Ovation Foods Brings Nutrient-identical Eggs To Meat Snacks

With the introduction of a jerky-like Chicken Stick product line the Wisconsin-based startup, Ovation Foods, is attempting to use its proprietary beaded “whole egg” ingredient, Eggsentials, as the foundational piece of a new CPG platform. Made with skinless chicken breast, the Sticks line touts a key differentiator within the saturated meat snack market: Eggsentials, which has the identical nutrient profile of a single whole egg, specifically its 175 mg of Choline which naturally occurs in raw eggs and which has been found to support brain health and cognitive function.

Available in No Soy Teriyaki, Chili Lime and Smokehouse Original flavors and the company has plans to introduce a leaner, “bacon-like” chicken strip product with Eggsentials in the near future, according to John Spingola, Managing Partner at Ovation Foods.

What is Ovation Foods?

Ovation Foods is a new CPG business and joint venture that developed out of Ab E Discovery, a full-service commercialization and innovation-focused company founded by Chris Salm, who also serves as Ovation’s CEO. Under the stated mission of replicating the “biofunctional availability of the nutrition of an egg” in a single ingredient, Ovation leveraged Ab E’s R&D and manufacturing capabilities to created Eggsentials, which retains all of the original nutrients of a raw egg in a safe-to-consume product.

The company works directly with agricultural researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and boasts the in-house expertise of egg innovation specialists such as Gil Boldt, who helped develop Conagra’s Egg Beaters product, claims Spingola. “We have Egg innovation in the lifeblood,” Spingola said.

Ab E’s manufacturing capabilities include access to a five-story Fluid Bed Processor, traditionally used by the pharmaceutical industry for creating egg microcapsules. Instead, Ovation Foods is using this process to create Eggsentials.

“In that process, we bring eggs into the facility, crack them and separate the yolk from the whites,” Spingola explained. “They get pasteurized at 140 degrees, and are brought back together in the fluidized bed… it’s kind of a wind tunnel of sorts. It creates a little microbead… the output almost looks like couscous.”

What’s the goal?

By creating a brand behind its ingredient, Ovation believes its greatest opportunity is to optimize nutrition by creating finished products in a way that caters to a variety of use occasions. Spingola noted that while the Chicken Sticks line, enhanced with Eggsentials, naturally lends itself to an association with breakfast, he said the goal is to focus on the product’s nutritional value rather than on specific use occasions.

While working to establish itself as a CPG company, Ovation also plans to launch Eggsentials as a standalone product at retail and as an ingredient for food service. Spingola said the company is currently in talks to secure a military base as its first foodservice client and hopes to increase its presence in the channel, stating that the base is “the largest protein provider to MRE production for the military” and has an interest in using Eggsentials to “beef up the nutrition and protein” of established military menu items.

To make a greater impact with its nutrient-dense ingredient, Spingola said Ovation plans to bring Eggsentials to Burundi through its recently established a 501(c)3 nonprofit known as One Another Foundation. He said Salm chose the African country because, according to the Global Hunger Index, it is one of the poorest nations in the world and also has the highest rate of chronic malnutrition.

“He felt like if he could prove it there, then he could prove it anywhere,” said Spingola. “Now we are in a hospital network in three countries in Africa…. But we want to do it in our own backyard as well. Any place we can help get Eggsentials out there to help nourish people [is where we want to be].”