MUSH expanded beyond overnight oats into refrigerated protein bars, leveraging its manufacturing plant to speed up the research and development (R&D) process, brand Co-founder Ashley Thompson told FoodNavigator-USA.
MUSH launched its protein bar – available in peanut butter chocolate chip, double chocolate chip and maple cinnamon flavors – at Whole Foods with 90-day exclusivity.
MUSH’s bars contain 15 grams of protein per bar and are formulated with the same ingredients as the brand’s other products, including gluten-free rolled oats and dates.
The idea for the protein bars came after meeting with Whole Foods earlier in the year, Thompson explained. With its own dedicated manufacturing plant, MUSH took the idea from concept to finished product in about eight months, an “incredibly speedy” R&D cycle by industry standards, Thompson noted.
“Whole Foods had come to us and said, ‘We love your core product line. Can you make it into a bar?’ And the one twist we had was we added protein to it because often in the bar category, the fastest growing segment is higher protein items,” Thompson elaborated.
‘We do not want to price people out of eating healthy’
MUSH’s dedicated plant not only speeds up the R&D cycle but helps the brand accomplish its mission of providing accessible healthy foods for everyday consumers, Thompson explained.
“My vision has always been to make healthy food accessible. And one of the points of accessibility — because it is pronged — is obviously distribution. How do we make our products more accessible? The key component to accessibility is price. We do not want to price people out of eating healthy,” Thompson elaborated.
While many CPG brands were raising prices in the last several years, MUSH went the other way, reducing prices and capitalizing on its manufacturing capacity for cost-savings, Thompson explained.
“We have actually cut our retail price by 50% since we started. We were $3.99 on shelf at Whole Foods in this crazy container with a spoon underneath the lid. We are now almost $1.99 at Whole Foods,” Thompson said.
She added, “Our own facility enabled that. Had we co-manufactured our product, we would never be able to hit the retail price points that we do today.”
MUSH sets sight on center of the store
Moving forward, MUSH is focusing on innovating new products, exploring how oats can be used in other formats like cookies, cereals and puddings with a special focus on center-of-the-store products, she said.
“The center store is filled with products that have a long list of ingredients that enable them to last for a year and a half. It is not the freshest and it is not the best source of energy for us as humans,” Thompson said. “What we are trying to do is take those old center-store items that we have come to love and bring them to the refrigerated aisle, and that enables us to make them in ways that without additives, without preservatives.”
