Rudi’s “Value Adds” Justin Gold, Frozen Innovation

For nearly 50 years, Rudi’s Rocky Mountain Bakery has been content to stay in its lane as a bread maker, but the recent addition of Justin Gold – founder of nut butter brand Justin’s – is paving a new road towards the frozen section.

Last year, after nearly 10 years away, former Rudi’s CEO Jane Strode Miller returned to the Boulder, Colorado-based brand with her sights set on a new direction, teasing plans to go into more value-added frozen products at Expo West in March. Gold’s appointment is part of those efforts: After being enlisted to assist with product R&D (this summer), he officially joined as Rudi’s new chief innovation officer at the beginning of the month.

The results are reflected in the launch of an ambitious suite of 12 new frozen products made with Rudi’s breads, including four varieties of Texas Toast, four egg-and-meat Breakfast Sandwiches and four Uncrustables-style Sandos, the latter of which will be offered with grape and strawberry fruit spreads in both peanut butter and nut-free varieties using Voyage Foods sunflower seed butter.

Gold said he had been working to develop a better-for-you pocket sandwich for kids since he left his eponymous nut butter brand in 2021, following its sale to Hormel in 2016.

“The hardest component of the whole thing is the bread,” he said. “I couldn’t get the bread right.”

As luck would have it, Miller, a former Justin’s board member, was looking for a CPG food innovator to be an “idea guy” at Rudi’s and bring the brand into a different part of the store.

“What I do really well is take great ideas and make them happen,” said Miller while taking a break from handing out samples at Expo East. “Having someone who understands how you come up with ideas, how you do something disruptive…The hardest part is coming up with the breakthrough ideas.”

In a nod to his former days making better-for-you peanut butter cups, Gold described his partnership with Miller as “chocolate and peanut butter colliding around a corner.”

Miller rejoined Rudi’s in November 2021 initially as an interim CEO (while continuing to serve on Rudi’s board) before officially taking over in October 2022 after former Good Karma CEO Doug Radi left the position to become Sweet Loren’s new president. Since taking the reins, Miller has been steering the brand towards reinvention. Along with Gold, she brought Rudi’s founder Sheldon Romer back and added Cynthia Tice, founder of Lily’s Sweets, as part of the company’s Innovation and Impact Board. Miller served as CEO of Lily’s Sweets from 2018 to 2021.

Based on nostalgic products from childhood, Rudi’s new offerings are designed to lean into consumers’ desire for better-for-you, convenience-based eating trends. The Sandos contain 50% less sugar than Uncrustables, the Texas Toast uses real butter and cheese, and the breakfast sandwiches use cage-free eggs and nitrite-free sausage and bacon. The idea is to create a value proposition with broad appeal across the whole family, Gold said.

It’s unsurprising considering that Smuckers attributes at least some of its most recent 10% sales growth in Q4 2023 to its Uncrustables business. Natural food brands have taken notice and are all launching their own versions from Chubby’s to Red’s Naturals frozen variety.

First up in retail will be Texas Toast, launching nationally in Whole Foods next month, with the Breakfast Sandwiches and Sandos ready to ship at the end of the year. The brand is still lining up retailers on those products.

Normally, adding 12 new frozen products to a bakery business would pose the additional challenge of cold-chain distribution, but Rudi’s delivers its bread to stores frozen, making this portfolio extension less difficult than it might appear.

That’s not to say there haven’t been hiccups.

In mid-August, about two weeks before Rudi’s was set to ship its first order to Whole Foods, Miller got a call that Cali’flour Foods, the co-manufacturer Rudi’s had contracted to make its Texas Toasts, had closed, shutting down its manufacturing facility and would not be able to fulfill the order.

Instead of delaying its delivery to Whole Foods, Rudi’s brought on Cali’flour’s former production manager and within ten days all production was brought in-house and the whole management team was called in to fill boxes.

“They gave me the simplest job of putting the Texas Toasts into the boxes. I wasn’t allowed to do the glue gun or anything that had heating elements,” Miller laughed.

“That’s what scrappy businesses do. They solve problems, they figure it out. They don’t make excuses,” Gold said. “That shows the grit of the organization. It was really cool. It was a really proud moment.”