Making your own superfood smoothies with fresh or frozen produce isn’t rocket science, but it can be “cumbersome and daunting,” say the founders of Everipe, a new-to-the world shelf-stable smoothie brand about to hit shelves at Walmart that promises to deliver the same experience in 90 seconds, without all the fuss.

Right now, says New York based co-founder Kerry Roberts, you can buy a mound of fresh produce (half of which will probably end up rotting in the fridge) and start peeling and chopping; you can buy multiple bags of pre-cut frozen fruits; or you can buy sachets of smoothie powders, which don’t deliver the same sensory experience as the real thing. ?

Everipe???shelf-stable smoothie kits - which contain a blend of freeze-dried fruits, veggies and chia seeds – make life considerably easier, says Roberts, who teamed up with Toronto-based entrepreneur Greg McMullen in 2017: “You just pour the contents into your blender, add one cup of water or milk and one cup of ice, and blend for 90 seconds.?

“Greg had gone through fresh, frozen, and powders and he wanted something with all the convenience of a powder with all the joy of real foods,” ?she told FoodNavigator-USA.

“Them he stumbled upon freeze-dried technology, which suddenly unlocked all these benefits. It took several months to find a manufacturing partner, develop the packaging and tweak the recipes, and we launched the brand online in January 2019.”?

‘We met in the lunchbreak. Within the hour they had invited us to Bentonville’?

However, the big break came in June 2019 after a serendipitous meeting at a conference in New York.

“We were just there to learn, but ?they had a speaker from Walmart talking about how they want to work with emerging brands. We got chatting during a networking break and they took one look at the product, saw it was shelf stable but that it had no preservatives or added sugars, and within the hour they had invited us to ?[Walmart’s HQ in] Bentonville.”? 

Everipe will launch in the cereal aisle in 60 Walmart stores in late December, said Roberts, who said Walmart felt the concept had broader mainstream potential beyond the Whole-Foods-type shoppers Roberts and McMullen had originally anticipated might be their early adopters.

“It was so incredible that they took a bet on a company this tiny with an unproven product, but they believed in the concept.”?

We were blown away by how collaborative they were?

So what was the meeting like in Bentonville??“A complete 180 from everything I’d heard about,” ?said Roberts, who spent six years in marketing at Kraft Foods earlier in her career before working with scores of CPG brands looking to turn consumer insights into action.

“Whether it was we were incredibly lucky or whether their culture has really changed, I don’t know, but we were blown away but how collaborative they have been. We said to them, if you love the concept, we’ll re-engineer it to make it work at Walmart, and they helped us with everything from the packaging design to renaming a flavor. ?

“They also said that to be successful on a Walmart shelf we’d need to step away from being 100% organic so our pricing could come down and we could scale. We also have two new flavors that will bring us into a more family friendly space – cocoa-mojo and strawberry bananza.”?

The products are debuting at $4.98/pack, a price the founders would like to see drop to $3.98 as they scale, said Roberts. “That’s the one thing we’re most concerned about as we want to be accessible to everyone.”?

 

Freeze-drying:羅伯茨說(shuō)，雖然冷凍干燥可能會(huì )讓人聯(lián)想起太空食品的畫(huà)面，或者是漂浮在早餐麥片里色彩鮮艷的軟渣，但這項技術(shù)正開(kāi)始吸引更多的關(guān)注，因為它讓水果保留了營(yíng)養和味道。

 

“一些廚師在高檔餐廳里用冷凍干果和蔬菜作配菜，因為你會(huì )得到那種強烈的味道。”

 

在這個(gè)過(guò)程中,水果和蔬菜收獲后立即被凍結,然后進(jìn)行低壓真空下干燥過(guò)程中冷凍水被直接蒸汽,繞過(guò)了液體狀態(tài),使凍干水果保持形狀、味道,香味,顏色和最新鮮的、營(yíng)養的水果。

哪里是銷(xiāo)售最好的地方?

沒(méi)有什么很像Everipe在架子上,沒(méi)有什么沃爾瑪可以比較直接銷(xiāo)售量時(shí),羅伯茨說(shuō)。他指出,零售商沒(méi)有設定硬性速度目標為新品牌和說(shuō)明白它可能需要時(shí)間來(lái)找到正確的位置。

 

“我們的買(mǎi)家非常支持，她的觀(guān)點(diǎn)是，讓我們學(xué)習安置。希望這是正確的部門(mén)，但也許有一個(gè)更好的地方在商店里。干果區、農產(chǎn)品區、超級食品區，有果粉、種子和堅果嗎?”

 

為了支持這一項目的啟動(dòng)，Everipe將投資地理定位的數字活動(dòng)和有影響力的活動(dòng)，并通過(guò)各種方式參與當地活動(dòng)，從電臺的贈品到瑜伽館的活動(dòng)。