Big Mountain Foods’ award-winning soy-free tofu gaining international attention
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If you’re a fan of tofu, you’ve likely already heard of Big Mountain Foods. Over the past couple of years, they’ve been gaining attention for their innovative product in the space—a tofu made from fava instead of soy. Developed as an alternative for consumers with soy allergies, the fava tofu meets its traditional counterpart’s taste, texture and nutritional qualities, making it a popular choice among grocery shoppers.
So popular, in fact, that it’s not only become Big Mountain Foods’ top sku among its 17 products, but also won two awards at Canada’s biggest Canadian retail awards. This past May, the company took home the Best in Produce and Best in Innovation awards at the Canadian Retail Grand Prix Awards.
“Within the next day, we already had retailers calling, wanting our tofu, so it was very well-received,” Big Mountain Foods COO Jasmine Byrne said. “We’ve been wanting to enter this award for at least 15 years, but we never did, just because it’s a very tough award to win … We just wanted to make sure that we really stood out, and we knew that the soy-free tofu innovation was definitely one of a kind.”
Byrne added that the company waited to enter the soy-free tofu in the awards until they were confident the product had not only reached its best formulation, but was also widely accepted. She said that when they first developed it, in part through a project under Protein Industries Canada’s first round of funding, they anticipated some push-back related to the product’s higher price point and its “tofu” label. To counteract this push-back, they not only determined the best way to name it—focused on its “soy-free” benefit—but also provided plenty of opportunity for customers to sample it with the objective to bring consumers back into the tofu category, creating incremental sales not taking away from traditional tofu sales.
The efforts have paid off. Big Mountain Foods’ soy-free tofu is currently in more than 3,000 grocery stores across Canada and the United States, and just launched trials in Whole Foods and Erewhon.
“We’ve been trying to get into Whole Foods USA for eight years, and now with the tofu they’re giving us a chance,” Byrne said. “So we have three months to perform in these 21 stores, and then it could go live as a full national listing at their 385 stores in October. So it’s a big opportunity.”
Byrne sees this expansion into high-opportunity grocery stores as just the beginning of Big Mountain Foods’ growth. As they continue to develop new products and fine-tune their existing lines, the company hopes to step into new markets such as Asia and Europe, while potentially opening small facilities in other locations that can help facilitate product development and shipping to international customers without sacrificing sustainability efforts.
To keep up with Big Mountain Foods’ work or to learn more about their products, visit the link below.