Rob:  The popularity of fruit-based drinks continues to grow as Americans search for healthier alternatives, to the standard fare.  And one Oklahoma entrepreneur hopes to take advantage of the trend.  Our Hannah Wright introduces us.
Hannah:  Fruity Delights is a company as rich in tradition as it is in flavor. It was established in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with an idea came from a thousand miles away. 
Ricardo Salas:  I remember when I was a kid, my best friend, my best friend’s mom, used to make a lot of these beverages for us. 
Hannah:  Originally from Mexico, Ricardo Salas is founder and CEO of Fruity Delights, a business dream he came up with while still in college at Oklahoma State University, 
Salas:  Fruity Delights was, from the very beginning, a dream. We were exploring the dream and trying to launch the dream. How we were going to launch the dream; how we were going to make this dream a reality; we had no idea.
Hannah:  Salas and his wife, Pepper, both had fulltime jobs when they started mixing Fruity Delights in their small apartment, investing every free moment, until a tragic accident changed everything. 
Salas:  All of a sudden, our son died. It was an accident that we had not anticipated it. It really caught us off guard.
Hannah:  Unable to focus on anything except the loss of their son, Ricardo needed a project from the heart.  A project that was Fruity Delights. 
Pepper Salas:  We finally got to the point where it was time for him to quit his job; that would be last October.  And it was time for him to stop doing that, I was a manager at a restaurant here in town, and I said, I’ll support the family right now, and you just go gung-ho with it.
Hannah:  And soon it was time for Pepper to quit her full time job as well, because the company was growing, by leaps and bounds. 
Ricardo Salas:  We want Fruity Delights to be available everywhere. Every single place where a granita machine makes sense, we would like to have it there.
Hannah:  OSU’s student union food court was one of the first vendors of Fruity Delights; assistant manager, Jerry Schuchman.
Jerry Schuchman:  Very positive response. People seem to like it well. They like the idea it’s all fruit, not a whole lot of additives, not a whole lot of sugars, and whatnot, as a lot of these other beverages have these days.
Hannah:  Which Salas says is one of the key benefits to the beverage.
Salas:  The beverage industry maintains itself as being artificial.  Artificially colored or flavored, and high fructose corn syrup just never leaves the beverage industry. We decided it was a very strong point for our product, a selling point, pretty much; and decided to do a beverage that’s 100 percent natural with no added colors or flavors, no artificial ingredients whatsoever, no preservatives.
Hannah:  A wholesome concept that goes beyond just the health benefits of the beverage, to the way the Salas family does business. 
Ricardo Salas:  Fruity Delights represents for us, and for a lot of people that are involved with Fruity Delights, represents much more than just a company, just a beverage.  It represents hope.
Hannah:  In, the American dream.