Pitch Slam 11 Finals - Bob's Natural

Speaker 1 [00:18] Our first finalist of this part is Bob Gruder, who is the CEO of Bob's Naturals. Come on up. Thank you.

Speaker 2 [00:28] Hey, Gotcha. Thank you. Well, thanks for coming and thanks for listening. I wanna start out by telling you a story about Dave. Dave's a good friend of mine and he's a lawyer in New York City. A couple of years ago, Dave was um working really hard. He was grinding probably like everybody else. He worked 60 hours a week, very dedicated to his craft, but he wasn't feeling great. He had stomach aches, he had kind of a headache, gained a couple pounds, incredible fatigue. So he went to the doctor. And the doctor took his blood pressure and he saw it was up a little bit and he saw that he gained a couple of pounds. But the doctor said something interesting. He goes, tell me what you ate for the last 3 days. Dave kind of looked at him, kind of weird and told him what he ate. So the doctor went to his desk and started writing. And Dave was thinking, oh no, here it comes, the Prilosec and the Lipitor prescriptions for the rest of my life. So he came back and he handed him 3 sheets of paper and said, Here's a diet I want you to eat. Come see me next week, which was very strange for a doctor to say. So Dave followed What the doctor told him to do, came back the next week and the doctor says, how do you feel? He goes, I feel great. I have more energy. I feel fantastic. My stomach. Pain went away, no headache. So I went and visited Dave a couple of years later. Dave had gained more weight. And I said, Dave, what's happening? He goes, I'm on the Prilosec and the Lipitor diet. And I go, what happened to what the doctor told you? He says, uh, I don't want it. It's too hard. I'm just not interested. And I said, why don't you just go boil some oats in the morning. Have some great oatmeal. You can eat it, clean the pots in 15 minutes. And he goes, I'm not interested. And it just kind of resonated with me for a while. And then he says, um, I just, I don't want to eat food that tastes healthy. I just want to eat food that tastes good, that is healthy. And that just, that just kind of just stuck in my mind for a while. I was at my, uh, my local supermarket, staring kind of just like this. At the frozen breakfast aisle, there hasn't really been any innovation in years in the breakfast aisle. There's been some great innovations. In fact, a lot of the innovations have come out of Nosh for snack aisle and other aisles, but you can see it's just a sea of yellow and red boxes filled with empty calories. And then I thought about Dave and the Daves of the world. There's female Daves. There's elementary school Dave's, there's millennial Dave's, there's truck driver Dave's, there's Doctor Dave's. And they're not interested. In trying to formulate or go or become a cause they just wanna do their work and work hard and that's what they do they work really, really hard at what they do, but they think the food companies should work hard and create something that is good for them. I looked at this and I decided, all right, I'm gonna start a new breakfast product. And we created power pies. Power pies, as you can see, come in three flavors right now, dark chocolate, mixed berry, and strawberry. One of the best compliments I think I heard yesterday was they said it tastes indulgent. Indulgence could be good or could be bad. Indulgent could be like, I shouldn't have this all the time. But there's only 4 g of added sugar. The rest of the sugar comes with whole fruit in the center of the power pies themselves, and they're made with all natural ingredients. We're in the process of getting our GMO certificate, non-GMO certification. We should be getting that in the next few weeks. The challenge I found, and I, I'm new to the food business was I must have been insane going into the food business in the frozen category because one, it's a cold chain which is very expensive in itself to support, but when I went to a couple of coal manufacturers and told them what I wanted to make with some prototypes, they said you can't put whole fruit in the center of a baked good. They, they said it has to have some sort of jelly or jam to be extruded and I said, I'm not doing that. So I'm gonna make something that's good, good for Dave, Dave of the world. Had to design an entire machine and process to be able to do that and we've done that. We've created, we have a great machine now that can make, um, make volumes of power pies and the power pies, as I said, are gonna be non-GMO and they do, they do of course cater to the vegan, the vegan and the non-dairy, um, community, but we wanted to create something for everybody, something that would taste good for everybody. And it's not just a breakfast item, it's an anytime item. Think about Pop-Tarts. People have those any time of the day. They're just not particularly great for you, but they, they sure taste good sometimes. Um, That's hard.

Speaker 1 [05:35] Well done. Uh, please bring your mic. Yep, no, you can bring it over here. Yep, of course. All right, uh, power pies, uh, Bob talked about, uh, very little innovation in the breakfast food space, uh, in some time. Gavin, do you see power pies as filling that need for innovation? Well,

Speaker 3 [05:55] there's certainly a little bit of a need in the breakfast category for sure, in the frozen breakfast category. Um, this could definitely fill, uh, a gap that is there. Um, I think the decadent. Uh, taste and profile of this product has some legs, and I think, I think there's some more innovation that, uh, Bob and his team can explore a little further with this one. that's my input there. Mhm.

Speaker 1 [06:17] Heidi, uh, tastes so important. Bob used the word indulgent. He said he heard that word yesterday. Are these indulgent products? Would you eat these on a regular basis?

Speaker 4 [06:24] Well, um, I think you know, uh, the chocolate was kind of like a gooey cookie. Uh, what I expected when I put this in the microwave with a little crisper was that it was gonna come out as kind of a crisp pie, um, right? There was some discussion around reminiscing around, um, uh, what are those things called? um. Strudels, uh, toaster strudels, right, and I don't know that it that it delivered on that. Perhaps if I had had it, uh, out of the oven, right, it might have performed differently. It was kind of soggy. It was like a soggy cookie coming out soggy cookie or soggy bar coming out of the microwave, but the flavor was good, but just the, the, uh, consistency, I think it just could use a little work.

Speaker 1 [07:03] Eugene, for the Daves of the world that are looking for better foods, um, you know, are they looking for products like Bob's, like, like the power pies, um, is this filling that need for people who, uh, don't wanna eat healthy food but we just want great food that is healthy?

Speaker 5 [07:19] Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the concept of power pies is interesting, is like a sort of product description, I think. I was wondering like what exactly is that like mean like is it delivering on high protein, high fiber like I think that was kind of missing in the messaging I think is like as far as the product description goes, but

Speaker 2 [07:37] I just ran out of time.

Speaker 5 [07:39] I, I looked at it as more of like a, you know, better for you toaster strudel it's kind of how I thought of the product so.

Speaker 1 [07:46] Carol, um, you know, as the other judges talked about, uh, you know, there seems like there is a need for innovation in the breakfast food space in that frozen space, but, um, You know, we've seen to varying degrees of success in terms of what moves the needle. Um, what do you think about Bob in terms of moving the needle, Bob's in terms of moving the needle for that innovation for that space?

Speaker 6 [08:06] Well, I, I mean I certainly have been getting a lot of pitches for frozen breakfast right now and so, uh, they all say it's a, it's a category on fire right now. I think given that you're sweet, um, and not savory, which is where a lot of these. Products seem to be. I would just make sure that you can appeal to a conventional shopper, um, in terms of delivering on that price point, the convenience, you know, yes, you can use a toaster, but let's be honest, a lot are probably gonna microwave it, so make sure that it, it works in that manner as well, um, and I do wonder eventually if you could explore more savory flavors, so it's like kind of a breakfast hot pots, hot pockets sort of style.

Speaker 2 [08:48] Yeah, we, yeah, we are, we definitely are.

Speaker 1 [08:51] Um, any questions for Bob? I mean, I think, you know, it's, it's an interesting opportunity for him to hear feedback. Heidi, yeah, I

Speaker 4 [08:58] have a question for you. You know, we heard you talk about that shopper with a health need. You developed this product for specific health need, so, but what I didn't see is how are you gonna connect to those shoppers that need this product?

Speaker 2 [09:10] That that's a good question. Um, interesting enough that the people that have tried it, uh, have started to create a little bit of a community out there and talk about it, and I think it's going to be more of a social aspect, a social media aspect that will, will drive the sales, and obviously we're gonna be working with some influencers to talk about that. And

Speaker 3 [09:29] then Bob, what is, uh, what is your target price point?

Speaker 2 [09:32] Uh, target price point is 5.99 for 4 pies, and that is, um, uh, similar to what the price of a, a protein bar would be.

Speaker 1 [09:42] All right, good stuff. We're out of time. Well done, Bob.