Pitch Slam 12 - Semi-finals : Farmer Foodie Everything Cheeze

Speaker 1 [00:13] Up next for the semi-final round of Nosh Pitch Slam 12 is Alison Elliot, who is the CEO of Farmer Foodie Everything Cheeze. Why not? How are you? Great, just grab one of those mics and please keep an eye on your timer.

Allie [00:32] Hello everyone, my name is Allie, and I'm the founder and CEO of the Farmer Foodie. I'm a product and recipe developer and I created the Farmer Foodie in January 2020 as my plant forward food blog. I have over 160 sustainable recipes published on my website, the Farmerfoodie.com. I'm here to talk to you about my delicious Everything Cheeze product. It's one of our first product launches and it's primari. a cashew Parmesan alternative. It is inherently sustainable, shelf stable, and made with fair trade organic cashews. It's highly differentiated because it is a multi-use product, so you can use it like a Parmesan on pizza or pasta or risotto, or you can hydrate it with boiling water and blend it into a queso, ricotta, or mac and cheese sauce. In 30 seconds, Everything Cheeze is strategically positioned to fulfill the rapidly growing plant-based cheese market in the United States. Our consumer audience is extremely diverse. Actually, in the United States, more than 50% of the population have been eating more plant-based foods. So as you can imagine, Everything Cheeze is the perfect solution. We are selling right now direct to consumer through EverythingCheeze.com. We're selling online and at farmers' markets, and we've received so much positive feedback from our consumers and the fancy food show this week. We're selling one unit at $14 and it's a 7 ounce bag. We are also expanding to other e-commerce distribution, um, you know, channels like Amazon. We have um 4 additional product skews that we're gonna be introducing down the line buffalo, caua pepe, truffle, and taco. We've built a lot of momentum and we are hoping to receive a lot of, you know, exciting responses today.

Speaker 1 [02:37] Well done. Well done. Uh, plant-based dairy, uh, definitely seeing a lot of traction in that space, a lot of interest in that space. Um, Jason, I mean, is Everything Cheeze a product that you can see easily fitting in? Is there a need? Is there a white space for a product like this within that category?

Speaker 3 [02:58] Absolutely. I think it's a, it's a great category and I thought it was a great product. I mean, when, um, we had the fully made queso dip, there was a big wow factor, I think across the board. So it was fantastic. But the problem was then when I picked up the packaging, I almost had a hard time connecting the packaging with the product. because the packaging doesn't look ready for prime time and there wasn't really anything on the packaging that told me that that queso dip could be made from that product. So I think that there's a, a real opportunity here. I just think that there's still some work that needs to be done for this to be able to go after that opportunity.

Speaker 1 [03:32] Karen, do you think, do you feel the same way? Do you think that's, you know, the, the challenge in merchandizing this product will, will hold it back?

Speaker 4 [03:39] Well, I definitely agree. I mean, first of all, I think the product was just surprisingly delicious, um, when she mentioned that it's being sold in farmers' markets, that's exactly what it looks like right now, which is great for that stage, but you know you might consider another name and definitely um. Packaging that would be more stable, easier to use. I mean this just looks like idea went to the farmer's market and it's awesome.

Speaker 1 [04:10] Matt, uh, you and I actually chatted yesterday about, uh, multi-use, uh, for rind, and you know, most people just eat the product as a snack, but, um, you know, as outlined in the presentation, there is a multi-use aspect to what this is, um, but you need to be more specific, or, you know, does it give more options? Is it better to have more options with a product like this?

Speaker 5 [04:28] I think it needs to be a bit better defined what the use case is before you can kind of branch out versatile, you know, with versatility, but the starting point is this was really great. So good job. This tasted great, but oh man, would I screw this up. Like there's homework involved in this and people would make this with different ratios of oil and everything. The sample I tasted was dynamite, and it was like, you wouldn't know it wasn't a phenomenal nacho cheese, but if I were you, I would think about more of a ready to eat solution that's already made. To certain specs and doesn't leave anything to chance because um I wouldn't know how to make what I sampled.

Speaker 1 [05:10] Adrian, how was what you sampled? I mean, you mentioned earlier, uh, you're a vegetarian. I mean, is this something that, um, you've been looking for on the shelf? Is this something that you feel like you could use in your kitchen in your cooking?

Speaker 6 [05:20] Definitely. I loved the aspect that it was versatile and you could use it for a ton of different cheese related, um, dishes, but, uh, we all kind of were commenting it seems like it could be a little bit of everything but not. The best for one specific meal, um, so I like hearing that you have other flavors coming that are a little more specified, um, but yeah, overall I thought it was a great neutral tasting vegan cheese

Speaker 1 [05:49] outstanding.

Speaker 5 [05:51] 01 more thing as I was thinking about this, it looked like mustard a little bit, not a bad thing, um, it tasted like a very like rich, uh, delicious creamy cheese like a fondue. If it were in a single serve like ketchup or mustard packet, and again I don't know with the oil if this could be done shelf stable, I would reach for this and have it with a plate of tortilla chips, um, but in this bag, in this form factor, um, it felt like there were multiple steps to get to that satisfaction. All right,

Speaker 1 [06:22] once again, great feedback. Thank you.