Granola for the 21st Century
By Lorrie Baumann
By day, Margaret Barrow is a mild-mannered college professor who teaches composition and literature at Borough of Manhattan Community College. When she unleashes her vegan super powers, though, she’s on a mission to use the granola-based snacks she used to make just for herself as a tool to help her students make better lives for themselves. The product she’s making for that purpose is It’s NOLA, poppable snack balls made from oats, seeds and nuts.
The idea to turn the snack balls she’d been making at home for her own consumption into a business came from her students, she said. They’d been bringing snacks to her classes that her vegan sensibilities wouldn’t allow her to share, so she decided to bring the snack balls she’d been eating at home – they’re chia seed, pumpkin seed, flax seed and sunflower seed along with nuts, oats and spices mixed with a vegan binder to hold them together in crunchy balls. “I started making them for me and my family because I’m the only vegan, and I wanted to make something that we could all eat,” Barrow said. “My students had never had vegan before, and I was delighted to share it with them.”
The students liked the snacks so much that they started asking Barrow if she’d bring more so they could share with their family and friends. Then they started showing up at her home at night. Then some of them told her that she should really start a company and sell them. She said no.
Undaunted, students Mariem Sanoe and Candice Ricks took some of the snack balls to other New York colleges and New Jersey’s Rutgers University and passed them out to students there, along with a survey. Then they brought the results of their consumer research back to Barrow. “We think you should read these,” they told her. “You always told us to get evidence to support our arguments.”
Shocked, Barrow held out a hand for the surveys and started reading. “I was shocked. It was totally unexpected,” she said. “The surveys gave me a sense of the commitment and the belief that the students had. I was the person who was always their champion, and for the first time I felt I was on the opposite end of it.”
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Then she started thinking. “I’ve spent most of my life doing two things at once,” she said. “I’ve spent so much of my life juggling two goals at a time. I have a lot of energy.”
She consulted the business professors at her college, and she asked a lawyer if there was a way that she could use profits from an entrepreneurial project to support community college mentoring programs.
They didn’t tell her no, and maybe it wouldn’t matter if they had. Vegans are used to answering doubts about the positions they’ve staked out. Barrow started accepting a new identity as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of a small artisanal food business. “I asked the students to accept sweat equity to come into the company and help me,” she said. “I’ve been mentoring them while I’ve been learning about being an entrepreneur. I want to continue working on legacies of wealth with them.”
It’s Nola is a snack that’s intended as a fun and filling amuse bouche to soothe a between-meals hunger pang rather than as a substitute for a regular meal or any part of one. A serving is low in calories, low in sugar, low in sodium and low in fats and carbohydrates. “It’s filling without making you feel lethargic. It provides energy. It’s a true traditional snack, which means that you’re having something between meals to get you to the next meal. You don’t need to eat a whole bag,” Barrow said. “Most people say that they can eat three or four of these balls and they feel good. They’re addictive – that, I can say. They’re very uniquely flavored.”
It’s NOLA is offered in Luscious Cranberry Coconut and Sassy Mango Masala as well as Decadent Chewy Chocolate, which is the newest flavor. They’re packaged in stand-up pouches with either a single serving, a two-serving 12-count or a 24-count. “We’re working on getting them into cafes, so it’s a stand-up pouch that will work next to a cash register,” Barrow said.
Ten percent of the profits from It’s NOLA are dedicated to community college mentoring programs, with the funds to go directly to the programs rather than being funneled through a foundation or non-profit organization, Barrow said. “Ultimately I’d like to raise enough money so we can create housing for community college students,” she added. “Some of them live in the projects – they just don’t live in the greatest of circumstances while they’re being educated.”
A Coffee Creamer for Active, Health-Conscious Consumers
By Lorrie Baumann
Urby Modern Creamer is a new keto-friendly coffee creamer with functional benefits from plant protein and no added sugar. The brand’s name is a reference to the idea that it stands for products designed for consumers who are trying to live their best lives.
Urby Founder Nick Boggs was looking for a healthier alternative to the flavored coffee creamer that he’d been using, so he started looking at ingredient labels. After those labels convinced him that he wasn’t going to find the clean-ingredient option and functional benefits that he was seeking on grocery store shelves, he set to work to develop his own.
Boggs started by looking at the data to discover how many other people shared his problem. “I really relied on the market research to define what the product profile would be,” he said. “That provided a lot of guidance to take that product profile to the food scientists.”
Boggs told the scientists that he had a list of features that he wasn’t willing to compromise on and asked them to develop a formula. The product had to contain no artificial ingredients and no added sugar, he insisted. He also wanted a functional benefit in the form of a plant protein.
Product development took more than a year and entailed more than 100 iterations of the creamer to come up with a product that met Boggs’ specifications and dissolved satisfactorily in both hot and cold beverages. Experiments tested different ingredients and different suppliers, with the results checked through a lot of blind taste testing, Boggs said. “We ultimately were able to meet our high standards for nutritional value while delivering a great taste.”
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Urby Modern Creamer is made with organic pea protein and organic sunflower seed protein, so that each serving provides 5 grams of plant protein. The product is sweetened with monkfruit extract, so it contributes 40 calories and 0 grams of sugar. Like protein powders, Urby Modern Creamer tends to clump when it’s added to a hot beverage, so Boggs recommends the use of a handheld electric frother to mix it into coffee. “Most of our customers are familiar with protein powders, so it’s very intuitive to them,” Boggs said. “Some people even like to use a blender.”
The creamer’s organic coconut milk provides flavor and creaminess. “Since we don’t use any color additives to create a bright, white product, it’s got a little bit of a beige tint to the product, due to the natural color of the plant proteins,” Boggs said.
Urby Modern Creamer is packaged in a polyethylene jar that contains 26 servings and retails for $25.99. It includes a scoop that measures out an individual serving. For each jar that’s sold, Urby donates a meal through a partnership with Rise Against Hunger, an international hunger relief organization that distributes food and life-changing aid to the world’s most vulnerable. “It’s a partnership that we established prior to launch, so it’s built in as core to the business,” Boggs said. “Now that the pandemic has hit, the need is even greater, so it makes the partnership really special.”
Distribution arrangements to brick and mortar retailers are under discussion, according to Boggs. “Before the pandemic occurred, we’d started placing the product in fitness studios. At the same time, throughout the pandemic, we’ve started conversations with larger national retailers. We’re getting a lot of interest in the product, and we’re moving forward with the conversations,” he said. “There’s never a good time for pandemic-level disruption, but the positive thing is that there is great interest, and the conversations are moving forward despite the challenges.”
Gourmet Flavor for the Freezer Case from Cali’flour Foods
By Lorrie Baumann
Cali’flour Foods has a new option for consumers who are growing bored with their own cooking during COVID-19 quarantine as well as those who follow gluten-free, keto or vegetarian diets. The company has launched four new frozen entrees on its own website and is currently rolling them out nationally into retail stores.
The four products are Vegetable Lasagna, Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Chicken Enchilada Bake and Vegetable Enchilada Bake. Each contains 12 grams or less of net carbohydrates per serving, achieved by using cauliflower instead of the traditional tortillas and enchiladas, just as Cali’flour Foods’ pizza crusts function as alternatives to traditional breads in the company’s line of frozen pizzas and flatbreads. “These recipes came from the cookbook that I made – more importantly, they just came from the recipes that I developed,” said Cali’flour Foods Founder Amy Lacey. “Even people who don’t like cauliflower like them.”
The 9-ounce single-serving meals are both gluten free and grain free, so they appeal to those consumers who are following a variety of diet regimes, including keto, gluten-free, grain-free or anti-inflammatory diets. “There are a lot of products that are gluten free that are not healthy, but these are grain free as well,” Lacey said. “I can’t think of a person who wouldn’t enjoy these, especially right now.”
The new entrees are also kid-friendly, so they appeal to parents who are trying to persuade their children to eat more vegetables, Lacey said. “My oldest is pretty picky about what he eats – he’s a no-vegetable kind of kid,” she said. “For any kids who won’t eat vegetables, these are amazing.”
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Recipes for the dishes started in Lacey’s own home kitchen as she started developing recipes for meals that she could eat after being diagnosed with lupus, an auto-immune disease that requires that she follow an anti-inflammatory diet herself. “I grew up eating comfort food. I love comfort food – biscuits and gravy kind of comfort food. I was looking to recreate comfort food to be healthy,” she said. “I was looking for a taco shell or a tortilla that I could eat. I was looking for something that I could make without having to make a separate meal – that the whole family would eat.”
In her home-cooking experiments, Lacey found that she could often substitute cauliflower grown around her in California’s Central Valley into her recipes, where its mild flavor would go unnoticed by the picky eaters in her family. “The lasagna, I made it one time, and I said, ‘This is a big winner,’” she said. “I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love the lasagna.”
Another benefit of the dishes is that they do offer quite a bit of protein. “Even the Vegetable Enchilada Bake has 15 grams of protein in it – it’s very filling,” Lacey said. “The Vegetable Lasagna has 24 grams of protein.” Much of that protein comes from the egg whites and cheese that bind the cauliflower together to make the crust that’s substituting for tortillas and noodles, so these dishes are not vegan. “We use high-quality ingredients. There’s zero added sugar. It’s natural, and they average 5 grams of fiber per serving,” she added. “They’re simple, fresh ingredients – comfort food made healthy from our farm to your kitchen. It’s literally picked from the farm and made in our plant and taken to the freezer section.” The single-serve entrees retail in the range of $4.99 to $6.99 each.
In addition to the four entrees, Cali’flour Foods is extending its flatbread line that already includes its Plain and Italian Flatbreads with a Sun-Dried Tomato Flatbread that’s made with sun-dried tomato, cauliflower, eggs and mozzarella cheese and spices. “They’re a huge fan favorite,” Lacey said. “They’re a huge hit.”
For more information, visit www.califlourfoods.com.