A new caffeine product is looking to follow in the footsteps of Five Hour Energy drinks. But instead of selling a caffeine infused drink, this start-up has created a vapourising inhaler for caffeine.
The company - Eagle Energy Vapor - was founded less than a year ago by Elliot Mashford who continues to act as its president. He is a serial entrepreneur that got interested in caffeine through inhalation by trying to find out why combination caffeine and nicotine e-liquids used in electronic cigarettes were generally unsatisfactory.
Having now created a product and brand, he wants to follow in the footsteps of Five Hour Energy drinks. Mashford is targeting the convenience store sector in the hopes of getting Eagle Energy on display as an impulse purchase for people looking for a quick pick-me-up.
“The key is to get the product on display at registers,” he says. “That’s first and everything else follows. It’s no good if the product can’t be seen. We’re not at the point where someone would walk into a store and request one, it’s still an impulse buy.”
Once it is established, the company can look at consolidating its position - similar to what Five Hour Energy did, Mashford says. For example, the company is thinking about expanding the range of flavours (currently it is only available in the typical ‘energy drink’ flavour) and increasing international distribution - although significant regulatory hurdles must be crossed in many jurisdictions for that to happen.
Although the company wants to distance itself from e-cigarettes - as it is not a nicotine-containing product - that is how most regulatory bodies choose to view it at the moment, Mashford says. He has a legal team working on convincing regulators to treat it differently but it is not easy to convince authorities that the product is simply a new method for caffeine delivery containing safe ingredients. There is also a round of clinical studies underway to better demonstrate the product’s safety, he adds.
Nonetheless it is a hard road ahead and there is no guarantee that greater publicity won’t bring knock-backs as politicians expand policies against the ‘re-normalisation’ of tobacco use to include more products that mimic the act of smoking and as regulators and consumers continue to worry about the impact of components in vapour on long-term health.
Science supports the relative safety of majority of the chemicals found in both caffeine and nicotine-containing e-liquids for inhalation by adults. Although long-term studies are still underway, the majority of the scientific community agrees that it is unlikely vapour will cause consumer harm (in comparison to smoking, there is still debate over whether it is as completely harmless as breathing air with normal levels of pollutants and particles).
However, there is much more unknown about the impact of many of the flavours added to e-liquids when inhaled. Mashford says that the flavours used in Eagle Energy products are safe as they meet Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States (FEMA)standards. But FEMA has explicitly said that its approval for flavours is only for ingestion and that its expert panel does not consider other methods of consumption.
“The Expert Panel does not evaluate flavor ingredients for use in tobacco products and e-cigarettes or other products that are not human food, or products that result in exposures other than by ingestion,” the organisation says. “In this context, it is important to note that the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) provision in Section 201(s) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) applies only to food as defined in Section 201(f) of the Act.”
There are a range of hurdles - both social and regulatory that Eagle Energy Vapor is likely to face - perhaps more than Five Hour Energy did. But the start-up has had some success following the Five Hour model already. Its products can be found across ten U.S. states as well as in Canada. It will soon be sold in 300 stores in New York - its biggest distribution deal to date. If it can keep making deals like this - and successfully deal with any issues that arise with greater scrutiny - the company may be onto something new. Just like Five Hour Energy was.
This article forms the second part of a two-part series. For the first part, click here.
