What’s new: Quick Sip and Patch

Trinity entrepreneurs come from many fields, disciplines, and worldviews. But in a crisis, they all have one thing in common: vision.

Technology can change, businesses can pivot, and products can evolve. But having a strong vision keeps entrepreneurs focused on their core values. For Trinity-founded startups Quick Sip Coffee and Patch Technologies, sticking to an essential set of beliefs has provided a road map for navigating tough times in 2020.

Jacob Hurrell-Zitelman '20 and Selena Davila '21 are bringing Quick Sip Coffee to you.

A BREWING COMMUNITY

When Quick Sip Coffee founder Jacob Hurrell-Zitelman ’19 graduated this past December, he thought transitioning from student to CEO would be hard enough. Add in a global pandemic, and he had another challenge entirely. His business would go on to lose nearly 80 percent of its revenue, including an entire month with none at all. 

But Hurrell-Zitelman and the Quick Sip team persevered and emerged stronger than ever: Quick Sip is now offered on Central Market shelves, a gateway into even more coffee communities and a vital step towards future growth.

“It’s a blessing, for sure,” Hurrell-Zitelman says. “We can go into a grocery store with a strong community, strong values, and a better grasp of who we are, but now we also just feel more legit.”

Quick Sip began at Trinity as an on-campus, specialty coffee startup and caught a major boost through Trinity’s Stumberg Venture Competition in 2018—taking home a $25,000 grand prize and receiving valuable mentorship, coaching, and industry connections through Trinity’s entrepreneurship program in the process.

After graduating, Hurrell-Zitelman says he’s now learned a new, tough lesson: Entrepreneurial success doesn’t just come from a solid business plan; it comes from building community.

“At Quick Sip, we were previously so focused on our business model and our efficiency that we neglected the fact that we had to build a community around our brand,” Hurrell-Zitelman explains. “It’s such a formulaic way to look at entrepreneurship, that you identify a target customer, develop a product they need, and then just assume it’s going to sell if it’s in the right outlets.”

“You need to have your mission statement over your bed,” he continues. “You need to be thinking about it everyday. Our company was not just about creating great coffee. It was about making great coffee accessible to people.”

So, to get Quick Sip back to its roots, the company made a few changes. In addition to pushing “high quality” in their branding, they also started promoting accessibility: Quick Sip coffee is bottled, and it’s now significantly cheaper.

“You can’t spread the love by keeping your price high,” Hurrell-Zitelman says. 

And the next step was finding a grocery store partner—a long-term dream of the Quick Sip team since they first started selling coffee out of their backpacks on Trinity’s campus. This was a big risk for the company’s margins, but they ended up finding a great partner with Central Market. 

The move came at just the right time. Quick Sip had been in the red for two months and was considering a shutdown. But the gamble paid off, as Central Market reps took an interest in Quick Sip and decided to place the product on shelves in early June.

So while transitioning to real-world CEO has been tougher than expected, Hurrell-Zitelman also counts himself blessed to be able to control his own fate. 

“In March, with zero dollars rolling in, I was seeing my friends at large corporations, and thinking, ‘that seems so much more secure.’” he says. “But then you think about what happens when you don’t have any control over what’s going on. Entrepreneurship is nothing but risk, but that stress is worth it.”

PATCHING PEOPLE TOGETHER

Andrew Aertker ’20 and Gavin Buchanan ’20 have always had a simple goal: to help people stay healthy.

This year, their company, Patch Technologies Inc., has taken two big steps towards that goal. The team has moved their patented smart pill cap into case studies with specialty pharmacies, and they have also released PatchRx, a new app that helps individuals remember to take their medications and allows friends and family members to participate in their health.

It's a bit of a shift back to the team's original goals of countering America’s opioid crisis, but the move has also proven a good choice, given the arrival of COVID-19.

“Focusing our energy onto consumer-facing services, especially after everything started to go wild, still gives us a great opportunity to make a difference by keeping people healthy,” Aertker says. “That has always been our original goal.”

Patch, which stands for “Pill-Administering Technology for Compliance Healthcare,” also grew out of the Stumberg Competition. Like Quick Sip, Patch was a big prize winner in 2018, taking home $10,000 in seed money. The group also enjoyed support from the contest’s unique Summer Accelerator program, which provides additional funding and mentorship to all Stumberg finalists. Patch even made the most of Trinity’s on-campus amenities, such as free access to 3D printing. Ultimately, Aertker says the best part about Trinity’s entrepreneurship program was the fact that “Trinity gave us free rein to build Patch our way.”

Buchanan (left) and Hurrell-Zitelman were Stumberg co-champions in 2018.

Aertker and Buchanan have continued to evolve their company, and now are expecting big things from their new PatchRx app. This isn’t the only medication monitoring tech on the market now, but Buchanan points to the app’s unique “buddy feature” as a major differentiator.

“Once users opt-in, they can track each other and hold each other accountable in terms of sticking to the prescribed medication,” he explains. “Connecting people to loved ones improves the quality of their care, especially during a time when more and more people can’t physically go check on each other.”

“We hope this is also a way to de-stigmatize the process of taking medications,” Aertker adds. 

On the pharmacy side of the Patch business, the group has released their smart pill bottle cap for pharmacies to remotely monitor patients and report vital medication adherence data back to pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies in order to improve patient outcomes.

“Our Patch Cap is super cheap and gives you a single-digit price compared to other caps that reach double or triple digits,” Aertker says. 

“And it’s a nickel sized device,” Buchanan adds. “That makes it universal - small enough to fit any pill bottle offered. Doesn’t matter where you get your device, the Patch Cap can work with it.” 

Buchanan (center) in a Zoom meeting with Patch employees (clockwise from top) Christine Huynh, Michael Bruce '19, Nathan Dullea '18 and Saran Chockan.

Transitioning to these two priorities has put Patch ahead of the curve during an international pandemic, when other businesses have had to shutter operations or shut down entirely.

“It was comforting, when everything slowed and we had to shelter in place, that our operations weren’t going to be affected,” Aertker says. “Moving to a virtual workplace was easy for us. Even when life seemed to grind to a halt, we were putting in dozens of hours in addition every week to meet our timelines.”

This crisis was a perfect time, Aertker continues, for Patch to re-focus on its essential purpose as a company. 

“Gavin and I always go back to the core of our purpose, which is to help people be healthier. We can always go back to the central message, even during a pandemic, even during a crisis,” he says.”

And clients aren’t the only people PATCH has been helping. Simply by finding a way to safely stay open, the company has also kept its employees healthy.

“Losing your job is a tough place to be. We’ve provided jobs to Trinity students looking for internships that would have been canceled elsewhere,” Buchanan says. “We expect to still be in a great place after this is over.”