June 11, 2021

By Meghan Holland, for SiouxFalls.Business

With full-time jobs, two kids and two dogs, Cory and Nikki Johnsen needed energy.

They found it in energy drinks — Cory would drink two or three every day — and it led to a business.

“We saw a problem,” Cory said. “The goal is that if you see a problem, how can you solve it?”

The problem they saw, he said, was that most energy drinks are not nutritious, have added dyes, are full of sugar and caffeine, and are overall not healthy products.

Constantly on the go with work and their kids, the Johnsens decided to ditch the energy drinks they consumed regularly and create their own a year ago. It led to Blitz Energy.

“We wanted a clean, healthy, longer-lasting energy drink, and that’s what Blitz is,” Cory said.

With neither of them being trained as nutritionists or dietitians, they said they relied heavily on the people they hired to help create the formula.

“It was a lot of going back and forth of figuring out what we actually wanted in the product,” Nikki said. Testing the flavors and figuring out what they liked was a tedious process, she said.

“The production (time) for the actual product to come is up to 12 weeks,” Nikki said.

Cory said they wanted a few specific ingredients to be in the drink. This includes 200 milligrams of caffeine and rhodiola, which is an herb that can improve exercise performance and prolong energy levels. He said they also wanted to incorporate all nine essential amino acids and vitamins B3, B6 and B12.

He said he wanted the drink to be low in calories and not have added sugar or dyes.

“Obviously in a perfect world, if you can get your energy from natural whole foods, that’s going to be a better option for you,” Cory said. “But not everyone has the time for that, so we wanted to put something out that’s just the healthy version of an energy drink, and that’s what Blitz is.”

It was important to them that consumers did not feel a crash after drinking Blitz, they said.

Nikki said they have received a lot of feedback from people who have tried their product.

“They feel great after they take it; they don’t get the jitters,” she said. “Some energy drinks will give you an itchy feeling, and ours does not do that.”

She said hearing about people who like their product encourages them to do more and do better for the company.

Blitz Energy offers one flavor: tropical punch. The Johnsens have ordered the next flavor and will announce it once everything is finalized.

Nikki runs the Blitz Energy website and social media accounts, which include Instagram and Facebook. She said she tries to reply quickly to messages, especially because younger generations “like to have almost immediate responses back to them.”

This is very time-consuming, and the Johnsens work on their business when they are not working on things for their full-time careers.

Nikki said one of the biggest challenges of running their small business is “time management and making sure nothing falls through the cracks.”

The Johnsens have explored the idea of adding more products to Blitz Energy, but for now, they said they want to focus on the quality of their product.

“I think that if we want to flourish and do really well, we have to figure out how to be really good at one product and then get the trust of all of our customers, build our brand, and then from there, we might produce something else,” Nikki said.

Blitz Energy also sells its products at various fitness and yoga studio locations, including Koko Fit Club, Amy Miller Training, Orthopedic Institute Performance and four Fareway locations.

“The networking has been awesome,” Cory said. “There are people who love it, and they want to tell their friends about it. They’re telling them just because they love it, not because they’re getting paid or they’re getting any benefit from it, other than the benefits that an energy drink will give you.”