Satisfying the Conscious Consumer
The Business of Food
by Jennifer Barney
Satisfying the Conscious Consumer
2-min read
I described the conscious consumer as one who buys alternative proteins due to animal welfare concerns but still plans to purchase animal derived products. This is the majority of alternative protein consumers and when their diet does include animal products, they want it to be ethically/regeneratively sourced.
Brands will be knocking themselves out trying to meet this demand for packaged goods. The challenge is lack of available inputs and consistency of product quality. (I don’t mean quality like good quality or bad quality, I mean characteristics and attributes which contribute to how products look, taste, smell and feel.) I talked about dairy components, so let’s continue the example.
Consumer expectations
The lack of available regeneratively derived dairy components makes formulating certain products difficult if not impossible to achieve. While the conscious consumer may desire regeneratively sourced everything, when it comes to packaged food they also expect a certain quality and consistency of quality. They want the experience to be the same each time they repeat purchase an item.
While myriad dairy components exist as conventional and even organic, the market isn’t at a point where segregating and sourcing regenerative dairy components exists at any scale.
To illustrate my point let’s say you’re making ice cream. You want it to be just as good as the best ice creams on the market with the added benefit of being regenerative. You’ll need skim milk, cream, and non-fat milk solids as separate components (and not how they come out of the cow), because, for example, if solids are low in your ice cream, it will be icy and not smooth. To make a good performing ice cream with regenerative dairy you’ll have to buy all the milk, take it to a processor that separates the milk and then deal with what to do with the byproducts you aren’t using, for which you paid a premium.
*Idea: if anyone wants to create a supply matching marketplace for regenerative diary components or if one exists that I don’t know about please write me*
Quality consistency
Even if you use whole milk, the way it comes out of the cows will not be consistent over time. Direct from a farm milk has high variability from one season to the next, and one lot from the next. You’ll have to test and adjust with other protein and fat inputs, adding to your ingredient deck, to meet your quality and nutris each time you run. This is nearly impossible to do at the manufacturing level for small brands.
I don’t care if I’m off a gram or two
While it’s true nutritional labels are only considered to be out of compliance if the nutrient content is within some margin (10% or 20% depending on the nutrient class) of the value declared, you’ll still have to right-size consumer expectations because something will be different each time. For ice cream it may not refreeze as well, get icy, shrink in the container or be too hard to scoop, etc.
Brands have to communicate the trade off to consumers
I think this is an area where brands struggle. It’s all about who you want to be as a brand, who you are speaking to squarely (consumer target), and being unabashedly transparent. While it might be scary and hard to say “this might be different than the last batch” the way you say it and why it is so is what consumers crave in the brands they choose. “Because we use unaltered ingredients that come direct from regenerative farms” is a mouthful, but with some effort can be condensed and story-told with A+ brand messaging.
As the industry grows and more acreage and ranches convert, more ingredients will become available that can make regenerative claims. Until then it is up to brands to continue to drive that demand.
For help formulating with dairy contact food scientist, editor and consultant Donna Berry and sign up for her newsletter Daily Dose of Dairy.
All my best,
Jennifer
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I'd love to hear from you - get in touch at jennifer@3rdandbroadway.com