Editor’s note: This story originally listed one $10,000 donation, but the donor later advised us he made two.

Entrepreneur Jack Savage, who’s made millions of dollars through his coffee brand Everyday Dose, gifted $20,000 to Homewood-Flossmoor High School.

Savage, who was Jack Klauber from Homewood when he graduated from H-F in 2006, says he “grew up with humble beginnings, and there’s something about public school systems that I’ll cherish forever.“ He considers his gift “as a way that I can help contribute to the public school system to give other people opportunity.”

This is the third monetary gift savage has given to H-F. He’s also interested in giving his time to help design an H-F curriculum in marketing and entrepreneurship by sharing much of what he’s learned about developing a business.

Savage will work around state mandates for programs, but he’s willing to try to “reframe the classroom (learning) in a way that’s more engaging and more exciting and makes people be an entrepreneur once they finish the class. …To me, that’s like a fun program, and if I can make it happen for one kid who falls in love with business and makes it big, that’ll be exciting.”

Savage admits he wasn’t a great student when he was at H-F. It was extracurriculars, like the DECA program and working on sets for H-F’s theater program, that made a difference, as well as teachers like theater teacher J.R. Willard-Rose “who was there for me.”

He left Illinois for California and enrolled in Santa Barbara City College that had a program that excited him and allowed him to later transfer into the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“Working hard and just making money was something that I was more interested in then taking a class,” Savage admits. “However, there are some benefits, the networking and the programs that allowed me to travel to India and to be in entrepreneurship programs and meet other entrepreneurs and take investment classes and creative classes that allowed me to use both the left brain and the right brain. I do believe there’s a lot of benefit to it.”

Making money didn’t come easy. Savage can smile now when he talks about his various jobs and starting a few companies that didn’t go anywhere. When he left California for New York, he didn’t know anyone. His first job was a waiter for a catering service.

What moved Savage, 37, to develop Everyday Dose was his own health. As a kid, he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. He was put on a regimen of various drugs that got stronger as he aged. When, at age 25, Savage was diagnosed with high blood pressure, doctors were going to give him medication to lower his blood pressure. He decided to quit all medications.

That led him to study the various properties of plants and animals to find a way to take their properties and develop something that would help him with his ADHD.

“It was just something I did rather than going out for a drink with a friend. I would have fun in the kitchen making different cocktails,” he said. Everyday Dose uses mushrooms, collagen, L-Theanine and Chaga, for brain, gut and skin health and mental clarity.

Some people identify Everyday Dose as mushroom coffee because two types of mushrooms are in the mix, but Savage feels he’s “leading the charge of what functional coffee is. I still don’t have that answer. People associate it as a mushroom coffee but it’s so much more,” he said. 

Savage says it’s still coffee because it can give that boost that so many people get from coffee in the morning, but Everyday Dose doesn’t leave one with the anxiety and the jitters like when the caffeine affects wear off.

He read scientific studies (on various ingredients) and studies online and benefits of collagen “and having that consistently every day and that’s how I started Everyday Dose. Manufacturing, fulfillment, marketing, packaging, supply chain. I was a one-man show for the first five months,” he said. 

Five years later, the business employs 100 people. Everyday Dose has 300,000 subscribers online who get monthly shipments. Everyday Dose is also available at Target stores, Sprouts and soon at Publix Stores. 

Savage, who now lives in Austin, Texas, is delighted by the success of his company. He said one day he will sell it and start something new. The entrepreneur in him is thinking about wellness hospitality. 

“Focus on what you love and double down on that, everything else will follow,” he said.