Day: April 20, 2023

Image commercially licensed from Unsplash

Entrepreneur Matthew Lee agrees with Warren Buffett when it comes to candy. 

“I don’t know what oil or wheat or soybeans or cocoa or anything like that’s going to be selling for next week or next month or next year,” Buffett was quoted as saying in Markets Insider. “I do know people are going to be chewing Wrigley gum and eating Mars bars.”

Matthew also likes the way Elon Musk thinks when it comes to candy. The man who launched Tesla and SpaceX, and bought Twitter, toyed with the idea of starting a candy company. 

And while Musk tried a range of options, he was quoted in that same Markets Insider article saying, “I couldn’t figure out a candy that was just way better than other candy.” 

Like Buffett, Matthew believes in the enduring power of brands and the manner in which consumers hang on to the nostalgia associated with their favorite sweets. Both men, in fact, own candy companies. Matthew not long ago launched Enjovo, while See’s Candies is owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.

But Matthew is also looking to disrupt the candy market that Buffett is banking on—the same one that Musk could not disrupt. While Musk struck out, Matthew believes he has a solution to the billionaire’s dilemma. 

That solution, Matthew believes, is Enjovo, the startup he launched in Jan. 2023 to create a new global candy culture. Enjovo revolves around a patented gum and candy dispenser that allocates, in a hands-free manner, Matthew’s patented gum, mints, chocolate beans, vitamin candy and energy candy.

Matthew with Enjovo is looking to harness the power of branding that brought the sweets industry to Buffett’s attention. And Matthew believes Enjovo has got just what it takes to catch Musk’s attention as far as discovering a new kind of candy. 

Regardless of what the two billionaires think, Matthew has already generated a great deal of momentum. 

He has caught the attention of some of the candy and snack industry’s biggest players—including Mars Wrigley, Mondelez and Perfetti Van Melle. 

But his sights are set on PEZ. And all of this can be traced back to Matthew’s love of basketball. 

While shooting hoops in the not-so-distant past, Matthew craved a stick of chewing gum. But he didn’t want to pop one in his mouth with hands that were dirty and sweaty from handling a basketball.

That’s what got Matthew thinking about the legendary PEZ dispenser. 

Unveiled in 1927, the candy whose name was taken from the German word for peppermint—”Pfefferminz”—grew to iconic status thanks to the legendary dispenser with a three-dimensional character head and “feet.” PEZ collecting grew so popular that collector conventions were ultimately held, beginning in 1991. 

But Matthew’s interest in the PEZ dispenser following that basketball game was more conceptual than literal. He needed a hands-free dispenser, a threshold that PEZ did not meet. So Matthew took it upon himself to improve upon the PEZ legacy. 

He asked an engineer friend to build a prototype of a PEZ-like dispenser, launched Enjovo and now holds patents that cover 2B people in the U.S., European Union, Canada, Japan and South Korea. Patent applications are pending in Brazil and India.

Click here to watch a video of the Enjovo candy dispenser, which brings innovation to an industry that has seen little change in decades. 

Enjovo’s non-PEZ, PEZ-like dispenser uses a push slider to streamline what can be a cumbersome and inconvenient process of accessing candy from the packaging. And it encourages good hygiene while supporting sustainable efforts through bundling, reduced packaging and reduced waste. 

Additional innovation includes a range of dispensers that targets a range of demographics, including young children; teens and tweens; young adults ages 18-25; and adults age 25 and older. 

All of this plays into Enjovo’s pitch for investment. 

As Enjovo looks to break into the $4B U.S. gum market; $36B global gum market; and $240B global confectionery market, the startup is raising a seed round. At the same time, data supporting the Enjovo effort is encouraging—a product demo video reached 4.2M people on the company’s Facebook page; and generated 2M+ views, 19K likes and a 14% CTR among teens.

Perhaps the billionaire Elon Musk would want to get in while the getting is good and add the Enjovo dispenser and candy roster to the cockpit of a SpaceX ship. Or place each in the glove compartment of every Tesla he sells?

Or maybe the billionaire Warren Buffett should stand up and take note of an emerging brand of candy that could strengthen his foothold in the nostalgic sweets sector? 

With Enjovo—the dispenser and the candies—there are a billion possibilities. 

Visit enjovo.com to learn more.