Organic September: Building Successful Healthy Food Brands
I learned so much last night at another great Women in the Food Industry event, this time celebrating Organic September and looking at what it really takes to build a successful healthy food brand.
There is so much information coming at us now about what we should and shouldn’t be eating. Organic, free-from, plant-based, high-protein, high-fibre, fermented, functional, clean label... the list goes on.
As consumers, how do we know what really matters and what we should be looking for? And if you’re creating a food product, how do you navigate all that noise? Which claims are genuinely relevant to your product, what does your consumer actually want, and how do you build a brand that stands out without trying to be everything to everyone?
Hosted by the unstoppable Mex Ibrahim, co-founder of Women in the Food Industry, the panel brought together four women looking at the subject from very different sides of the food industry:
Elin Roberts, co-founder of Better Nature, the tempeh brand helping bring fermented, plant-based foods to a much wider audience.
Julianne Ponan MBE, founder of Creative Nature, the free-from brand she has built alongside becoming a passionate campaigner for allergen awareness.
Tara Taylor, founder of Good Grain Bakery, who has built her bakery around traditional methods, great ingredients and, importantly, great-tasting bread.
And Jade Hoai, Executive Leader of Purchasing at Whole Foods Market UK, who brought the buyer and retailer perspective to the evening.
What followed was an incredibly honest conversation about everything from getting your first product onto a shelf to allergens, packaging, fermentation, organic food, accreditations, supermarket buyers, consumer trends and even the potential impact of GLP-1s on the food industry.
There was so much knowledge, information, real stories and practical advice that I thought I’d try and share some of what I scribbled down.
With so much noise, where does a food founder start?
Mex started with a question that must be increasingly difficult for anyone developing a food product today.
There are so many different directions a brand could take. Organic, free-from, plant-based, high-protein, high-fibre, fermented, functional, clean label. So how does a founder or manufacturer decide what really matters? Which claims are relevant to their product, what will resonate with consumers, and how do they avoid trying to be everything to everyone?
Tara’s advice was to start with your own core values. Know what you do and what matters to you. Stay true to the integrity of what you started with.
Jade looked at it from the food buyer’s perspective: What problem are you trying to solve? What’s your USP? Where is the gap in the market?
Elin’s advice was equally straightforward. You can’t be everything because it becomes confusing. What is important to you? What is the space you’re going to own? Are there enough consumers who want or need what you’re offering? And importantly, do they care enough about it to actually buy it?
And Julianne summed it up brilliantly: Stay in your lane. She also recommended getting out there and listening to real consumers. Go to shows. Let people try the product and talk to you.
She pointed out that children give particularly useful feedback because there is absolutely no diplomacy involved. If it’s disgusting, they’ll tell you it’s disgusting! Sometimes that’s exactly the reality check you need before going back to your producer and saying, right, this needs changing.
Because ultimately, whatever else you’re promising, it has to be delicious.
If you were starting again today, what would you do?
Mex then asked the panel what they would do if they were starting their businesses today.
Julianne came straight back to the product. It doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect before you start getting it in front of consumers. Talk to people and listen.
There’s little point spending a fortune creating the prettiest box imaginable if that isn’t what your customer actually cares about. The packaging should come from who you are and what the product is.
Tara talked about spending two years perfecting her recipe, going back to the drawing board repeatedly and finding herself coming back to the principles of her original recipe.
And I loved the reality of how she started.
No fancy labels. Her daughter helping her stick labels onto products. Tara getting samples into foodhalls and getting the bread in front of people. Because packaging might persuade someone to buy something for the first time. Taste is what gets the repeat purchase.
What does a supermarket buyer actually look for?
Jade’s perspective from Whole Foods was fascinating. A food founder doesn’t have very long to grab a buyer’s attention. Too much information on packaging can actually be a put-off.
Run your ideas past people. Understand the competition. Look at what’s already on the shelf and ask yourself why somebody would pick yours instead.
Even things like size matter. Is this the right size for the way somebody will actually use it? Will they buy it in bulk? Will they come back next week and buy another one?
And then there’s the person behind the product. Jade talked about the energy of the founder being incredibly important. The product has to taste great, obviously, but the founder also has to know it inside out and be able to communicate why they love it.
Know your elevator pitch. Know your product. A buyer who believes in you can become a real champion for the brand. Whole Foods runs pitch events for new brands, but Jade made the point that it’s a shame when somebody gets that opportunity before they’re properly ready for it. Getting a buyer on board is golden. Make the most of it.
And then you’ve actually got to deliver the stuff...
Julianne told a brilliant story that rather summed up the less glamorous side of being a food entrepreneur.
In the early days she had thousands of tubs that had been hand labelled by her parents but then had to be moved and delivered. She discovered she needed a forklift truck. Slight problem. She didn’t have a forklift truck. And then discovered you also need a licence to drive one. She didn’t have that either. But the stock had to get there or she would lose the order completely and that could break her business.
She made us laugh describing how she found a way around it, moving everything using a hand pallet truck, dragging it down the street, stopping the traffic and upsetting quite a lot of people. But she did it.
It was funny hearing it now, but it made a serious point.
Getting the foundations right matters: Supply chain. Manufacturing. Allergens. Shelf life. Labels. Logistics. Deliveries. These are the things nobody sees when they pick up a lovely finished product from a supermarket shelf.
And for Julianne’s business particularly, the allergen procedures aren’t simply business admin.
They can be a matter of life or death.
Free-from is not just another food fad
This was probably the part of the evening that stayed with me most.
Free-from has become such a big category that it’s easy to think of it alongside all the other food and wellness trends.
But for somebody living with a serious food allergy, this isn’t a trend or a fad.
Getting it wrong can be a matter of life or death.
Julianne spoke about how much understanding has improved but also about the confusion that still exists. Something being vegan, for example, doesn’t automatically make it safe for someone with a severe dairy allergy.
Those of us without allergies can walk into a restaurant, choose something from a menu and barely think about it. For somebody with a serious allergy, eating out can involve asking whether the restaurant can genuinely guarantee that their food hasn’t been exposed to the allergen.
And sometimes the answer is no.
Julianne talked about occasions when she simply hasn’t been able to eat out because nobody could give her that assurance.
That isn’t a lifestyle choice.
And it also means there’s still a huge opportunity for the restaurant and wider food-service industry to do better.
What does “free-from” actually mean?
There was an interesting discussion about how consumers understand the category itself.
Free-from doesn’t necessarily mean free from everything.
Tara talked about the assumptions we make around the words we see on packaging and the importance of helping consumers understand what they’re actually buying.
She also raised another problem. In trying to make free-from foods work, manufacturers can sometimes replace one ingredient with a whole collection of fillers and other ingredients.
So does removing something automatically make the finished product better?
Not necessarily.
Again, it came back to reading what we’re eating and understanding the ingredients rather than assuming a label on the front tells us everything.
How do you make bread “sexy”?
As an ex Bakery buyer for Selfridges Foodhall (the best foodhall imo)! Tara asked a question I loved:
How do you make bread sexy?
Bread is both a want and a need. But with so much attention now on protein, fibre and functional foods, it would be very easy to keep adding things to make another health claim.
Her approach is much simpler.
Make really nice bread.
Use good ingredients. Look at traditional baking methods. Explore different grains. Help people understand what they’re eating.
Adding extra protein or fibre simply to follow a trend also adds cost. Her mission isn’t to call her bread “healthy”. It’s bread. It has its own space.
That felt like quite an important point in an evening about healthy food brands. Does absolutely everything need to be marketed as healthy?
Or can we simply make food well?
Tempeh has a different challenge
Elin’s challenge with Better Nature is slightly different because many consumers still don’t know what to do with tempeh.
And this led to one of the most interesting business lessons of the evening.
Better Nature isn’t necessarily trying to take customers from another tempeh company. If they want more people eating tempeh, they need to show consumers what it can replace. For them, that can mean chicken.
So you’re not necessarily competing with the brand sitting next to you in the same category. Your competition might be somewhere completely different in the supermarket. And if your product is unfamiliar, a lot of the education has to happen before somebody even reaches the shop.
Recipes. Content. Ideas. Showing people how to cook it and where it fits into a meal they already know.
Because, as the panel pointed out, most of us don’t go to a supermarket to discover something completely new.
We go with a list.
Whole Foods is slightly different
Jade explained that Whole Foods customers often are looking for discovery. Health and wellness are already part of the reason many people walk through the door.
Whole Foods Market UK also has strict ingredient standards, so customers already arrive with certain expectations about what they’ll find.
That creates opportunities for emerging brands to use demonstrations, sampling, promotions and incentives to introduce consumers to something unfamiliar.
But you still need to give people a reason to pick it up.
And ultimately a reason to come back and buy it again.
Are fermented foods finally becoming mainstream?
With the explosion of interest in gut health, Mex asked Elin where she thought fermented food was heading.
Interestingly, Better Nature has deliberately not rushed to put fermented at the centre of all its messaging.
For some consumers, the word itself can still be off-putting.
So rather than leading with fermentation, they’ve talked about things people already understand: protein, fibre, plant-based food and flavour.
Tempeh has a naturally umami flavour, so why not also talk about what fermentation does for taste rather than turning everything into another health message?
There’s clearly huge room for fermented foods to grow, but again the message was not to overwhelm people.
Organic and paying more for food
Of course, being Organic September, organic food was part of the conversation too.
Mex asked what convinces consumers to pay a premium.
Jade talked about customers being prepared to spend more on certain fresh and centre-of-the-plate ingredients, with organic chicken being a strong seller at Whole Foods.
But it raised the bigger question running through the whole evening.
What does the consumer genuinely value enough to pay more for?
Organic certification costs money.
Better ingredients can cost more.
Adding protein or fibre can cost more.
Allergen-safe manufacturing can involve additional processes.
Beautiful packaging costs money.
Eventually somebody has to pay for all of it.
Which is why knowing what your customer actually cares about matters so much.
How many badges does one packet need?
Mex also asked how founders decide which accreditations are worthwhile when there are so many available.
Julianne’s answer came straight back to the same starting point:
Your value proposition comes first. Everything else follows from that.
You don’t necessarily need every accreditation available.
The Soil Association organic mark is well understood by many consumers, but another badge may add very little or could even confuse the proposition.
Julianne gave an interesting example from Creative Nature.
Removing vegan messaging actually helped sales.
Their consumer wasn’t necessarily looking for a vegan product. They were looking for something suitable for their allergy needs.
So adding “vegan” could make people think the product wasn’t for them.
Her advice?
Look at the data. What are people actually buying?
She referenced Apple and the extraordinary simplicity of its branding.
There might be a lesson there for food brands.
Don’t chase every new food trend
This came up again when the conversation moved through some of the current trends.
High protein.
High fibre.
Menopause-friendly.
And inevitably, GLP-1s.
There will always be something new.
The question for a founder is whether it genuinely belongs in your product and your brand.
Tempeh, for example, naturally contains protein and fibre, which may make it relevant to people whose eating patterns are changing through GLP-1 medication.
The panel recognised the potential impact GLP-1s could have on the food industry and that there’s much more discussion to come around what that means.
But it brought us straight back to the earlier question.
Just because you can put another claim on the packet, should you?
What mistakes do new food founders make?
Jade’s answer to this was really practical.
They don’t always think far enough ahead.
Getting into a retailer isn’t the end of the job.
What’s your promotion strategy?
What mechanisms are you going to use to drive sales?
Can you actually afford them?
What happens after launch?
And importantly, don’t be afraid to talk to your buyer.
If you need help, say so in advance.
A retailer doesn’t bring you in hoping you’ll fail. They want the product to grow too.
What if you’re genuinely trying to disrupt a category?
Elin’s advice was to be clear and be distinctive.
Better Nature isn’t simply trying to win a bigger piece of the existing tempeh market. It’s trying to make the whole category bigger and persuade people who currently buy completely different proteins to consider tempeh.
That’s a much bigger ambition.
And when you’re doing something genuinely different, you have to commit to it.
There may be a hundred ways of building your business.
Her point was essentially: go for it.
Don’t do it half-heartedly.
And what happens when everyone follows you?
Julianne was also asked what happens when you’ve been a trailblazer and suddenly the space you created becomes crowded with new brands.
It would be easy to see that purely as competition.
But new entrants can also grow awareness of an entire category.
More brands can mean more innovation and more consumers understanding what the category is.
The challenge is to keep evolving while remembering why your own brand exists.
And there are still areas where change is desperately needed.
Food service.
Restaurants.
Airlines.
Schools.
Places where consumers with allergies or particular dietary requirements don’t necessarily have the choice they now have in retail.
There is still plenty of room for innovation.
Perhaps innovation starts with listening
One thing that came through repeatedly was that innovation doesn’t necessarily mean sitting in a room trying to invent the next big food trend.
Sometimes it’s listening to someone telling you:
“I can’t eat that.”
“I don’t understand how to cook this.”
“I can’t find something safe when I eat out.”
“This packaging doesn’t tell me what I need to know.”
“This costs too much.”
“This tastes horrible.”
There’s your problem.
Now can you solve it?
What I came away thinking
I learned so much during the evening, but I think what stayed with me most was how complicated we’ve made food.
We are surrounded by messages about what we should eat.
More protein. More fibre. Fermented foods. Organic. Plant-based. Free-from. Functional foods. Gut health. Menopause. GLP-1s.
Some of those developments are exciting.
Some are clever marketing.
And some are incredibly serious.
That’s the distinction I don’t think we should lose.
For someone with a severe allergy, free-from isn’t a wellness trend.
It’s not a fad.
It can be a matter of life or death.
For a food founder, meanwhile, perhaps the answer amongst all this noise isn’t to add more.
The women on the panel kept coming back to remarkably simple things:
Know what you stand for.
Know what problem you’re solving.
Stay in your lane.
Listen to your customer.
Get your foundations right.
Don’t overwhelm people.
And make sure it tastes really good.
And for those of us buying the food, perhaps there’s a lesson too.
Don’t assume “free-from” means healthier.
Don’t assume “vegan” tells you everything you need to know.
Don’t assume that because something says high-protein, organic, fermented or functional on the front, it automatically makes it the right choice for you.
Perhaps we all need to get a little better at turning the packet over, reading the ingredients and asking:
What am I actually eating?