Must Love Sees Growth Opportunity On Center-Store Shelves

Plant-based ice cream maker Must Love is looking beyond the freezer with the launch of its new cookie line, a product it believes will be its “bridge to conventional consumers.”

Speaking to NOSH, Must Love cofounders Mollie Cha and Hannah Hong described the new nostalgic sweet snack as the next step in the brand’s trajectory to becoming a plant-based platform for better-for-you indulgence.

“Must Love’s vision is to be your family’s brand of choice for all indulgence occasions, whether that means from the freezer or from the pantry,” said Hong. “We’re speaking to the same consumer as our ice cream, and our brand will be their go-to throughout the week – not just for their frozen treat moment. We are going to be the household name brand that stands for modern indulgence for the [whole] family.”

The cookies come in two flavors – Birthday Cake and Chocolate – and were inspired by the classic childhood treat, frosted animal crackers. The cookies are plant-based, sweetened with date sugar, non-GMO project verified and will launch online in December for $42 per 6-pack of 3 oz. bags.

Must Love began in 2017 as Hakuna Banana, a banana-based dairy-free ice cream. In 2019, the company moved deeper into the set, launching oat milk ice cream line Totes Oats and adding frozen novelty bars made with both of its ice creams. Last year, the two lines were rebranded and merged under the newly created Must Love and saw the launch of its single-serve all natural sprinkles.

The founder duo said the new cookie line will present the brand with an opportunity to connect with a broader audience, but believes it is reaching the same type of shopper with the new format.

“The two aisles are shopped very differently,” said Hong while explaining that while dairy-free ice cream shoppers will often only browse the dairy-free ice cream set, the behavior is not the same in the cookie aisle. “Not many consumers are necessarily looking for a dairy-free cookie,” she stated.

However, with the rising interest in plant-based food, clean ingredients and more consumers looking to avoid refined sugar, the cookies give Must Love an opportunity to appeal to consumers while honoring the same core tenets as its flagship product. Additionally, the line will help move the brand beyond natural and specialty channels and increase its online sales. The team, which has chosen to limit its e-commerce distribution due to the high cost of shipping ice cream, also anticipates the cookies to help bolster growth online.

According to Hong, cookies also have a higher purchase rate than a pint of ice cream. While the launch may help increase the brand’s sales, the team will also be tasked with managing product moving through two very different supply chains, manufacturing processes and temperature states. Must Love onboarded with new co-manufacturing partners and explained how their learnings from ice cream gave them a significant leg up in producing the cookies.

“One thing we came away with from scaling ice cream is that you can’t be 100% married to some made up vision,” said Hong. “Understanding what’s really important to the product and your consumer should be the true North Star. Everything outside of what’s truly important can be adjusted.”

For example, prior to the cookie launch and after packaging was already printed – complete with food imagery – the team realized the cookie shape needed to change from circles to squares. The shape shifting virtually eliminated scrap produced during manufacturing, making the product much more sustainable for the company to produce long term.

“The shape is not what’s the most important thing to our product and our consumer, and we were willing to be flexible on that point,” she continued. “I can see an earlier version of ourselves who could’ve been more rigid because we had an idea of what it was supposed to be like.”