Juneberry

Tabletop Campfires You Can Take Anywhere

Award: $121k

Dylan Veilleux founded Juneberry (formerly known as Tree Free Fire) with the goal of making it easier for people to safely experience the joy of an outdoor fire. From there, he developed Juneberry’s tabletop fires using all-natural materials like wax and peat moss. These tabletop fires produce an odorless, smokeless fire.

Prior to working with MTI, all of Juneberry’s production happened in Dylan’s mother’s kitchen, capping production at approximately 70 units per day. The pandemic spurred renewed interest in outdoor activities, which in turn, increased sales for Juneberry as people were eager to add this safe and easy campfire to their outdoor gatherings. It soon became apparent that Juneberry would need to grow — and fast.

Dylan discovered MTI through the central Maine entrepreneurial community. After hearing about other companies’ successes in executing high impact projects with MTI, Dylan reached out to MTI to see if they could help support Juneberry’s growth.

Juneberry has since received three rounds of funding from MTI over the course of three years. The initial grant focused on scaling their production facility, production capabilities, and hiring firms to assist with marketing and branding through the MERC program. The second round of funding built on increased production capacity to expand Juneberry’s geographic coverage. To attract wholesale accounts, Juneberry used MTI funding to professionally design retail packaging, build a national sales pipeline, hire part-time production assistants, and purchase commercial-grade equipment.

The final round of funding focused on building on previous successes and setting Juneberry up to continue to scale seamlessly. Funding was used to improve production efficiency (with assistance from Maine MEP), move to a new 2,500 square foot warehouse based in Portland, and prototype new products (with assistance from UMaine Advanced Manufacturing Center). Tree Free Fire also rebranded to Juneberry to better help position the brand in the outdoor industry.

In addition to funding, MTI has guided Juneberry through their growth and helped them focus on revenue-generating projects.

Founder Dylan Veilleux reflects on the impact of MTI’s funding over the years. “Not only has MTI’s investment helped our organization grow from the kitchen to a 700 square foot facility and then to a 2,500 square foot warehouse, the process and advisors from MTI help our organization stay focused on revenue-generating projects. We’ve received great feedback about our revenue expansion projects and listen diligently to the advice from individuals at MTI. Annually, we’ve increased our revenue significantly and we attribute a part of that success to the help we’ve received through MTI.”

Juneberry also credits the supportive and collaborative entrepreneurial ecosystem in Maine with their success. With so many opportunities for advice, financial assistance, and co-marketing opportunities over the past four years, Juneberry has been able to scale from a simple idea to a growing and profitable business.