B-Corps, Healthy Eating

My guest last week was Joanna Allen , the CEO of Graze and it got me thinking about a few things.

Firstly, Graze was one of the early innovators dropping boxes through consumers' letterboxes, full of healthy snacks. This approach inspired many and the idea of membership models has been the holy grail for VCs for a while. But today at Graze, D2C only makes up 20% of its business and its role has fundamentally shifted. The team use it as a way of collecting data, for media targeting, product testing and selection and as a recruitment vehicle for a cohort of fans that can spread the word on social media.

Now clearly with the rise in media costs and the cost of living crisis, brands have to be careful with overinvesting in D2C. And on the flip side with all the price wars at retail, brands need to avoid seeing the channel as a cash cow as this will restrict growth and the wider role the channel can play. The reality is that D2C isn’t a standalone channel or strategy – it has to be seen as an engine of growth that can impact the entire business - and this can be hard particularly in the early days for challenger brands.

The second thing was our discussion about B-Corps. There has been a lot of debate in the challenger brand community about B-Corp and whether the brand was being diluted by it being used by sub-brands from Danone, Nestle and Unilever. I wanted to understand more about the B-Corp brand and how it is understood by consumers. I found a really interesting study that showed that not enough people are actively seeking B-Corp brands yet, even amongst the 18-34-year-old audiences. ?It did make me think that with support from bigger brands who have larger marketing budgets, there is an opportunity to make B-Corp better known and that will benefit everyone involved.

Finally, as you would expect Joanna and I talked about the recent government procrastination around climate commitments and HFSS. As has been well covered by Henry Dimbleby in his brilliant book Ravenous , the food industry has a lot to answer for.? I do sense with the lack of long-term thinking in government, we really need the food industry and retailers to lead the charge. This is as much about reformulation as it is about encouraging consumers to make better choices. Joanna outlined how it is harder to make products win in consumer tests when you aren’t relying upon dirty tricks and ingredients. If ever there was a time to actively seek out those brands that are trying to do food right, particularly considering the challenges we face both from climate change and loss of nature/species, it is now.

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