Hydration is the foundation. Start there.

I remember my first sip of Gatorade. I was about 12 years old. It was a brutally hot late-summer morning, and I’d just finished mowing the lawn. I felt awful — overheated, wrung out, shaky in that way you only understand after you’ve really depleted yourself.

I chugged the whole bottle and felt better almost immediately.

That stuck with me.

Not because I thought it was magic, but because it was the first time I understood that hydration could meaningfully change how you feel. That what you put back into your body matters.

Since then, I’ve been on a bit of a lifelong quest — first around hydration, and eventually sports nutrition more broadly.

I’ve never been an elite athlete, but I’ve always relied on my body to take me places: long days on the river, on the bike, running and climbing, skiing, backpacking deep into the mountains and desert for days at a time, and balancing all of that with travel, work, concerts, late nights, long drives, and the occasional rough morning after living life fully.

I’ve spent a lot of time pushing my limits — physically, professionally, and personally — and trying to understand how to feel good doing it.

I grew up in the Inland Northwest, where being active outdoors was simply part of life. That shaped how I think about effort, balance, and paying attention to what your body needs. Later, I moved to Seattle for a culinary apprenticeship, where another piece of the puzzle came together: flavor matters. People do not build habits around products they have to force themselves to consume.

In Seattle, I followed my curiosity and lived passionately. I rode my bike everywhere. I spent long, hot, greasy hours in restaurant kitchens. I went to rock shows and museums. I hiked among giant conifers when I needed to reset. I worked in a record store simply because I loved music. Eventually, I ended up at a scrappy little company called Starbucks — back when it only had a handful of stores and nobody imagined it would take over the world.

That experience changed me.

I learned what real quality looks like. I learned the difference intention makes. I learned why some products quietly become part of people’s daily rituals while others feel disposable. Great products are not built around marketing claims. They are built around trust, consistency, experience, and how they make people feel.

From there, I spent years traveling, working in the outdoor industry, and eventually helping lead and grow one of the most respected brands in sports nutrition. I worked closely with exceptional athletes, retailers, formulators, and customers. I spent years immersed in the world of hydration science, product development and the real-world ways people actually use these products.

And over time, I noticed something important.

A lot of sports nutrition products are designed for edge cases — elite athletes, race day, maximum sweat loss, extreme effort. That makes sense in certain situations. But most people are not running ultramarathons on a Tuesday afternoon.

Most of us are trying to stay hydrated through workouts, workdays, travel, heat, dry climates, gym sessions, bike rides, ski days, hikes, stressful schedules, and everyday life. We want to feel better, function better, recover a little faster, and avoid that low-grade depletion that slowly drags down energy, mood, and performance.

But the market often forced people into extremes.

Plain water on one side. Hyper-sweet, artificially flavored, aggressively formulated sports drinks on the other.

I kept thinking there had to be a middle ground.

Something cleaner. More balanced. More drinkable. Something rooted in real hydration science, but designed for how people actually live. A product you could drink during a workout, after a run, before yoga, on a travel day, while working outside, or simply because you wanted to feel a little more functional and a little less depleted.

That idea stayed with me for years.

Then one day, while driving to one of my favorite places in Idaho, it finally clicked: take what matters from sports nutrition and leave the rest behind.

Keep the parts that actually help — electrolytes, effective hydration ratios, accessible carbohydrates, real functionality.

Lose the parts that feel performative, excessive, artificial, or built only for elite endurance athletes.

That was the beginning of Monkey Wrench and what lead me to what we now call the Goldilocks.

I formulated Goldilocks to be the hydration product I wished existed all along: balanced enough for everyday life, but capable enough for real activity. Enough electrolytes to matter. Enough cane sugar and dextrose to support hydration and provide accessible energy. Real fruit juice because flavor should feel clean and natural, not like candy or chemicals. Flexible enough to scale up when conditions get hotter, longer, or harder.

Not too much. Not too little.

Just right for most of us.

I’m not interested in hype, shortcuts, or pretending every moment of life is an extreme performance event. I’m interested in making honest products that earn a place in people’s routines because they genuinely help.

Long days. Workouts. Travel. Recovery. Heat. Late nights. Early mornings. Everyday life.

If you use our products, you should feel better. Every time.

That’s the bar.

Thank you for your interest and support.

— Jay Peery
 Founder/Managing Director - Monkey Wrench, LLC