Milling & Baking News - February 14, 2017 - 30

Grain-Based Food Start-ups X

people will never really leave the
breakfast table completely."

SEVEN SUNDAYS

New twists on cereal
Another start-up striving to transform traditional breakfast offerings is
Seven Sundays, a Minneapolis-based
muesli brand founded by Hannah
Barnstable and her husband, Brady.
"It's sort of a forgotten mealtime in
the U.S.," Ms. Barnstable said. "Growing up, it was always a big deal in our
households to sit down and eat breakfast and have it be an actual meal time
- not just running around and eating
something that was really processed
or bad for you.
"With Seven Sundays, we wanted to
create a product that solves breakfast,
that gives you that feeling of a Sunday,
when you may take a little more time
or put a little more thought into what
you're eating in the morning."
Made with nuts, seeds, fruits, whole
grains and organic honey, muesli varieties include original toasted, vanilla
cherry pecan, ginger pear macadamia,

Bircher (an unsweetened Swiss-style
muesli), and gluten-free blueberry
chia buckwheat.
The company recently expanded
into the nutrition bar category with
the launch of breakfast squares in
such flavors as blueberry lemon chia,
cocoa pumpkin seed and banana
toasted pecan.
"Most of the bar set is processed
and very sugary, so what we're trying to offer is something that can be
a complete meal, if you're traveling
or just don't have a lot of time in the
morning but still want good quality
ingredients, like chia seeds, coconut
oil, maple syrup," Ms. Barnstable
said. "With our flavor profiles, our
goal was to really feel like you're eating something special, like it was prepared for you, and it's fresh and has
really nice flavors."
Modern Oats, Irvine, Calif., is a
gourmet, gluten-free oatmeal brand,
offering products packaged in singleserve cups with whole grains, nuts
and seeds. Varieties include mango
30 / February 14, 2017 XMilling & Baking News

MODERN OATS

blackberry, chocolate cherry, nuts and
seeds, apple walnut, five-berry and
goji blueberry. The company last year
added four more flavors: no-sugaradded five-berry, Vermont maple,
coconut almond and a plain variety
called Just Oats.
"Obviously we didn't invent the
category, and we certainly didn't invent oatmeal, so we had to be a bit
of a disruptor and try new things,"
said Richard Principale, president
and c.e.o. of parent company Innovative Beverage Concepts, Inc. "We felt
all you hear about are old-fashioned
oats... What if you wanted more stylish, up-to-date oats with goji berries
and blueberries and tied into some
health trends like non-G.M.O. and
gluten-free? What would you have?
Well, you'd have Modern Oats."
Being a small player has its perks,
he said.
"These big companies don't necessarily just wake up and change things
overnight, so it gives you the opportunity to say, 'Hey, let's go for it,'" he
said. "There's no big board here to
spend three years deciding whether
we're going to go non-G.M.O. We just
do it."
A different kind of bagel
Yet another company setting out to
reinvent breakfast is Brooklyn-based
Bantam Bagels. Elyse and Nick Oleksak, a pair of Columbia University
graduates, ditched their fast-paced jobs
on Wall Street to develop miniature
New York City bagel balls stuffed with
cream cheese. The product concept

BANTAM BAGELS

came to Mr. Oleksak in a dream, and
after making hundreds of test batches
in their Brooklyn apartment, the husband-and-wife team opened a small
shop in New York City's West Village
to sell the signature bagels.
The brand offers both sweet and
savory options, including everything
bagel stuffed with vegetable cream
cheese, pretzel salt bagel stuffed with
cheddar Dijon cream cheese, cinnamon nutmeg egg bagel with maple
syrup cream cheese, and brown sugar walnut bagel with chocolate chip
cream cheese.
A year after the shop opened, Oprah
Winfrey featured Bantam Bagels on
her Oprah's Favorite Things 2014 list.
That following January, Bantam Bagels appeared on the television show
"Shark Tank." Following the "toughest, most rigorous interview we have
ever experienced," the pair secured a
deal with Lori Greiner, a prolific inventor dubbed the "Queen of QVC"
shopping network. Ms. Greiner offered the company $275,000 in exchange for 25% equity.
"The food industry is full of some
of the most dynamic, interesting, creative and smart people we've ever
met," Ms. Oleksak said. "Our advice
is to meet and learn from as many
industry professionals as possible.
We've learned so much along the way
as we've taken each step forward, and
we owe a lot of our success from the
shared experiences and guidance of
our peers."
Cleaning up the baking aisle
In the baking mix category, emerging brands are introducing products
with free-from attributes and simple
ingredient statements. In a market
dominated by the likes of Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and Pillsbury comes
Simple Mills, Chicago. The company
uses almond flour as its base and differentiates itself by promoting the simplicity of its ingredient list.
The difference, said Katlin Smith,
founder and c.e.o., starts on the ingredients panel. Simple Mills products
never have more than 10 ingredients,
and at the top of the list is almonds.
Traditional baking mix products tend
to have more ingredients and lead
with "enriched flour bleached."
"We are focused on nutrition vs.
empty calories," Ms. Smith said.
Ms. Smith's initial foray into the
food business was personal. She
wanted to "clean up" her diet by reducing the processed foods she ate,
but did not want to give up baked
bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

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Milling & Baking News - February 14, 2017

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