As the swarms of patron flow through the lines of vendor tents, Michael Merwin sits surrounded by dozens of red hued coffee mugs, each embellished with the name “Burnout”.
What is Burnout?
“Burnout is the culmination of many, many years of research coming out of the Engineering School, specifically mechanical and aerospace engineering school, and what our lab does is military and space technology for cooling of high tech electronics [by] utilizing the change in phases like ice melting and water vaporizing to cool something down a little more. So all that research goes into say the military, the department of defense [and] the space industry, which is covered by our parent company, and we take technology that they develop from our parent company and develop technologies and integrate them into consumer products, and that’s where the burnout mug came from.
So it takes the burn out of your coffee by cooling it down from that really dangerous high, Starbucks burning temperature that it’s brewed at, down to the perfect drinking temperature almost immediately, and holds it there for about eight to 10 hours. So you’re actually able to enjoy your coffee over the course of your day.
Yeah, it’s kinda cool, plus, we’re the only stainless steel manufacturer of drink ware in the United States to our knowledge, and it’s all coming directly out of the university.”
Is Burnout a part of the university or an independent company?
“So, there’s a connection to the university through the protection of intellectual property. So the designs and whatnot, the royalties, they could pay to the university.They do some protection for us, as far as the legal side. It’s kind of a cool thing that we have the protection of a larger institution with the ability to operate as an independent.”
Are you the CEO of the company?
“I’m one of the partners in the company. But I’m the director of operations. Our CEO is Dr. Bill Ma. So he’s the researcher on campus.”
Why did you choose to market here?
“[Roots and Blues], , it’s a great local setup. It’s really cool seeing all of these bigger names in the community coming together. You all get to joke, laugh, have some good food and kind of share a little bit about each other. So we’re a homegrown product, so it’s nice, coming around all these other local products and doing like, we do a lot of co-branding with our company as well. So you know, we like to integrate our local companies as much as possible to help promote each other. So that’s the main reason why we’re here is just to not only sponsor ourselves, but to enjoy the other companies here as well.”
How has business been tonight?
“It’s not horrible. We’re more here to broadcast what the Burnout mug is. Sales just come along with it. Yeah, but the main thing is we want promotion of our brand. People are like, I’ve never heard of Burnout. So that’s really why we’re here [they see] the shirts, they see the mugs they see the tents and think, ‘What the heck is Burnout?’”
