Brenner and his team set to work developing CPG products that utilized every part of the antioxidant-rich cacao pod and take advantage of its superfood properties. “I wanted to say goodbye to the retail part of my life and move to CPG,” he explains. The store was doing well, but in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic shut down retail businesses in New York, Brenner took the opportunity to pivot and rethink his business model. “We created a concept where you could drink and eat all kinds of things made from cacao.” In 2019, Brenner opened up a new store in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, which he and his partners called Blue Stripes Cacao Shop. After expending considerable resources on the legal battle, he was forced to leave the company and stay out of the industry for five years. Brenner got sued by Strauss in 2012, which alleged that the bakery chain was a breach of his noncompete clause. While he was still there, he also started a bakery chain. The chain expanded internationally with more than 50 outlets at its height. He founded Max Brenner Chocolate in Israel in the mid-1990s, staying on after its acquisition by Strauss Group in 2001 for $5 million. While chocolate has been processed for hundreds of years, most people have never tasted the cacao fruit.“They don’t know about its incredible hidden potential ,” says the serial entrepreneur. That dark secret of chocolate production really bothered Brenner. Then ,consider it takes roughly two-three cacao pods to make a single bar of chocolate. About 70 percent of the cacao pod goes to waste-meaning that chocolate makers are typically discarding most of the fruit pulp and the shell, despite all the energy and resources it takes to produce them. Blue Stripes CacaoĬhocolate makers typically discard everything but the cluster of cocoa beans (really seeds) that the white pulp encases. Blue Stripes products utilize the whole cacao pod, from bean to juice to shell. Next year, sales are projected to triple, says CEO Oded Brenner. The startup’s entire product line debuted in Whole Foods in May 2022 and the company is finishing out its first, partial year in business with $4.5 million in sales. Not every company’s new upcycled food has tickled my tastebuds this year, but here’s a standout: Blue Stripes Urban Cacao, whose investors include Hershey Co. Since the Upcycled Food Association’ s inception in 2019, the trade group reports that its membership has grown to 255 food producers, and its member companies have diverted nearly a billion pounds of food waste. The enterprising food companies in this space are hoping to make at least a small dent in the massive problem of food waste by making use of the byproducts of food production, as well as leftover plant and animal parts (think crispy fish skins) and imperfect produce. Upcycling, a sort of culinary alchemy that turns food waste into edible gold, is one of the most encouraging environmental trends in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG). Prize winning business and health care journalist who writes about the future of food, sustainability and plant-based eating. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Upcycling: Hershey-Backed Blue Stripes Makes Cacao Products From The Shells And All
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