The healthier, more efficient way to make meat

We at Emergent believe that pushing your product concept and brand positioning sufficiently to the right or left of center is desirable to author a new category, one that your brand can own and thus define as state of the art. This action delivers a unique opportunity to be No. 1 in a new business segment controlled by the brand. With a bold move like this, an emerging challenger can radically differentiate itself in an otherwise murky “sea of sameness” – in this case, among all-too-similar novel protein brands. 

Of course, category creation comes with unique challenges related to pioneering a new idea in the face of consumer behavior that is systemically wired to avoid any perceived risk. Overcoming this consumer-perceived risk isn’t as easy as you might think, and that task stands as the primary barrier to mainstream market adoption of anything new and different.

Today we’re taking a closer look at an emerging success story in alternative proteins, a Boulder, CO-based animal-free meat maker that has managed to integrate nutrition density with an amazing animal meat taste but without having to resort to “highly processed” formulation wizardry to get there.

Meati is the brainchild of Tyler Huggins and his team of MushroomRoot™ experts who are on an expansion drive at food retail to bring their muscle meat chicken and beef products to everyone with a taste bud. They’re offering a compromise-free meat solution that replicates the animal version, only at a fraction of the environmental and resource consumption impacts of livestock agriculture.

Here is our deep dive interview with Meati founder and CEO, Tyler Huggins. Emergent’s brand building guidance follows the Q&A, so stay with us.

How is our legacy food system currently contributing to global warming and what changes must occur to stay within the Paris Climate Agreement ceiling of 1.5˚ Celsius?

Huggins: Stepping back and recognizing the overarching principle that demands greater attention from all of us is crucial. In essence, efficiency is the key to success. We need to strike a better balance between the resources invested in food production and the outcomes of that process.

This principle strongly influenced our business, known as Meati Foods, but legally registered as Emergy – a term denoting the total energy expended in creating something. Our mission is to create significantly more delectable and nutritious food while minimizing resource usage. This approach leads to less strain on our ecosystems and reduces the factors destabilizing them.

How important is sustainability readiness (responsibility) performance to your brand narrative and to consumer preference for Meati?

Huggins: Sustainability is becoming or has already become a normalized expectation for consumers — it is no longer a distinguishing feature or distinct selling point. Still, it is absolutely essential. There are different degrees of sustainability, but the main takeaway is that what we produce and consume to run our societies must use far fewer resources, pollute far less, and regenerate and protect nature’s riches. It’s the efficiency issue described above. If you cannot demonstrate sustainability, it will be noticed, and you won’t be considered if there is another good-enough option that does. Sustainability is table stakes, just as taste, texture, and nutrition are in the food business. We took years to find a type of MushroomRoot™ with natural characteristics that allow a vastly more sustainable way to produce a scalable, delicious, and high-quality source of nutrition that is affordable and easy to work into familiar cooking routines.

Sustainability has transitioned from a unique selling point to a standard expectation among consumers. Nevertheless, it remains absolutely vital. While sustainability can manifest in various degrees, the primary message is that our societal production and consumption must significantly reduce resource usage, pollution, and actively regenerate and safeguard nature’s resources. This aligns with the efficiency concept mentioned earlier. Failing to demonstrate sustainability will not go unnoticed, and if there is another viable option that meets the required standards, it will likely be chosen over non-sustainable alternatives. Sustainability has become a fundamental requirement, just like taste, texture, and nutrition are essential in the food industry.

The retrenching of Impossible and Beyond has poured cool water on the ‘plant-based meat for meat lovers’ hype machine while serving a reality check on brand strengths and weaknesses in alt. proteins. What is Meati doing to secure sustained business traction with consumers that will help avoid these hiccups and convince retailers your new category isn’t a one hit wonder?

Huggins: It’s important to acknowledge that there was a considerable amount of excitement surrounding Impossible and Beyond, and rightfully so. They were pioneers, turning futuristic visions into a reality in the present. They deserved all the attention they received for leading the conversation about the food system and the environment. Over time, the world has become more accepting of alternative proteins, and the stock value and demand are now stabilizing at more realistic and sustainable levels.

However, the fundamental desires of people have not changed. The current food system exacts a heavy toll on the environment without adequately meeting people’s needs, especially with a growing global population. As income levels rise, more individuals crave a meat experience. To become a staple in people’s regular diets, our approach has been to fulfill every essential criterion for a successful protein today: deliciousness, check; irresistible texture, check; nutritional value, check; use of simple and natural ingredients, check; significantly more efficient and sustainable, check; convenience and easy integration into familiar cooking techniques, check; and scalability to ensure affordability and accessibility, check.

The time has come for “and/and” products that offer it all, without compromising on any aspect. Our company is built on this philosophy, and we have carefully chosen our star ingredient to achieve precisely that.

For decades people have been taught that meat from animals is always the best source of great tasting protein. Old habits die hard. How are you currently working to convince serial risk-avoiding consumers to switch to Meati?

Huggins: A funny recurring story related to this is that we’ve heard from our restaurant partners that people who order our cutlets sometimes come back declaring the restaurant made a big error and served them chicken. The point there is that we think the product speaks for itself. Still, you’ve got to get people in the door and taking that first bite, right? To achieve that, it’s a mixture of approaches to reach people at different stages of comfort or interest in animal-free meat made from MushroomRoot. A big part of that mix is enlisting folks whose opinions about food are respected, sought out, and trusted. That can mean we work with famed chefs like Dave Chang reaching millions of people in a video of him cooking with a Classic Cutlet. We may work with lesser-known influencers who have smaller but passionate audiences excited to explore with them. We’re also being mindful of collaborating with people and brands that are all about practical, varied, and realistic solutions to eating well for health and the planet.

Flexitarians fit into this category, and they’re often great at connecting the animal-based food universe with other types of food. Rachael Ray is a great example. Derek Jeter is another one — here is a star athlete, someone who clearly understands nutrition and performance, who was happy to announce he is investing in Meati.

Consumers now care more about your brand’s “why” than either how or what you do. What is Meati’s higher purpose, mission and beliefs that transcend the usual mix of balance sheet considerations such as increasing investor returns?

Huggins: As a registered public benefits corporation, Meati has ingrained its commitment to more than just the bottom line into all aspects of our operations. Our mission statement encapsulates our core purpose: To elevate humanity’s collective health and longevity through the limitless power of MushroomRoot.

We firmly believe that the world requires innovative and superior solutions that allow us to care for the planet while still indulging in the pleasures of good food and the communal experience it brings. We understand that people genuinely care about the environment, but they often need support from companies like Meati to provide them with accessible tools for making a positive impact in their daily lives. Our aim is to assist individuals in making a difference without entirely upending their meal planning, sourcing, preparation, cooking, and eating habits. We strive to offer convenient and practical options that empower people to contribute to a better future for the planet.

Meati is made from a unique ingredient – MushroomRoot. Please explain your technology and process to deliver an authentic analog eating/taste experience to animal-based beef and chicken products?

Huggins: The beauty of our process lies in its simplicity, which is immensely appealing to consumers who are tired of lengthy ingredient lists and heavily processed foods. It shares similarities with the art of brewing beer or crafting cheese. We start by placing spores of our MushroomRoot (also known as N. crassa mycelium) into a tank along with sugar, water, and nutrients, and then it grows rapidly. Once harvested, we combine it with other wholesome ingredients and gently shape it into our various cuts.

That’s about it — all the texture that people love in animal-based options is naturally present in our animal-free MushroomRoot. This is a major reason why we explored various types of mycelium before discovering this incredible one. Its inherent texture sets it apart and ensures an enjoyable culinary experience for our customers.

Is MushroomRoot a farmed ingredient? How do you source this ingredient and how will your supply chain offer an improvement over existing vulnerabilities in supply?

Huggins: Depends on what you mean by farmed! But, yes, we would say it is farmed. All you need are the spores of our type of MushroomRoot, and you can go from there. Once we have the spores, we simply keep regrowing them from a batch of MushroomRoot and reusing them. Picking them up is as simple as finding a provider of all types of spores or tracking it down in the wild, but we’re well past needing to do that. We grow and prepare it completely in-house, which does indeed make our supply chain less complex — we need only our MushroomRoot spores, sugar, water, nutrients, energy, a modest amount of other ingredients like natural flavors, a tiny slice of land to house everything, and the equipment similar to what you might see in a beer brewing facility. We don’t need to rely on external partners halfway around the globe to prep critical components of our products.

To boot, we can do all this indoors — we’re not beholden to radical weather shifts impacting our growing cycles. If we’re facing any issues in the supply chain, they’re low in quantity and of a generic quality — they are issues common to all types of companies operating in a post-COVID world. When it comes to the supply chain issues that may affect the few ingredients, we do use outside our own MushroomRoot, we also have a lot of confidence in getting a hold of them, because we’ve aimed to work with experienced suppliers in extremely developed industries who are as near to us as possible. We always knew achieving supply chain simplicity would be essential in a more chaotic world, and the simplicity of our MushroomRoot also helps us realize this goal.

No offense intended towards farmers, but we proudly identify ourselves as ranchers. Our process starts with a mere spoonful of spores, and from there, we nurture and cultivate our MushroomRoot, creating the perfect conditions for it to flourish and yield a variety of nutrients, including protein. All of this takes place within our specially designed “Mega Ranch,” a name befitting one of North America’s largest end-to-end meat production facilities.

One of the remarkable aspects of our approach is that we don’t need to rely on distant external partners for crucial components of our products. Everything happens under one roof. This indoor setup provides us with stability, unaffected by radical weather shifts that could otherwise disrupt growing cycles.

By streamlining our supply chain and partnering with a select few experienced suppliers from well-established industries, located as close to us as possible, we have achieved significant simplicity. We have always recognized the importance of simplifying our supply chain, especially in an increasingly chaotic world. Our MushroomRoot’s inherent simplicity plays a vital role in realizing this essential goal.

Meati is in-market and rapidly expanding. What key learnings can other alt. protein brands take away from Meati to accelerate the commercialization of their businesses?

Huggins: To succeed, you must showcase sustainability and a genuine dedication to safeguarding the environment. However, it’s equally vital to satisfy consumers’ valid expectations concerning taste, texture, nutrition, price, availability, convenience, and culinary versatility. Food holds a deeply personal place in everyone’s daily life—it’s both ordinary and sacred. When we select and savor our meals, it’s only natural to momentarily set aside broader concerns and concentrate on the individual sensory pleasures and experiences that elicit the heartfelt declaration, “I love this food.”

Our primary goal is for everyone to express this sentiment when they try our food. We aim to provide an unforgettable culinary experience that captures people’s hearts and taste buds while reassuring them that they are contributing positively to the planet in the process. Balancing these aspects is what drives our mission—to create food that brings joy to people’s lives while also caring for our precious environment.

One of the biggest challenges alt. protein companies have on the path to market is scaling their production. What advice would you offer to others coming up as the best and most efficient path to manufacturing at sufficient scale to supply demand? At what level of production do you reach price parity with the products Meati replaces?

Huggins: First, our goal is not so much to 100% replace this or that product, but to offer another option that people can work into their diets that makes it easy to adjust mealtimes to be better for the planet without sacrificing joy. People love animal-based meat and will continue to do so, but it does come with immense costs that we may start seeing very clearly present in its price, so it’s important to have another option to scratch that “meat experience” itch that does not feel like a compromise. Other than that, my general advice would be: Pick your ingredients carefully! We spent years researching different types of mycelium looking for one that naturally possessed all the characteristics of a great and sustainable food and scalable food.

We are already reaching price parity with certain cuts of organic and super high-quality animal-based meat. We’re confident that as we ramp up to millions of pounds of Meati, we’ll start to see exciting shifts in the price. At the same time, again, it is very likely the price of animal-based meat will start to rise in the face of supply chain chaos, health emergencies, weather patterns, and reduced externalization of environmental costs.

What three things should consumers know about Meati that will influence them to give it a try?

Huggins: Delicious with the just-right texture, easy to cook with, and nutrition like you wouldn’t believe.

The next chapter in food has arrived

Meati is an iconic example of the future of food – new processes that help us reimagine where food comes from and how it is produced. The changes we’re witnessing are the most pervasive and fundamental to how we feed ourselves, since the domestication of plants and animals 10,000 years ago.

With the dawn of a new food system and the entrance of a host of new brands creating various forms of protein using fermentation techniques, cultured solutions and evolutionary improvements to plant-based version, come unique challenges to securing marketplace traction.

• Even today, in the ramp up phase for many new brands, the storytelling, value propositions and brand imagery are remarkably similar business to business. Sameness is a calcifying phenomenon that works hard to commodify brands. Distinctiveness is necessary and harder to achieve because it requires an intentional push towards radical differentiation.

The great lesson embodied in Tyler Huggins’ organization is the effort to establish a new category that is unique to the Meati brand. Consumers always think category first and brand second – like Mexican beer and then Corona. Category ownership is a power position and enabler of competitive advantage. Retaining the edge and distinctiveness over time isn’t easy – it requires constant attention and occasional refurbishment to stay ahead of those who will

rush to mimic your success. Being first with the most is an incredible advantage.

The coming revolution of new food brands and categories, all competing for share of mind, stomach, wallet, shelf space and devotion will elevate the premium for sound strategy, well-executed.

Here are some fundamentals to stay ahead of the pack:

Refined higher purpose

You would think that new tech food brands would be the industry darlings of mission and higher purpose thinking, yet all-too-often we find that isn’t the case. A quick pass on a change-the-world origin/founder story may appear to be checking the higher purpose box. However, building a sound mission, values and belief system for a brand requires more work and a defined process to thoroughly vet the details of a relevant and resonant purpose-driven platform. Posers not allowed.

Inspiration and education, not manipulation

The path to engagement between brands and consumers is paved with recognition that consumers (and trade customers for that matter) are human beings and biology is at work in how we make decisions and take action. People are not fact-based, analytical decision-making machines. We are feeling creatures who think and not thinking creatures who feel.

Thus why a brand’s “why” – its purpose and deeper meaning served with a honed beliefs system – is the path to inspirational, emotion-resonant communication. Emotion drives decisions and actions, not feature and benefit selling. This rightfully places insight to behavioral psychology in the center of strategic planning.

Education, coaching, guidance are the tools and role brands play in successful communication – the consumer is always the hero of our storytelling. Inspiration not manipulation is the path to building a community of brand advocates and evangelists. Want to have a deeper relationship with consumers, then imbue your brand with deeper meaning.

Symbols, symbols everywhere

Consumers now look upon the brands that matter to them as flags and symbols of who they are, what they value. Is your brand communication intentionally designed to help them signal to the world around them the meaning you bring and thus amplifying how they see themselves?

Your brand communication and digital channels need to supply the symbolism they want to convey. This is intentional and designed to help them “feel” a certain way when they are in the presence of your brand.

The path ahead

Tyler Huggins and his team are working on the next generation of food products that deliver on taste and nutrition but at a fraction of the environmental and natural resource impact of conventionally made foods. This is how we will affordably feed 10 billion souls by 2050, and without further damaging the planet we call home. The great news: we can accomplish this mission while amplifying and enhancing our love of great taste and elevated eating experiences. If this story raises questions about the right mix of strategic tools to breakout from the sea of brand sameness, use this link to ask questions and start an informal conversation.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Advantages you can plan and design for

Food culture in America has dramatically shifted during the last 10 years. People favor premium quality, higher priced products that address modern dietary needs serving health, wellness and sustainability goals. Better food experiences, fresh ingredients, more sophisticated tastes and the brand sustainability symbolism that goes along with it help complete the mission and taste adventure. This is the preference paradigm where all innovations whether from legacy brand or new player must pay homage on the road to success.

• Here are four key strategies that hold sway over your ability to succeed, to grow and gain share for food and beverage innovations.

We highlight these four distinctive growth strategies in part because they are passed over all too frequently. Eclipsed by the allure of instant scale, every-new-retail-door-is-a-good-door and ill-advised distribution moves that undercut the very brand value proposition that premium CPG solutions embody. This helps explain the high innovation failure rate or seemingly insurmountable plateaus where new emerging brands stall out, never getting a shot at the high volume homeruns of wider adoption downstream.

Want to assure your brand innovations are successful and not a casualty on the path to pantry and fridge domination? Then read on.

1. Your product concept is the marketing lynchpin (watch out for the Special Occasion Trap)

Food retailers care about velocity and monitor it relentlessly. Marketers care about scale because velocity and scale together are the flags of a winning concept; thus, why growth nirvana for premium CPG success always begins with strategic product and category design. Your innovation goal is a product that naturally, intuitively fits with frequent if not daily consumption occasions and feeds high repeat purchase behavior. Retailers understand this and look for it.

Products that are intended for niche, episodic occasions are much harder to score scaling victory for the very reason they don’t lend themselves to velocity, high repeat purchase business imperatives. If fancy jams are your jam, be prepared for the embedded difficulties that come with slow turn categories or segments with a narrow, special interest fan base.

2. Public ‘display’ categories add symbolism romance to marketing

Food and beverage purchases these days are largely symbolic. People ‘wear’ their brands as a statement, a flag, a visible demonstration of what they value and what they wish to signal to the world around them about who they are.

You know this so can you plan for it, use it. How can you enable consumers to fly your symbolic brand flag? Does your premium brand innovation lend itself to public display occasions such as barbecues, parties, taken to the office or gym and consumed in a social setting? Brand iconography, symbolism and telegraphing of same can be deployed here to help your users display and vote their beliefs and values. Too often this opportunity gets overlooked.

3. Pack strategies can ignite new occasions

No doubt you’ve heard of price-pack architecture. There is a bit of CPG magic in this strategic growth solution. It helps you lean into new and different occasions while creating higher average retail price points (more cash and flow) with a perceived embedded consumer discount, and more facings (brand billboard) at shelf. Pack architecture projects open the door to migrating your users to new consumption occasions.

Amplify Brands’ Skinny Pop brand rode the pack architecture idea to fame and fortune by creating both smaller bags and larger pack sizes of their pound-able guilt-free popcorn. The move lifted average price points while leveraging new use occasions from school lunches to birthday parties. When you offer new packs the input costs are manageable while adding exponential growth on the income side and serving the usage occasion/velocity rule at the same time.

4. The slightly uncomfortable but immutable rule of upscale zip code distribution

There’s an old but wise saying: fish where the fish are. For premium priced food and beverage innovations the distribution strategy decisions you make will have an enormous impact on your ability to gain traction and scale the business. Where you do business matters especially in the early going.

Premium innovations are home to higher quality ingredients, real food-based formulations.  These brands reflect the lifestyle symbolism embraced by consumer cohorts who in reality control the fortunes and failures of new product fame or flame out.

What do we know: educated, high earning households congregate in upmarket neighborhoods. Trial for premium priced CPG innovations will always be better served in retail doors that exist to serve an upscale shopper base. These folks not only won’t flinch at your higher price point, they are also hunters of new premium innovations. Early trial fuels their social currency of being a word-of mouth warrior.

There was a time when Whole Foods owned the early trial zone for premium CPG innovations, but other banners have caught up in their premium offerings. Now it’s a zip code exercise where your decisions are more about the education levels of the communities you distribute in ahead of other considerations.

The guidance: not every new door is the right retail door. Controlled expansion plus patience are better for building your business rather than taking distribution wherever you can get it. EDLP retailers have a different model and a different shopper base driven more by price point than your quality ingredient, healthy lifestyle bona fides. Walmart is better for mass legacy brands for this reason.

• Broader distribution and wider geographic expansion make sense when innovations become mainstream and lower income households begin to take them up. Going that route too early can create problems leading to profit-eroding price drops and even delisting if you’re not careful.

There are 40 metro areas in the U.S. where greater than 30% of the adult population has a Bachelor degree or higher. That’s a cohort of more than 65 million adults. Higher income zip codes within those metros are primed for premium CPG introductions. These higher income, higher educated households are tuned-in to the evolutionary changes going on in modern dietary preferences. They are listening to your narrative.

• In sum, you will grow in geographic areas where large numbers of people attach their lifestyle symbolism to your brand and spread it in their social circles. You should be on shelf in the banners where the shopper population is experientially primed to look for you.

Don’t forget to consider University towns for the same reason. These can be enthusiastic communities for bold, dietary alterations and innovations. Young adults especially are early adopters and influential in making new dietary shifts.

Here is the premium CPG innovation recipe for success assuming the product design fits squarely in the frequent consumption arena.

• Build visibility, awareness and discoverability in the right stores in the right zip codes.

• Increase local household penetration.

• Increase consumption rates among early-in users by adding consumption occasions.

If you have these challenges and strategic questions as you plan your innovations and launch strategies, use this link to start a conversation with us. We can help you create a roadmap to success and the brand narrative well told to go with it. We are new product launch specialists.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Your early priority: what will consumers rave about?

An inconvenient truth: the vast majority (80%) of emerging CPG food and beverage brands will never surpass $1 million in annual sales. Here we examine some of the critical components that drive velocity growth and reveal the fundamental rules that must be respected to scale a new brand over time.

In case you’re wondering, this has no bearing on the scope of investment funding in development and launch phases. The business opportunities, ultimate size of the prize and inherent growth-limiting factors all begin with the product concept itself.

It’s true, the product IS the marketing. The product shouldn’t require promotional lipstick to make itself appear attractive. Instead, it should draw a following because it exudes its own obvious and valued magnetism.

No matter what the Series A, B or C funding rounds looks like:

• You can’t buy food culture relevance
• You can’t buy consumer enthusiasm for the product
• You can’t mandate or enforce memorability on the consumer

The product concept must be strong, unique and valuable enough to drive interest across a larger addressable market.

It’s hard to get noticed when the product isn’t a knockout standout relative to adjacent choices.

Mediocre (not rave-able) innovations, especially in saturated categories, almost never scale because the product concept isn’t big or exceptional enough to leap ahead of current category players. If the product doesn’t incite high memorability levels and consumer passion it won’t be able to drive a sufficient baseline of routine repeat purchasers.

Throwing money at a relevance and value proposition problem won’t help.

For example, hardcore nutritional innovations are difficult to scale because they can’t attract an audience past the ‘holistic’ alternate nutrition audience segment. If sales are dependent on a narrow cult of users, it creates an automatic embedded drag on velocity.

Instead, product design must connect symbolically to highly valued, desirable dietary outcomes for the consumer who will enthusiastically seek it out – such as weight management, energy, immunity, overall health/wellness or indulgence.

Key information the exec team needs to seek through active listening with early-in users:

• What attribute-outcome association is the early adopter holding in their mind?
• Which associations do the heavy users embrace?
• Which of these attribute-outcome associations is truly scalable?

This data should be used to refine and improve the product in its earlier stages of distribution so that once the gas pedal on added distribution is pushed, the product itself is accurately, optimally reflecting what consumers say is their ‘why’ for buying repeatedly.

This is also a vote for patience in expanding the retail door footprint. While some brokers may believe any increase in volume as good volume to have, if there are flaws in the product experience, added distribution will only further expose those weaknesses – risking future delisting if repeat purchase performance falls off. To succeed in steadily increasing overall case volume movement, a core base of repeat buyers (satisfied enthusiasts) must be established, with product trial users added on top of the base.

Category selection and design is vital to long-term success

Please take note, consumers shop categories first and brands second. Likewise, retailers see themselves as category managers. A category is a culturally relevant cognitive title that works to secure a specific use/space/value location in the consumer’s brain.

If you’ve followed our recent articles on radical differentiation, you know how important uniqueness is to generate sufficient category separation from other nearby brand combatants. Ideally, the new brand should occupy its own category space.

The goal of topflight category design is to mine strategic differences that are competitively scalable.

• Here’s Emergent’s top scale principle: the innovation must be attractive to a larger audience and clearly, effectively answer a consumer dietary need or goal – such as ‘natural, better for you, plus an important bonus attribute’. What that attribute will be comprises the creative challenge of our work in category design.

Why did Beyond and Impossible scale so quickly?

The product innovation here for both brands was a significant vault ahead for plant-based meat over previous category versions that were more narrowly positioned for vegan and vegetarian users. They could have elected to position their products as an improved plant-based meat for vegans, a narrow, small cohort when compared to other segments of the meat business.

Instead, they pursued the largest addressable market opportunity, cast as ‘meat lovers’ (which is nearly everyone). This audacious, bold move was built on confidence the product eating experience and taste would live up to the litmus flavor test from beef hamburger fans. Further they created a new category in the fresh meat department – plant-based meat for meat lovers.

Because the product delivered fully on this promise, it fueled word of mouth and consumer enthusiasm/ambassadorship – further closing the loop on trust and credibility. The promise was effectively fulfilled in the candid testimonials of happy users.

Most important however: these brands also conquered the one barrier that often stands in the way of acceptance – perceived risk. How did they manage consumer skepticism about anything novel and new that includes trailing sensory baggage about taste compromises associated with plant-based burgers? The smartly played decadent, indulgent, crave-able, mouthwatering photos of luscious cheeseburgers to build desire and taste appeal said it all. Zero effort here to sell this as a health food (read: tastes bad).

They also benefited from a consumer perception that anything plant-based is better for you and thus why people are looking to add plant-based foods to their diet. The climate message was tertiary social issue icing on the value proposition cake that added ‘feels good’ to consumption. It also operated effectively as a relevant publicity angle to enhance awareness.

The role of symbolism

Consumers are loathe to tax their brains or burn mental calories trying to determine if a product addresses what they believe the purchase should signal about their values to the world around them. Package symbolism becomes a vital link in respecting this signaling behavior that a purchase confers on the user.

This isn’t an invitation to the over-use of certification logos (Whole 30, Certified Organic, etc.) that often clutter up the front panel of many new premium food brand packages. Photography and graphics that billboard the trademark and primary attribute offering from the shelf should intentionally bring visual cues that evoke the brand’s deeper meaning.

Consumer social communities are always based on shared values. Those values operate sub-consciously and are on auto pilot. The decision to pick brand A over B is really a social decision. For this reason consumers have learned to quickly scan for symbolism on product packages.

• “Consumers do not eat kale because they watched a heartbreaking documentary about the meat industry. They eat it because, by doing so, they send social signals of being enlightened, wellness-obsessed, and socially conscious. They do not watch “Succession” because they like it; they watch it because their friends watch it and they want to participate in the shared experience.” Sociology of Business

Halo Top went to market as a high protein ice cream. An odd attribute for ice cream. After carefully listening and then iterating changes to their package, they pivoted to low calorie indulgence and off it went to fame and fortune. Why? Weight management is a highly leverage-able dietary outcome.

Repeat purchase rates are fed by an enthusiastic fan base that shows up in social channel participation. The best influencers are current repeat users who nourish the social channel proof loop about their ‘why’.

In reality, the consumer is your true business partner

In Dr. James Richardson’s wonderfully insightful and well-written book, Ramping Your Brand, he lands on the ultimate list of questions founders should be asking of their users to inform strategy.

1. Why do they like your product line? Is the motivating outcome scalable?
2. Who are the “wrong” consumers”? (i.e., those motivated by non-scalable outcomes or who make insincere trade-offs on taste)
3. How do they use it in everyday life?
4. Does it fold well into their daily routines?
5. How often do they use it? (e.g., daily, weekly, special occasions)
6. What, if anything, they would change? (e.g., weird after taste, pack size, etc.)

As Richardson reports, consumer packaged foods and beverages are all about “easy-to-shop, easy-to-buy, easy-to-use shortcuts to achieve desired outcomes. Find the right way to sell to consumers, not the right way to turn them into your image of what you want them to be.”

If this article sparks interest about optimizing your business on the path to marketplace fame and fortune, use this link to launch an informal get acquainted conversation with us to share your questions.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Symphony of logistics becomes an orchestra of societal values

For the last 30 years or more, supermarkets have operated as a highly-choreographed dance of sourcing, merchandizing and value pricing all stage-managed with intricate daily replenishing management of same. It is, in many respects, a remarkable achievement that provides the lowest cost-to-quality food on earth in an assortment depth that is the envy of the rest of the planet. The grocery store has stood as an assurance of food quality and availability, yet now arrives precariously at a moment of transformation that is far beyond the mechanics of coming in-store robots, the challenges of e-commerce friction and assorted home delivery platforms.

Strategic shift underway

Food retail may also be the most visible in-your-face demonstration of traditional brand marketing strategies borne of the post-World War II consumer packaged goods explosion; focused on a more impersonal and product feature-and-benefit form of consumer communication.

A sea change started to emerge in recent years based on an evolving consumer mindset driven about what matters most to them on the path to purchase. Witness the emergence of health and wellness as a primary driver of consumer preference, the attention now paid to transparency and supply chain integrity and a growing concern over food safety practices. All of these emerging trends have eclipsed the traditional purchase motivators of taste, price and convenience.

The Great Pandemic of 2020 pushes the envelope of change faster and farther as consumers not only connect the dots between the quality of the food they eat and their quality of life, but now see retailers and brands as active participants in their social and societal concerns and growing activism.

Two fundamental impacts of COVID 19 on behaviors and attitudes

1. The pandemic has served to reveal the inescapable, searing questions of economic inequality, exclusion, racial prejudice and its unfairness while lighting a fire to address and solve these inequities. How this plays out will require sensitivity to the issues and strategic planning to address it openly and visibly in policy, procedure and behavior.
2. On another front, at one time consumers aspired to improvement in their lifestyle through status signaling in conspicuous consumption of brands that elicited those feelings of aspirational identity. However, today this has fallen away, shed by a pandemic that has entirely recalibrated what matters to people. Today a brand reputation is enhanced by its social, cultural and environmental values.

Brands and retailers must add responsiveness to a requirement for higher purpose, generosity in behavior and social improvement to their actions. Do you think this transformative insight has fully translated into how brands and retailers package their story and represent themselves in the marketplace? I would say no. Or not yet, while a few are in the starting blocks and getting ready to claim their competitive advantage.

Recasting the supermarket business model

Here we find ourselves in a moment of mechanization. Robots. Digital ordering platforms. Supply chain optimization. Experiments with drones. Electronic grocery carts. Wringing more efficiency in an effort to get product A into hands B more quickly, efficiently and at lower cost.

Nothing wrong with any of this, except it may inadvertently mask the cultural trend changes that argue for a different priority around how supermarkets organize their business for success and relevance to the consumer they need to keep. Technology has its place, but there is a more human need arising that should be considered strategically, as customer-centric planning becomes a top priority.

Let’s go to the ground on this together, where the food culture ‘rubber’ meets the consumer relevance road:

For over a year we’ve been reporting on the shift to home-based meal consumption and cooking. A fair question then: what does the massive pivot to home cooking mean to supermarkets? We’re not talking about the obvious of selling more products, more often for more occasions.

The intimacy people have with food and its preparation is increasing. There’s another form of ‘closeness’ that is percolating underneath as a potential component of retail strategic uniqueness and differentiation – the two components of sustainable business growth.

People buying food from people

You may recall there was an era prior to the maturing of efficient retail when people knew the sellers and makers.

A relevant story: awhile back I had the honor and privilege of meeting Glen Kohn and his business partner at a networking event staged by Chicago’s impressive food brand incubator, The Hatchery. Later during a deeper get acquainted meeting, Glen spoke in detail about his company Prevail Jerky, an emerging super-premium brand of clean, high quality jerky snacks offering an array of culinary forward flavors.

He told the story of how his wife had food allergy challenges. He wanted to make a jerky his wife and family could enjoy. You see Glen was a smoked meat mastermind who had a personal passion for barbecue, smoking proteins and making his own bespoke jerky. He set out to perfect this high protein snack with a recipe that stripped away the legacy bad-for-you allergenic ingredients and use of nitrates, excessive sodium, artificial flavoring and sugars that dogged this dried packaged meat category since inception.

More magical in my opinion is a preparation technique, and he won’t say exactly how he does it, that improves the eating experience by making the meat less tough and chewy. Ultimately what we have here is another improved, higher quality, better-for-you product in a legacy category, with a personal story behind it. In effect, the food quality is guaranteed through Glen’s personal journey.

Even before the Pandemic sent us behind closed doors and placed an even higher premium on human contact, personal relationships were making a comeback. People want to know who the makers of their food are, where they come from, what they are about and how that translates into the product they’ve created.

• Increasingly, we see the aisles at food retail stocked with new brands built by a person, not an R&D lab or innovation department. What was once a hall of impersonal, faceless brands, is turning into a showcase of businesses that acquire their social value through consumers’ desire to support an actual, real-life maker.

Makers bring with them values, beliefs, mission and unique standards of quality that provided deeper meaning past the better recipe. Here’s the strategic twist: while local sourcing has been popularized recently, this nuance stretches the idea further to what we’re calling Local-ism.

People now look at purchases as a statement of what they believe is important rather than flags of social status and prosperity. They are voting their beliefs and values with their wallet. The checkout lane is a voting booth. They are electing product winners with a voice, face and story. The intimacy with food goes deeper. The sense of community building gains a whole new perspective. The store is an aggregation opportunity for these stories-as-brands and a place where they can be brought to life.

• Now retailers have an opportunity to move past the old-school model of being a seller of boxes, cans and bags off shelves at velocity on hyper-thin margins. Food retail can disrupt itself by becoming a form of neighborhood cooking club that respects the environment and the farm while supporting people who craft new food solutions that come to market with a soul. Doesn’t sound like a distribution center for factory food, does it?

What was once impersonal, transactional and formulaic, takes on some of the pastiche of the corner market where the buyer knows the seller, meets the maker and real trusted relationships take root. This is not in conflict with technology and robotics but is rather an important reflection of consumer insight to better guide retail strategy and banner differentiation.

How to think about this: efficiency only goes so far. Becoming a more human-focused business that embraces the emotional investment people have in food, its provenance and related quality is a path to relevance that beats yesterday’s reliance on store location and lower pricing to create competitive advantage. Amazon may have a tougher time with this kind of thinking.

Recommendations on humanizing food retail

• Optimize your aisles and product assortment to feature local and emerging brands with a maker story.

• Use your content creation platform to provide a voice for their stories – and a real, relevant reason for your customers to feel connected to the products they buy at your store.

• Serve this up in a context that works in people’s lives around meal and snack solutions. That’s the foundation for relevance for the food-savvy consumer.

• Marry and merge your indulgent food strategies with better-for-you as the relationship between these two draws ever closer.

• Look past the coupon to start creating other experiences both digital and in-store that showcase your love for food adventure and culinary creativity. Love of food is something you can immediately demonstrate to your shoppers.

When you become highly differentiated, unique and relevant to people, your need to rely on heavy advertising spend to generate traffic declines. When you become remarkable in your shoppers’ eyes, people talk about their experience. Word of mouth is still the most effective form of marketing outreach at your disposal. It is an outcome of remarkable-ness.

Changing perspective may be hard to do because retail traditions and embedded thinking are more about logistics and efficiencies than experiences and food adventures. When the name of the game for decades has been how can we deliver food most cost-effectively – somewhere, we’ve lost sight of the real people who are buying the food – and meeting their needs beyond assortment and price.

When you can see merit in bringing to life the voices and stories of food makers and create ways for buyers to meet them, it lifts your banner above competing mostly on price and product range. That’s a race to the bottom no one wins and plays right into the hands of the endless digital shelf.

A supermarket chain CEO once said to me, “if you walk our office halls on any given day you may find it hard to determine if we’re in the food or hardware business. So much of what we do is too far removed from emotional connections to food and what people use it for.”

You just need to fall in love with food and its ability to transform people’s lives.

If this conversation gets you thinking and you would like to explore it further with like-minded people, use this link to start a conversation without any expectation of a business relationship save we made new friends.

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Air Protein creates first ultra-sustainable proteins

If the pandemic created one positive outcome for Americans, it has been the most potent force in history to elevate the importance of health and wellness to consumers. Already a rising cultural priority, COVID-19 serves as a compelling motivator for people to further invest in their physical health by elevating the quality of what they eat and drink.

Witness the skyrocketing popularity of meatless meat, advanced by first making a product that accurately replicates the taste and eating experience of animal meat but sourced from plants. Survey after survey in the food industry has verified the general growing interest in consuming more plant-based foods because people believe it’s a healthier option. As a result, the alternative meat business is forecasted to reach 40 to 50 percent of the $1.4 trillion global meat industry by 2029.

Now on the horizon comes a new company and food-making technology that promises to create the most sustainable meat alternative on earth. Meat that requires no agriculture, no animals and yet delivers a nutritionally superior, complete higher protein product than anything created from a chicken, pig, cow or plant.

A funny thing happened on the way to the moon

During the massive run-up in the 1960s in its bid to put a man on the moon, NASA continuously launched better, bigger spacecraft while another experiment was going on behind the scenes – one that was eventually shelved and forgotten. The premise was based on nourishing astronauts with food that could be created in space, and the tool for this genius idea was carbon transformation. Said more simply, converting carbon dioxide exhaled by the crew into food. Experiments were conducted but eventually pushed aside in favor of other lunar landing priorities.

Pleasanton, CA-based Air Protein, helmed by MIT physicist Dr. Lisa Dyson, is on a new mission to take the carbon transformation ball all the way down the field and put it in the culinary end-zone. “More and more people are starting to consider the harsh reality of our food system as a global contributor to greenhouse gases (GHG) and climate change,” explains Dr. Dyson. “Our agricultural system produces more GHG than all of the fuel-burning sources of transportation combined. When you mix that with the finite limitations of available land and water resources for farms, ranches and fisheries, you know it’s going to be nearly impossible at some point to feed a rapidly growing global population.”

Dyson’s moonshot is a fascinating recipe of uniquely combining carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen with renewable energy, water and nutrients, then adding common microbes in a fermentation process similar to making wine or cheese. The high protein flour outcome of this brewery-like approach is turned into authentic meat analogs by using pressure, temperature and natural flavors. Her sustainable “Air Protein Farm” operates more like a yogurt making facility than meat processor.

While a steak requires two years of dutiful cattle raising that consumes a significant amount of natural resources, Dyson’s ultra-sustainable meat comes to fruition in just four days.

Air Protein’s process helps avoid two current concerns of conventional meat infrastructure revealed during the coronavirus outbreak:

1. Dangers of meat packing plants becoming hyper-spreader environments for the virus.
2. The resulting scarcity and higher prices of various meats available to consumers at the grocery.

Alternatively, the Air Protein carbon footprint is negative. All of this becomes more plausible when you consider that carbon chains are the essential building blocks of all fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Scientists refer to carbon as “the backbone of life” because, along with water, it is the primary element that makes up all living things.

Sustainability emerges as part of the path to purchase

People everywhere are experiencing a transformation of their own in adding higher purpose, mission, beliefs and values to the shopping list of what they want from food brands they prefer and purchase. The International Food Information Council in a recent national pandemic-inspired survey of consumer behaviors found the impact of environmental sustainability is on the rise as a priority, with 39% of consumers saying it is now a factor in their buying decisions. More than 40% of respondents said it is important for food makers to have a commitment to sustainability, recognition that people are more aware now of limited natural resources and the effect of society and industry on climate change.

Sustainability practices and behaviors clearly matter to people. Dyson believes Air Protein’s emerging story will be a game-changer at the supermarket meat case where retailers are increasingly on the hunt for brands that fulfill the shoppers’ wishes for sustainable choice.

Climate change became the call to arms

The horrible devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina that claimed more than 1,800 lives and left $125 billion in property damage, much of it in New Orleans when the levees were overcome, served as a Road to Damascus experience for Dr. Dyson. While there she labored to help restore a city overcome by a natural disaster that many assigned to the accelerating menace of hostile weather patterns borne of climate change. Dyson vowed to make solving the rampant build-up of greenhouse gases (GHG) an avocation, leading to a partnership with MIT colleague Dr. John Reed and the eventual genesis of a new company named Kiverdi.

“My experience in New Orleans was life-changing. I decided to develop solutions that would combat climate change. During the years following, it became clear to me that our food system is a major culprit in this unfolding crisis. The world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, how to feed everyone sustainably and affordably is the big question we intend to answer,” she said.

The supreme irony of Air Protein is its intention to make food from carbon dioxide. As if meat were to become a new kind of photosynthesis that turns protein creation on its head – not as a contributor to greenhouse gases but also an effective eraser of this global temperature-raising threat. Ultra-sustainable meat may become a center of plate, culinary chess piece to satisfy the appetite while refusing to exact an enormous toll on the environment. That no plants or animals are involved means there is an embedded promise of a high-quality protein source that is generously renewable, kinder to the environment, scaleable and thus plentiful.

The premiumization of palates

Food culture in America has undergone a makeover as the quality of cuisines, ingredients, cooking techniques, kitchen tools and culinary expectations have risen. From the days of Hamburger Helper and Cheese Whiz, people now find themselves eating Michelin star quality cooking at the corner gastro-pub.

The successful strategic gamesmanship of plant-based meat like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, was their insightful move not to make an improved Vegan burger for Vegans. Rather, to deliver an alternative that could satisfy the sensory, gustatory preferences of the most ardent meat lovers. In doing so, these companies reimagined veggie burgers as plant-based protein, opening a new chapter in food where taste trade-off to achieve better-for-you was not required.

This feat is not lost on Air Protein founder Dr. Dyson. With consumers moving rapidly to embrace alternative meat, she sees Air Protein’s probiotic production tech as the next generation category. She has chefs working alongside food science experts to ensure that deliciousness is right there with the heaping tablespoon of ‘feel good’ about not harming the environment with every forkful of her chicken made without the chicken. “We are tuned in to the requirement that our products must deliver on the taste, flavor and eating experience of animal meat, the plant-based hamburgers have shown that when you hit the eating experience squarely, the purchases will follow and repeat,” she said.

The next generation of meatless meat is coming

Who knew that exhaling combined with microbes could build a protein? It took NASA to start the ball rolling and Dr. Dyson and her team to hit the three-point basket at the buzzer. “Because our protein production process requires no farm, no agricultural input or animal, our ability to scale is not governed by supply chain conditions. The COVID-19 influenced meat shortages we’ve seen remind everyone that the food system as we know it can be compromised. We’re excited because our game-changing technology can create a reliable, sustainable supply of meat products that are better for you and infinitely better for the planet at the same time,” she said. Context provides dramatic proof: Dyson says it would take a farm the size of Texas to produce the same amount of meat Air Protein can deliver from a production facility as small as the footprint of Disneyland.

Air Protein is a category-defining company now in the midst of an equity capital raise and expects this round to provide the required assets to take the last lap to commercialization and retail launch. “What’s exciting here is our cost base to produce meat. We will be able to market our products at an affordable price, which in this economy will be important. Our goal one day will be to help economically feed the world from the platform we’re building now,” reports James D. White, Executive Chairman of Air Protein, and former CEO and President of Jamba (formerly Jamba Juice Company).

This dynamic duo believes Air Protein will eventually become the reference standard for ultra-sustainable meat.

Can’t wait to try her chicken at the corner grocery with a salad. One day you’ll probably find it on the moon.

Editorial note: Emergent extends our thanks and appreciation to Dr. Lisa Dyson and James White for participating in this important story.

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Right for the times we are in and when it truly matters

Perhaps the single most important emotional revelation coming out of the pandemic and surrounding events is the complete loss of control experienced by people, now buffeted by an unseen disease and historic events. The conditions have taken charge of our everyday lives, challenged our cultural norms, and affected our behaviors and personal priorities. 

We now have overwhelming evidence that people want to reassert control in their lives in meaningful ways. In our recent article, Health is the New Wealth, we started a discussion around the one thing consumers can actively participate in controlling that helps correct the imbalance and uncertainty they’re experiencing: health and wellbeing matters. 

The pandemic amplifies the health and wellness issue exponentially as people work to protect themselves by investing in their immunity thresholds through better eating and healthy living. This has influenced the purchase patterns and brand preferences for millions and ushered in an era of incredible innovation brought by entrepreneurs who, right and left, are reinventing legacy categories and creating new ones with better ingredients while serving a higher purpose to boot. Every so often we come across a new brand that has relevance written all over it because it so squarely hits the touchpoints of what matters to people now.

Everipe lands at precisely the right moment with precisely the right solution

The pandemic has locked families into homebound consumption occasions and a need for healthy beverages that are pantry ready and convenient. Imagine this: a shelf-stable, super-food smoothie developed using freeze-drying tech to perfectly preserve real fruit ingredients. Freeze-drying removes moisture while also concentrating the flavor profile. 

Then add super-food ingredients to enhance nutritional density. Make it easy to do – just add water, juice or dairy and some ice to a blender. Make it at an affordable price point. And oh by the way, eliminate the hassle of building a homemade smoothie from scratch while fresh fruit ingredients go from ripe to fuzzy in a matter of days. 

Everipe is right for the moment we’re in. We interviewed founding partner Kerry Roberts to learn how the company is handling the pandemic and what they see in the future ahead. Here’s our Q&A with Kerry and some related observations from Emergent.

1.   In the last 60 days much has changed for emerging food and beverage brands. How has the pandemic impacted your business and what changes have you made in how you go-to-market?

Kerry Roberts: “These last couple of months have managed to pull the rug of ‘business normal’ out from under us as company leaders, parents, and partners.

Everipe, is a direct-to-consumer, shelf-stable superfood line of good-for-you smoothies. We suddenly found ourselves relevant for these functional benefits overnight, and for reasons we never could have crafted in a strategy deck. We were incredibly lucky to have planned a launch with Amazon in March that was expedited with Amazon’s emerging business team given the need for nutritious (easy to ship) pantry foods – and so we have seen that channel immediately exceed our expectations. At the same time, we’re seeking out additional E-commerce channels with launches in past weeks on Zulily, Walmart.com and we’re temporarily pausing any plans to pursue brick and mortar.”

Emergent: Ready-to-drink smoothies have been around for a while, but many of them are higher in sugar and the taste isn’t quite on a par with fresh-blended versions. Making smoothies from scratch is time consuming, like baking a daily cake. Frozen fruit ingredients can be expensive and there’s only so much room in the freezer to start anyway. 

Everipe hits so many appropriate buttons from great taste to convenience to nutrition delivery to satisfying at a friendly price – you just know this is going to catch fire. My oldest daughter, who is a smoothie fanatic, loves them. The innovation here is timed, positioned and packaged correctly. 

2.   What specific changes have you implemented in your sales and marketing strategies?

Kerry Roberts: “Consumers in the early stages of quarantine were shopping under duress and it was important to recognize that they were not wired for aisle-browsing discovery of new brands and their messaging. 

As we thought about consumer motivations and how they had shifted on-a-dime in our category from things like energy and weight management to home delivery and shelf-stability, we immediately adjusted our messaging.

Instead we focused on pantry storage, clean ingredients and free delivery – which sound functional at face value, however they all ladder up at present, to safety.

Tactically, in addition to seeking out expanded e-commerce distribution, we’re also leaning aggressively in on our own direct-to-consumer channel, offering a deep trial discount and tripling our digital Ad spend to introduce a captive audience to Everipe.” 

Emergent: Right here you are witnessing the one great lesson that feeds trial and development of a new brand: put the consumer first at all times. Listen carefully to what they are saying, how they are behaving. Be cognizant of the environmental conditions they find themselves in. Work to understand the nuances of what they care about and plan backwards from there.

Relevance and resonance are the twin engines of growth in food and beverage businesses. You can’t have either without an acute understanding of what drives consumer behavior. 

The “if you build it they will come” approach just won’t work. Everipe understands the consumer comes first. Period.

3.   How do you think investors are reacting to the COVID-19 situation and how does that impact their interest in brands like yours?  

Kerry Roberts: “Everipe has not taken on funding as yet and as we think about the coming months, we’re conscious that dollars may tighten as Venture Capitalists and funds work to support their own portfolios through a recession. 

That said, I feel this year presents an incredible opportunity for founders to create a story around how they navigated these challenging times – how quickly they pivoted, how strategic they reacted, and how they set their brand up to weather what may become a lengthy recovery. 

With no shortage of incredible product ideas, I think investors look to invest in founders as potential teammates. While this may not be an easy time to champion an emerging brand, the chance for founders to showcase your character and intellect is probably as poignant as it’s ever going to be (at least I hope this is as tough as it gets!)”

Emergent: We are reminded once again that it is the strength and skill sets of founding partners and creators that imbues brands with “difference.” It is rare that you find a CPG experienced marketer like Kerry Roberts at the controls of building a new brand like Everipe. More often than not founders don’t hail from the marketing discipline. Yet, how a new brand is packaged and presented can have enormous impact on scale and staying power. 

Knowing your skill sets and capabilities can help owners identify the blind spots – and brand building can be one of them. This is why Emergent is a resource for emerging brands. Consumers are emotional creatures. They do not make analytical, fact-based decisions concerning the brands they care about. 

We know that both the stories and the words used to convey the value proposition are of great importance in creating a strong brand right out of the gate. It’s a highly specialized area of expertise not always “owned” by the owners.

Kerry’s presence at Everipe gives them a significant advantage, because she understands the emotional fabric and character of what a brand consists of and how vital it is these days to design it with higher purpose and deeper meaning.

4.   How will the economic uncertainty and lifestyle impacts of the pandemic influence consumer priorities and behaviors?

Kerry Roberts: “I reflect on the spotlight placed right now on wellness, particularly immunity – and health as the only currency that really matters and I am hopeful that the connection between how we fuel our bodies, and how we feel, (and heal), becomes more appreciated. 

At the same time, I worry that in a recession, consumers may not have the resources to invest in healthier options. As a startup with lean margins we understand this friction. I hope that the leadership for making truly clean foods more accessible continues to extend to, and include, big CPG businesses who have the resources to make those changes.”

Emergent: As we’ve said, “Health is indeed the New Wealth.” The pandemic and related events have made the home a more important safe zone; making and consuming food at home more desired; and investing in our health and wellbeing a top priority. There is no greater calling now for the food and beverage industry to acknowledge this will not be achieved through incrementalism in formulation adjustments, but in reinvention of legacy brands to answer the desire for higher quality, shorter ingredient decks and improved nutritionals. 

Six years ago we reported on the seismic move in food and beverage preferences to fresh, locally sourced, higher quality food and beverage choices as people fully connected the dots between what they ingest and the quality of their lives. This single event has created a shift in consumption patterns, food and foodservice retail strategies, and changed the very definition of what better-for-you eating is about. The pandemic has only heightened the shift.

Better-for-You is what the consumer cares about. It is what they want. A panicked blip in sales of boxed mac and cheese should not be interpreted as a lasting return to highly processed food consumption. 

If we indeed care about the health and wellbeing of our users, we owe it to them to advance the creation of healthier products and new food and beverage experiences like Everipe.

5.   What advice can you offer to the founders and investors of new emerging brands that will help assure their continued growth? 

Kerry Roberts: “I wish there was a pandemic playbook! If I might offer any advice it would be: 

• To think carefully about any aggressive plans for rapid expansion and instead to first ensure that existing partners and channels are well cared for, and cash is managed. 

• To double down on listening to and serving your consumer, employees and partners. Your most efficient marketing efforts right now may just lie in how you listen to and treat people.

• To get comfortable with the discomfort of not having a crystal-clear road map. Exercising mental muscles for making the best decisions with available information, while the ground shifts underneath you, will position us all well as an uncertain future unfolds.”

Emergent: Following the true north and optimal strategic game plan in these uncertain times requires that new and emerging businesses pay close attention to consumers – and continuously dial how the brand and business behaves to serve their needs. What people want now is greater control over their lives and to invest in their own health and wellness. This is the path.

To the extent the brand lives in service of improving customer wellbeing, the opportunity for continued growth is achievable. The brand’s role here is as expert guide and coach on the consumer’s life journey. That principle should sit at the foundation of business decisions, marketing messaging and how the offer is presented to all stakeholders. 

Too often we see a form of brand narcissism unfold when the business celebrates itself and is in love with its formulation first, over its relevance to fulfilling consumer needs. Business is now built on reciprocity and that requires a less self-centered operating philosophy. 

Everipe is on a journey itself

As much as we speak about the consumer journey to fulfillment, meaning and purpose, so too Everipe is on a path to revolutionizing the smoothie and healthy beverage category. It will not be easy. Nothing of any real value ever is. Kerry’s comments are evidence of a remarkable sense of self and values that operates as guardrails for their decisions and provide a litmus test for their judgments.

We see great opportunity ahead. When food retail distribution re-emerges as a channel for their growth, we believe the evolving center store will become more of a curated location for higher quality, healthier choices. Everipe will likely be a star in that environment.

If your brand and business is on the hunt for fresh ideas, and improved brand storytelling, we’d love to talk with you.

Editorial note: Emergent would like to express our deepest appreciation to Kerry Roberts for participating in this story and helping to inspire and educate other brands now trailblazing a new healthier frontier in food and beverage.