![]() Coronavirus opens door for juice to come back “It is a wonderful treat that I can give to my kids and have a guilt free experience around lemonade without sacrificing your typical sweetness from sugar,” he said, adding that “they don’t have the typical stevia bite” thanks to using high quality ingredients and blending with erythritol. The second product is a No Sugar Lemonade that comes in classic and strawberry flavors and is sweetened with stevia and erythritol to offer a sweet taste but only 10-15 calories and zero grams of sugar per service. “We are so excited to put functional in the frozen case,” McLean said, adding that pops also “are sweetened only with fruit juice, no cane sugar, and have 30-35 calories each, making them a healthy, nutritious treat that is good for the whole family.” New products expand beyond traditional juiceĭean also helped the already innovative brand create two new products that launched in the first quarter of this year, including frozen Probiotic Pops, which include a billion GanedenBC30 probiotics per serving to support a healthy immune system, digestion and protein absorption. “We are really excited to build upon those and other channels, as well as our existing natural food industry distribution … to really make organic more accessible,” he added. So, they really helped us begin the journey into those other channels … that are hard to break into as a small organic brand,” McLean said. “Dean had a very good sales team and they were able to penetrate into some new channels for us, including food, drug, mass, the dollar channel and the convenience segment as well as some food service. In addition, McLean said, Dean helped elevate the brand and set it on a path for success, which he plans to continue down with a focus on expanded distribution, innovation and consumer education. Expanded distributionįrom an economic perspective, buying a company during the ongoing pandemic may sound risky, but McLean said that the immunity-supporting, nutritional punch offered by organic orange and grapefruit juices make the company well-positioned for growth. The venture capital firm Renewal Funds also helped make the deal possible. McLean said he was able to seize the opportunity because he is “fortunate to have a group of industry friends who are talented and successful and willing to come alongside and invest with us.” These include Gary Hirshberg, co-founder of Stonyfield Organic John Foraker, former CEO of Annie’s and co-founder and CEO of Once Upon a Farm Andrew Abraham, CEO and founder of Orgain Nicole & Peter Dawes, founders of Late July Snacks & Nixie Sparkling Water and Matt Rogers, founder of Nest and. While he laments the “sad ending” for Dean and the negative impact of the bankruptcy on friends and colleagues at the company, he described the chance to buy back his business and house it under a new parent company named Harmoni, Inc., as “one of those things in life that you probably don’t get the opportunity to do more than once, so we definitely took advantage of it.” So, it feels good from a lot of different standpoints.” He explained to FoodNavigator-USA in an exclusive interview that while “Dean was a great company for us to partner with” and “gave us a lot of freedom to do things, they were still an $8b publicly traded company that had to do things through a certain process that was very different than a small company. ![]() ![]() ![]() Matt McLean, who established Uncle Matt’s Organic more than 20 years ago and remained with the brand when he sold it to Dean Foods in 2017, said it “feels wonderful, really, to be back in charge” of the company he loves after Dean Foods filed for bankruptcy in November 2019. Emulsifiers, stabilizers, hydrocolloids.Chocolate and confectionery ingredients.Carbohydrates and fibers (sugar, starches).Plant-based, alt proteins, precision fermentation. ![]()
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