Focus on health and wellness is ‘not going anywhere,’ New Fare Partners founder says
Health and wellness is top of mind for consumers as they enter 2023, and specialist venture fund New Fare Partners aims to find the next big disrupter in the food and beverage industry.
The fund launched in early 2022 focusing on "driving the next generation of food." Elly Truesdell, New Fare Partners founder and managing partner, told Yahoo Finance when the fund looks at a brand, it wants "to see true long term value proposition" that fulfills the need's of the modern-day consumer, "who's expecting or demanding a lot more from their food."
"The macro shift towards health and wellness is not going anywhere," she said.
Since its launch, the company has invested in the protein snack company Mid-Day Squares, veggie burger company Actual Veggies, vegetable company Ark Foods, taqueria Tacombi, and Japanese barbecue sauce Bachan's, just to name a few. In November, New Fare announced $20 million raised for inaugural Fund I.
Mid-Day Squares defines its products as a "functional protein bar." This New Fare investment taps into Truesdell's 10-year tenure at Whole Foods as the global director of local brands and product innovation where she brought in the RX Bar, which was acquired by Kellogg's in 2017.
"Mid-Day squares was sort of that same 'Aha!' moment — I tasted the product, I saw the brand, I saw that what they were doing and thought this is going to be the next big thing in protein bars."
She never intended to bring in another protein bar, yet the dual texture of the bar, "sort of gets your chocolate bar fix, gets your protein bar fix."
And while the future of the plant-based product trend is worrisome, with shares of Beyond Meat down 81.1% in 2022, Truesdell is optimistic about the sector overall.
"We get most excited about plant based alternatives that are actually focusing on nutrition, they're focusing on health, they're focusing on attributes that the consumer actually went to them in the first place for."
Consumers aren't trading down from premium brands
With experts fearful of a consumer slowdown in the new year, Truesdell says a brand really needs to stand out on the shelf.
"What we're seeing is a brand really needs to be offering some sort of indispensable attribute to their consumer, otherwise, they are going to be in a tough position during a recession."
And she's confident, New Fare's investments so far have done just that.
"When I read about people trading to private label or store-brand products, that means they're trading from Kraft Heinz to store-brand. It doesn't mean they're trading from Mid-Day Squares or a lot of these premium consumer brands that have really created a differentiated experience," she adds.
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Brooke DiPalma is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com.
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