About this episode

Caitlin Bricker interviews Maria Velasquez about her journey in bringing the Peruvian drink chicha morada to the US market.

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Caitlin Bricker sits down with Maria Velasquez, founder of Purple Drop — a Peruvian super drink made from purple corn grown high in the Andes. Maria is bringing chicha morada, a staple in every Peruvian household, to the US market for the first time as a better-for-you RTD. And she is doing it with her mother-in-law's recipe, organic agave, and zero compromise on the integrity of the original. Caitlin opens with a passage from her personal library on ancient fermentation that captures just how deep the history of chicha actually goes. Maria meets that with her own origin story: a Moroccan woman who married into a Peruvian family, fell in love with the culture and the cuisine, and had a lightbulb moment in Lima over Christmas that turned into a brand. She also explains why the one RTD version already on the market — packed with sugar, additives, and coloring — was exactly what she did not want to make. From there the conversation covers the functional story behind purple corn (studies show it has 10 times more antioxidants than blackberries), the co-packer journey that eventually landed at a brewery, a rebrand that brought llamas…

People in this episode

Host: Caitlin Bricker

Guest: Maria Velasquez

Topics covered

• entrepreneurship
• beverages
• Peruvian culture
• food and drink
• business strategy

Keywords

• chicha morada
• purple corn
• Peruvian drink
• RTD
• entrepreneurship
• Maria Velasquez
• Caitlin Bricker
• business strategy
• food service

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Purple Drop, B2B cybersecurity

Products: chicha morada, purple corn, RTD

Places: Peru, Andes, NYC

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