Jenkintown man's Fever pitch.: More stimulating than common energy drink

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"All they did was take energy pills... and put them in a more mainstream beverage," said [Delmond Newton], a Cheltenham native and owner of Fever Beverage USA.

For guidance, Newton went to friends at Hank's Beverage Co. in Trevose, who helped him find his way around the beverage industry. Another friend, Philadelphia herbalist Keith Exum, created the formula for the eight active ingredients.

Newton, who enlisted his sister Chereese Griffin-Newton as chief marketing officer and his brother ReyMonn as director of marketing, said it was important to be able to tout the product as all- natural. The drink's sweetener is liquid sucrose, a solution of granulated sugar

If you find eating oysters too sloppy and certain fabled animal organs too hard to find, but still want to fire up your libido, a Jenkintown entrepreneur has a concoction just for you.

It's Fever, a "stimulation beverage" -- an infusion of horny goat weed, clavo huasca and other roots and herbs -- that will be available this month at nightclubs in New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

Locally, the company has been giving away free samples at nightclubs in the Old City section of Philadelphia and in Atlantic City to prime the market for later this year, said Delmond Newton, who got the idea for the "aphrodisiac" drink from an article he read about the explosive growth of the energy-drink market.

"All they did was take energy pills... and put them in a more mainstream beverage," said Newton, a Cheltenham native and owner of Fever Beverage USA.

The result has been an explosion in the energy-drinks market. Sales last year grew nearly 80 percent and have increased between 50 percent and 100 percent over the last seven years, according to Beverage Marketing Corp., a New York research and consulting firm.

Newton hopes to capitalize on that momentum toward specialty beverages with a sexual-stimulant beverage, an area he said had not been specifically tapped by the beverage industry.

It does not bother him that scientists do not think aphrodisiacs are anything more than folklore. "For thousands of years, people in South America and around the world have used these products that really work," Newton said.

For guidance, Newton went to friends at Hank's Beverage Co. in Trevose, who helped him find his way around the beverage industry. Another friend, Philadelphia herbalist Keith Exum, created the formula for the eight active ingredients.

Whittle & Mutch Inc., a Mount Laurel flavor company, makes the herbal blend for the noncarbonated ginger-vanilla-flavored drink, which is packaged in an aluminum bottle by a company in Indiana.

Newton, who enlisted his sister Chereese Griffin-Newton as chief marketing officer and his brother ReyMonn as director of marketing, said it was important to be able to tout the product as all- natural. The drink's sweetener is liquid sucrose, a solution of granulated sugar.

The key, said Gary Hemphill, managing director at Beverage Marketing, is whether folks who try Fever believe it does what it claims. "People will try anything once," he said.

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