Exploring Life & Business with Wesley The Keeper of Akron Honey

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wesley The Keeper.

Hi Wesley, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In an effort to improve our neighborhood, my family and I bought a vacant city lot and transformed it into an apiary (bee yard). After teaching myself how to keep honeybees, I was quickly introduced to the mind-blowing flavors that the urban landscape brought to honey. It was unreal how different it tasted from any honey I’ve ever tried before. Additionally, I figured out how to enhance the flavor by practicing a high-quality driven process which involved us not straining, filtering, or mixing one batch with any other batches. On an effort to discover more flavor, I bought a second vacant lot on the other side of the city. Our hypothesis was this: if the flavor of the honey was driven by the unique flora imprint of the immediate neighborhood, what kind of flavor would a different neighborhood reveal? It worked! Upon starting our second location, we found intense flavor, especially during fall.

By this time, we had landed ourselves on the popular reality tv show ‘Cleveland Hustles’, produced by Lebron James. By the end of the show, we decided to take a pivot into personal care which didn’t last for too long. Because of that pivot, we realized how truly food centric we were. So we just decided to run wild with it and began to create new and exciting flavors like ‘Bourbon Barrel Honey’ and ‘Habanero Hot Honey’. And here we remain; on a constant forage for flavor and how our users can use it with anything.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No. Nothing worth pursuing will be smooth. Although we started in 2013, I was working full time in Corporate America up until a few months ago when I jumped into Akron Honey as a full-time brand. During the last seven years, I was balancing the task of growing the brand as a side hustle, the corporate gig, being a sometimes touring musician, and raising a young family (we now have five kids). So balancing was always difficult to do. Also, raising enough capital is a common challenge in the small business world. But we haven’t had that problem just yet. The biggest challenge I’ve experienced is developing a system of organization that allows things to run as smoothly as possible. I didn’t grow up with organization, so it took the guidance of my wife to make me see what I needed to do.

Being a black beekeeper is interesting. Most of the time you’re celebrated. But then there is the obvious and ever occurring skepticism of some white people who don’t believe that you actually keep bees and or harvest your own honey. You’ll experience that at markets or accidentally hear about what someone said. Also, another unique part about being black and successful with a side hustle while working in the corporate world is that you could be surrounded by white people who are waiting for a reason to criminalize your success, as they blame anything that doesn’t go right at work on your activities outside of work. That was extremely challenging and was a driving force in my decision to take on Akron Honey full time.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Wow. Well, we make honey with such mind-blowing flavor that you can use it with anything. I guess any honey company can say that. But it’s our approach that truly sets us apart. Flavor is in our DNA. We don’t just try to bolt on the idea of flavor, but rather think to ourselves “how much will our user’s mind will be blown when they try this with that?” We go from Raw to Wow! It’s not about a jar of honey, but about the experience. For us, it’s about the moment you taste our stuff with your favorite foods and realize how amazing it actually was. But then there’s the part where we want to guide our users to get the absolute most value from our honey by sharing the best, simple and most delicious honey ideas with them. That part we are working on right now. I’m mostly proud of how we have built such a solid brand. Honesty, integrity, community-minded, ecocentric, flavor centric, socially responsible. We’ve earned this as a reputation.

Lastly, it’s not that we sell honey that is cool. It’s ‘how’ we honey. Due to our approach (urban apiaries, how to harvest, and how to create flavor), we are considered a bit different and disruptive to the traditional idea of being a honey brand. We like to push the boundaries. For instance, we collaborated with a whiskey company to develop our Bourbon Barrel Honey. That’s what I was talking about when I mentioned that we go from Raw to Wow. The way we infuse the honey with that variety is so different that our local health department couldn’t give us easy guidance with a nutritional label and statement of ingredients. But instead of throwing in the towel, we leaned in to make it happen. And although it’s causing delays to our grocery launch, we know it will be worth because of how freaking awesome it tastes with pretty much anything you’re already eating. Our Products We currently have two lines of products: Urban Honey & Flavored Varieties Long term we are positioning ourselves to be able to make some of the most amazing sauces by using our existing technology with honey.

What do you like and dislike about the city?
I like how low the barriers to entry are. Everyone knows everyone. That makes it easier to get right into it or overcome certain challenges that would normally be difficult. What I like least about our city is that the food scene here is small as compared to other larger cities.

Pricing:

• Sweet Three $19.99: Features a small sample sizes
• Larger Jars Coming Soon.. $14.99

Contact Info:

• Email: keeper@akronhoney.com
• Website: akronhoney.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akronhoney/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Akronhoney
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AkronHoney
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/akron-honey-akron