VELVA, N.D. — About 10 years ago, Tate Howe had a notion. It was just an inkling, really, for a candy with caffeine. But he was young and busy, and that glimmer of an idea fell by the wayside as he pursued his career.
By 2017, he was working for a grocery company in his hometown of Bemidji, Minnesota, when his boss tossed him a bag of pretzels and told him they were going to meet the owner of a little North Dakota-based company in the small town of Velva to see how they could help market her product. By the time his boss finished telling him about Dot’s Pretzels, Howe had eaten the entire bag.
“So, we drive over to Velva and this nice lady meets us at the plant and walks us through and shows us the place. We talked for quite a while and then she says to me, ‘I'd like you to come sell pretzels for me,' and I thought that was kind of weird,” Howe said, smiling. “But then we had some other meetings, and within a year I found myself working for Dot.”
Howe became Dorothy "Dot" Henke's first sales and marketing hire in 2018. And the rest, as they say, is history. Dot’s Pretzels' meteoric rise in popularity prompted the Hershey Company to buy Dot's in 2021.
By then, Howe had left Dot’s, believing he’d accomplished his goal of getting the product the exposure and attention it deserved. He received job offers at several big companies, "but nothing ever felt right,” he said.
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The caffeinated candy kept creeping back into his head until he couldn’t ignore it any longer, and Howe decided it was as good a time as any to try to turn the vision into something real.
“I used the things I learned at Dot’s — metrics about what’s important for an item and for retailers and for consumer behavior. Everything pointed to this being a good item to produce: It's light and easy to ship, you can manufacture a lot of it in a small space, it’s functional," he said. "I sifted through lots and lots of data and I tried to beat it up pretty hard, because there's that fear inside that said if I can just find a reason not to do this, maybe then I can just get it out of my mind.
"But there was just not one negative thing to it."
The idea was for a caffeinated candy that could serve as an alternative or secondary delivery method for the coffee crowd. A chewy treat with a kick.
Howe rented manufacturing space in Minneapolis to start research and development on the product. He cooked batches, tweaked the recipe, and even connected with a man who knew something about confectionery products and whose mentor was the man who started Jelly Belly jelly beans.
Finally, after about a year of working on the product, Howe thought it was ready to share with his old boss.
“We've always been really close," Howe said. "Dot and Randy, her husband, are just the most beautiful people. You read a lot about them in papers and magazines, and the articles just don't do it justice, how they really are. So I told her I’d been working on this thing for a while, and she said 'Well, send me some.'"
Her reply came quickly.
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“These are gross,” Henke said.
But Howe was undeterred.
“She's definitely one of the most honest and forthcoming people, and she's made me better the whole time I’ve known her," he said. "I went back to the drawing board. And next thing you know, it's starting to come to fruition."
A few iterations later, Howe had a product his test audience fell for — even Henke, who took to hiding her stash from her husband, who was also quite fond of the chews.
The product is called Get Coffee’d. It has half a cup of coffee, or an espresso shot’s worth, of caffeine in it — 48 milligrams. It is infused with cold brew coffee and has a chocolaty, mocha flavor. One piece has 15 calories. It also has a green tea extract shown to prevent the “jitters” that some people feel from caffeine. Ten chews are wrapped separately inside a container that looks like a to-go cup from a coffee shop.
But while Howe was busy cooking up his caffeinated concoction, Henke's heart was breaking. For all of the pomp and celebration that happened when Hershey decided to purchase her pretzel company, the worst possible outcome eventually came with it: Hershey announced last summer that it would shutter the Velva factory.
At its height, Dot’s employed around 100 people working three shifts in that plant. Many were Velva locals, and Dot knew the closure would be a massive blow to the town she loved.
Henke told The Forum she was disappointed when Hershey made the announcement, but as heartbroken as she was, she was not about to let that be the end of the story. She still owned the plant. She said when she saw the building empty, she immediately started thinking about something new going into it.
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“It was designed for manufacturing, and that’s what I looked for to fill those walls with that excitement again,” she said.
It turned out she didn’t need to look very hard.
When Howe heard Hershey was closing the factory, he wasn’t surprised. But he also wasn’t too sad, because he’d finally perfected his product. He just needed a place to produce it.
For Henke, partnering with Howe to invest in Get Coffee’d and having it be the product to revive the plant was an easy decision. She said she loved everything about it.
“Taste, texture, convenience — it fills a void,” she said.
Humming again
Henke and Howe are the picture of mutual admiration.
“Tate is very driven, well-mannered, business-minded,” Henke said.
The Velva plant is humming again — albeit with new equipment and churning out a new product.
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Howe hired back the old plant manager, who lives a block away from the factory, first. Another five former Dot’s employees have come back on board in recent weeks. He hopes to bring another 20 workers on in the coming months.
“That part feels really good — to be able to come back,” Howe said. “The team members are amazing people, and they've done it before and they know how Dot and I work. So, it's just a nice fit for everyone.”
Distribution is starting to ramp up. Howe said Get Coffee’d will start popping up in convenience, grocery and hardware stores in the coming weeks.
“We'll just start in North Dakota,” he said. “But I have Montana, South Dakota, Kansas ready, and part of Minnesota, too. We’re just making sure we get everybody trained and we're doing it correctly, that we don't get too excited or ahead of ourselves."
They plan to set up online sales with a fulfillment center through another company in Fargo, he said.
Howe said he is in late-stage discussions with several potential stakeholders about joining Henke in investing in Get Coffee’d. Pride of Dakota has embraced the product and is helping with its distribution and marketing.
And as spring arrives in Velva, the signs of new life at the plant in this factory town are a welcome sight.
“We're going to try to do what we can to grow this company and add a bunch of employees and support and reinvigorate the community as much as one business can,” Howe said.
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