LOCA Food Introduces Plant-Based Potato Queso
Bay area-based allergy-friendly, LOCA Food, launches with the first shelf-stable potato-based queso on the market. Made with real foods and no artificial ingredients LOCA Food offers consumers a better alternative to traditional cheese sauces.
Originally served at ball games and movie theaters, nacho cheese sauce is classic American junk food. But as we all try to consume fewer artificial flavors and preservatives in favor of real foods, LOCA has recreated that nostalgic nacho taste made with vegetables you could grow in your backyard.
Traditional cheese sauces are high in trans fat, preservatives, and artificial ingredients and while others have introduced their non-dairy alternatives none have tried with potato, until now. LOCA is proudly the first ‘potato queso’ to go to the market and the first shelf-stable (12-18 months), top 8 allergy-free, queso sauce made with only veggies and whole ingredients! By making it allergen, conflict, and cruelty-free, LOCA is making it easier to enjoy nacho sauce as often as you want. Through sustainable sourcing and swapping nuts for potatoes, LOCA eliminates the high usage of water and excess greenhouse gas emissions that the livestock industry is notorious for. By sourcing sustainably farmed vegetables to make our nacho sauce, LOCA is a tasty way to lessen humankind’s impact on the one planet we have.
Founder Lauren Joyner was raised on a meat-and-dairy heavy diet that considered macaroni and cheese to be a vegetable. Her friends and family back home became more interested in adding more plants into their diets but made it very clear that cheese dip was something they could never give up (and she couldn’t blame them).
As she searched for dairy alternatives that did it justice, she found that stores only served limited options, most of which were expensive, nut-based, or both. That’s when Lauren decided to pivot her career to focus on the mission of making healthy, plant-based foods accessible to all by reimagining classic dairy comfort foods with nutritious, whole foods ingredients that everyone can enjoy.
Lauren soft-launched the product at the beginning of 2019, testing the nacho sauce in places like Oracle Park baseball stadium, The University of San Francisco, and NVIDIA corporate offices, to name a few. The test market was a success. The product was such a hit with students at UofSF that the culinary team served LOCA daily in their main cafeteria, at one point completely replacing the dairy nacho cheese previously available.
She spent months preparing for a national foodservice debut this past Spring. After it became clear that COVID-19 wasn’t going anywhere, she revised the business plan to instead focus on launching the retail line in e-commerce ahead of schedule. She plans to focus on a mix of food service and e-commerce in 2021.
You can now purchase LOCA Potato Queso on their website eatlocafood.com.
About LOCA Food
Originally served at ballparks and movie theaters, nacho cheese sauce is classic American junk food. As we all try to consume fewer artificial flavors and preservatives in favor of real foods, we recreated that nostalgic nacho cheese taste with vegetables you could grow in your backyard. LOCA makes healthy eating easier by reinvesting classic dairy comfort foods with nutritious, allergy-free ingredients that everyone can enjoy. LOCA Plant-Based Potato Queso is a shelf-stable cheese sauce that’s packed with flavor and nutrients, contains no artificial flavors, and is made with vegetables that you could grow in your background. It looks, melts, and tastes like the gooey, glossy nacho cheese sauce you grew up with. To learn more about LOCA you can visit https://www.eatlocafood.com or follow their cheesy journey on Instagram.
For More Information:
https://www.eatlocafood.com
