brain,” said Daniel Kim-Shapiro, director of Wake Forest University’s Translational Science Center in a journal released by Wake Forest University titled, “Acute effect of a high nitrate diet on brain perfusion in older adults.”

Van Horn and the Unbeetable team have been going to various events and stores to spread the word. They are now in various stores in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Maryland.

“I am happy with our one slot of Unbeetable at 7-Eleven, even though Red Bull has an entire cooler. We are still changing the way people think of performance and energy drinks,” Van Horn said.

The Unbeetable team is doing demos weekly at the 7-Eleven stores to show that it is worthy to be sold nationally at all the 7-Eleven stores. The team gives free samples and educates customers on the benefits of beetroot juice.

“ I have noticed repeat customers coming into 7-Eleven to buy Unbeetable now, it’s through blood flow and oxygen instead of chemicals and caffeine, and people are starting to realize that now.” Eva Lowry, Director of Sales and Marketing, said.