Kencko Seeks To Offer Fruits and Vegetables For Every Moment of The Day

Plant-based wellness brand Kencko has expanded its product portfolio to give consumers a fruit and vegetable-packed “dessert moment,” introducing a line of gumdrops available in four flavors: Berrylicious, Passionista, Gingerella and Bananarama. The company has also ramped up its sustainability efforts, including transitioning its product lines into fully compostable packaging and earning its B Corp certification in late 2020.

What is Kencko?

The New York-based company was founded in 2018 by Tomas Froes and Ricardo Vice Santos after Froes suffered health complications and began increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables in his diet to aid his recovery. From there, Froes set out to create a more convenient way for Americans to consume their recommended five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, beginning at breakfast with smoothie powders and now reaching into the sweets segment with gumdrops.

“Gumdrops felt like the most natural way to convey the proposition we wanted to achieve,” Froes explained. “Growing up, parents or grandparents tell you to have the meal, have lunch, have dinner, but afterwards for dessert what you should have is a piece of fruit. That piece of fruit — that most of the time isn’t had — is that moment we want to achieve with the gumdrops.”

Both of its product lines are made through a combination of flash-frozen and slow-drying technology. For its newest launch, Kencko uses the resulting colorful fruit and veggie powders to create gumdrops which contain 3.5 grams of fiber and sell for $47.90 for 16 packs. Each pouch of gumdrops contains the equivalent of one of those daily servings, with its packaging calling out the corresponding amount of fruits and vegetables contained within the sweet treat. These designations are derived from calculations of the weights and measurements of the ingredient as it is altered during each stage of the manufacturing process, Froes explained.

What’s the mission?

Packaging the products in transparent, recyclable and fully compostable plastic has always been a top priority, Froes said. Following the company’s $3.4 million capital raise in 2019, it was able to hit that goal in Q1 2020 — though the choice resulted in the need for product reformulation to maintain shelf life and quality.

“It has been one of our key areas of focus to be as sustainable of a company as we would like to see other companies be,” Froes said. “From a consumer standpoint this was eye opening and one of the things we noticed once we started to showcase ‘fully compostable’ on our ads was that it completely changed the message in terms of how people were reacting to us.”

According to Froes, consumers had previously pointed to the company’s use of plastic on social media as a point of contention. Taking this feedback a step further, the company has also achieved carbon neutral deliveries and is offsetting its emissions by participating in reforestation projects in the United States and South America.

Because of its close relationships with its farmers and suppliers, Froes said, Kencko was able to keep operations “agile” during the pandemic and further the brand’s sustainability commitments. In tandem with its goal to expand ingredient offerings, the company plans to continue connecting its consumers to the products’ origins.

“We want to get as much of the stories of the farmers in front of people’s eyes,” Froes said. “Our ambitions in terms of sustainability have always been to act in the best interest of the farmers. At the end of the day that is going to be an act in the best interest of the quality of our ingredients and the product we are producing.”

What’s next?

Kencko’s ultimate goal is to encourage consumers to eat more fruit and vegetables by making this habit affordable, convenient, environmentally sustainable and able to be integrated anywhere into a daily routine.

“A large focus [for the brand has been] evolving from a single, breakfast-oriented moment,” Froes said. “COVID slowed down some of that but we are back on track and evolving from our first category to a second and are preparing the launch of a third category which will focus on a meal moment soon.”

Kencko has been rapidly extending its product lines since closing a funding round in 2019, moving beyond its original six SKUs, which were made from a combination of about a dozen ingredients, to over 20 different varieties, utilizing roughly 55 ingredients. Froes said the company will continue to not only add new flavor varieties, but also increase the number of fruits and vegetables it uses with the hope of reaching ​​85 to 90 ingredients by the end of the year.

“We are going to evolve, but it’s always going to be the same company — organic fruits and vegetables, nothing added, nothing taken,” Fores stated. “What we are trying to do is get more Americans to increase their intake of fruits and vegetables day-to-day [in a way] that is affordable, convenient and sustainable for them and the world.”