Every item we can actually buy, with the price we will actually pay, in one page. Tick quantities to build an order sheet, and use the ready-written emails at the bottom to close the gaps that are still open. Nothing here is an order — it produces a list you place yourself.
This doubles as the franchise supply playbook. Every figure carries its source and its confidence level, every supplier carries its contact and its terms, and the page is generated from data files rather than typed — so it can be handed to a second operator, or a tenth, without anyone having to re-derive the supply chain from scratch.
Suppliers/_data/Read the tags. They are the difference between planning and ordering.
Closed since the first version of this page: servings per container for every Power Blendz boost (so boost cost per drink is real, not an assumption), serving counts for the aloe and hot-drink lines, and per-kilogram pricing on 163 single ingredients. The dose in every boost was read off its Supplement Facts panel — two of them turned out to be cosmetic and are flagged below.
Reading the actual Supplement Facts panels changed the picture. Two boosts are sub-therapeutic proprietary blends, and the ones that are honest are sold at a large multiple of what the raw ingredient costs. Since the drink is made to order, we can dose ingredients straight into the cup.
| 1st Phorm Hydration Daily, retail per serving | $1.85 |
| Our clone of the same profile — buying 1kg packs | $0.086 |
| Our version at scale — buying 25kg packs | $0.039 |
| Gross margin at a $1.50 upcharge | 94.3% – 97.4% |
Functional minerals only — no flavour, sweetener or acid. We are not selling a sachet into plain water; we are adding minerals to a drink already flavoured and sweetened by two or three GramZero layers. GramZero’s own mixes list citric acid, sodium citrate, organic stevia, natural flavour and silicon dioxide — so every one of those was being costed twice. Dropping them cuts 20–29% and deletes the natural-flavour estimate, which was the single largest line item and the biggest unknown. No flavour house needed.
Matched to 1st Phorm’s exact stated amounts — potassium
500mg, chloride 440mg, sodium 250mg, magnesium 140mg, calcium 100mg, vitamin C 90mg, zinc 3mg — in
3.27g of powder against their 6.20g packet. Their packet is therefore
47% non-functional by weight, which is not a knock on them: a stick pack dropped into water
has to carry its own flavour. It just means half of what they sell is something we already have. Their label
states elemental mineral, so each salt weight is back-calculated from molecular weight. Working in
Electrici-Tea — Clone Cost Model.md; re-runs from
Suppliers/_data/electrolyte-clone-model.py.
Salt forms are the taste lever, and the offender is potassium chloride specifically — not chloride. Table salt tastes like salt; potassium chloride is the bitter, metallic one that makes salt substitutes taste bad. Going all citrate overshoots: potassium is only 38.3% of citrate against 52.4% of chloride, so it costs more, and it drops chloride to zero when chloride is a real electrolyte lost in sweat. The fix is narrower.
| Option | Powder | $/drink | Chloride | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mixed salts, as modelled | 3.27g | $0.039 | 440mg | contains the offender |
| All citrate | 3.68g | $0.045 | 0mg | costs more, loses chloride |
| No potassium chloride; table salt for sodium | 3.45g | $0.042 | 386mg | the fix |
| Above, calcium dropped | 2.97g | $0.033 | 386mg | recommended |
✓ Option D locked. Potassium all as citrate (the one change that fixes the taste) · sodium as plain salt (tastes normal, costs ~$2/kg, and carries 386mg of chloride for free) · magnesium stays glycinate-led because magnesium citrate is an osmotic laxative and glycine is faintly sweet · calcium dropped, because calcium carbonate is chalky and near-insoluble and visible grit in a clear cup is a defect when the layered pour is the whole product · zinc as citrate at 8mg. Citrates are hygroscopic, so keep the silicon dioxide. Still taste-test from small packs before any 25kg order.
Never zinc gluconate or sulfate — the literature describes gluconate as having "an astringent, bitter, or metallic taste." Zinc citrate is ~31% elemental zinc against gluconate's 13%, absorbs as well, costs less than bisglycinate ($18.15 vs $20.70/kg) and fits the citrate theme. Raising zinc from 3mg to 8mg (73% Daily Value) costs three hundredths of a cent.
But the limit is not taste — it is 40mg a day, including diet. Above about 50mg for weeks, supplemental zinc inhibits copper absorption, lowers high-density lipoprotein and reduces immune function — so over-dosing backfires on the exact benefit being sold. Diet supplies roughly 10mg, so at 15mg in the base a customer having two drinks a day sits at the 40mg limit every day. That is the wrong design for a drink aimed at daily locals. 8mg still leaves headroom at three drinks a day.
| Immuni-Tea — the occasional add-on where a real dose belongs | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Zinc citrate | 15mg zinc | $0.00088 |
| Ascorbic acid | 500mg vitamin C | $0.00498 |
| Copper gluconate — 15:1 zinc to copper, offsets the antagonism above | 1mg copper | $0.00029 |
| Total — 99.6% margin at a $1.50 upcharge | $0.0061 |
Because it is bought occasionally rather than daily, the ceiling stops mattering and the taste risk is isolated to one product. Alternative worth tasting: zinc ascorbate ($62.30/kg) delivers zinc and vitamin C in one ingredient and is tart rather than metallic. Claims discipline: "supports immune function" — never "prevents colds," which is a disease claim.
Buying theirs to resell does not work — $1.85 of cost against a $2.00 upcharge is 7.5% margin. And this needs no contract manufacturer and no minimum order: electrolytes carry no measurement hazard, so a pre-blended tub scooped into a made-to-order cup is entirely appropriate. Premeasured stick packs are reserved for caffeine, where they are the only safe format, and for a retail take-home line.
Where 1st Phorm actually sources it: the TRAACS and DimaCal marks on their label are Balchem’s Albion Minerals; ConcenTrace is Trace Minerals Research, harvested from the Great Salt Lake. Their own label reads “Manufactured & Designed Exclusively for 1st Phorm” and no production facility is documented anywhere — so their quality is a purchasing decision, not a factory, which is exactly why it is reproducible.
Neither supplier sells single-serve samples, so the honest answer is that you cannot taste one flavor for a dollar. But the assortment stick packs solve it: they are the only way to taste a wide range without buying a 640-serving case of each. This exact combination clears the $200 free-shipping threshold, which is why it is built this way.
| Super Assortment 2GO Stick Packs — 13 flavors | $54.95 |
| Variety All Natural 2GO Stick Packs — 12 flavors | $61.95 |
| Variety Pack, Instant Hot Beverage Mixes — 7 flavors | $28.00 |
| Organic Aloe 2GO Stick Packs — the second layer in the pour | $60.00 |
| Total — ships free | $204.90 |
Clears $200 by $4.90, so freight is zero. Thirty-two flavors to taste and rank against each other, no case commitment, and every stick is a single drink so nothing is wasted. Allow five business days processing plus ground transit from upstate New York — call it two weeks.
Four different asks, four different rules. Full working in
Label Claims — What We Can Actually Say.md.
Threshold is under 0.5g of sugars a serving and nothing in the build contributes any — every component is a mineral salt, an amino-acid chelate, ascorbic acid or silica. The base is literally GramZero’s “Sugar Free Drink Mix” sweetened with organic stevia. Safe on every line including Pret-Tea, no qualification needed. Of the four asks this is the only free one.
Under 5 calories may be declared as zero, and “calorie free” / “zero calories” needs the same — under, not equal. Option D as locked is exactly 5.00 — on the line. The D-ZERO variant (potassium half chloride, half citrate) is 4.00 calories, $0.0318 a drink and 613mg chloride — safer claim, cheaper, more chloride.
The twist: citrate salts carry calories (~2.47 kcal/g), chloride salts carry none — so the fix for metallic taste is exactly what added the calories. Pret-Tea can never be zero-calorie: 10g of collagen is 35 calories.
Largely retired already — GramZero is migrating site-wide to natural colours and the ACAI label reads “Colors from Black Carrot and Blueberry.” 14 conventional flavours state “with Natural Color” in the product name.
But no artificial colour and no artificial flavour are different asks. Conventional mixes say “Natural and Artificial Flavor”; only the All Natural line closes that — and it carries 18 flavours against 58, with zero sour. Action: pull ingredient lists for the 18 conventional flavours whose names don’t state a colour — some are probably already dye-free and just unlabelled.
A nutrient content claim must be defined by regulation, and “calories from sugar” is not a declaration on any panel. FDA killed the analogous construction deliberately: the 2016 label revision removed “Calories from fat” and stated it would “no longer require, nor allow voluntarily,” that declaration.
And it is unnecessary — it is a weaker version of two claims we already have cleanly. Use “sugar free”, or the plain fact “0g sugar”, which is a number rather than a characterisation.
The All Natural premium is $0.0056 a layer — 1.7 cents on a three-layer drink, and the cost model already prices it. So default to All Natural for all 18 flavours it covers and use conventional only where nothing else exists.
Then the claim attaches to individual drinks built entirely from that palette. Scoping it to a kids section instead would tell parents the adult menu is the dirty one, and would mean stocking two tubs of the nine flavours that exist in both lines. The kids menu should be a subset of the clean-buildable drinks, not a parallel supply chain. Green Flag is already the kids tier.
FDA menu labeling becomes mandatory at 20 or more locations under the same name with substantially the same menu — calories must then be posted on menus and menu boards. It stops being a marketing choice. A formula locked now at a verified 4.00 calories never needs re-substantiating later, which is the cheap version of a problem that arrives with scale.
Search or filter, then type quantities. The running total and the free-shipping bar are at the bottom of the screen, and the order sheet you can copy or print is underneath the table.
| Item | Supplier | Category | Pack | Price | Per serving | Qty | Line total |
|---|
Copy this into an email, or print it and work off paper at the counter. It lists the exact product web address for every GramZero line and the supplier code for every Power Blendz line, so there is no guessing at checkout.
Two numbers moved. Packaging is cheaper than the model assumed, and aloe is far more expensive than anyone had accounted for.
| Component | Source | Cost | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 flavor layers, All Natural | GramZero, $47.60 per 640 servings | $0.223 | Verified |
| 24oz cup, lid and straw | Power Blendz storefront, real case counts | $0.275 | Public price |
| Subtotal, before boosts or aloe | $0.50 | ||
| Aloe layer, stick packs | GramZero, $60.00 per 100 sticks | $0.60 | Verified |
| Aloe layer, bulk packs instead | GramZero, $42.97 per 124 servings | $0.347 | Verified |
| Energizer boost | Power Blendz, $33.99 per 65 servings | $0.52 | Public price |
| Collagen boost (Pret-Tea) | Power Blendz, $38.99 per 45 servings | $0.87 | Public price |
| Our own electrolyte blend | Raw ingredients at 25kg tiers | $0.039 | Verified |
Servings per container are published — in the storefront copy and on every Supplement Facts panel. Every boost margin in the old model was soft for no reason.
| Boost | Real cost | Upcharge | Margin | Dose verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fat Burner | $0.42 | $1.25 | 66.4% | Vanity 2,420mg proprietary blend split three ways, no stimulant |
| Energizer | $0.52 | $1.25 | 58.2% | Real 200mg caffeine + 3g taurine, plus three unstudied stimulants |
| Organic Greens | $0.72 | $1.25 | 42.6% | Vanity 3g leaf powder, label declares zero vitamins |
| Collagen | $0.87 | $2.00 | 56.7% | Real 10g type I & III, top of the clinical band |
| Our electrolyte blend | $0.039 | $1.50 | 96.3% | Real matched to 1st Phorm’s stated amounts |
The base drink runs about 94%. Every bought-in boost runs 43–66%, so each one sold adds gross profit dollars while lowering blended margin percentage — fine in itself, but it means nobody should judge this business on margin percentage once attach rate climbs. Blends we make ourselves run at or above the base drink. Never discount any boost below $1.25.
Packaging is cheaper than we planned for. The model carried $0.42 for cup, lid and straw as a guess with no vendor behind it. Power Blendz publishes case counts, so the real figure at storefront pricing is $0.275 — and that is before any wholesale discount. It also means packaging is no longer the largest cost line in the drink.
Aloe is the expensive surprise. The documented layering method puts aloe in the second layer. On stick packs that is $0.60 a drink — more than all three flavor layers and the entire cup combined. Switching to the bulk packs cuts it to $0.347. Before designing aloe into the standard pour, confirm the intended dose with GramZero (it is question 4 in the email below) and decide whether aloe is standard or a paid upgrade.
Each of these is written and ready. Copy it, read it once in your own voice, and send it from your own mail. They are ordered by how much they unblock.
Suppliers/_data/gramzero-2026-08-01.tsv and
powerblendz-2026-08-01.tsv. Page generated by build-command-center.py —
edit the data or the script, never the generated file. Written notes on every supplier live in
Area51 Labs/Loaded Tea Co/Suppliers/.
Prices change; re-run the pull before any large order.