Interview with Caroline Cotto

Transcript

Sheldon Young
Welcome to No Footprints, a podcast brought to you by Alfa Laval. I’m Sheldon Young.

Jason Moreau
And I’m Jason Moreau.

Sheldon Young
We’re here to talk about impact and to share the efforts and people behind making sustainability real. Here we are again, Jason.

Jason Moreau
It’s very exciting.

Sheldon Young
It is. I know. It’s enthralling how exciting it is.

So what’s going on in the sustainability world for you today?

Jason Moreau
You know, I don’t know. I’m somewhat vexed. It’s hot here in Virginia at the moment of this recording, which is not unusual.

It feels like it’s maybe earlier this year and I always have this internal struggle with myself about like what I should be setting the thermostat at. And I, and I know I should probably have it higher. And I know, I think some states, I remember a news item from like a year or two ago where like the state, if you had a smart thermostat, could actually control it really.

And they, they raised the temperature on consumers during peak hours so that they wouldn’t have to do like rolling blackouts and things like that.

Sheldon Young
Yeah.

Jason Moreau
Yeah. I want to say California or Texas, but I, I, I don’t remember the state, but, um, wow. I’ve never been more glad to not have a smart appliance because I’m like, Oh, if somebody messed with the thermostat right now, I would be.

Sheldon Young
So I want my dumb air conditioning is what you’re saying.

Jason Moreau
Exactly. That I control. I tell it what to do.

And essentially, so I, I do raise it in the day, I put it down at night because, and here’s the rub, right? Like sustainability temperature should be as high as possible. And yet science tells us the best conditions for sleeping are cool.

Very cool. Right. And sleep is super important to health.

So right. Like, where’s the balance? So I tend to, I, so I raise it during the day and then I lower it at night and I sleep like a baby and then I wake up and I have this argument in my head of like, I should really like, should be more warm during the day, but I, uh, I’m very bad about that.

Sheldon Young
I won’t, I won’t talk too much about our own habits. I think we’re, we keep it fairly high. It’s in the seventies.

Jason Moreau
Yeah.

Sheldon Young
I think we’re in the, during the day.

Jason Moreau
Yes. Yes.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. 73 I think is the number. I think that’s where we live.

Jason Moreau
It’s where I usually land, like 72, 73, but I think they recommend like 74 to 76 or something like that.

Sheldon Young
I’m like, I don’t know.

Jason Moreau
I think I can’t, I can’t get there, man. I can’t get there.

Sheldon Young
I understand. I understand. It’s interesting.

Well, it also takes a lot more energy to bring it down at night then. I don’t know. There’s, I think there’s a balance there.

Anyways. I, I understand your dilemma. I really do.

It’s a struggle. It is. It is.

Well, my sustainability thing this, this week is around, uh, uh, I recently attended the Dairy Sustainability Alliance, which is fantastic. I want, I want to give a shout out to the innovation center for us dairy, uh, the person that drives a lot of it. There’s more, lots of people involved.

But Angela Hesinger is the one that kind of, you know, she’s the one that I get all the emails from to attend it, but it was a really great event, really, again, inspiring, energetic. It had farmers there. It had the people, the dairy producers, people like ourselves that are suppliers to the industry, industry associations, whole array of topics, um, everything from like manure management tools.

I know I’m exciting, um, to making like data work for sustainability. Like how do you, a lot of people are, are finding instead of using old Excel spreadsheets now that a lot more tools available to, and they’ve talked about those. And then we also talked about other various topics.

It had nice little round tables where you could get together with people that are had same interest in topics that you do. And, and, uh, we, we hit topics around, you know, processing efficiencies and all things like that, that, uh, made a really valuable time to connect to the industry and be around people that, uh, are really taking the effort and understanding to make an impact, uh, in, in, uh, in dairy, which is a, you know, it’s a big industry. It’s a, it’s an impactful industry because it has a lot of potential impact.

And so it was really nice to see so many people together, kind of all driving to, to make it better.

Jason Moreau
That sounds amazing. And I mean, I think that like breadth of topics and discussions is also really, really cool. Cause I mean, I mean, we talk about it all the time, so many, so much of sustainability just as like, it’s so much.

And it’s like, what area are you trying to like cover with your time and effort and make a difference in and to, to go to a conference like that and be exposed to like, oh, here’s how somebody else is thinking about manure management from a sustainability standpoint. And that’s moving the needle this way. It’s like, holy cow.

Right. And to be able to talk to that person and exchange ideas like that, that’s crazy. That’s so cool.

Yeah.

Sheldon Young
It was cool. And it’s a particularly, like I said, they had farmers there, like people that run these dairy farms who really, just to be very clear, at least every dairy farmer I met there really, really cares about the health and welfare of their animals. I just want to make that very clear, uh, you know, and it was so fascinating to hear about, you know, their, their struggle, right.

You know, they want to be more sustainable, but they also, you know, every dollar they have to spend towards that is impactful to them in, in financial point of view, you know, and you know, they don’t run on the thickest margins in that, in that world. So it’s an interesting dichotomy to talk around and to, to, to really see how they’re laying out those solutions. But that was my sustainability, uh, uh, story for the week and I, uh, I really, really enjoyed it.

I’m glad I get to be a part of that.

Jason Moreau
well, you win. Yours is way more positive.

Sheldon Young
I win. No, your struggle with air conditioning isn’t quite as interesting, but you know what is interesting Jason, our guest, our guest, our guest today, um, uh, just a, a fun one for you. I mean, she’s essentially doing consumer focus groups, right around, around these insights.

And so, uh, I thought it’d be really interesting to hear from you, uh, after we get through the interview here about, uh, what you thought of, of that journey and, and, uh, the insights that she’s discovered. So what do you say we, uh, go, uh, listen to Caroline Cotto and see what we got, exciting stuff.

Welcome to No Footprints. Today’s guest is a fearless food innovator who’s grown up in the business and who isn’t afraid to take the road, less travel. She has worked everywhere from the white house to being a Fulbright fellow in Taiwan, to regenerative farms in Italy. She’s a director of Nectar, a nonprofit initiative, accelerating the protein transition through taste co-founder of the upcycle ingredients company, Renewal Mill, and a Forbes food and drink 30 under 30 change maker.

It’s a lot transforming how we eat and think about food. Please welcome Caroline Cotto.

Caroline Cotto
Thanks so much. Excited to be here.

Sheldon Young
Thank you for joining us. So, um, first of all, you know, thanks for coming. We appreciate it.

Um, tell us just a little bit about you and kind of your journey and background. We talked about a lot in the intro, but tell us how you, how you got there.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah, I think, you know, I’ve food is sort of my first passion. My, my family owned an ice cream store growing up. I’ve always loved to cook.

Um, but I spent sort of the first decade of my career really trying to figure out what part of the food system I wanted to work on to make the most impact. So started my career more on the nutrition side of food, working on child obesity and child malnutrition, um, vended up moving into sort of food tech and helping incubate businesses along the food supply chain. And it was there that I really learned about the problem with byproducts, um, and how much food waste we are generating at manufacturing facilities.

And so ended up co-founding a company that was working at that, um, intersection and really trying to, to find better solutions for byproducts. And then after a few years there, um, turned my attention to another big problem, which is sort of how do we, um, reduce reliance on factory farming and, um, get folks to eat more plant-based diets or even consider that. And so currently my role at Nectar is around making plant-based alternatives taste great so that it’s an easy choice for American omnivore consumers.

Sheldon Young
Wow. So lots going on there. I think it sounds like you take on the easy challenges.

Yeah.

Caroline Cotto
I like the sticky problems, you know, right, right.

Sheldon Young
Um, so food, yeah, we, we work in the food and beverage space here, uh, Jason and I both do. And, uh, you know, it’s obvious that there’s so many challenges out there. I mean, so much food waste, as you mentioned.

Uh, so tell me a little bit about, a little more about the company you’re working with now, but how does it go about doing that, that, that thing? Cause it’s, it’s really hard to move people from one habit to another.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah, truly. And I think we’ve seen this reflected in the market. So going into 2024 plant-based meat sales were down almost 20%.

We’ve just seen the data going into 2025, they were down another 11%. So, um, our sort of thesis for starting Nectar was that there were a number of plant-based products that launched during the pandemic that were not ready for mainstream adoption. And so consumers tried those products.

They maybe had a negative taste experience, um, or spent more than they were comfortable for that product. And then, you know, are not revisiting the category because of that experience. And so we wanted to understand how does the plant-based category taste today in terms of plant-based meats and what are the really great products and how can we, um, you know, uplift those products and which products need a little bit more support and how can we provide them with a specific R&D roadmap to improve those products so that when you walk into the grocery store, every product you encounter on shelf is something you can be excited about from a taste perspective.

Jason Moreau
Where is the American palette? Like, you know, like baseline, like where, where do you see the majority of the gap, um, between the, the plant-based and maybe consumer expectation? Just kind of curious about that.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. So just to give a little bit more context, um, Nectar does very large scale blind taste tests with thousands of omnivore consumers. So we have them come in, they try probably six products.

One of those is animal-based and the rest are, five of them are plant-based, but they don’t know which one is which when they’re trying it. So we just ask them a series of questions about how much do you like this product? Um, you know, how do you rate it on its similarity to me?

How do you rate it on texture, flavor, all these different attributes. And then we sort of map that. And what we see is plant-based products are still very far behind their animal counterparts to American consumers.

The, uh, average plant-based product is generally disliked. So 35% of people when they try a plant-based product are what we call detractors. And only 30% are promoters versus for animal products.

Um, it’s usually 68% promoters. So sort of a big gap in general. However, we do see certain products sort of that are resonating with omnivores and those tend to be in categories like burgers or chicken nuggets, where it’s a little bit easier to replicate the texture and the flavor of the animal product versus something like bacon or whole cut steak, where it’s very hard to replicate the texture of those whole muscle cuts.

Sheldon Young
Um, is that kind of a big takeaway for the industry right now? It’s like, you know, should they be focusing there until they get the other stuff? Right.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah, I think what we’ve found is that those categories have had historically more investment and more R&D. And so the big takeaway is that R&D really matters. And we’re trying to push these companies to benchmark against animal products, to do external sensory testing, and to sort of have this continuous test and learn approach.

Um, because we sort of set a threshold for top performance in this year’s study, and we tested 122 plant-based products, and 20 of those met our top performance threshold, which meant that they were sort of resonating with mainstream consumers. Of those 20, five of them were burgers. And so you’re seeing that there are products that really are getting close, but we just have some more work to do to get sort of all of the categories of plant-based meat up to that level where omnivores will accept them.

Sheldon Young
So in one of your traditional kind of studies, it’s like, what could I, I mean, I kind of heard a little bit what I’d walk away with, right? But what are some major changes, for example, someone has undertaken based on a study you’ve done? And obviously no names or anything proprietary, but.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah, we’re working with companies of all sizes and sort of all stages of their R&D process. But one example is a plant-based baking company that we tested their product. They were sort of debating internally, should we make it saltier or smokier?

Like, what is the real need here? And they didn’t have clear direction. But after going through our test and seeing sort of the feedback from 2000 omnivore consumers, we were able to give them clear direction on, OK, yes, this product needs sort of a bolder profile.

It needs to be smokier, a little sweeter, a little saltier. And they implemented that change. And then we’re able to get into distribution nationwide in Whole Foods and have seen sort of increased turns on that product.

So just one example, we’re still fairly new in the space. We only launched a year ago. So it’s been hard to measure sort of the impact at scale.

But we also see this as a real ecosystem building tool. So a lot of this research is being cited in other academic publications. We’re currently working with some academics at Stanford University to build a AI tool that will actually take in this sensory data and help suggest the next experiment for food scientists to try to improve their product so that we are reducing that barrier for them to use this data as much as possible.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, the AI thing in particular, it’s like, talk about interesting ways to use that tool. It’s actually suggesting, you’re saying it’s suggesting the actual experiments to run.

Caroline Cotto
That’s the goal. I mean, we haven’t achieved that yet. So Nectar, we’re collecting the largest sensory database on alternative proteins.

This is sort of, we’re democratizing access to this information that hasn’t been previously available. There was no objective evidence base for how plant-based products taste. And so instead of just handing companies or people a ton of sensory data, we wanted to say, and so what?

And so the AI tool would be able to help us say, okay, here’s all the feedback on your product. We’ve taken that in, we’ve analyzed it, and now here are some specific experiments you could run to implement this sensory feedback. It’s a bit of a long road to do that because there’s a lot of processing that goes into these products that’s not entirely clear or public.

The flavors are kind of a black box. But that would be the ultimate goal is to provide some clarity on how to actually implement this sensory.

Sheldon Young
Really interesting stuff. I mean, Jason, if you had a question around it, but.

Jason Moreau
I don’t know. I’m just more curious about the data that you see. I’m curious if there’s any regional variances that you find based on New England or coastal areas.

From an omnivore standpoint, maybe there are more seafood than middle of the country, or like at this point, maybe everybody’s diet is roughly the same, but I’m just curious if there’s still regional variations or any, or where are you seeing variations from a demographic point of view, I guess, or geographic.

Sheldon Young
Oh, the demographic one’s interesting too.

Caroline Cotto
So I will say, you know, obviously we haven’t had a, we don’t have the resources to do this in every place we would love to. But right now we’ve conducted these studies in San Francisco and New York and one in Chicago. And actually we haven’t seen that much of a difference between sort of the different regions.

There’s slightly like more tolerance for higher prices and purchase intent with sort of the coastal populations. And that demographic tends to be slightly more educated than the general American population. Interestingly, the more educated the population, the lower their purchase intent was, which I think is something we weren’t expecting.

So yeah, we’re still to be seen. I think we’re hoping to do some future testing in Ohio to get sort of a more middle of the country view. We’ve also only tested plant-based meat to date.

So we don’t have a clear view yet on like seafood or some of those categories that might be a little bit more polarizing. But we are looking at doing some of those tests. And our next test for 2026 is going to be on 10 categories of alternative dairy.

So we’ll be looking at sort of plant-based cheese, plant-based yogurt, milk. We know kind of anecdotally that plant-based milk has more penetration in the market than plant-based meat. But we also know that plant-based cheese is pretty far behind.

So it’ll be interesting to see sort of what’s resonating, what’s not.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, that is really interesting. Now, are you going to be focused 100% plant-based stuff? Or are you looking also into some of the other alternative proteins?

Caroline Cotto
Yeah, I should say, yeah, that’s a good point. So for our most recent test, we were calling it plant-based, but we did include like fungi-based products.

Sheldon Young
So like mycoprotein, mycelium.

Caroline Cotto
Exactly. For the dairy study, it’s a good question. And I think we’re looking for feedback, but we’re considering including precision fermentation products.

So products that use sort of real dairy cells, but no animals are harmed in the process to see if those products are actually resonating more than just the straight plant-based alternatives.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, it would be interesting data for sure. I think it’s, again, everyone tries to guess, you know, where’s the market going, right? If you have that answer, then you’re the genie with the crystal ball.

But I mean, insights like this could certainly fuel the trends or at least provide insight on those trends. You know, precision fermentation is obviously an important one of the aspects of the alternative protein movement, right? And, you know, and just, you know, having the, at least differentiating, you know, we’re testing all of these, are there trends that are unique to those versus some of the other ones would be interesting data for sure.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. And Jason, just to talk a little bit more about regionality, all of our testing to date has been conducted in the US, but we did test a significant number of European products with American consumers and actually found no difference in how those products performed with the American consumers. So that kind of signaled to us that European products were ready for being brought to the US and sort of commercialized here.

We’re interested to see if the, you know, vice versa is true. Like do European consumers actually enjoy American products? So that’s on our roadmap.

And then in November, we’re going to be releasing a study that we’re currently conducting in Singapore. And this is on sort of pre-commercial, what we’re calling balanced protein products or products that combine plant-based ingredients and meat in the same product. And this is the first time we’re doing a study that’s sort of trying to intervene earlier in the R&D process before products are brought to shelf to see if there’s any difference there and how valuable the data is to brands.

Sheldon Young
Interesting. So fascinating stuff. I mean, I could sit here and talk about this all day, but I want to, I think that’s, you’ve given a pretty good assessment of how do people work with you if they’re interested, you know, at what stage should they come to you?

I guess maybe that’s the question I want to ask.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. So for our U.S. studies, we have been focusing on fully commercialized products. So if you have a product in either food service or retail, it would be up for consideration for participating in one of our tests.

And we want to make this sensory data available to brands that may not have had access because this type of testing is quite expensive, especially when you’re testing as many products as we do with as many consumers as we serve it to. So we are open to companies of all sizes and really just trying to sort of get a diversity of products, processing techniques, and ingredients to surface. Like, are there any conclusions we can draw about what ingredients or processing techniques lead to the best taste outcomes?

Sheldon Young
Excellent. And so if I’m a person that’s working on product or trying to understand, hey, I got choices to make here, how would they access some of the information and data?

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. So if you go to Nectar.org, we are extremely transparent. We have created a digital data dashboard that has sort of the category level data of all of the products we’ve tested.

So you can look at sort of the R&D roadmaps for each category, where they’re falling behind, what they could do to improve. And then if you’re a plant-based product producer and you’re interested in having your product tested, you can also reach out to us. And we’re kind of constantly recruiting brands for our next studies.

Sheldon Young
Do you have kind of a current focus for things that you’re looking at next?

Caroline Cotto
If you’re currently working in old dairy, that’s our sort of top of mind category. But we will be testing plant-based meat again in the near future.

Sheldon Young
Excellent. Um, let’s see. I had a couple other things.

I know, are you involved as a conference coming up? Is that right? Am I not mistaken in that?

Caroline Cotto
Yes. The Institute for Food Technologists conference.

Sheldon Young
I had IFT written down. I’m like, what is IFT? I don’t know what that was.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. Our people are food science people, and that’s their sort of annual gathering in Chicago. So we’ll be there talking about sort of the key findings from our Taste of the Industry 2025 report, which is this study we’ve been talking about of 122 plant-based meats across 14 categories and looking to find collaborators who want to ask questions of our novel dataset that we might not be asking already.

Sheldon Young
Excellent. Will you guys have like a table or booth where you’re presenting? What’s the interaction model going to be for you?

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. I’ll be giving a like 30-minute presentation on this research, and then we’ll be walking to the floor. So I’m looking to kind of meet people at their booths and in the hallways.

Good water cooler conversations.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, good.

Well, this is a sustainability podcast. So I want to obviously plant-based and all that stuff makes a lot of sense from a sustainability point of view. We’ve talked about a bunch of things.

There’s a couple takeaways that you want to give to people, how to make sustainability real based on what we’ve talked about. What would you say is kind of at the top of that list, kind of the big walkaways?

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. So we’re big fans of Project Drawdown, which does a lot of research on sort of what can we do as individuals to reduce our impact on the climate and reduce climate warming. And the top two things on that list are reducing food waste and eating more plant-based diets.

So I think those are two things that we as individuals can do in our homes. But also we’re really trying to implement more plant-based diets at scale. And so we’re working with sort of food service operators and retailers to help them make more sensory informed decisions and offer more plant-based options to their constituents and stakeholders.

So eating plant-based once a week really can make a big difference if we’re able to get cafeterias to serve four plant-based options and one meat option, that also can have a huge climate impact. And just all of us working together is going to be really important to sort of slow the climate warming process.

Sheldon Young
Excellent. Excellent. And I have one question.

You said your family owned an ice cream store. I just have to ask it. What is the best selling flavor, but also from an ice cream expert like yourself, obviously, the best flavor?

Caroline Cotto
That’s a good question. I think the ice cream store is on Cape Cod. So New England style ice cream.

Ooh, the best. Yeah. Black raspberry is a personal favorite of mine.

But I hate to say it. Americans, a little boring. Vanilla is the best selling flavor.

Sheldon Young
Vanilla, I knew it. Would have been my guess. Would have been my guess.

Oh, boy.

Caroline Cotto
And we’re going to be testing vanilla ice cream as part of our alternative dairy test. So I’ll be interested to see sort of which plant-based vanilla ice cream is coming out on top.

Sheldon Young
Absolutely.

Jason Moreau
You volunteer for that.

Sheldon Young
You volunteer as tribute? Both Jason and I, our eyes light up immediately. Absolutely good stuff.

Yeah.

Caroline Cotto
If you head over to nectar.org, you can find a sign up on our website. We’re always looking for more taste testers. As I said, right now, most of our testing happens in San Francisco and New York.

But we’re looking to expand that and hopefully come to more cities near you.

Sheldon Young
And someone wants to get a hold of you. Do you have a best way to do that?

Caroline Cotto
Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn at Caroline Cotto or at my email at caroline at nectar.org. And we would love to hear from you.

If there is ways that we can improve our research to help your efforts, please reach out. If you have a category you’re dying to know how it tastes to the general public, we’d also really welcome that feedback.

Sheldon Young
Excellent. Well, Caroline, thank you so much. This has been fantastic.

I learned a lot. And I want you, Jason.

Jason Moreau
Yeah. Fascinating work. Really exciting, too, because I feel like this is something that’s sorely needed.

Yeah.

Caroline Cotto
Yeah, we think so. And hopefully, we’re still pretty nascent into the alternative protein space. It’s the Impossible Burger launched just 10 years ago.

So a lot of work has happened in that time. And we’re excited to see where the next 10 years take us.

Sheldon Young
Well, Caroline, thank you again so much. And appreciate you joining us on the podcast.

Caroline Cotto
Thanks so much for having me.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, welcome back. Here we are. What a great guest.

Jason Moreau
Amazing.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, I truly, truly, truly enjoyed that. Yeah, I think, you know, just that whole aspect to me is fascinating as to, you know, we have all these products out in the market now. These, the attempt to kind of to bring that all into us with these new, more sustainable products and doing that research to say, okay, we recognize we have a problem because sales are going down.

Why? And just asking that question in a different way. What did you find most interesting about that whole conversation?

Jason Moreau
Well, yeah. So first, I think it was fortunate for Caroline that we met on a podcast because had we run into each other at like a random barbecue or cocktail party, I probably would have talked to her, right? Like, okay, but what about this?

What about that? Like, yeah, I think it’s just hours later. Jason’s still asking about what do people think about this?

Yeah. No, I, I really, I just appreciate. Um, well, I mean, you, you kind of, uh, one, I mean, it’s, it’s impressive how much she sort of accomplished in a very short period of time.

I mean, you kind of read off the accolades at the beginning, but more than that, I’m just really impressed how she kind of continued to keep following her curiosity, right? Like, so she started with this, like, as she mentioned, like kind of a general interest in food because of her family’s like ice cream shop. And, but then like, okay, it started like the trail started at nutrition for her, but then it’s like, oh, nutrition led her to like producing better food.

So then that kind of, the trail led to like food technology. And then it was like, oh, okay. If you combine nutrition and food technology, you kind of see how she got to plant-based and then it’s like, well, how do I, how do we impact that in a positive way?

And so I just, I, uh, just as a, like a, almost as kind of like a personal, like journey type of thing. I just, I really admire people who just sort of like keep pulling that thread, keep going. And they’re, they’re not quite sure where it’s going to go.

And they just sort of have that like, uh, confidence and awareness to keep going. And, um, no. And I mean, I think she’s like most journeys that are kind of like windy that way.

I think she’s landed in a really unique, but super interesting, super important space, which is how do you make, uh, either full-on plant-based or, uh, proteins.

Sheldon Young
Right.

Jason Moreau
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Where you’re, you’re mixing traditional protein with, you know, with a plant-based or mycelium. How, how do you make those, um, taste as good as what every American omnivore is used to. Um, and, and that is the threshold.

And so I just, yeah, really, really admire the work quite honestly. And then, uh, I mean, obviously as sort of a marketing person, love like diving into the data. It’s so, so interesting.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. I think, um, you know, she’s asking the tough questions. Yeah.

You know, there’s, there’s a lot of factors that go into, I mean, obviously taste and experience are top. Uh, I think, I think the industry recognizes that I think they have. Um, I think to her point, it’s like, well, you may recognize it, but it’s not delivering.

Right. From that perspective, the data is not showing it. Right.

And if, if there was a preference to tell people their baby’s ugly, which is always, right. But like, that is true.

Jason Moreau
If you’re, if you’re trying to sort of like make the most beautiful, attractive product for the American consumer, this is what you need to do. Um, and, and it, it sounds like companies are listening, which is, which is great. Right.

And it sounds like more companies are maybe engaging earlier in the R and D process. Right. So like before they’re already in, you know, small market tests or things like that, where it’s like, oh, we’re, we’re a bit down the river here.

Right. Like now, now it’s a bigger decision to have to rewind and retool and kind of go, oh, we don’t, we don’t have the right formula yet.

Sheldon Young
You know? Yeah. And I think this is a, what we’re seeing here, I think is a symptom of what happens at almost any trend.

Jason Moreau
Yeah.

Sheldon Young
Right. Where, okay, this is the next big thing. Everyone tries to jump on board quickly and they try to, you know, get a product out there that may not be game time ready, frankly.

Right. But they got to get something out there. That at least that’s a hypothesis.

That’s a hypothesis. And, um, and again, I’m, this is a Sheldon hypothesis, but I think it plays out pretty well when you think about it. Right.

It’s like, cause you did see, you did see a large spike during, during, particularly during the pandemic era.

Jason Moreau
Yeah.

Sheldon Young
Shot right through the roof. Part of it was, again, it was, um, there were some reasons behind it. Um, you know, families were eating together more.

They wanted to eat healthier. Also, there were some supply chain issues with, with quote, traditional proteins. So I think that drove, uh, I guess it opened the door for a trial.

Um, and to her point, uh, and she, she, she talked about this, you know, it, people tried and they’re like, oh, they aren’t quite as good as my other things. Right. So they abandoned the category.

I think it’s a risk. We see it all the time. You, you’ll go, here’s another silly one.

It’s happening right now. It’s, um, uh, it was a tick tock thing that started like Dubai chocolate bars. Have you seen them?

It’s like a, it’s, it’s very simple. It’s a chocolate bar, but inside there’s like this pistachio cream with like, uh, ground up, um, uh, almost like a baklava kind of texture kind of stuff.

Jason Moreau
And it was okay.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. But anyways, they went, it went nuts. Right.

And like, you know, tick tock went nuts and all of a sudden you see people putting things, these things out all over the place. Even right here in Richmond, I’ve seen it. Like I’ve seen people making them and, and putting them out there in farmer’s markets.

And, uh, trader Joe’s has one now. And so did Wegman’s and, you know, and it’s like, some of them, I think put them out there. The quality isn’t fantastic.

So again, I, my suspicion is we’re going to see a category abandonment and the flash in the pan. Now, again, that’s a very big generalization on a very one singular product. But I think the, the story may carry through, um, to something that happened similar in that category, in the alternate protein category, where you had a lot of products, at least her data is showing it didn’t quite hold up.

And so people will leave in the category. So this is fantastic. Now, I think they’re doing some of the, uh, creating that environment where it will help more of these products be successful.

Cause again, you run the risk of the whole category suffering. Uh, I mean, I’ve seen, again, I’ll use another, you tell him my mind is right now. Cupcakes, you know, all of a sudden, I like where your mind’s at, man.

There’s, I know that all of a sudden there’s cupcake stores everywhere after like, I think, uh, Magnolia cupcakes or no Magnolia was Magnolia bakery. And Georgetown cupcakes came out again, the category went nuts. And then you had various levels that all of a sudden they didn’t learn to diversify, which, you know, you see that sometimes now it’s like, you know, she mentioned it.

The categories that were successful were like basically ground, you know, like hamburger substitutes and a couple other chicken nuggets and burgers were where the more on par products were, but it’s fall short in some of the other ones. So I think, you know, that could be. Um, if you, if you’re not careful and don’t understand the market and put product out there that isn’t meeting the quality bar criteria of your, of your target audience, you run the risk of seeing flat sales and seeing declining sales because of it.

Jason Moreau
Yeah.

Sheldon Young
I mean, I want your marketing take on that’s the Sheldon, uh, sideline quarterback. Yeah.

Jason Moreau
The take is that this is why research is so important and is, but it’s also important to sort of continually check in because the market isn’t static. Um, there’s all of these variables that we don’t control. So it’s really interesting to sort of compare where everybody was at during COVID and then now, and you see all of these, um, trends, you know, or things that ticked up during COVID because it was such a, a unique set of circumstances.

We were all reacting to it in, in sort of this way. And it sort of took us out of our normal every day and we had to evaluate things in a different way, but what’s fascinating to look at a lot of these graphs, uh, you know, whether it was Peloton, whether it was meal delivery services, whether it was plant-based foods is there’s been a regression to the mean where if you look at the trend line, where it was before COVID and now where it is after COVID.

It’s pretty much straight. You see the spike that happened during the pandemic, but like it kind of, it regressed to where it was going to be. Normally it snapped back.

And so I think if you were, you know, plant-based company during COVID great, you rode the wave and that’s totally great as a business. Like you want to do that, but you need to be doing data and research and kind of anticipate this as a wave like this, like, don’t, don’t delude yourself that now all of a sudden. Everybody had like, this is the quote unquote, the new normal, right?

Like nine times out of 10, it’s not a new normal. It regresses a bit. And so be ready for that snapback, but also like an honest assessment of, okay, this is an extraordinary set of circumstances that are giving us this, um, tailwind now in an average market with an average American consumer, what do they really think about our product?

Right. Like I just, and I think it’s really hard for some, I think the challenge is, is that. What it takes to start up a company and be an entrepreneur.

There’s a lot of self-confidence and you, you need to be a salesperson and an advocate, sometimes like pushing a rock up a hill, especially in a category like plant-based or alternative where it’s new. And the danger is that you assume that how you look at it is how everybody else does. And you forget that everybody else is not where you are in terms of accepting.

Well, it’s, it’s not a hamburger, but it’s, it’s mostly there. No, not good enough.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. Right. Like it’s a really good point.

Yeah. And that’s why I heard data who are sort of her research and information is so important, right? Yeah.

It’s, it’s, it’s really, it’s lifting again, uh, it’s lifting the hood a little bit so you can look under it’s okay. Here’s the truth. Here’s what consumers are truly saying compared to baseline product, right?

Not just, Oh, this tastes pretty good. Um, and again, there’s other drivers around why someone would go to a plant-based, uh, or I say plant-based to an alternative protein product. But again, at the end of the day, uh, what I think she’s proving out with her research is that taste and experience really matter.

And I’m assuming price does as well, right? Those two things always drive the market. Um, so they have to kind of not forget about that.

And I think the ones that are really putting the, their, their, uh, uh, the thought into this are gonna, are gonna do that. Um, I think we also had a lot of money that followed that category for a short period of time and starting to see, um, and spoiler alert, we have a conversation coming up with a future guest, uh, around. I’m gonna quote it, um, more informed money entering the market now, and that’s kind of what’s driving the investment nowadays.

And that’s going to, I think also make it even more important to have research like Caroline. So, uh, yeah, so really interesting topic. I mean, uh, shifting a little bit, I wanted to ask you about another thing that she talked about.

Again, we didn’t spend a lot of time on this, but I thought it was really interesting around the AI that she was, uh, working on using with the goal of it recommending the experiments that they do. That to me was pretty fascinating, right? It’s like, not only is it, uh, uh, you know, it’s, it’s actually going to talk about the experiments.

It’s just really quick. I want to wrap up here so we can, uh, close the episode. But do you have anything like in the marketing space that recommends like campaigns to run and stuff like that?

Jason Moreau
Yes. Yeah. There are, there are companies in the marketing space who are developing, um, full-fledged synthetic called in personas, right?

So instead of having to do focus groups or research studies with real people, um, you can feed and train LLM models with the data that you have. And, um, the results are actually really pretty, I guess, intriguing, scary, pick your adjective, but, um, like they’ve done, you know, these companies are still obviously pretty new, but with the. The, um, clients that they have, they’ve tested, right?

Like what was the accuracy of the model responses of those synthetic people answering questions to what we got from our real results. And it’s, it’s North of 90%. Wow.

So crazy, obviously good enough to, to like start making decisions on when you. Look at the speed at which you can now question a thousand synthetic people and get back data. That’s 90% is good.

And you start making business decisions off of that. Yeah. It’s a brave new world.

Sheldon Young
Really cool. Really cool. All right.

And then one last very important question. Um, what is in fact the best ice cream flavor in Jason?

Jason Moreau
Oh, uh, mocha chip. Mocha chip.

Sheldon Young
Turtle Sunday is my answer. And I like the turtle.

Jason Moreau
Turtle Sunday. What is in that?

Sheldon Young
Well, it’s just a basic thing. Well, I’ve seen different versions of it. Vanilla base, caramel pecans, uh, maybe some chocolate in there too.

Jason Moreau
Dan, we’re going all out. All right.

Sheldon Young
I love it. That’s my favorite. All right.

So getting, getting back to it. How do you connect with Caroline again? Uh, nectar.org, N E C T A R.org.

Um, they have data there. They have a signups. If you’re in San Francisco, New York, you’d send her to be a taster.

Uh, LinkedIn, Caroline Cotto. Uh, Caroline at nectar.org is her email. Uh, and then, um, they’re going to the IFT Institute of Food Technologists Conference in Chicago.

So if you’re, if you’re there, look them up, find them. Uh, I think they’re walking around the show and, uh, sure. They’d love to talk to you about this category and, and what they’re doing.

Yeah. So that’s it. Jason, my pleasure as always spending time with you.

Jason Moreau
Absolutely.

Sheldon Young
Talk to you soon.

Jason Moreau
Bye-bye.

Sheldon Young
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