Word: baron
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...Baron eventually came up with the more palatable Sipahh. Since launching them in late 2005, he's sold more than 500 million of the plastic straws, which are filled with flavor beads that dissolve when milk is sucked - or sipped - through them. End to end, he boasts, the straws would go twice around the world. But it's not far enough. Baron believes he can more than double his sales by putting beads of bacteria inside the straws...
...Breakfasting on bacteria - call it the billion-bug diet, because that's how many the company says will be in each straw - might seem like a disgusting idea. But Baron's Sydney-based company, Unistraw, says there's a lucrative and growing global market for probiotic bacteria (the name comes from the Greek words "for" and "life"). These so-called "good" bugs live in the human gut; the claimed benefits of boosting their numbers include better digestion and a stronger immune system, the easing of allergies, stronger nails and shinier hair...
...Baron, an industrial designer whose other products include ant-free dog bowls and shop shelving systems, says he always saw the straw as a system for delivering more than flavor. He started tinkering with the idea in 1996, after wondering why flavored milk cost so much more than the plain variety. He tried using a fat plastic straw from McDonald's and a filter made from one of his daughter's school stockings. That didn't work. He soon designed a new type of conical filter that wouldn't clog, and figured out how to create flavor beads by making...
...Dragging in all the friends he could find, Baron managed just in time to fill the order by hand. He lost money, but market research showed that the straws boosted Denny's milk sales by more than 50 per cent. "It meant the product had a good chance internationally," Baron says...
...Taste of Success The flavored-milk straws hit Australian shelves in late 2005 and are now sold in 69 countries; Russia and China will soon join the list. Baron is also looking at flavor straws for water and fruit juice. Ingredients have been trialed that make soda water taste like Coca-Cola, and an Indian company called recently to ask if it was possible to add spicy masala flavor to the beads for mixing with orange juice. "It tasted great," Baron says of the sample batch...