Emerging Brands Supplement 2020

PRESENTS

NOVEMBER 2020

INSIDE

Baby Food Brand Grows Up p. 1 Tchibo Coffee Debuts in The U.S. p. 4

Petal Still Blooming during Covid-19 p. 5 Cece’s Veggie & Regional Brand Accelerators p. 6 Innovating the Plant-Based Food Category p. 8 EBSupp_Cover_1120.indd 1

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NOVEMBER 2020

Baby Food Brand Grows Up Babyblends brand owner Little Spoon has expanded its product offerings to include supplements/vitamins and a line of plated meals for the younger set in just a few short years, while also selling solely direct-to-consumer.

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ittle Spoon is a national brand best known for fresh, direct-to-consumer (D2C) baby food. In 2016 Packaging World covered the emerging brand’s patented resealable packaging and use of HPP in their Babyblends product line (pwgo.to/5782). They quickly sold over one million meals in the first year (now over six million), and amassed a following that now comprises the growing community on Little Spoon’s online parenting blog and platform, “Is This Normal.”

The company recently launched Plates, a new product line of over fifteen healthy, ready-to-heat-and-eat meals designed for 1-10-year-olds, and The Sauce Box, a pack of three dips available Little Spoon’s new product line uses reusable, recyclable, top rack dishwasher as an add-on to Plates with selections safe and BPA/BPS-free packaging. such as Soy Glaze, Veggie Ketchup, Creamy Dill Ranch, Avocado Crema, and Honey Mustard. The sauces, like the Plates meals, also day. By launching Plates early, we hope to make this time feature “hidden veggies & superfoods.” easier for our community,” says Little Spoon’s co-founders, The Little Spoon Plates are reusable, recyclable, top-rack Lisa Barnett, Ben Lewis, Michelle Muller, and Angela Vranich. dishwasher safe, and BPA/BPS-free. Little Spoon will also be We asked Barnett (President & CMO), Lewis (CEO), launching a reuse initiative: the Plates Send Back program.

Muller (CXO), and Vranich (CPO), for a company update: “Our focus is to make it easier for parents to keep their Packaging World: kids healthy without breaking the bank or sacrificing hours of When you first spoke with Packaging World, Babycritical time each day. There aren’t enough resources for this blends was going to be sold in Whole Foods and other generation of parents in normal times—add to this a global retailers as well as direct-to-consumer. When and why pandemic, and we have millions of parents struggling each did you decide to solely ship D2C and bypass retail stores?

One of the critical needs when it comes to nutrition is variety.

Little Spoon uses over 100+ organic ingredients in our meals, and we simply would not be able to offer that level of variety at shelf. We frequently rotate our menu, integrating seasonal ingredients and unique flavors—keeping that flexibility to our menu is critical to offering our customers the best experience and it wouldn’t be possible at the grocery store.

This flexibility afforded to us by going D2C also enables us to be responsive to our customers’ needs. We change our recipes and bring new products to market frequently as we Plate’s line of clean dipping sauces include hidden veggies receive feedback from our community about their children and vitamins. and what they need more or less of. In fact, our entire R&D

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NOVEMBER 2020 process was designed to include our customers’ feedback at every step of the way. An example—one of our natural remedies, Poopie Power, designed to alleviate constipation for babies, was launched in direct response to our community sharing their frustrations on the lack of clean, all-natural and effective solutions to this very common pain point in infants.

Another huge priority for us is convenience. We want to make sure that parents don’t have to add time to their already busy schedules by constantly going back to the store for more blends or meals from us. Shipping directly to our customers allows us to save even more time in their already hectic day.

Finally, by going direct, we’re also able to pass savings onto our customers. For example, our newest line of toddler & kid’s meals, Plates, are offered under $5 a meal, a price point we wouldn’t be able to match had we gone through grocery retailers.

What kind of growth have you seen over the last couple of years? Has the pandemic impacted negatively, or pushed growth forward?

Little Spoon has seen triple digit growth year over year since our inception just three years ago. This is thanks to our incredible community, who has helped spread the word on what we do!

We’ve been fortunate throughout the pandemic to continue to ship out deliveries and have been a source of comfort for families who have been quarantining or have gone to the grocery store only to be met with empty shelves. We’ve grown our community tremendously and are doing everything we can to be there for our customers. Those who are essential workers or who have faced unemployment have been offered ‘at cost’ meal plans, and we’ve also worked to donate over $100,000 worth of our products to Feeding America (with plans to donate an additional $100,000 before the end of the year).

Working parents, and especially mothers, have been tremendously impacted by COVID-19, and in fact, one third of women have had to take a step back in their careers simply to care for their children in this time without regular childcare. The knowledge that our customers were struggling propelled us to launch our most recent line, Plates, early— and just in time for back to school.

Do you use HPP for preserving Plates and Dipping Sauces, since it is used with the Babyblends products?

We do not. Instead, we use our Freshlock® seal, a proprietary vacuum seal that enables us to keep our meals fresh without the use of preservatives. This seal uses cutting-

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Babyblends, the company’s first product line, innovated with its use of HPP. edge vacuum technology that preserves food freshness and ensures the meal’s flavors and ingredients are captured at their best. It also allows for even heating through steaming, self-venting to heat food quickly and evenly. The Freshlock seal is completely free of BPA/BPS, phthalates, and other plasticizers.

What else can you tell us about the Plates packaging beyond being BPA/BPS-free?

Overall, we design our packaging solutions to be as simple and convenient as possible for parents, while also doing as much as we can to be as sustainable as possible.

When it comes to our Plates line, the physical plate that you receive your Little Spoon kid’s meal on is made to be reused again and again. This plate is top rack dishwasher safe and will be reusable for Little Spoon once we’re able to implement our send back program (this has been delayed due to COVID-19).

Tell us about Boosters. When was that product line launched and what kind of packaging does it utilize?

Our Boosters, a line of clean vitamins, probiotics, and natural remedies, are another innovation from Little Spoon in the supplement/vitamin category. Our formulas are completely natural and combine key vitamins and probiotics with organic fruit and vegetables. Our packaging form factor is also unique: stickpacks containing powder that can be poured and stirred into breastmilk, yogurt, ice cream—you name it. We heard from so many parents that traditional form factors, like the dropper, were constantly rejected by their children, so we knew we needed to do something different to alleviate that pain point.

And there is much more to come with our vitamins, so keep a lookout!

—Kim Overstreet

Powdered boosters vitamin and natural remedies are packaged in stickpacks that can be mixed into food or liquid.

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NOVEMBER 2020

Tchibo Coffee Debuts in The U.S. with Unique Package Features This 70-year-old European coffeehouse brews up a fresh experience in eight Midwest markets.

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chibo (CHEE-bo) coffee makes its U.S. debut this fall.

Distributed by Rainmaker Food Solution, Tchibo will be available at a broad selection of retailers in eight target Midwest markets (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin) prior to a full-phased national roll-out.

The Tchibo Difference: Aroma Protect

Tchibo’s sleek gold packaging is engineered with a patented Aroma Protect Technology™, which removes over 99% of the oxygen from the beans during packaging, maintaining the original roasted flavor and aroma.

While the coffee is presented in a standard foil/plastic side gusseted bag, a one-way valve moderates the ideal conditions for fresh coffee, removing the gas and moisture while preventing air from entering. By protecting the coffee from oxygen, it stays fresher longer.

In the whole bean bags, the sealed pouch comes with a plastic spout similar to those used on liquid cartons, a screw cap with fine grip ridges around the sides, and an auto-break tamper band at the base. Whole bean coffee screw Opening the cap pushes an internal cap section downward, cutting into the bag and breaking the seal. The resealable cap locks out oxygen, helping to prolong the coffee’s freshness.

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Sustainability

Tchibo is a proponent of sustainable practices and says it is one of the leading drivers in sustainable coffee initiatives and fairness standards. With global headquarters in Hamburg, Germany the family-owned business has been recognized with multiple awards for its sustainable, fair-trade practices, including the award for Corporate Ethics and the Environmental Logistics Award and the European Union’s CSR Award. In 2016, Tchibo was awarded Germany’s most sustainable major enterprise. The company says it is committed to protecting the future of coffee, the environment, biodiversity, water resources, and workers safety and rights. Thomas Linemayr, Chief Executive Officer, also says “Tchibo is bringing a cleaner, more sustainable and fresher coffee experience to the U.S. “As the pandemic continues to impact coffee behavior and consumption, consumers are looking for a brand to trust, one providing a reliable, authentic experience from the comfort of home. With a strategic commitment to building and delivering a strong foundation of differentiated product, services and solutions, the time is right to bring the Tchibo experience to the U.S. and get the first batches brewed in these new markets,” adds Linemayr.

Available in ground or whole beans and in an assortment of sizes and formats, Tchibo will launch with a selection of coffees, ranging in price from $9.99 to $17.49. —Kim Overstreet

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Petal Still Blooming during Covid-19 We updated the Petal Sparkling Botanical beverage story during PACK EXPO Connects in early November.

Go to pwgo.to/5781 to read more about how Petal started.

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o how does a brand that wins on the shelf adapt when people stop going into the grocery store?

First things first. Calling it a “major milestone during COVID-19”, founder and owner Candice Crane showed us Petal cans that have shed their wrap-around shrink labels and now sport printed-on-the-can labels.

But earlier in the year, Petal had to adjust. The can may have “popped” better with printed labels, but grocery store traffic had shifted. People stopped shopping as frequently or started shopping on-line, affording fewer encounters with the new brand.

Crane started focusing on reaching her core audience,

which she calls “the Tribe,” in their homes via social media.

Both with online advertising and a social push to live events— yoga, live DJs, live nutritionist, and mixologists all on Instagram @DrinkPetal. A local Chicagoland grocery had a virtual event and Petal generated five times average engagement.

“Consumers are almost demanding ‘better for you’ sodas,” says Crane. Petal’s online marketing drives both for e-commerce and traffic into stores.

Evolving into this online retail space, two projects are advancing simultaneously with the help of Crane’s father, Mike Levy who is retired from OEM Arpac in Schiller Park, Ill. Petal’s retailers are now demanding four-packs, and Amazon wants a “starter kit” of four different flavors in one case. The new “ready-to ship” corrugated cases should launch late fall.

The pandemic has thrown a wrench into whatever plans emerging brands thought they had. Petal was able, before COVID-19, to establish a personality and have the critical co-manufacturer/co-packer partnerships. Not only has the brand survived this crisis, Crane and her team are generating a lot of momentum for the future—whatever it may hold. —Jim Chrzan

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NOVEMBER 2020

Cece’s Veggie Co-Founders Helps Roll Out Regional Brand Accelerators A patient Mason Arnold, founder of the fast-growing Cece’s Veggie Co. lines of vegetable-based noodle replacements, braved his host Matt Reynolds’ ultra-slow internet speed to tell PW all about the growing Naturally umbrella of emerging brand incubators.

Packaging World: Tell us a little about your background, and how you ended up founding Cece’s Veggie Co.?

Mason Arnold: My prior start-up company was called Greenling, where we did grocery home delivery. We had created a value-added kitchen, so we were processing and selling value-added vegetables that we got from local farms. Often, this local produce isn’t as pretty as some in retail, and so processing them leveled the playing field, and we would sell them chopped or diced.

Mason Arnold has been an organics pioneer and serial entrepreneur since graduating from the University of Texas in 2001. He founded several companies with sustainability at the core, most recently Cece’s Veggie Co., which a year ago was ranked as Inc. magazine’s third fastest growing private company in 2019.

Over that time, I saw a lot of brands come and go, and got pretty good at guessing which ones were going to do well, and which ones weren’t. And then—in what turned out to be a really influential event in leading me to found Cece’s—my family and I had to go gluten-free due to allergies. So, I was looking for the best gluten-free pasta out there, as well as trying to get more vegetables into my kids’ diets, and I felt like that vegetable noodles might be a plausible business model. I researched all the way down to the microbiology of what happens when slicers and blades cut vegetables. With that research, I actually invented the machine that we still use to this day to make pasta out of fresh vegetables.

With that machine, I knew I could make a good noodle, and so then the very next question to me was, “what does the packaging need to look like?” I identified where in the

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store I wanted it to go, and then from there, I decided on what I felt like the best packaging would be. And got some help from a local agency, Shelf Studio, Austin, Texas, to design the perfect package and brand, in order to sell these vegetable noodles.

Are there any specific packaging challenges with vegetable noodles?

When you cut a vegetable into a very small cross section, there’s a whole lot of surface area for degradation of that product. And because we sell it fresh, and there’s no kill step [pasteurization or HPP, for example] involved, shelf-life and pathogens are the two biggest considerations. All of that did have to go into it our business model, and how we do that is kind of our black box, our trade secret.

What was the genesis of Naturally Austin?

I’ve been a mentor for SKU, a consumer products accelerator program in town, and seeing the community come together around that was inspiring. But even though there was this great accelerator program where entrepreneurs got to meet all of these mentors and suppliers, SKU is mostly focused on the companies who enter their program. I wanted to help create something that extended beyond that, to anyone who wants to be involved in the CPG community.

I think it’s really important to have community within industry. Actually, I’m also a mentor at Capital Factory, which is a technology accelerator for all things tech. It’s kind of the central hub for technology start-ups and entrepreneurship in town. And I had watched that grow—the founder of that, Josh Baer was on the board of my last company— and I wanted to create something like that for the CPG community.

Rather than the SKU accelerator, which is very focused on growing businesses—and most of them are already revenue and such—I felt like we should create a place where people can just get together, and talk about their ideas, and meet other people doing it.

So, I combined the best parts I saw of the two. I saw how much more robust the Capital Factory community was

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around tech, because they had a lot more resources. In SKU, you kind of had to be in the program to get access to the resources. And as I started to talk to other people in the CPG community, there were multiple people that really wanted the same thing, so we all got together, and we started to ask, ‘how do we build community around CPGs in Austin?’

As we were evaluating the idea, one of the people that we were meeting with knew of Naturally Boulder and said that they were really interested in helping. So, we ended up partnering with them, because they already had resources like documents, structure, and all kinds of things that we could lean on. And so that’s when we decided to form Naturally Austin.

How does it operate, and what does the structure look like?

There are multiple phases to it that we sought out from the outset. The first phase was just building community. So, there are membership options for it, and the least expensive one is $65 a year. But really, lots of events are open to the general community. We just wanted to be a resource, and for people to know that they could come to Naturally Austin to talk about ideas, and learn about the CPG industry, and do education. For instance, we get some of the really highprofile CPG brands and personalities in town to talk about different areas that new entrepreneurs will come across.

We have educational sessions, networking, and community gatherings in general. And then, as the organization grows, we want to add services, and we want to find a location that we can call the Naturally Austin’s own location to host all these events and such, so we’ve got a lot of big plans. But the first step will be as a non-profit that just wants to help educate people and gather people around CPG entrepreneurship.

Mature brands and brand owners know packaging matters from the beginning. But often, new business owners or entrepreneurs don’t recognize this off the bat. How does Naturally deal with that common dynamic?

I personally view packaging as absolutely critical to a CPG brand, and I think it’s one of the things that needs to be focused on and worked out extremely early. From the Naturally Austin perspective, we communicate that same perspective—that packaging is something that needs to

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be well-thought-out from the very beginning, and Naturally Austin can provide resources to do that. Because there are a lot of resources out there these days for that kind of effort, and just helping people know that they need to think about it up front, and not wait until they’re at scale.

Do you partner with packaging machinery builders or other packaging suppliers to help members figure out where to start?

Yes, we can. And we do have members who are packaging companies, and we have lot of sponsorship opportunities as well for packaging companies wanting to be able to get themselves in front of the Naturally Austin community.

Some entrepreneurs invent a product and build a brand with the intent to sell it and move onto the next idea. Others are in for the long haul.

We strive for our education sessions to provide information for both of those perspectives, and for Naturally Austin, we don’t necessarily want to lead anyone down either one of those in particular. Both are great paths, and we provide the resources for either path.

Has growing Naturally Austin benefitted your business, Cece’s Veggies, as well?

I would definitely say that we’ve benefited in just having the community aspect that I’ve run across, and resources that I may need at the moment—whether it’s additional packaging resources, or transportation resources, or technology and other resources of people that are in the Naturally Austin community. And then, as I need something, I know that I’ve got this community that I can pose a question to and get lots of responses back. No matter what I need in the business, having that community to lean on has been a really great aspect of it.

What’s next for the Naturally network?

Naturally started in Boulder, but it’s now joined by a network in San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago, and Austin. Now, the Naturally network is coming together and creating a more national Naturally network. No matter where a brand is, there may be a Naturally member of the network nearby, so they should look and see that. —Matt Reynolds Visit pwgo.to/5716 to learn more about Naturally Austin and the Naturally network.

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NOVEMBER 2020

Innovating the Plant-Based Food Category with Functional Superfoods Lavva is growing its brand with Paleo- and Keto-certified plant-based yogurts and milk products.

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his Brooklyn, N.Y.-based company is packing a lot of power into its growing catalog of vegan all-natural products.

Lavva’s yogurt and milk products are made with the Pili nut, a low-carb, high-fat nut that requires little water to grow, and creates zero waste—the trees’ shells and bark are used for furniture, and the sap is used in cosmetics. Founder and CEO Liz Fisher, who created the company in 2017, discovered Pili nuts while following a strict Keto diet during her successful battle with advanced-stage ovarian cancer. “I was looking for highquality plant fats that weren’t macadamia nuts that didn’t taste like a nut, and that’s what the Pili nut is. It’s a beautiful fatty acid profile and it’s very neutral,” says Fisher.

Starting with the plant-based yogurt, Liz Fisher, Lavva expanded its offerings with the first Founder certified Keto vegan yogurt in the category— and CEO, Lavva Molten Lavva. According to Fisher, compared to Lavva’s original recipe yogurt, it is much higher in fat and Pili nut, and has a different package and cup size. “It’s a different proposition,” she says. “It’s kind of a different eating occasion, that’s more of a dessert.”

The brand has recently introduced a new plant-based milk and will soon be releasing a plant-based creamer. The plant milk’s label will be perforated to make for an easy recycling process.

Lavva’s functional superfoods are minimally processed

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and have no added sugar, gums, oils, or natural flavors. The yogurt products are packaged in printed PP-5 cups made by Polytainers, and the new milk products feature “a fresh, beautiful shrink” on the bottle, according to Fisher.

The emerging brand has recently undergone a messaging pivot. The yogurt products were originally marketed as “Dairy Free” but have been re-branded to “Living Cultured Superfoods.” Says Fisher, “Plant-based is starting to become a new descriptor. Non-dairy just sounds so old school. I realized, we were burying the lede here, because it’s not just not made from cow’s milk, it’s a heck of a lot more differentiated than that.”

Part of the brand’s mission is to take down the wall between the food industry and food-as-medicine. Fisher says, “I did a recent podcast with Dr. Scott Gundry. He is a beautifully trained medical doctor and is a very articulate spokesman for food as medicine, especially around gut, microbiome, and immunity…I think that the consumer is more aware of gut health and its role in disease, even obesity itself, and they’re not necessarily millennials. People over 50, they want to feel good and stay healthy as long as possible, and they are becoming real activists about what they eat and the quality of their food, and it’s hard to get all that without eating fresh.”

Fresh food, says Fisher, has taken a bit of a hit during COVID-19 as consumers stockpiled shelf-stable items during the early months of the pandemic. Like many other companies who tried to find new ways of reaching their customers during lockdown, Lavva tried direct-to-consumer and “we had a great couple of months, but then we had trouble just combating the shipping options,” says Fisher. “And with a highly perishable product…we wanted to make sure we had a perfect customer experience, and that wasn’t happening. So, we’ve paused it [direct to consumer shipping] but we’re hoping to get it back up again soon.”

For now, the best way to find Lavva product is in retail locations such as Whole Foods, Sprouts, Wegmans, The Fresh Market, Fred Meyer, and natural food stores across the country. —Kim Overstreet

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