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PMA19.Oct18

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Produce Show Daily Friday, October 18, 2019 4 6 A Snack Brand for Comfort and Compassion By Lorrie Baumann A snack can be more than just a small meal to stave off hunger when the mid-afternoon doldrums hit hard but there's still work to be done before dinner, says Robert Ehrlich, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Vegan Rob's, his brand of chips, puffs and popcorn, since 2013. Vegan Rob's snacks include Probiotic Dragon Puffs, Brussel Sprout Puffs, Probiotic Cauliflower Puffs, Turmeric Chips, Spinach & Matcha Kettle Chips and Vegan Pop. If the names sound more like "health food" than "junk food," well, that's not an accident. "We are positioned in snack foods, which is the most visible prod- uct in any situation of retail and com- merce. They're very affordable grab- and-go nutrition with no preparation necessary other than opening the bag," he said. "Most people buy snacks for stress and anxiety. They don't buy them because they're hun- gry. We're on the forefront of creat- ing sensory snacks.... We're onto something huge here. It's a whole new frontier of creating sensory snacks to calm people's nerves and to center them – using techniques of meditation and superfood ingredients to enhance their lives for the price of a non-GMO, gluten-free and kosher snack bag. You can finish off a bag and not feel guilty." Snack foods are currently among the top categories in retail sales of specialty foods, according to the 2019 State of the Specialty Food Industry report unveiled to the industry during the Summer Fancy Food Show. The report also noted that refrigerated and front plant-based meat alternatives were among the top 10 cate- gories with the highest dollar growth over the past year. Ehrlich has been thinking about the manifold benefits of snack foods and the psychology of crunch for more than 30 years. He founded the Pirate's Booty brand in 1986, left that behind in 2013 after the company was sold to B&G Foods, and immediately started thinking again about what drew consumers to the snack food aisles of their grocery and convenience stores and how he could make snacks that would capitalize on consumer desires for a little more crunch and flavor with a bit less salt and sugar and an ingredient deck that could wear a halo. As he looked around him at the world he saw almost 30 years after he'd begun building a brand based on puffs made of corn, rice and cheese, Ehrlich had his feelers out – he prides himself on a unique talent for sensing trends and finding ways to act on those intu- itions. Corn had lost favor since it had become ubiquitous in the American food chain, but Ehrlich thought he could find another grain that could be puffed and could be produced with less water and energy than corn could claim. What's more, he could be nimble in a way that a big corporation commit- ted to corn could not be. "We kind of had a feeling – the non-GMO, gluten free, plant-based craze was starting in 2012," he said. "To me, it's an every- day event to seek out new paths for food and nutrition." As he considered the spectrum of consumers who were driven by those concerns, he saw the vegans at one end, a small fringe group of con- sumers as sheer numbers went, but a group comprised of passionate advo- cates for causes with emotional reso- nance among their peers – people who'd respond to the appeal of snack foods with righteous ingredients, real flavors and the satisfaction and com- fort of a crunch. Veganism still carried a bit of a stigma in those days, but Ehrlich thought the times would move past that, and attitudes would soften – he decided to brand his new snack line with a name and colorful packaging that wore the title with pride: Vegan Rob's, and sell it to consumers who fancied the idea of becoming a vegan – even if only until they'd reached the bottom of their bag of snack puffs. "We're not trying to be anything but transparent in our attempt to modern- ize the snack as a therapy tool, not just a frivolous meal replacement, but something that's much more than that for consumers," Ehrlich said. "The big companies don't seem to get it, but we do. When you buy a product, you're buying it for a reason. Sometimes it's to calm you, sometimes to make you feel important. There's a sociology to consumerism." Ehrlich easily embraces the contra- dictions between lofty abstraction and the concrete realities of selling snack foods in a crowded conventional mar- ketplace. He's now making his Vegan Rob's products in six plants in the U.S. and three in the U.K. and selling them around the world. Products sold in the United States are made domestically with ingredients sourced in the U.S., while the U.K. plants make chips and puffs for sale in Britain, the European market and elsewhere. He's taken the brand from the co-ops and independent natural foods stores where he started out into mainstream channels with products like the 2019 sofi Award-winning Dragon Puffs, whose flavor starts smoky and spicy and finishes cool. "It takes you on a journey," Ehrlich said. "Once that cool is gone, you need anoth- er bite.... Smoky's hot now." His love of that kind of contradiction is evident, too, in the Burger Puffs he launched at this year's Sweets & Snacks Expo – it's a vegan puffed snack with the flavor of a "flame-broiled" fast food burger. "You can't get any more contra- dictory than saying 'vegan' and 'burger' on the same package. The flavor makes people think about burgers and the beach, gives the mind a chance to reflect on the memories," Ehrlich said. Burger Puffs came to the Summer Fancy Food Show this year along with Vegan Rob's newest products – canned sorghum potato crisps with probiotics and vegetable seasoning and a popcorn that also offers a vegan collagen derived from sea buckthorn. For the future, Ehrlich is planning to take the Vegan Rob's brand on beyond snack foods and into other lifestyle products that share his philoso- phy of humanity, health and compas- sion. "We're looking at anything and everything. It's not just snacks that we're involved in, though they've made a nice platform. The bottom line is that we're fun. People are looking for fun these days and not just nutrition. "If you're grateful and humble, that's going to come back to you in so many ways, and that's what's missing in life," he said. "We try to do that here." Clean, Refreshing Coconut Water from TAJA By Lorrie Baumann TAJA Coconut Water is the only patented cold-filtered coconut water on the American market. Made from tender green coconuts harvested when they're just 90 days old and then filtered with a seven-step cold filtration system, TAJA contains no juice, no sugar and no stabi- lizers. "It never turns cloudy; it never turns pink. It's just like nature intended it to be," says company President Hallie Lorber. The company started two years ago after TAJA's founder Nilang Patel dis- covered that he was unable to find in the U.S. the kind of coconut water he was used to while he was growing up in India. With his background in the beverage industry, he had the intellectual tools nec- essary to solve that problem. "Since he couldn't find it and didn't like any of the brands that were out there, he created it himself," Lorber said. After figuring out the patented process that's used to extract the water from the coconuts he was able to source from local farmers in India, he opened a zero-waste production facility in India and started the company. "In the last year and a half, we named it, gave it a great personality, gave it great packaging and sold it into retail," Lorber said. The packaging is a tri- angular 10-ounce polyeth- ylene bottle that's labeled with the same PET, so that it's completely recyclable. "It's the easiest to recycle," Lorber said. "It can be recy- cled up to four times." The triangular-sided bottle mimics the shape of the natural coconut, and it offers the extra advantage that the bottles fit together without wasted space, so that an entire 12-count case of the bottles will fit on a shelf in the produce aisle, where the product has already seen significant success since its February launch. "It makes for easy merchandising," Lorber said. Individual bottles retail for $3.59 to $3.99. TAJA sells cases online for $53.99, which includes shipping. According to Lorber, "We've seen that among general consumers, there's been an increasing trend toward being careful about what they're put- ting into their bodies, and as a result we see a larger amount of people looking for better-for- you, all-natural products with real ingredients. TAJA especially appeals to these health-conscious consumers since it's 100 percent natural and free from additives. It's clean. It's raw. What you see is what you get." For more information, visit www .tajacoconut.com.

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