Moving Deeper Into Snacks, One Mighty Mill Expands Supply Chain, Distribution

Since its launch in 2018, Massachusetts-based brand One Mighty Mill has aimed to “revitalize local food systems” with products made using locally sourced, fresh-milled wheat, starting with bagels and tortillas. Now, the brand is focused on sustainably scaling its wheat supply chain and expanding distribution beyond New England as it goes deeper on its snack offerings, launching two new pretzel flavors and a hummus and pretzel snack pack at Whole Foods.

While fresh-milled flour, which retains the fiber, vitamins and minerals that are typically stripped out of industrial flour to make the ingredient shelf-stable, is the brand’s “key component,” co-founder Jon Olinto said, One Mighty Mill’s main focus has always been creating value-added products such as bagels, tortillas and pretzels.

“We didn’t think you could scale a company quickly when you have to take an ingredient and give it to somebody else to make something with,” he said.

One Mighty Mill was founded by Olinto and Tony Rosenfeld, who also founded farm-to-table food chain B.GOOD in 2004. After over 12 years running the business, Olinto said they noticed consumers were moving away from flour-based products as flour became “connected to unhealthy food.”

“I really started to understand that you could never talk about farm-to-table when it came to bread,” he said. “I got really stuck on that idea.”

They built a stone mill in Lynn, Massachusetts, researched the history of fresh milling and wheat farming and met with farmers from Aurora Mills & Farms in northern Maine. In the summer of 2017, they purchased the farm’s transitional organic wheat, wheat which complies with all organic requirements but has not reached the three-year threshold to be USDA-certified organic, as well as its certified organic wheat the next year. The brand launched in September 2018 with a manufacturing facility and a bakery offering bagels and tortillas made from its fresh-milled flour.

One Mighty Mill’s products are currently sold online and in the Whole Foods North Atlantic region, and the brand received the annual North Atlantic Region Supplier Award from the natural retailer in February. Its pretzels will soon launch in the Northeast region, though those plans were delayed due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on category resets. While the exact timing for the launch has not yet been determined, Olinto said the brand will hit shelves in Whole Foods Northeast stores by September at the latest.

During One Mighty Mill’s first year, 86% of its wheat was sourced from northern Maine, but the brand has since had to expand its supply chain beyond Maine and even beyond New England, a result of outpacing the output of organic wheat farms in these areas. As it has grown, the company has built three new mills in the Boston area, purchased organic wheat from upstate New York and Illinois and began working with an organic grower in Montana. As it enters new markets, Olinto said the brand wants to build its “own unique supply chain.”

“The mission is to bring back local food systems that help our communities be healthy and thrive,” he said. “The idea to start was we want to build a network of growers region by region.”

Aftering launching with three SKUs of whole wheat bagels and tortillas, the brand rolled out its first snack offering, whole grain pretzels with sea salt, last September. Late last month, the brand expanded the pretzel line with Honey Mustard and Hot Chile & Cheddar flavors.

Olinto said that bagels, tortillas and pretzels were part of the company’s product roadmap, after data from The Whole Grains Council showed gaps in whole grain product offerings in those categories. One Mighty Mill’s Lynn bakery wasn’t able to support pretzel production, Olinto said, resulting in the delay in getting them to market.

After rolling out the new pretzel flavors last week, the brand is already focused on a new product line: Mighty Dippers, single-serve packs of pretzels and hummus. The line was a request from a Whole Foods buyer who was looking for more grab-and-go items. The products, available in original and chocolate hummus flavors, went into production last week and will be available this week.

“Launching two new products as a small company during this [pandemic], we’re going to learn a ton but there’s also a ton of unknown,” Olinto said. “I think regardless of what happens in the short term, we know long term that we’ve created something that’s really good.”

Currently One Mighty Mill has a variety of messages and points of differentiation it’s seeking to convey to shoppers, ranging from the importance of fresh milling, sustainability efforts and revitalizing local food systems. However, the pretzel launch helped the brand dial in its messaging around nutritional benefits. After launching its first round of the pretzel packaging, Olinto said it became clear that most consumers don’t understand the nutritional benefits of fresh milling. The new packaging will instead feature callouts for the pretzels’ fiber and protein content.

In producing its products, Olinto said the team has had to reset recipes and remain nimble as every field, harvest and product could “come out slightly different.” This was especially true for the pretzels, whose shapes vary from run to run. While he said this slight inconsistency could be frustrating at times, it can also be “endearing, because real food has character.”

“This is one of our competitive advantages,” Olinto said. “Real food is an expression of the soil it comes from, in some ways, the climate and in some ways, the growers. The only way that we feel like we can win on that is if people actually understand the brand and connect with it at a deeper level.”