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Lessons on scaling up novel proteins with SuperBrewed Food's CEO Bryan Tracy
82 Plays2 months ago
Amy and Karthik sit down with Bryan Tracy, the CEO of SuperBrewed Foods, to talk about all things postbiotic proteins. They discuss value that postbiotics can bring, the opportunity for integration into a wide range of food types, pitfalls in branding and positioning, navigating the regulatory environment, and ultimately how the chemicals and food industries are converging.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Innovation Matters' Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Innovation Matters, the sustainable innovation podcast brought to you by Lux Research. I'm your host, Karthik Subramanian, joining from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. And I'm pleased to be joined by my wonderful co-host, Amy Huris, Director of Research from our anthropology team. Amy, how are things in Canada? Pretty good. Thanks Karthik.
00:00:35
Speaker
Yeah.
Interview with Brian Tracy: Superbrood Foods Partnership
00:00:36
Speaker
And for today's episode, I'm pleased to be joined by Brian Tracy, ah CEO of Superbrood Foods. Brian, welcome on the show. um I see that you are in a hotel in the Netherlands. What brings you to this lovely country? Yeah. So it's a pleasure to be here, first of all. So thank you for having me. But we we have a manufacturing partnership with a company based in the Netherlands. So I'm here checking in.
00:00:58
Speaker
Fantastic.
Understanding Postbiotics vs. Probiotics
00:00:59
Speaker
So ah for our listeners out there, before we get into superb rootfruits itself, I see that you use the word postbiotic, which can be quite confusing for our listeners because I'm sure they're aware of what prebiotics is and what probiotics is. So could you give a ah give some you know ah insights into what postbiotic is?
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. We take the use the definition that ISAP uses, the I-S-A-P-P, which is trying to harmonize a standard definition around probiotics and prebiotics and postbiotics. And as all the terms may suggest, a probiotic is a live microorganism that you may want to populate your digestive microbiome or your skin microbiome or some sort of a microbiome associated with humans.
00:01:46
Speaker
to grow and thrive and support your health. A prebiotic would be something like a fiber to give a growth advantage to the microorganisms in your microbiomes that you would want to be able to thrive. At the end of the day, it kind of amazes me. Consumers, I think, should ask the question, why do I want something to grow inside of me to begin with?
00:02:07
Speaker
And what it means is probiotics make postbiotics or probiotics in the inactive form when they finally reach the end of their life, they are a postbiotic. So postbiotics are the chemicals, the compounds, the bioactive molecules that probiotics produce that you absorb for your vitality effectively.
00:02:33
Speaker
And that's what we produce. We produce an inactive, so no capacity to grow, microorganism, along with all of its goodies that it produces during fermentation, all delivered in one package as a protein source.
Inspiration for Postbiotics Focus
00:02:50
Speaker
So what actually got you to superbrood fruits? Like what was the inspiration and and why touch on postbiotics? Because I believe a lot of activity takes place in the pro and prebiotic space. um And I think consumers in general today are ah very well aware that good gut health is representative of good health in in general, like overall wellbeing. So what got you to postbiotics and superbrood fruits?
00:03:15
Speaker
yeah it's ah There's two big components, and I think we'll talk later on in the podcast about production. But one of them is we want to be able to produce an ingredient that can be practiced at phenomenal scale so that it truly can have global impact. We'll talk more about that. But the other one that's a really curious story is we asked ourselves the question,
00:03:38
Speaker
herbivores. How are herbivores so massive, fast, strong, and this might sound kind of childish, but the world's largest land dwelling entities were dinosaurs. Herbivores. And today's strongest, pound for pounds, the gorilla. Some of the fastest, like a horse. These are all totally vegan animals.
00:04:01
Speaker
and somehow they're able to thrive off of consuming what really on the surface is relatively low quality plant proteins and plant fibers but yet they can be massive and tremendously you know live with tremendous vitality and fast forward the reality is top shelf nutrition the best nutrition that animals consume today is the postbiotics that their gut microbiome produce by digesting plants. So we went and asked the question, why can't we find the microorganisms that serve one of the most critical roles to to convert lower value plant proteins into super high nutritious, high value, microbiota, postbiotic proteins. And we were able to find those microorganisms that are tremendously good healthy protein ingredients themselves.
00:04:58
Speaker
So within the ah the the protein this thing, I was just curious before I let you jump in, Amy, when we look at any kind of diet changes, we always think about, you know, people having too much protein, they need to drink too much water, things like that. Do these postbiotics and do you think that these postbiotics can maybe suit better with conventional diets that already exist yeah or or do you still have to change the way in which you you know you have to have excess water now so that it can digest better? Are there any tweaks like that you're supposed to make?
Versatility of Postbiotic Protein in Food Applications
00:05:32
Speaker
so One of the really interesting things about postbiotic and the way we like to look at it, it's almost a whole food.
00:05:39
Speaker
So we're not isolating protein. I'm not isolating a fiber. I'm not isolating a mineral. The postbiotic that we produce are postbiotic cultured protein. It is a single bacterium. And it is a balance of all the essential amino acids that we need for humans' nutrition. It also has a broad array of B vitamins.
00:06:02
Speaker
It has a pretty high content of minerals, not sodium, but other minerals like zinc and phosphorus and so forth that humans need for their nutrition. So to your question, it's not necessarily that it has any specialty in that you would, you know, consider less water or something of this sort, but we are not just a turbocharger protein. We are a more well-rounded sort of ingredient that brings multiple nutritional facets with it.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yes, though, it happens to be predominantly protein, right? But it brings a lot of other extra goodies with it. So what we're looking for humans to do, humans for people to do is utilize our ingredient as kind of like an everyday use ingredient in a whole broad range of products. It's not intended to be like your meal replacement only or in a supplement form. It's got its opportunity to be used broadly in many different things.
00:06:57
Speaker
I guess just following up on that, then could you can you explain a little bit about the the use cases for for this postbiotic protein? How do you envision it being used in in food in general? ah What sorts of um partnerships have you had already in in terms of getting your your product into into food?
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, so i I don't want to overspeak too much, but we literally have tried basically all the types of food applications you can think of. So beverage formats, like a spoonable yogurt formats, bakery good applications, confectionary applications.
00:07:34
Speaker
alternative meet applications, and and we have been able to get it to usable form in all applications we've tried today. Some are better, obviously, some are not as compelling, but they can go into a whole range of of applications. Where it really thrives is dairy applications. One of the reasons being when you think of ingredients you humans you're not only thinking of an ingredient for nutrition you're thinking it for our tastes the textures that they can deliver the appearance so broadly nutrition and then functionality and the functionality it's a very good emulsifier so it does a really good job of mixing oils with water to give you kind of creamy you know nice textures in what you would typically think of as a dairy format so that's one of the areas I mean where we're
00:08:26
Speaker
forging our earliest partnerships, I would say. um Bell, Group Bell, who make things like Laughing Cow Cheese, Baby Bell Cheese, a whole range of snacking cheeses. We have a well-established partnership with them that we're really fortunate to have. We also recently announced a partnership with Fonterra. I think they're the second or third largest dairy cooperative in the world to explore additional dairy applications in which you can go into. Fantastic. I think um When we think of the consumer perspective of what they're looking for in alternative proteins, things like taste and texture really are top of mind. um And there are a lot of the the pain points that consumers have with alternative proteins is that they don't taste like the real thing or they don't taste as good. Could you talk a little bit about how post-biotic protein, some of the benefits that it has over ah traditional we we could say traditional alternative proteins like plant proteins? Sure.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, so by nature of not being a plant, we didn't come out of soil as an example. Where minus sort of the beanie or fibery, sometimes people qualify as cardboardy types of flavors that plant-based proteins kind of inherently have and and it's challenging to to remove those to be honest.
00:09:46
Speaker
our ingredient by the nature of the way that we produce it and we just wash it with water. So we don't do any chemical extractions. We don't do any harsh fractionations. We grow a bacterium in a fermentation broth. We mechanically separate it through centrifugation and we wash it.
00:10:03
Speaker
and then we spray dry it. The name of the game for us is to make it as neutral flavored as possible. So we've done a lot to make it as bland basically as we could, thus giving it its ability to be formulated in a broad range of applications whereby the flavors come from the other components.
00:10:21
Speaker
and it inherently has some savory type of umami flavor to it but it's quite baseline neutral to the point where most people can make it taste like birthday cake flavored ash if that's what you want, which oftentimes people do, or if you want it to be more of a meaty type of taste, or if you want it to be and one of the things that's really challenging if you want to taste like standard dairy milk. We have partnerships where we do that and they've been having very good success.
Navigating Regulations and Consumer Trust
00:10:54
Speaker
ah ah In terms of just ah the regulatory aspect of this, I was just curious to know, what are the processes you have had to go through and what are some of the challenges you have faced in getting regulatory approval for this? I believe because the process that you use, and I think, ah Amy, you will also touch upon this, the ah topic on the word brewing and how you know there's not a lot of scientific jargon used in the process.
00:11:20
Speaker
which is very consumer friendly. How has that been taken by the regulators as well in terms of approving the process? And I guess because ah you're also you know taking this out of the playbook from the ethanol industry, if you will, of sorts. So it becomes very in easy for regulators to you know see eye to eye in terms of how the process works and what's going in. right
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, well, first of all, I'm not one to complain about the regulatory process. I have a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old child, and they eat my, they are protein all the time. It's there for good reason, right? So Health Canada for folks like Amy does a great job. EFSA with an awful food approval. FDA's self-affirmed grass and subsequent no objection process and so forth. We've we've done everything to go through those standard processes, and we've had to go the full gambit.
00:12:09
Speaker
because we're such a new food. Like literally this is the first time, so so maybe just to jump to the end point, we've actually gotten full market approval in the U.S. because we got our self-affirmed grass and then FDA reviewed it and they have no objections. So effectively FDA has affirmed our grass position.
00:12:26
Speaker
And no companies ever, ever, in the history of humankind, gotten regular regulatory approval of such for a bacterium as a macronutrient food ingredient. So we've had to do the entire suite of what's called acute oral toxicity studies and aims and micronucleus studies and food allergen assessments and so forth. And it's it's a process. um um I'll be the first to tell you. And unfortunately, it takes a long time, which is a big challenge for startup companies, right?
00:12:52
Speaker
But we've gotten through it with FDA. We're deep into the cycle with Health Canada and with the UK version called FSA. And also with EFSA, we're deep into the safety evaluation cycle for novel food. And our organism,
00:13:09
Speaker
actually got and analyzed by EFSA, European Food Safety Authority, and got added to the Qualified Persumption of Safety list, which is actually a pretty big deal. That doesn't mean it's a novel food-approved microorganism, but it means that there's enough bulk literature and understanding of this species of microorganism, which rabbits out of the hat, it's a strain of Clostridium Tyrobituricum. I'm happy to talk to people more about that. But it's a strain of Clostridium Tyrobituricum. And that organism now, because there's enough known about it, and it's not known to have any concerns to human, animal or environmental safety.
00:13:46
Speaker
that it's on the list of qualified, presumed safe, which is actually a first ever as well for such a bacterium for this intended application has ever been put onto that list by EFSA.
00:13:58
Speaker
And one thing that's helped us in the process is we are a non-GMO organism. We are not genetically modifying this. And that was one of our initial focuses was saying, hey, if we genetically modified it, then it would, almost a priority, eliminate our ability to enter various jurisdictions.
00:14:19
Speaker
And also from the consumer perspective, I'm a fan of GMOs just for what it's worth. I believe that GMO foods are necessary to feed our global population. I don't think we have to eat as many as we do necessarily, but I'm i'm not trying to disparage GMOs.
00:14:37
Speaker
However, by going a non-GMO pathway, you to an average consumer, there's less to explain. right It's a natural microorganism. Otherwise, when you start opening up that Pandora's box of, this is a genetically modified microorganism, goodness, now you have to explain where genes came from or how the genes were manipulated. Did you silence certain things? Did you upregulate certain things? That's a lot more than an average consumer can really comprehend without expending a huge amount of cost and effort to educate them. So we also did it from the consumer awareness perspective of it's one less thing that you would have to go out.
00:15:20
Speaker
and to allay the concerns of an educated broader consumer base. Just to add to that, sorry again Amy, just a follow-up question to the to the the the regulatory side of things, and maybe this is not a direct comparison, but in the energy industry, which is the industry I follow, especially with something like nuclear, for example, when a new technology comes in, um the regulator tries to, you know it's very difficult for the regulator to uh, you know, license that technology because first of all, they don't have the experience. And so you don't have anything for apples to apples comparison to say this works. Um, um so I was just curious to see from your side as a startup when you're developing something new.
00:16:01
Speaker
that's not been done in the in in the past. ah From the regulatory standpoint, ah the only thing you would think of is, okay, because this is new, um it's just gonna take longer for it to come into the market. Because you don't have a reference point to compare it with. So sure what are the steps that you had to take in terms of you know just bring the regulator to say, hey, listen, this is new and this is nice, but you don't have to take a whole ton of time to just go through what this is. So what are some of the things that other startups could also do in in terms of just, you know interacting with regulators to think about these problems. Yeah, so I think there's three things or or two things that I would suggest other startups to do, and then I'll add a third that we did as well to kind of ease the process. But first is, first, try to draw parallels to existing incumbents in the space, right, in the market.
00:16:50
Speaker
And so you use the analogy of energy if you're bringing in nuclear into an and into a g jurisdiction that doesn't have experience with nuclear. It can be challenging, but there's definitely parallels and there's analogies you can make to coal or to natural gas or to solar or what have you. So we did the same in making abundantly clear that this is not just a you know radical concept. We're consuming postbiotic bacterium in an inactive form, but humans have been consuming inactive yeast for millennia.
00:17:20
Speaker
right So it's not that big of a leap to say I'm going to consume a bacterium as opposed to a yeast. So that's kind of one thing that people should should or other startups should contemplate. The other one is most regulatory jurisdictions will interact with you early on. So I would behoove them to take time to speak with the regulators.
00:17:43
Speaker
and to understand what things are the most challenging for them to wrap their minds around. And you're not going to explain it away to the regulatory agents, but what you're going to do is you're going to do the right the appropriate studies to prove the safety around those key questions that they feel uncomfortable with.
00:18:01
Speaker
right And it prepares you. The last thing you want is to get into a cycle with regulatory agents where you submit a dossier, all of these studies, and you think you buttoned it up, and you did a beautiful job, and they come back with a whole range of questions. And you're like, oh, crap, I completely did my studies wrong. like I should have contemplated these things as well. And then you're back to kind of square one.
00:18:20
Speaker
right And then lastly, this is unique to us, but our microorganism lives inside of humans. So it already is a part of us to begin with, right? And that helps out a lot when you contemplate safety for humans if it's already living and breathing, so to speak, inside of you and contributing to your overall health.
00:18:39
Speaker
I think um you know having the the approval of the FDA or Health Canada obviously is necessary to get your your product out on the shelves, but and it gives consumers a sense of security and trust in the sense that the the um ingredient has been rigorously tested and has proven to be safe.
00:18:57
Speaker
um But there's also the consumer perception about whether it's, you know, appetizing to eat a bacteria um or, you know, thinking about like, is it natural to eat food that's
Strategic Branding with 'Postbiotic' Terminology
00:19:08
Speaker
created in a lab? So I guess I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about the way you're also thinking of the consumer perspective and the language you use and and how you're presenting this to the public as well um in a way that can still feel appetizing and something that consumers might want to try.
00:19:27
Speaker
Absolutely. I think that is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that people have had. And so let me kind of open, let me break this down into two ways. And and I want to preface up front too. This is not meant to claim that others have done it wrong. And this is not meant to disparage other approaches that other companies have done. and And it's not like we're this multi-billion dollar company success as as of right now either. So to be determined how well our approach is. But what I would first and foremost say is it's expensive to educate consumers. It's really expensive. So if you're going to put in marketing jargon of like
00:20:09
Speaker
Never known ingredient name. Well think about it and one way I one way I think about it Two-thirds if not three-fourths of all my purchase decisions for food have nothing to do with me eating it has to meet do with me buying it for my wife or my kids or my You know family members and if I don't know what it is. I love my family. I'm not gonna buy it. Mm-hmm, right? Um, so if it's just completely unknown then it's really challenging to educate them and and science fictiony types of terms or oxymoronic type of statements of like non-animal way. I mean, non-animal way is confusing. It's an oxymoron.
00:20:48
Speaker
Is it animal or is it whey? What is it? right So I think that people companies have missed the mark by trying to be excessively brandy, they're branding up upfront to the consumer, or excessively sciency, nouveau type of, or catching a fad or some sort, because that's the last thing you want is to be a fad. You want to be sustainable for long term.
00:21:15
Speaker
So then we took a different approach and and in inherently too, we are natural. We're a non-genetically modified microorganism. We're a microorganism that actually lives in the digestive microbiome of every human today. So this is an organism that we pulled out of a natural environment and we cultivate it with its natural inputs and so forth. And the I really don't know of any consumers who are adverse to the terminology of like natural and non-GMO. Now some consumers will pay more for non-GMO, but no consumers turned off to quickly buy it. and And then we spent a lot of time studying what the ingredient name could be to be compliant with regulatory sort of approaches to naming ingredients. But we also came up with post-biotic cultured protein, because first of all, it's predominantly protein.
00:22:07
Speaker
So you're going to be utilizing it as an ingredient, as a protein. It's just as much protein as whey protein isolate or milk protein isolate. So it's accurate to call it a protein. And then we produce it through fermentation or culturing. So we named it cultured to give a clear indication to a consumer as to how it was manufactured. And then it is, it's an inactivated microorganism, unadulterated, not manipulated. So it is a postbiotic. Now the term postbiotic is relatively new to consumers, right? It's very new to consumers. However, consumers definitely know probiotic.
00:22:42
Speaker
and they're starting to understand prebiotic, and this is not meant to be critical of consumers, but they see postbiotic, and they see P in the biotic, and they're like, oh, okay, sounds healthy, right? So it's familiar coming at them. So we came out of a point of familiarity. We definitely leverage the fact that it is a natural microorganism. We're gonna shy away from science-y fiction types of terms, and and we're we haven't yet developed a clear thesis as to when
00:23:14
Speaker
if ever or how you develop like a brand around an ingredient, right? To be determined. I'd like to take a little bit of a step back and think about, have you talked a little bit more about how you produce this? Like what is the the process? What are the inputs to create this cultured postbiotic protein?
Anaerobic Fermentation Process Explained
00:23:34
Speaker
Could you explain that a little bit? Yeah. So we produce it through anaerobic fermentation, meaning no oxygen.
00:23:43
Speaker
And we did this for a multitude of reasons. First of all, humans nutrition is based upon anaerobic fermentation. Your digestive microbiome, your food gets digested in an anaerobic fermenter in your gut, believe it or not. So center of the plate nutrition is coming out of anaerobic fermentation all the time. So first we're like, that is the headquarters of nutrition. So we started there. Secondly,
00:24:11
Speaker
Anaerobic fermentation is the most carbon-efficient approach to convert things like sugars into products. That is why this planet has for millennia been practicing anaerobic fermentation to make beverages.
00:24:26
Speaker
beers, wines, things of this sort. It's also why anaerobic fermentation is the largest bioprocess on this planet to make ethanol to blend with gasoline. Canada and the US alone produce about 23 billion gallons of ethanol to blend it with gasoline.
00:24:46
Speaker
So what that means is there is huge quantities of established infrastructure, lots and lots of plants, lots of workforce, service industry around it, logistics around it, capital that's being invested into the space of anaerobic fermentation.
00:25:05
Speaker
I like to say the operational excellence of the existing industry today is what we can leverage. So anaerobic fermentation is the center of nutrition. It has opera industry excellence across the globe. And then lastly, anaerobic fermentation, by nature of that, we produce the organism, which is our protein source, but we also produce butyric acid.
00:25:27
Speaker
And this has been a dedication for me personally for over 15 years. When you look at butyric acid, butyric acid is a flavor, it's a fragrance, it can be a nutritional supplement. It's also used in a whole range of what I would call durable goods. It goes into things like making automotive coatings. It can be derivatized to make a solvent that goes into paints, that goes into lacquers, that goes into even the manufacturing of plastics and different polymers.
00:25:59
Speaker
What we have done is established a single fermentation process that in the most carbon efficient fashion converts low cost sugars to as much outputs of healthy food ingredient in durable chemical product. And that durable chemical product means you create a carbon sink.
00:26:19
Speaker
Right. We're sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere to grow a grain like corn. And instead of that being burnt as a fuel, it goes into a durable chemical that it might not sound that ah like, um, I don't know that beautiful, but it sits, it goes into a landfill and it gets sequestered for thousands of years.
00:26:41
Speaker
So we took the same nature of fermentation instead of making animal feed and fuels, which the ethanol industry does, we make food direct to humans and we make durable chemical goods.
00:26:52
Speaker
So we have ah a tremendous impact, positive impact on sustainability, carbon that's captured to bypass the cow and go directly to humans for more efficient conversion, less CO2 associated with food. And then as opposed to burning a fuel, our output goes into making durable goods to replace petroleum-based chemicals, right?
00:27:15
Speaker
That's a really long way of telling you a whole bunch of what we did, but we did it because we're taking this nexus of food and chemical, putting them together to decarbonize two industries simultaneously with one process. And if we look at it to global commodities, which we don't want to be a commodity, we're not a commodity per se, but global commodities, those have been set by Companies like Cargill and ADM and Ingredion, they're big ingredient manufacturing facilities. They also make energy. They make chemicals. They make animal feeds. They make four, five, six different massive products simultaneously from one input.
00:27:58
Speaker
And we took the same lesson and said, we have to make as much as we can out of one input, corn grain in our case, through one fermentation process to dramatically impact multiple industries from a sustainability perspective and also to maximize the revenue coming out of our process.
00:28:16
Speaker
I think that's fascinating. I'd like to hear more about the butyric acid. ah Do you have ah partnerships right now in terms of of selling that part? And do you anticipate I guess, do you anticipate the the protein part of the bill the business being the the main income generator? Or are both of these equally valuable and important for the viability of the business?
Revenue Streams: Protein vs. Butyric Acid
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah, so we're pretty open kimono on this, right? so um on on the revenue split and so forth. So I'll talk about that in just a second. But on the partnerships in butyric acid, we make butyric acid, and butyric acid actually is butyric acid, is butyric acid. So we don't have any publicly announced partnerships today. we have some purchase We have quite a bit of purchase order out there. But effectively, we don't really need partners because we're not introducing something brand new. It's known in the space there's plenty of customer base for butyric acid.
00:29:15
Speaker
Protein, our protein ingredient is so new that it behooved us to develop strong partnerships to bring it to market with with those partners. um And then when we talk about, I'm going to be very honest, we make two times as much butyric acid as we do protein in our conversion process. So we make quite a bit of butyric acid, quite a bit. Butyric acid is not as valuable as the protein. So we're making about two thirds of our revenue off of protein and one third of the revenue off of butyric acid.
00:29:45
Speaker
So, and many investors and strategics may see that as a huge risk, but one thing to think about though, is puteric acid, like I mentioned, it's ah an established market and we're another supplier into that market and it can be derivatized into even larger volume market outlets. So we're another supply in a very large demand pool across the globe.
00:30:12
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's the revenue still leaning quite a bit more to the protein side compared to the butyric acid. ah Just to go back to the regulatory side of things, and I was just you know just curious to know about how, and and maybe you've already answered this partly when we was talking about you know the language that is used when interacting with consumers, but how do you want to go about the labeling process for your products on the consumer-facing side? Because um I believe when consumers look at new information on there, and and they start getting confused again. What is this? How is it going to interact with my body?
00:30:49
Speaker
Is it going to advantagely affect what's going on with my natural processes? so How are you looking at the labeling side of things for these products? Sure. yeah To be very sincere, it's not an established outcome yet with European novel food. right so We haven't really gone through that process yet.
00:31:10
Speaker
But with US-based market and other markets that we can full regulatory sell into today, again, the precedence is, the precedence in these types of ingredients is it has to be sufficiently descriptive of what it is. and so For example, nutritional yeast, that's an established ingredient name. You don't necessarily know what yeast it was, what what it was, right for example. and so In our case, postbiotic is fully indicative of a bacterium that's inactivated dead.
00:31:40
Speaker
And then we go further, we we also say protein, because it is predominantly a protein ingredient. Just like, for example, whey protein isolate. You realize our whey protein concentrate or soy protein concentrate. Soy protein concentrate is 82% protein. What's the other 18% but it's still called soy protein concentrate, right? So we're 85 to 87% protein on an as ingredient basis. So we think it's accurate to say it's protein. And then we want to tell the consumer as well, how did we,
00:32:09
Speaker
manufacturer that's the cultivated part of it so post-biotic cultivated culture excuse me post-biotic cultured protein or a customer can can change the name it could be post-biotic fermented protein that's fine as well came from fermentation um but we came from it from the perspective of being as descriptive to the consumer as you possibly could be broadly to accurately claim what it is Karthik, you love the regulatory questions, so I'm happy to talk more on the regulatory side. it I spend a lot of time in there, so. No, yeah, it's it's just that ah you know every time I think about consumers and what I would do, a lot of people don't read labels. For example, especially I feel as consumers, I don't think this will go on the pod, but as consumers in general, we tend to you know listen listen off of our friends. Our friends will give us a recommendation. They're like, try this out, and you just go pull it back, you know because a friend has already tried this. It's a trusted source, and we move on.
00:33:04
Speaker
But when we are trying new things, you know, we, we tend to read the labels a lot. So, so that, that's where my thinking. And there's, there's two types of labels, right? And there's two types of labels in food. There's front to pack labels. And then there's the back the nutritional efficiencyency level and it's the ingredient. And I think you're right. I don't think.
00:33:23
Speaker
all consumers read all the ingredients or I don't know if they necessarily know how to read a nutrition label. They focus on things that they are most focused on at that time, right? Calories, fat, saturated fat, added sugar, what have you. So anyhow, but one thing though that I think really pops out to a lot of consumers is they do look at the front of the pack because It's there staring at you, right? So one thing that we can do is because of the nature of our ingredient, the nutritional content, depending upon how much of it goes into the product, but doesn't need to be a lot, it would be a consequential source. So a good to excellent source of several different B vitamins or minerals.
00:34:03
Speaker
And so that's one thing that our customers, because we're a B2B company, takes advantage of, that they can, you know, because of the inclusion of our ingredient, they can actually put on the front of the pack a good source of vitamin B12, or an excellent source of zinc, something of this sort, right? And those really, really speak to consumers.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think we've seen in our research, our consumer research is protein is ah something consumers are are definitely looking for. um And they're concerned about ah getting complete proteins when it comes to looking for alternatives. They're looking for healthier proteins, you know, looking for lean proteins, as opposed to like red meats, something like that. When when they're um changing their diet for health reasons, they're looking to avoid allergens as well, because a lot of plant proteins,
00:34:53
Speaker
come from nuts or foods that are common allergens. So I think all of these things as well can appeal, they're tapping into what consumers are paying attention to when they're looking for an alternative protein.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yep. And we've taken a bit of, it's kind of a generic cliche statement, but we have a lot of potential claims that come on the front of the pack. It's a bit of a Swiss army knife, right? Of, of optionality. I don't dictate to our customer what to put on the front of their pack.
00:35:24
Speaker
so they can take advantage. And let's be true. Let's be honest here. Even when we talk about Group Bell with Laughing Cow Cheese, Baby Bell Cheese and so forth, they're talking to a whole broad range of consumers. And so they have the ability now to pick and choose which which of those claims they want to put on the pack because frankly, they know their consumer base better than I do. um And they're going to speak to, you know, let's say the mom who's buying snacking, laughing cow cheese for their kids to put in their lunch bag as they go off to elementary school or something. So this multifaceted approach allows it to speak towards all demographics of consumers, health trends that seem to be going on and so forth. And I think that's one of the really nice advantages of our ingredient. It has a number of facets to it. And so it can fit into a lot of different brand standards and a lot of different approaches that they're trying to communicate to the consumers.
00:36:18
Speaker
I think the final question, unless Amy, do you have any questions? I do have one other question. Go for
Operations, Sourcing, and Expansion Plans
00:36:25
Speaker
it. Well, this is maybe more a basic question that we should have asked at the beginning, but um where is super brewed foods located? Are you sourcing your corn or the corn grains that the the input here locally? um Are there plans for expansion? I guess like the location question is something.
00:36:45
Speaker
Yeah, so Superbrew, the majority of our operations as a company are based in Delaware. We're not actually manufacturing at a Delaware. This is where it developed the ingredients. So we have a manufacturing partner, Doeller, that's publicly announced, who's, they're actually based out of Germany, but they have a manufacturing facility out of the Netherlands. And so we're finishing the establishment of our manufacturing out of the Netherlands as we speak.
00:37:11
Speaker
So unfortunately, we're not fully in market yet, but we're finishing that transfer process to produce out of there for so many other ones. We are hot on the pathway to site our first plant, which is going to be likely the US could also be Canada. So I hope so.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah. and And the goal right now, all of our plan and focus and where we've really developed the ingredient on is we would source directly non-GMO corn ourselves and we would process the entire green at our own site, right?
00:37:44
Speaker
And so, yeah, it would be another opportunity. And this is one of the things that I really geek out on. And I'm not a Midwestern guy. I grew up all throughout the US, but I really love this idea of allowing Midwestern plants to climb the value chain from where today They're making animal feeds in fuels. That's great. And that's tremendous. But we have the ability for them to repurpose these assets, breathe new life into them, to no longer make an animal feed, but make a direct human food. And not to make a fuel, but to make a higher value biochemical, right? Out of the same workforce communities, the same grain. I mean, let's why not? You know, climb that value chain.
00:38:30
Speaker
for those communities. So to to be seen, Amy, but I would say in the next two or three years, yes, you'll be hearing a lot more about that further scale up in the US and Oregon. Awesome. I look forward to that. Yeah. And I guess you I just wanted to know, ah maybe you partly answered this in the previous one, but when can we see something made by Superfood Foods in the supermarkets?
Market Entry Strategy for North America
00:38:55
Speaker
And even in the Netherlands, perhaps, I could go and check it out.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah. Unfortunately, you're not going to see it in the Netherlands until we get novel food approval. So all that ingredient comes back to the U S and we will be a marketing Q one of next year for sure. I can't tell you exactly which product because I'm not a liberated to say, but you will see us in Q one of next year. And then there should be, I would say three or four different products in multiple brands that you will see us in in 2025.
00:39:26
Speaker
Hopefully our colleagues in the US get a chance to you know visit a supermarket and when Super Brute Foods makes it to the market, we'll be one of the first ones to chat about that on this podcast. so Once again, Brian, thank you so much for joining. It was a pleasure discussing Super Brute Foods with you.
00:39:44
Speaker
and to our No problem. I really appreciate the chance to come on. Thank you both. Thank you, Amy, for all the great questions. And Karthik, I'm happy to talk about regulatory. Of course, always looking forward to that. And to our listeners, if you like listening to this podcast and the content content we are putting out, please give us a rating, ah like, share, and subscribe our podcast on whichever platform you find our podcast. And see you soon. Thank you so much.
00:40:13
Speaker
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