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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:罗伯茨说，虽然冷冻干燥可能会让人联想起太空食品的画面，或者是漂浮在早餐麦片里色彩鲜艳的软渣，但这项技术正开始吸引更多的关注，因为它让水果保留了营养和味道。

 

“一些厨师在高档餐厅里用冷冻干果和蔬菜作配菜，因为你会得到那种强烈的味道。”

 

在这个过程中,水果和蔬菜收获后立即被冻结,然后进行低压真空下干燥过程中冷冻水被直接蒸汽,绕过了液体状态,使冻干水果保持形状、味道,香味,颜色和最新鲜的、营养的水果。

哪里是销售最好的地方?

没有什么很像Everipe在架子上,没有什么沃尔玛可以比较直接销售量时,罗伯茨说。他指出,零售商没有设定硬性速度目标为新品牌和说明白它可能需要时间来找到正确的位置。

 

“我们的买家非常支持，她的观点是，让我们学习安置。希望这是正确的部门，但也许有一个更好的地方在商店里。干果区、农产品区、超级食品区，有果粉、种子和坚果吗?”

 

为了支持这一项目的启动，Everipe将投资地理定位的数字活动和有影响力的活动，并通过各种方式参与当地活动，从电台的赠品到瑜伽馆的活动。