Myracle Kitchen Launches Bytes As Single-Brand U.S. Strategy Takes Shape

U.K.-based food company Nurture Brands LLC, introduced organic plant-based Coconut Bytes to the U.S. market this week under its Myracle Kitchen banner. As the sister brand to the U.K.’s Rebel Kitchen, Myracle Kitchen debuted stateside in June with a line of organic plant-based Barista Mylks, which Myracle Kitchen’s General Manager Graeme Puffett said was the first step in the company’s strategic growth plan in the U.S.

Nurture Brands is the parent company to four European food and beverage brands, which also includes EMILY, The Primal Pantry and Ape Snacks, the latter of which produces an almost identical coconut snack bite product. Puffett explained that although Nurture owns a variety of brands with single-product lines in Europe, they plan to consolidate any products launched in the U.S. within the Myracle Kitchen brand in order to develop brand awareness and credibility stateside.

“As a business starting here, it’s easier to build up with one brand rather than divide across brands,” explained Puffett. “We also feel that with what Myracle kitchen stands for – no compromise on great quality and great tasting plant-based products – we can build a brand across different categories and platforms.”

Why Launch Snack Bytes?

Puffet said Myracle Kitchen isn’t necessarily focused on specific categories or retail partnerships, but rather on building a portfolio of products that can serve as “brand tools” to facilitate expansion. After monitoring the impressions of its Barista Mylk in the U.S., the brand is pursuing the specialty coffee market and believes by offering a snack alongside its Mylk, it can further elevate its presence and performance in the channel.

“A lot of the coffee shops, cafes and distributors we are working with are excited about the fact that we can offer them a snacking option as well that they can bring into the market,” Puffett said. “We can use it as a brand tool to offer cafes healthy snacking within their own shop, but we also see it as an opportunity to build the brand within retail.”

Though the company has no committed retail buyers yet, Puffett reiterated that brick and mortar stores will also be an important part of the line’s retail strategy.

Myracle Kitchen’s Organic Coconut Bytes will first be available online and on Amazon in three varieties: Original, Chocolate and Caramel, caramel is a new flavor not offered by its sister Ape Snacks line. Ben Arbib, Founder and CEO of Nurture Brands believes the core values of the brand will resonate with consumers beyond the individual product lines and hopes to reach a point where the consumer associates the Myracle Kitchen seal with all of its attributes and not just a flagship product.

Who is Myracle Kitchen?

Nurture Brand’s portfolio was first developed with the company’s B Corp certification in mind and in response to the organic foods movement in Europe. Aribib said the Myracle Kitchen brand is essentially a platform to extend that European portfolio of better-for-you, organic plant-based products into the United States and explained they are less concerned with proof of concept within each category and more focused on building brand awareness and credibility.

“We believe the brand is very stretchy,” said Arbib. “It’s not really the done-thing to launch a plant milk in one category and then come in with a healthy bite-cookie product literally at the same time. It is quite a different strategy because what we can do is we see what the consumer likes [in Europe] and, obviously they are different markets, but it’s not that different of a consumer from London to New York.”

Rebel Kitchen’s Barista Mylk line launched in Europe at the beginning of the year and was soon followed by additional varieties of plant-based milks such as Whole and Low Fat which Puffett said will enter Myracle’s portfolio in Q1 of 2022.

Where will they grow?

The brand’s next move will be to find retail distribution for the bytes, while also looking to debut a non-barista milk line next year that will further build out the portfolio. Puffett said establishing the brand as a leader in the organic plant-based industry at retail will make it easy to then “transition to other parts of the shop” with new product lines. Although the priority is expansion within the natural channel, Puffett said he thinks the brand will resonate in mass and conventional retailers as well.

“A few years ago healthy, plant-based snacks would have been seen as a very prim and more upper market demographic product, but that has been changing,” Puffett said. “We don’t see why we can’t go into the likes of Walmart where every family now is looking for healthier options.”

Arbib and Puffett noted the pandemic’s influence on “at-home” snacking has driven the majority of consumers past “Twix and chocolate bars” and into the healthy and functional snacking space. They both believe that the core values of Myracle Kitchen – fully carbon neutral, all organic, non-GMO, Glyphosate-free, lactose-free and plant-based – align well with the current snacking environment and the industry’s long-term predicted growth trends.

In order to share those core values with the consumer Myracle Kitchen is amping up its social media game through a variety of micro-influencer partnerships. Rather than harnessing celebrity power, the brand will instead work with those influencers with “10 to 50 thousand followers that have a little more credibility and haven’t sold out to charge a fortune to do an advert”

“Because we already know our products are the best out there in terms of the ingredients we use, taste and functionality, food experts or influencers are going to be the ones that can build that credibility and brand awareness,” Puffett said.