It started in a small Maine town with a big idea: matcha that doesn’t feel intimidating. Andrew Schundler and his wife Chloe launched CHUH [pronounced like mah-CHUH] from their home in Georgetown, determined to make canned matcha lattes that are organic, flavorful, and easy to grab on the go. With Andrew’s background in film production and Chloe’s eye for design, they turned creativity and logistics into a brand that brings playful flavors like blueberry and spiced vanilla to shelves across New England.

Q&A as told to CEI by CHUH co-founder, Andrew Schundler, in his own words, with minor editing for context.

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Andrew Schundler, and I am the co-founder of CHUH, which is a canned matcha latte company based in Maine.

Can you share a little bit about your background?

My wife Chloe and I launched CHUH from our home in Georgetown, Maine. She grew up here, and I am originally from New Jersey. We first met at summer camp in Maine as kids, reconnected after college, and eventually married. Before starting CHUH, I spent seven years in Los Angeles producing films, documentaries, and commercials, where I managed clients, budgets, and the logistics behind complex shoots.

What unique skills do you bring to CHUH?

In terms of unique skills, as a producer in film, my biggest job was to be the connector between departments. Whether it’s connecting clients to the team, getting a project from point A to B, or being willing to just go out there to ask questions. I’ve done everything from searching and learning how to fly a helicopter over the Grand Canyon and obtaining permissions from the native tribes to shutting down part of the Pacific Coast Highway so we can drive a double-decker bus wrapped in Christmas paper. All those things involved a ton of very niche, random tasks to figure out, and it required making calls, asking questions, and connecting people.

I bring to the business my background and skill set in making connections, asking questions, and building relationships. While my wife is an interior designer by trade, she brings a lot of the design to CHUH, the marketing, and thinking through how we position ourselves as a brand voice-wise. I’ve been more focused on back-end logistics and moving forward by hitting the checklist, making the calls, and just keeping the momentum going.

Please describe CHUH in one sentence.

CHUH is a canned matcha latte company creating matcha lattes that avoid grassy aftertaste and blend in organic ingredients with fun flavors. Our goal is to make matcha easy so you can take it on the go.

Why did you start CHUH?

I, like most people in America, drank coffee and would have my morning cup. But if I didn’t have that one cup, I was hopeless. Splitting headache, basically in a coma. Even with that one cup, though, I’d have the jitters and the anxiety that comes with coffee. My wife and I both really wanted to find an alternative solution.

That’s when I found matcha, and I really fell in love with it. I loved the earthiness. I wasn’t a black-coffee person, nor was I going to be a purist matcha person. As I said previously, I was on the road for my film career, in airports, and traveling a ton. My options were either to make it at home or spend $7 to $9 at a café. It kind of dawned on me…why is there not an easy kind of middle-of-the-ground solution, something that you can grab while on the move? Where is that easy, quick solution to drink matcha? Paired with what we were seeing, and still see today, is a current movement towards super-high caffeine energy drinks.

Our mission is to make something that’s delicious, organic, and has fun flavors. There were a couple of other competitors in the marketplace that were just doing a totally pure matcha in a can, which, again, was never going to be me, or it tasted wrong. For us, launching with blueberry and spiced vanilla, it’s fun flavors out of the gate. It’s something even someone who doesn’t normally like matcha might still enjoy, and people who do like matcha hopefully enjoy it as well. Also, we wanted to push back on that caffeine craze.

For us, CHUH was that happy middle ground where you’re going to get a little bit of a boost, some antioxidants, and with matcha, the big thing is it has L-theanine, which basically allows caffeine to slowly release into your bloodstream, so you’re going to get steady energy versus that crash and spike. Matcha’s been around for literally centuries, but it started to gain momentum, I would say, in 2018 and 2019, continuing into the pandemic. Now, over the last two years, with the explosion that matcha has had, it definitely feels like it’s here to stay. Matcha will be something that sits on every cafe’s menu permanently.

How does your business represent you?

A big part of CHUH was wanting matcha not to be so serious. Matcha can get a vibe of being higher-brow and more elitist.  We wanted matcha to feel accessible to the everyday person. Something that anyone can enjoy, it’s not just for the elitist or the Instagram matcha girly. Something that any of us can enjoy, so in our branding, we really wanted to lean into fun colors. The fox on the front is accessible, which feels cool and laid-back. We are people who work hard and take what we do seriously, but we also have fun doing it. CHUH balances and represents us well in that way.

What has been your greatest challenge so far? How have you overcome it?

The largest thing that Chloe and I have had to work through is learning the balance to grow in a steady way, where we don’t spread ourselves too thin, but also don’t go too slow. At the end of the day, there are a lot of beverages out in the marketplace. It’s more than ever, and there’s an explosion of unique, interesting new beverages. In a supermarket, there can be 30,000 items, thousands of brands, and we don’t notice most of them.

The largest thing that we’re overcoming is continued brand awareness. Making sure people know we exist. Doing tastings when possible continues to allow us to meet customers and overcome the largest challenge we run into. One thing we’ve learned very quickly since launching CHUH is that our original thought was to focus on online direct-to-consumer and then move on to retail. Pretty quickly, we realized most people aren’t buying beverages online. We quickly pivoted and focused on leaning into retail, trying to win retail to make it something that people recognize.

What do you hope someone feels when they take their first sip of CHUH?

The first thing we hope is that they go, “Wow, that’s really good.”

With the blueberry, we struck a balance of the blueberry to really pop when you open that can. You smell it and are like, “Wow, that really smells like blueberry, and it’s a nice nod to Maine.” And it’s a blueberry with an oat milk base, so it has a kind of blueberry crumbled pie vibe. Our hope is that people, when they taste CHUH, find that good middle ground of something that’s a little sweet, so it’s enjoyable, but it’s not too sweet. We hope someone goes, “Wow, this is something I really enjoy, and also I want to have again!”

What’s a flavor idea that didn’t make it to production? Besides Maine Lobster?

We needed to launch with something vanilla. But we wanted it to be more unique than plain vanilla, so that’s why we went with spiced vanilla; it’s kind of a cinnamon-vanilla chai vibe. Strawberry is incredibly popular in the matcha community, but we wanted to go blueberry, like I said, for the nod to Maine.

That said, we are beginning development and considering new flavors, and the doors are currently wide open to what we might do. Matcha is a great base to build off of. We’ve had a few people say, “You should just do an original, no flavor.” I have to be honest, you’ll never find us doing it. For Chloe and me, we really believe in CHUH being the fun flavors. Interesting, creative, and unique stuff, so you’re not going to find creating a straight-down-the-middle matcha-flavored. It’s always going to have some twist and intrigue to it.

Why is organic sourcing important to you?

Now more than ever, as a society, we are aware of the importance of sustainability, taking care of the planet, and being good stewards of the environment. We work with a couple of different matcha suppliers who are generational, family-run farms that use sustainable practices in their matcha techniques, both in how they harvest it and in their finishing process. On the whole, we just wanted to make something that was organic, you could feel good about drinking, and knew was coming from clean, sustainable suppliers.

California and the West Coast get a lot of attention, but I think Maine really champions sustainability and organic, good-for-you brands. We are really proud to be part of that community and make something that anyone can feel good drinking.

How did you first hear about CEI, and what made you decide to work with us?

I did the Dirigo Labs Incubator program last fall, and over this past summer, the Maine Center of Entrepreneurs Smart Launch Program. So far, Chloe and I have bootstrapped this. We don’t have massive venture backing. The balance of self-funding as well as partnering with you [CEI] on a startup loan has been super valuable to us as we get going. And we hope to continue partnering with CEI as we grow.

What resources or support from CEI were the most helpful to you?

During the Wicked Fast loan process, I worked with Michelle from the CEI team, and she was awesome. CEI had some required documents, obviously to provide a loan, and working with Michelle on thinking through those documents, and what is our goal as a business? What is a 1, 3, 5-year projection, and thinking of those types of questions has just been super helpful.

Part of running a business is that you just have to go out there and do it. Spending too much time tinkering and wondering, maybe this, maybe that.  At the end of the day, you just have to go out there and see if people want your product. Nonetheless, I think it is really helpful to create benchmarks, to know what you’re aiming towards, and to hopefully blow past them, celebrate those wins, and be surprised.

When I worked with Michelle, I was hoping we would be in 30 stores by the end of our first 6 months here. We’re going to probably be over 100 by the end of next month [December]. That’s a huge win, and we’ve blown past our projections, but it was good to have them as a foundation of knowing what to push towards.

What advice would you give to aspiring business owners?

I would say we live in a time when it is both as easy as possible to start a business and as hard. Because it’s easy, there’s just so much competition in any space. Nonetheless, you’re never going to hit a home run if you don’t go up to the plate. I’ve always taken the approach in film, and in my life in general, that it never hurts to ask, and it never hurts to go out there and do it. I think for any aspiring entrepreneurs, I would just say, “Give it a shot.” Whatever field you’re in, create something, whether you’re just going to go to the farmer’s market or making an app. Just take that first swing and do it on the side. Don’t leave your full-time job until you really know, and you really can’t do both things.

On top of that, I would just add that whether you love it or hate it, AI is here. ChatGPT, Claude, and those different tools are incredibly valuable to lean on and use as a solo entrepreneur. My wife and I have used ChatGPT a ton over the last year. We have used it for things that we might be able to do, like running projections of COGS, cost of goods sold. Sure, I could do those things, but time is super valuable, especially when you’re doing everything, because you can’t afford to bring other people on. Having these tools that now exist at your fingertips and to not use them is just a disservice to you and your business and the growth that you could experience, or research.

What are you most excited about in the next 3 to 5 years?

I’m really excited to build the CHUH brand with Chloe in terms of marketing. It’s obviously somewhat of the world I come from, but both of us care a lot about what the brand voice is and having fun with it. We have a fun fox. What can we do with marketing? I would love to see CHUH grow and be first a regional brand, and hopefully at some point the East Coast, and then National. That comes with more ability to do really fun marketing, and our hope is to be zany and do fun stuff that catches your eye and feels ridiculous.

Getting to do that more, getting more people to try matcha, coming out with new flavors, is what I get really excited about, just continuing to grow this thing and see what’s possible. I’m excited to get to the point that I might walk into somewhere in Tennessee, and it’s like, “Oh wow, there’s CHUH. That’s crazy! My wife and I thought of that, and there it is.” That’s what gets me really excited. I think with the right support, and just the right patience and steady growth, we’ll get there.

Anything else we should know about CHUH?

We’re now in a lot of main locations in the greater Northeast. We’re wrapping up conversations with a convenience store chain here on the East Coast that we’re excited about.

Look out for us in the independent retailers, whether it’s Rosemont or Tendercrop down in Massachusetts, or Bow Street Market and Morning Glory here in the Mid Coast area near CEI, and give us a try. I think matcha is something that we’re hoping to surprise you with.

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Andrew shared how CHUH was created from a desire to make matcha approachable and fun. His and Chloe’s unique vision and strong passion resonated with CEI’s team, including Business Advisor Michelle Bond, who noted:

CHUH is a great example of a Maine small business that has local heart and regional reach. They’re building a fun, value-packed brand along with a web of local specialty retailers along the way. Andrew had a great start to his business plan and a good handle on what the opportunity was – with just a few touch points, he was up and running.

For Andrew and Chloe, CHUH is more than a canned drink. With support from CEI’s Wicked Fast loan and guidance on business planning, they’ve turned a personal need into a rapidly growing brand. Keep an eye out for the fox logo in your favorite Maine shops—and discover the fun CHUH flavors changing the way we think about Maine energy drinks.