Saffron Road Challenges Plant-Based Exuberance
By Lorrie Baumann
Saffron Road is launching frozen and shelf-stable meal entrees designed to appeal to consumers who read the backs of packages before the items go into their baskets. The new frozen products include Shawarma Chicken with Lentil Rice; Thai Red Curry Chicken with Jasmine Rice; and Thai Basil Noodles with Grass-fed Beef. The two shelf-stable vegetarian options are Chickpea Masala and Delhi Potatoes, known in India as Aloo Mattar.
In addition, Saffron Road has three new varieties of its Crunchy Organic Chickpeas: Toasted Coconut, Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper and Buffalo. They’ll all be reaching grocers’ shelves and freezer cases in May or June of this year.
The introductions come as more consumers are looking for plant-based meal options, driving growth of the category by 31 percent over the past two years, so that the retail market for plant-based foods is now worth almost $4.5 billion, according to research by the Good Food Institute and the Plant-Based Foods Association. Some of that growth reflects enthusiasm for the plant-based meat alternatives that have come onto the market over the past year or two, and according to Deloitte, a large number of companies are now investing heavily in acquiring and creating new products and brands that will appeal to the surging consumer demand for plant-based products.
Saffron Road Chief Executive Officer Adnan Durrani says that you can count him and Saffron Road out of the rush to create plant-based products designed to mimic meat and dairy. He points out that although the market for vegan and plant-based products is growing at a fast clip, those products still represent less than 1 percent of the frozen meals segment in the American market overall. Although the plant-based meals category grew by 6 percent last year – “a good number,” Durrani admits, that still represents only $387 million in sales, compared to the $40 billion frozen meat entree market. “So it still is a drop in the bucket, and even if it grows 500 percent, it’s still a drop in the bucket,” he said.
He suspects that the current market enthusiasm for the plant-based meat alternatives that he calls “fake” may run into a ditch once consumers start asking more questions about them. Durrani points out that the vegetable-based meat substitutes are actually made from protein components isolated from the vegetables in which they originated, and he suspects that human beings will find that their nutrition is better served by eating whole vegetables rather than protein isolates that have been processed with preservatives, additives and fillers into something that suggests meat-like texture and flavor.
“Consumers should not be told that fake foods are any better for you than real whole plant-based foods or the meat products they’re replacing,” he said. “Our feeling at Saffron Road is that clean foods, plant-based or not – and certainly plant-based – should not contain highly-processed ingredients with complex, alien names.”
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While those ingredients are certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as safe to consume, “safe” doesn’t mean “healthy,” Durrani insists. “The promotion of them being healthy or natural is not yet factually proven…. Everybody’s spidey-sense around transparency should be on alert.”
Instead, Saffron Road is reaching into the culinary traditions of vegetarian cuisine and into frozen entrees that include meat but are made with transparently sourced, clean ingredients and traditional recipes. “Our vegetarian products at Saffron Road have found a sweet spot for discerning consumers that are looking for a healthier vegetarian diet,” Durrani said. “Our brand promise at Saffron Road is always to go that extra mile in terms of culinary excellence and clean-label foods.”
The new Chickpea Masala is packed in a pouch and sold from the grocer’s shelf. The meal serves two and is prepared by heating it for 60 seconds. “We use very high quality, premium-quality, authentically sourced ingredients like non-GMO chickpeas,” Durrani said. “Everything we do is made in small batches, not highly processed.” The Chickpea Masala is so delicious that it has become the Saffron Road staff’s top choice for their own consumption, he said.
The Delhi Potatoes are a traditional Indian vegetarian dish known as Aloo Mattar in India. Like the Chickpea Masala, it’s ready in just 60 seconds and non-GMO verified. “It’s like a comfort food. It’s wonderful either for lunch or for dinner,” Durrani said. “These are clean-label plant-based protein foods that have been sourced from clean whole plant-based protein – and are made using the most traditional, authentic recipes.”
Saffron Road’s new frozen entrees include its recently launched Madras Curry with Meatballs in addition to the Thai Red Curry Chicken with Jasmine Rice; and Thai Basil Noodles with Grass-fed Beef. The company will also soon be introducing a Coconut Curry. “I think that’s is going to do extremely well,” Durrani said. Those new products will begin shipping to retailers in May.
With the new Shawarma Chicken with Lentil Rice, Saffron Road is venturing into Middle Eastern cuisine, a decision that Durrani said was based on consumer interest in that cuisine. “It’s a shawarma-style chicken with lentil rice. It’s really amazing,” he said. “That’s going to be our debut into the Middle Eastern sector in terms of frozen entrees, so we’re pretty excited about that.”
Soulfully Seasoned Beans on the Table in a Flash
By Lorrie Baumann
A Dozen Cousins offers ready-to-eat bean dishes seasoned with the Creole, Caribbean and Latin American flavors of the ethnically diverse Brooklyn neighborhood that brand Founder Ibraheem Basir grew up in. “Food was a joyful, cultural experience,” he says of that neighborhood. “I grew up in a Black and Brown melting pot. I can remember eating jerk chicken, empanadas, black-eyed peas. It was a really interesting mix of flavors that I wanted to bring to life with this brand.”
Coming from a background as a brand manager for a natural foods manufacturer, where he fell in love with the ethos of healthy eating and responsible business practices, Basir has founded his own line with a vision of eventually extending it with other dishes created at the intersection of healthy food, convenience and bold flavor. “Beans is just first. Dinnertime is such a joyous time for people, and you want to put something healthy on the table for your family or for your loved ones. You want, in some cases, to share cultural experiences with the people that you love. But, at the same time, usually people have, like, 20 minutes to prepare dinner each night,” he said. “There’s always this tension between wanting to prepare something that’s wholesome and high-quality, but to do it really quickly. We feel like, as a brand, that’s a spot where we can help out.”
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The A Dozen Cousins line, named after his daughter and her 11 cousins, currently includes three products: Cuban Black Beans, Mexican Cowboy Beans and Trini Chickpea Curry. “They’re ready-to-eat beans, fully cooked and seasoned, according to those traditions from Black and Latino recipes,” Basir said. They’re all cooked with avocado oil, real vegetables and spices. They’re packaged in pouches that tell the story of the ingredients and their flavors, and they’re designed to stand out on the shelf. Each pouch contains 10 ounces and will serve two.
Visit www.adozencousins.com to learn more.
Gillibrand Calls for USDA Study of Produce Industry Market Conditions
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, has called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate if fruit and vegetable farmers in New York and across the country are receiving fair prices for their produce. While the prices of fruits and vegetables have increased for both consumers at the grocery store and for wholesale buyers, the prices that farmers receive for these same products has not kept up with these increases – and even gone down in some cases.
“Our New York farmers are facing a produce-pricing crisis. Throughout the state, fresh fruit and vegetable growers are hurting because the prices they get for their produce have stayed flat, and in some cases have even gone down, while the middlemen who move the produce from farmers to grocery stores and grocery store shoppers have seen the prices for the same produce increase,” said Senator Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “Despite this, the USDA has not reviewed the fruit and vegetable industry in decades. We need to understand what is causing these unfair prices for our farmers, and I am calling on the USDA to complete a top-to-bottom review of the fruit and vegetable industry so that we can help New York’s farmers better price their produce and plan for their future.”
United Fresh Produce Association is taking issue with Gillibrand’s position. “The fresh produce industry operates on extremely tight margins, at every stage from grower to wholesaler to retailer. Our industry is the ultimate supply-and-demand economy, and our real goal must be to increase demand for fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Tom Stenzel, President and Chief Executive Officer. “That’s the key to raising prices paid to farmers, allowing reinvestment for growth. Transparency in any supply chain is a good thing, and we always welcome USDA’s analysis of our markets. It’s important for each sector in our supply chain not to lose sight of our goal to grow fresh produce consumption, while fighting with one another over whose share of a dwindling pie is bigger.”
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There are thousands of farms and orchards throughout New York State, and New York consistently ranks as one of the top agricultural states in the nation, Gillibrand noted. “However, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Agricultural Statistics Service shows that the prices paid to farmers for many of New York’s specialty crops – including apples, snap beans, cabbage, and broccoli – lag behind the terminal prices (the prices that the middle men who move these same crops from farms to grocery stores receive),” she said in a statement. “Furthermore, structural changes to the fruit and vegetable industry in recent decades, such as new farming technology, nutrition science, and consumer behavior, have left farmers facing uncertainty as they feel that the market is not transparent enough to know if the price they are offered for their produce is fair.”
The persistently low prices that farmers receive for their fruits and vegetables have led to the loss of small family farms, and in the last five years alone, New York lost 11,000 acres of vegetable production. The USDA hasn’t conducted a full review of the fresh fruit and vegetable market for decades, and Gillibrand’s push for a new study of this industry would help identify which factors contribute to unfair prices for farmers and increase transparency in the market. Gillibrand is also calling for the USDA to use new technology to improve farm sales reporting to ensure that data is updated in real time, increasing transparency for farmers and allowing them to see if the prices they receive are fair.
