Origin Almond tackles cold-pressed juice pain points: sugar & food waste

“At Origin Almond, our mission has always been to make cold-pressed better and more relevant,”​ Jake Deleon, the founder of Origin Almond, told FoodNavigator-USA at Nosh Live in New York City earlier this month.

He explained that a major challenge facing cold-pressed juices is that more people are conscious about sugars, calories and carbs “and it is no surprise that the biggest category affected is juices, which is notorious for having a lot of sugar. So our goal and our mission is to reinvent that and offer a cold-pressed option at a better rate of sugar, calories and carbs. We offer the fresh taste because it is cold-pressed, the nutrients and all the benefits, but as low as one gram of sugar for the bottle and all the great things that come with being cold pressed.”​

The young company achieves this by cold-pressing sprouted almonds, which it blends with superfoods such as turmeric, matcha, spirulina and ginger for a full flavored beverage that has only 1 to 4 grams of sugar, none of which is added.

“Our product is unique in itself. It is neither a creamy milk, it is neither a really sweet juice. It is something in between,”​ Deleon said.

To communicate the product’s benefits and unique positioning, he opted to call them shakes instead of milks or juices. He says consumers understand this because it tastes like the shakes they make at home when they add a splash of almond milk with other superfoods – only his has the added convenience of coming in a bottle, ready to drink.

The shakes also have a competitive edge on cold-pressed juices in that they can be faced in multiple categories in the store, he added.

A unique solution to food waste​

As for the growing awareness and concern about the food waste generated by pressing juices, Origin Almond has a unique solution for that as well.

“One of my biggest pain points with doing fresh cold-pressed almond milk was the amount of food waste we generated,”​ Deleon said of the almond meal that was left after processing.

“We used to throw it away, which is a pain the butt because I hate wasting food. But we [researched and developed] quiet a bit and where we ended up was launching a new line of skincare that uses almond meal as the main ingredient,”​ he explained.

The face scrub, Clean as Kale, is a clayless mask that blends almond meal with botanicals and “has been getting rave reviews,”​ he noted.

In addition to being sustainable, the scrub also is “a great profit generator to fund Origin Almond business. And so it is just a nice, beautiful solution to a simple food problem that is affecting most of the world,”​ he said.

Looking forward over the next two years, Origin Almond will continue to iterate its shakes based on consumer feedback, but it also is confident that product as is now will drive velocity and deserves more distribution.