Smári Founder Announces Upcycled Barley Brand Bygg Foods

After closing the book on his last food and beverage venture Smári Organics, Smári Ásmundsson’s new brand has the Icelandic-born, California-based entrepreneur thinking Bygg.

Ásmundsson announced on LinkedIn this month his latest venture, Bygg Foods, which will create foods and beverages made using upcycled barley grain, beginning with a plant-based milk set to launch in the second half of 2023. Bygg, which is the Icelandic word for ‘barley’, aims to disrupt the dairy alternative set by offering a better-for-you and more sustainable option that Ásmundsson said offers a taste and texture that more closely resembles traditional cow’s milk.

Bygg is about 90%-95% through the R&D process, he added, and is expected to have around 70 calories per serving, zero grams of sugar and contains 50% more calcium than dairy milk with 45% fewer carbohydrates than oat milk. The drinks will also be Non-GMO Project, Upcycled and carbon neutral certified and the company is a B Corp. The brand intends to launch in the on-premise channel with 32 oz. shelf-stable Tetra Pak cartons in Original, Chocolate and Barista Blend varieties, with a refrigerated version launching in natural and conventional grocery stores shortly after.

“I think when you look at the plant-based milk market, it’s been around for a while and [it used to be] mostly people that are really passionate about not drinking animal milk and they were okay with the sacrifices in terms of flavor or in terms of function,” Ásmundsson “And now you have plenty of milks, there’s some that taste great, some of them that function well in one aspect of cooking and baking, but there isn’t that one that replaces dairy milk. And I think that’s the key to high-paced growth in the category.”

Beyond Ásmundsson, who is serving as CEO, Bygg has also built out a leadership team of food and beverage industry veterans, including R&D lead Rusty Schwartz, founder of food startup incubator KitchenTown; finance and ecommerce head Ken Burke, founder of MarketLive; innovations and operations leader Jens Hoj, also the VP of product and innovation at Krave Pure Foods; and marketing head Brian Steele, founder of design firm SLATE.

To source the barley, Bygg is working with Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB) and EverGrain, the beer giant’s upcycled ingredient supplier arm which provides spent grains from beer production.

Bygg, however, is certainly not the first brand to attempt to launch a barley milk in the U.S. market. This Spring, Molson Coors introduced Golden Wing, an upcycled barley milk line created in partnership with L.A. Libations. The drink similarly touts 50% more calcium than dairy milk with 60% less sugar.

As well, earlier this year AB shuttered its own barley milk brand, Take Two. Founded in 2017 as Canvas, and a participant in of AB’s ZX Accelerator program, Take Two similarly used upcycled ingredients and at its height was sold in around 1,300 stores. Former Take Two president and chief innovation officer Matt Olsofsky has also joined Bygg to oversee supply chain and sales.

According to Ásmundsson, although AB decided to shutter Take Two, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still interested in the barley milk space, stating that brand’s closure “had nothing to do with Take Two [as a product] and had everything to do with COVID and AB InBev really needing to focus on the core business.” While AB does not have any ownership stake in Bygg Foods, he said the company is aiding in R&D and has shared insights from the Take Two project that Bygg will be able to follow and improve on.

Bygg had financially bootstrapped so far, but Ásmundsson said the company has opened up its first fundraising round ahead of next year’s launch.

“[Plant-based milk] is a crowded space, but it is also a fast-growing space,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll need to take revenue away from Oatly, you know, I think there can be several winners in this space. And I think we’re well equipped to be one of them.”

While barley milk will be the focus for the foreseeable future, Ásmundsson said he hopes to grow Bygg Foods into a platform brand playing in a number of food and beverage categories, all built around upcycled barley as a hero ingredient.

More personally, Bygg Foods also represents a new opportunity for Ásmundsson after his previous brand, the eponymous Smári Organics, shut down earlier this year. Founded in 2010, that company was Ásmundsson’s first food and beverage venture, debuting with a line of Icelandic yogurts and later introducing a ready-to-drink Protein Coffee line. The drinks ultimately found placement in around 900 stores nationwide, but the onset of the pandemic led the company to lose 95% of its business, he said, a setback that proved to be insurmountable.

“We were so new that we were never able to recover from it,” he said. “You know, it was a perishable product; I would reformulate it to make it shelf stable and we tried to restart it, but essentially it was killed by COVID.”

However, looking toward the future, he said he’s optimistic and aims to apply the lessons he learned from his old company at Bygg.

“When I started Smári Organics, I’d never been in food before, I was in advertising, and I had no idea what I was doing and was learning as I went,” he said. “But now … I know the next steps I need to take. I know the pitfalls and know how challenging it is – and it doesn’t scare me. I’m still just as excited about it. I love creating a brand.”