Jell-O shots are fun and delicious, but they have a serious disadvantage: they’re quick and easy to prepare, but require hours of lead time and a lot of fridge space while they congeal. This limits the potential for spontaneous boozing at your house party, but one entrepreneur realized that it also affects bar profits. His solution is a machine that cranks out a tray of Jell-O shots in five minutes.
This is an unfortunate case of a genericized trademark, where the makers of Jell-O may not want us referring to their product specifically, but at the same time, no one says “small servings of flavored gelatin interspersed with alcohol.” They’re just Jell-O shots.

It took the company, headed by a serial entrepreneur and a former bar owner, three years and $3 million to develop the machine. Don’t go planning your parties just yet: it takes ten minutes to produce twenty shots, but won’t be on the market until next spring.

Its name? The Jevo. Its business model comes from part of the beverage industry that isn’t a bar: the Keurig machine has been a hit, even as the company actually makes money on producing or licensing the pods that its machines use. Selling the machines isn’t the point, but selling the pods is. It will be the same with the proprietary gelatin mix that the Jevo uses.

It might not be called Jevo by the time it hits the market. A spokesperson for Kraft Heinz, the owner of the Jell-O brand, says that the name infringes on their long-standing Jell-O trademark, simply taking the two letter Ls and tilting them at angles.

Applications for a near-instant gelatin dispenser aren’t all recreational, either: the founder has visions of Jevo machines cranking out medicine-laced gelatin cubes in hospitals and assisted living centers. Think of the success of gummy vitamins!

This Man Spent $3 Million to Make Instant Jello Shots [Bloomberg]

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