To kick off the new academic year, the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center hosted Looped In: Chicago’s Startup Social—an exciting event for networking, showcasing student businesses, socializing, and enjoying various activities. In this series, we highlight two student entrepreneurs from the event who share their journeys in building their businesses and their future plans. Read on to discover Eddie Favela’s story and his venture, Vidagua.
Eddie Favela (Finance, Driehaus College of Business, June 2025)
My whole life, I never planned to enter into the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) space, however here I am with Vidagua– now entering our 5th state and our 55th location. My name is Eddie Favela, I am a senior here at DePaul studying finance, and I am the founder of Vidagua.
Vidagua produces all-natural aguas frescas in a bottle. For some context, an agua fresca is a traditional drink in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. Historically, these beverages were produced fresh in large containers, meant to be consumed within the same day. Often sold at taquerias and other Latin restaurants, aguas frescas had no place on retail shelves because they were not properly bottled, pasteurized, or regulated. So Vidagua took this traditional staple, and found a way to not only bottle them, but keep them tasting fresh with wholesome ingredients.
Preparing for the Looped In event was something I had to think about for a minute. Originally,
we were told to sell our products, as the goal was to support student entrepreneurs. However, I personally wanted to spread brand awareness much more than make some extra cash for the day. So rather than only selling our bottles, I decided to hand out free samples of all our flavors, and if someone wanted to buy one of the bottles, they had the option to do so. Once I decided on that, I realized I needed someone to help me out, as managing samples, sales, and answering questions simultaneously would be difficult. I ended up asking one of my good friends, Ishan, to help. Ishan was more than willing to help, as he’s been able to see the company grow from ideation to production to our early success. Together, we were able to pour samples for everyone and answer all their questions.
To prepare, I brought plenty of bottles; the last thing I wanted was to run out, as it would mean people couldn’t buy or even try our drinks. By the end of the event, as expected, we had a surplus of bottles that I was getting ready to take back. However, just as I was about to leave, Bruce Leech stopped me and offered to buy the remaining drinks to stock in the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center. His kind gesture made a lasting impression on me, especially since he has been more than supportive of this idea of mine from the very beginning.
Our next steps at this stage are to focus on expansion. This looks like 3 components: sales, marketing, and reach. For sales, the goal is for me to continue to go to stores and distributors and get them to stock Vidagua while also bringing on a sales reps to help us grow at a faster rate. The next component is marketing, which is essential for capturing people’s attention and building brand awareness. Even if we get into 100 stores, it will be difficult to sell if only a handful of people know about us. Lastly, with reach, our goal for this is to continue to expand into different regions and states, to find out what places work the best for Vidagua.