Chris Bogdan is an entrepreneur from Maryland that studied at the University of Michigan. He ended up coming to Michigan because his father studied there and his parents are originally from the Midwest state so he wanted to walk a mile in their shoes. Originally Bogdan wanted to be a doctor, but later decided that he wanted to focus on starting a company. This is why he launched Get Up And Go, a company that creates caffeinated baked goods in the summer of 2012.
“At school, I was spending so much money on coffee and breakfast. Every day, I would go to Espresso Royale in Ann Arbor and spend 6 bucks. This is when I realized that a coffee drink and a muffin are too expensive separately. I thought that there has to be something to change this. After experimenting for a couple months, I gave my friends some caffeinated muffins when I visited University of Maryland over winter break. They said that ‘this is awesome and you need to sell this.’ So I did. Now we have a deal with University of Michigan and they are carrying our products,” Bogdan told me in an interview.
Bogdan started out by buying caffeine pills and he recrystallized the caffeine from them in his home kitchen. The caffeine was extremely bitter and was not palatable. He then tried adding it to the baked goods, but realized that he must mask the bitter taste. After months of research and development, Bogdan eventually was able to figure out how to mask the caffeine taste, resulting in a great tasting product. Get Up And Go now sells caffeinated chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip blondies, double chocolate chip muffins, cinnamon coffee cake muffins, and fudge brownies.
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