Why Is Gen Z Obsessed With BFY Frozen Foods? We've Come Undone.

0:10Hello friends and thanks for tuning in to taste radio the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage. I'm Ray Lateef, the editor and producer of Taste Radio, and with my co-host for this episode, John Craven, Jackie Brugliera, and Mike Schneider. I was reading an article the other day about why people don't like to hear their own voices. I assume there are some people out there that love the sound of their own voice. Like you. No, I don't like listening to interviews I've done. I mean, I have to because I have to consider content edits and whatnot, but I don't typically, do you guys listen to yourselves?

0:48You like hearing your own voice? You have a great voice. I hate it. And Jackie hates it. Okay. I hate it. Like it makes me cringe, honestly. But it's your brand and it's you and everyone loves you. So. But I don't know. You like, you're also very critical of your own self. So you like notice a lot of things that maybe someone else doesn't. Well, the fact that you two don't like your own voices doesn't seem to shut you up at all. Yeah. Jeez. He's powering through. All right. All right. Wasting miles of Tape here. All right. All right. Tape. Well, maybe we can move on to a subject that is much more interesting for Mike and John.

1:21And maybe the listener. How about them? And the listener, of course. Yes. That is the topic of the Nosh Notables 2025. Nosh Notables is Nosh's list of some of the most influential and interesting people in our business, the business of food, that is. And so our Nosh Notables 2025 list was announced today. That is Tuesday, August 5th. And I'm seeing some pretty amazing people on this list as expected. We have grouped together the platformers, the crusaders, the trendspotters, the sisters, the trendsetters, the archaeologists, the cleanup crew, and the can-do kids. It's a pretty interesting lineup of folks.

2:07If you want to find it, if your name is on the list, you should head to nosh.com. I'm on my way. Somehow, for the fifth year running. Why are you laughing, Jackie? For the fifth year running, Mike Schneider was left on the list. I knew it. He was an honorable mention. Yes. But not this year. He was an honorable mention in like 2021. So do you still have the plaque? I do. I do. I kept it. Yeah. Check out the full list. Head to nosh.com. And I encourage folks to check us out. I know that sounds weird. It is weird, but we're going to be in Chicago next week for Taste Radio Chicago Meetup. It's on August 14th.

2:46That's a Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Host Cocktails event space in the Pilsen neighborhood. Very excited. We have a ton of people already registered for the event, including founders, retailers, investors, lots of investors, actually, and the consultants that can help you scale your business. I am very, very excited. It does look like it's a great opportunity to come and meet an investor in Chicago. I'm going to be sitting down with Molly Santuli, who is a senior associate with Springdale Ventures, which is an early stage venture capital firm or a venture capital firm that invests in early stage concepts, which is pretty awesome.

3:23Marcel, I'm going to be sitting down with Jordan Tepper, who's the founder and CEO of Host Cocktails. And of course, Rashid Ali, co-founder and CEO of Chomps. those folks and dozens, literally dozens of other folks are going to be attending the event. Thank you so much to our event partners, Host Cocktails, Source Technology, InvestBev, and Ingredion. Chicago is such a great town. I'm looking forward to meeting with founders and just finding out what they're up to. Haven't been to Chicago in a while. So many new products to try and founders to talk to and find out what their innovations are. Yeah, absolutely.

3:58Mike, you mentioned meeting founders you and jonna were at the unfi show yeah at mohegan sun last week what do you guys see there well we saw a founder from chicago taylor blue who makes little latkes which is a really cool new idea so you know everybody likes latkes potato pancakes the best part when you eat one is you get like a little crispy bit and these are shelf stable latke crisps yeah we She featured little latkes in a past episode of Elevator Talk. She mentioned. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's a really interesting concept where you have basically a salty snack version of latkes. Yeah, and all the nostalgia that goes with them just hits you when you have one little crunch of those chips.

4:44It's a really good idea. You used to munch in some latkes back in the day? I mean, I like latkes. You like latkes. Who doesn't? Come on. John, you see anything interesting when you were at the show? Well, I brought some samples. Can I take them out now? Oh, we usually wait till the end, but please go ahead. They're talking to you on a five show, aren't they? Oh, these are amazing. Yes. I got some yaw. Yaw. Yes. Y-A-W exclamation point. Yeah, so they're baked baguette bites. This one has no cheese if you'd like to sample. I'll take a look. They also had a really unique, they have a bunch of other flavors.

5:15The crab. The crab flavor. The crab's really good. Also a barbecue. This one's a cheese flavor, and Ray has a tomato herb. The founder's super enthusiastic. He's like, you got to try my baguettes. And, of course, we're down to try. Like, our eyes just popped out of our head like Roger Rabbit style because they're so tasty. They're, like, exploding with amazing flavor. So I'm curious. And crunch. A baked baguette bite. Is that something that makes sense to you? Yeah, I mean, we maybe more commonly call that a crostini, perhaps? Yeah. That would kind of fit the pill. What's the use case for this?

5:51Is it just snacks? Yeah, you put it in your mouth, chew. Look at it, Ray. It's like a little... Do you dip them or are they just flavorful? It looks like a tiny piece of bread. Yeah, you could definitely break these up and put them on your salad or you can snack on them. They add a lot of flavor to whatever you're eating. Yeah, and I think it's kind of like compared to common extruded snacks of the, you know, maybe like chickpea variety or whatever, like these are a lot more crunch. I don't know if it literally is just like bread that they sliced up and turn into these, but I mean, it's pretty true to like a piece of toast almost.

6:26I'm going to nitpick here. Yeah. So on the front of pack, it says non-GMO. It's a little box there. It says non-GMO. Yeah. If I look at the ingredients here, I see the word, the words, artificial flavors. Artificial flavors. Can you say non-GMO and have artificial flavors? Can't say non-GMO. Or sorry, you can't say artificial and organic. But I think you can technically... Oh, interesting. Okay. That's something I learned today. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Either way, these things are very tasty. They're super tasty. Okay. And you got something else by yourself. Yeah, we also got some happy candy. Yeah.

7:07Those are also really good. I always love a random umlaut. So these look like they are from Sweden or from Denmark, perhaps? here you can you can attack okay the product of Germany it says what's the flavor you have there big apple and I got literally what it's called Italian summer nice but they're basically just slightly less sweet no junk gummy candies yeah definitely seeing a pretty steep rise in the better for you candy space at least in terms of the number of players and new entrance into that space I mean, I put these up there with some of the other great offerings, Better Sours Behave being a couple of my favorites.

7:50And these are good. These are good. It's not going to ruin anything to have this one. No one's going to be like, oh, no, I don't like Better For You gummies. These are amazing. Are they? Yeah. Do they fit the bill? No compromise? They're really tasty. Okay. Well, again, they're less sweet. So, like, when you taste them, they just also don't taste super junky, you know? Well, one thing I love to see on the front of Pat, because it says 70 % less sugar, no fake sugars and no dyes. And on the back, it makes it very clear in big letters, it says N-O. And then next to it, it has a list of commonly used alternative sweeteners, including stevia, monk fruit, allulose and ericitol.

8:29For those of you who are wondering, Italian summer is lemon and cherries. It's like, you know, Italian ice. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Really nice. Yeah. So I mentioned that we're seeing a lot of new Better For You candy brands come to market. And it seems like there is a good amount of consumer demand for lower sugar, lower calorie, great tasting candy out there. And every time I see a LinkedIn post from the team at Better Sour, it just seems like they're getting into new retailers. They're getting more distribution, which to me sounds like there is quite a bit of velocity. There is quite a bit of consumer demand and people pulling these products.

9:09Great to see. Just fantastic product. Fantastic people. Yeah. And I was wondering the same thing about frozen dinners and frozen meals. It's interesting to me because, you know, all of us in one way or another grew up on Stouffer's, right? Yeah, we did. Yeah. When you thought about like frozen lasagna, Stouffer's, right? If you thought about... We're a hungry man kind of guy. Okay. Hungry man is another one. Or wait, is the hungry man the one? The Marie's? Exactly. Which one had the crappy dessert with it? Hungry man. Yeah. Okay. I think I just, I feel like I just ate dessert and threw the rest away, but anyway.

9:42Well, I wouldn't be surprised because that's what a lot of people do. Cause typically all that stuff was really bad for you. Yeah, the meat was nasty. Didn't taste good. And you know, so for his pot pies, I think they had a pizza. They had, do you like that? They were called TV dinners way, way back in the day. But nowadays it feels like we're getting new frozen meal brands, samples of these brands coming into the office on a pretty regular basis. And so I pulled a couple from the freezer. We have Vital Pursuit. They had a few meals. They sent a few meals. This one is their teriyaki chicken. It promotes that it's an air fryer meal, so you don't have to put it in the oven.

10:1923 grams of protein, portion of line, essential nutrients. So that's that. They also have a cauliflower crust pepperoni pizza. Scott and John's. Now we talked about Scott and John's a few episodes back. Jack, Jackie had this for breakfast actually. Scott and John's is a maker of premium seafood meals. So these things you can stick in the microwave and you'll have a pretty delicious meal pretty quickly. This is their shrimp and mushroom risotto. And then Blue Zones Kitchen, this is another product that I saw in the freezer. Blue Zones is a maker of frozen meals that you can also stick in the microwave.

10:54Those are really tasty. Yes, clean ingredients, high quality ingredients. This is their sesame ginger bowl, carrots, edamame, broccoli, brown rice, and garbanzo beans. Now I'm wondering, all this looks really cool and good and so on and so forth. I got to be honest, I'm not that consumer. I don't buy frozen meals very often, but is there enough demand? Do you see enough consumers wanting these products, buying these products? Jackie? I do. Yeah. I mean, I think like my generation and below are going to the grocery store and buying exactly what they need or just opening the freezer and pulling something out.

11:32Or I know a lot of my friends eat like factor meals, like they're looking for convenience, and only using what they need. I think also, we were eating the hungry man's when we were younger for a reason. So why not disrupt that category? Like there's still people growing up that are eating frozen meals because their parent just needs to feed them something. And that's convenient. I think there's a lot of different use cases. Yeah, it's convenient, but it's these are I would assume these products that I mentioned, these brands that I mentioned, have a higher price point, much higher price point than a Hungry Man or a Stouffer.

12:07So I think that's the stumbling block. That's the the difficult part of whether there's a real future for these products or not, because people, low income, middle income, you know, folks that just can't spend eight dollars on one frozen dinner, they're probably still going to buy a lot of Hungry Man and Stouffers. Yeah. And I think like Walmart, for example, does a really good job with like their Better Goods line and they have a lot of frozen food and their frozen pizzas are actually delicious and only like$7.50. So I think there's like opportunity for people and companies to get that price point maybe a little bit more to an accessible level.

12:43I think it's, you know, it's complicated. A lot of the various attributes that people or retailers or the supply chain might want a lot like you know price big portion size long shelf life even in a frozen meal you know the ability to actually like heat all the things at once when it's in a microwave all at the same you know time and time proven it can be done well i mean it can but i'm just saying all these things impact like what goes in the product and also the types of products that people buy and are stocked in like retail. And I guess what I'm getting at is that, you know, I think we've seen a lot of entrance into like the frozen aisle, like in frozen meals and it's, it's challenging, you know, and I don't know, there's a lot of people who just go into a grocery store to like buy what they need for their current meal, either because that's what they can afford to do or because they just aren't planners or whatever, or, you know, somebody lives by themselves.

13:45And, you know, there is a price point at which these products, to become super clean or quality, are competing with other stuff in the store, a la prepared foods and, you know, all the other things we talk about that are relatively easy to prepare. So I don't know. The frozen aisle is, it's, I think, really challenging. And obviously, like in most retailers, it can't take part in things like end caps or even, you know, product demos. Have you ever tried just bagging your own frozen fruit, for instance? Yeah, of course. So it all sticks together. That's true. But when you buy a bag of frozen fruit, it doesn't.

14:22Is it because it's like covered in olive oil or something? I don't know. It's usually they dry it. Anti-caking agents or something? It has to be dried so that when it's frozen, it doesn't stick. I don't think that's a sticking point for me when it comes to buying frozen fruit. I would say, however, that I've seen brands that have been able to compete on price point and have clean ingredient products and very delicious products. I can name one right off the bat. That's Mason Dixie Foods, which has done a pretty incredible job with their breakfast sandwiches, their burritos, their biscuits, and all at a competitive price point.

15:00I think the question for them going forward is how do you achieve broader distribution? How do you make sure that demand and production are aligned? And I suspect that Asha Abelisha and her team, Asha Abelisha being the founder, if anyone can figure that out, she will. Mason Dixie, great products, but also eating a breakfast sandwich every morning for breakfast is probably not the best of ideas. No, I think certainly moderation is probably what they would recommend too. I'm sure they're not advocating for people to eat a breakfast sandwich every day of the week. Yeah. And look, with any of this stuff, yeah, we're just so far down a rabbit hole.

15:39Okay. Let's get back to reality here. I think this is the reality we live in, unfortunately, where people have to choose between, and maybe this has always been true, but people have to choose between nutrition and price point, right? And I guess my point is, I hope... Seed a banana ray. Yeah, well, there you could do that too. For any retailers that are listening, any retail buyers, I would advocate and encourage folks to consider perhaps working with your suppliers to achieve a price point that is reasonable for people such that, especially in this day and age, they can afford to eat better.

16:18That's all I'm saying. All right. Let's drink some booze. So when I was at the Bar Convent Brooklyn trade show in mid-June, I came across a really interesting seltzer brand called Swirl, S-W-R-L. And they sell, I don't know if I can pronounce this, a Macgioli seltzer, spelled M-A-K-G-E-O-L-L-I. And it's described as a fermented rice brew. And they have four varieties. They have an Earl Grey. They have a mixed cherry. They have a Yuzu and Pine needles. And John has a... Original. Original. So I saw the Yuzu and Pine needles, and I was like, I got to try this. Okay, just don't get those Pine needles stuck in your throat.

17:08Yeah. Okay. I'm just going to pour this right over my laptop. Classic Ray style. Classic Ray style. Ray's also the guy that when you get the little pop-up on your screen, that's like, call Microsoft immediately. is that what that i've never seen that that was a test i'm glad you didn't react to that okay that's what folks you know like boomers kind of oh anyway okay so this is 3.7 alcohol by volume it comes in these 12 ounce cans they're white mike would you like to try any i'm gonna i'm gonna pass i've got okay so when i tried this i fell in love with it let me try it again it's really delicious and i love the fact that it's under four percent alcohol i know hard seltzers are seem to be done in decline but um does that body what's it like yeah it's got some weird body to it what do pine needles taste like i'm not getting a ton of pine needles i'm definitely getting the yuzu yeah i don't know i don't know where the pine needles come in i feel like that's probably probably in the bottom of the can it's the fiber yeah perhaps swirling around in there I want to try the Earl Grey.

18:16It's an obstacle course. You know, I normally hate brands that just ditch all the vowels, but I don't know. Swirl, you want to ditch the eye? That's fun. It's a swirly logo. It's pretty cool. It kind of, I don't know. I mean, it does almost taste like sake-like in a way. It's different. It's different. Yeah. I don't know if this is for me personally, but... I believe, if I recall, this is a relatively common drink in Korea, a fermented rice brew like this. But I haven't seen anything like this in the States. And I feel like this, just the branding, the different kinds of flavors. I mean, when was the last time you saw a hard seltzer or really any kind of alcoholic beverage that had yuzu and pine needle flavor or an earl grey flavor?

19:05So well done, in my opinion, on Swirl or by Swirl on creating this pretty outstanding brand, in my opinion. So you'll be knocking a few of these back instead of your normal white cloths? I'm done for the day after this. I'm just going to be crushing these. Perfect. All right, Mike, what do you got in your hand there? I've got a brand out of Oklahoma City called Afropop. Afropop. which is, you know, a craft soda, a cultural craft soda founded by Jamel Stevens. This is the black or the berry. It's blackberry cream soda. Have you tried this yet? I have not. I assume it's a pretty sweet product. It is, but it's seven grams of sugar.

19:49So it's 30 calories, seven grams of sugar. You didn't get that, did you? It went right over your head. The black or the berry, the sweet or the juice? Yeah, the black or the berry, the sweet or the juice. And of course, when I've been Instagramming this, I've been playing that song. It's a great song. Is that a song? It's a Kendrick song. Oh, okay. I have not heard that one. Love that song. Oh, yeah. This is really tasty. I mean, didn't know I needed blackberry cream soda, but I do. This is really good. Outstanding. Well, I love the branding on that. It's Afro Pop on the front of the can in very large fonts.

20:21And it's got some cool artwork on the side. It's got some cool artwork on the side. There's also a butterscotch soda with a picture of two people making cookies, grandma and kid making cookies. And like, I think there's, you know, it's a cultural nostalgia brand. And yes, exciting. Nice. Super tasty. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more. jackie what do you got over there in the san diego well you were talking about better for you candy earlier and i have fruit thieves real fruit whips oh nice which by the way jackie was mowing down before this i've been eating at least one a day i was a huge twizzler kid so these hit that Yeah, they're like fruit snacks, but they come in like these long like Twizzler like strands.

21:21And it's literally just fruit. So if you look at the ingredients, it's just apples, strawberries, apple juice, black carrot extract and strawberry flavor. When you were a kid or now, did you ever just take the whole rolled up thing and just pop it in your mouth? Oh, yeah, I definitely did that. How about now? And you can do whatever you want with it, you know, like you can eat it like a piece of spaghetti or just roll it up in a snowball. In one nostril out the other. Oh, God. So many options. She wasn't even listening. No, she was listening. No, I would try that. Oh, God. I love Jackie so much.

21:56That sounds horrible. But these are delicious. And I am not a huge fruit fan, actually. Like, I prefer vegetables. So I'm getting my, like, daily vitamins. That is a great product. We had some of those in the office. They went fast. Yeah, they went, like. And fruit thief is spilled. well, the fruit in Fruit Thief is spelled F-R-O-O-T. And they do taste amazing. That is a no compromise or an extremely low compromise product. I think they did an amazing job getting that texture right, getting that sweetness level right, and actually not having that chemical taste that Twizzlers typically do. So really well done, Fruit Thief.

22:35Yeah, and the packaging's awesome too. Yeah. We had Fruit Thief in the office. Ray likes them. They went fast. I think we found our fruit thief thief solution. He is this guy. This is Ray. That's Ray. I'm the raccoon. It is similar. Trash panda. Trash panda on the front of pack is Ray. That's a raccoon. Trash panda. AKA trash panda. Oh, I've never heard that term. All right. Now, if you're watching the video, you've probably seen all these tall bottles of what seem to be liquor and wine on our table here. And that's because a brand called Undone, which is a non-alcoholic alternative or an alcohol alternative brand that makes non-alcoholic versions of spirits in wine.

23:27They're based in Europe and I guess pretty well distributed in that continent are making their debut stateside. And they sent us a bunch of their products and the branding is pretty phenomenal agreed it's very standout they come in these 700 milliliter bottles they look like custom bottles actually they don't look typically like or they don't look like typical bottles as you'll see in the spirits category and they're very clear about what they're not so on the front of the bottle it says undone has the logo describes itself as non-alcoholic and then it describes what the product is so this one i have in my hand is their American blend.

24:06And right underneath it, it says, this is not whiskey. So this is their whiskey variety, but it's not whiskey. They also have a, what looks like a Campari type product, an Italian bitter aperitif, but it says this is not orange bitter. So there's a number of them. Mike's opening up the Aperol alternative. I want to make, you're going to make a Mezcal Negroni. This is not vermouth. This is not orange bitter. This is not mezcal. I'm going to try the this is not whiskey because this has always been the biggest or the hardest spirit to mimic. I like so much about this brand. I don't think a custom bottle, though.

24:45Maybe not a custom bottle. I just bought you don't typically see in this industry. Can I have a plastic cup? I don't know. I don't drink as much booze as you do, John. I don't drink that much booze. I don't know if that's true. I don't think that's true, to be honest with you. Ray, yeah, wow. Wow, everybody jumped on that really fast. That was a fact check. Right on the show. Can I have one of those plastic cups there? I'm just trying to open it. Oh, yeah, of course. These are difficult to open. You might need to... Stab it with a knife. Stab it with a knife. Okay. All right, I managed to get the This Is Not Whiskey, the American Blend variety.

25:21American Blend, I assume, is going to hopefully taste a little bit like bourbon. And here we go. John, you want to try any of this? Yeah, sure. There you go for me a scotch maybe with a fresh cup. I don't know what that's all about. Oh That is filthy. Sorry about that I was about to give John some Some backwash. Yeah, right. That's that's no good. No, thanks Laptop perfect Okay, it looks a bit more Scotch ish than it does bourbon ish, but let's see Okay on the nose Like burn hmm. I want to try the red one A mezcal in the ground is coming your way. Hang on a second. Great. No, the nose is actually slightly reminiscent of a low-proof whiskey.

26:05There aren't really many low-proof whiskeys out there. I think most of them are 80. The lowest you can do is 80%. Yeah, it's like, what's a low-proof whiskey? Yeah, 80%. But let me try this. God, that's a really... How much of this do you think I'm drinking, Mike? Come on. The whiskey isn't bad, which is pretty high praise for non-alcoholic whiskeys. I'm going to taste the mezcal first before I make a Negroni. I'm actually going to go in for another sip here. Yeah, no burn, but the flavor's there. Super, super nice. Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is liquid that's comparable to other brands that we've seen in the category.

26:35I like the Un and the Zero. Yeah, the brand's cool. I like that. The Zero for non-alcoholic is pretty cool on the branding. Let's see how this Negroni works. Well, I think the reason why we're all praising these products is because Undone de-alcoholizes actual spirits in wine. So they start with real spirits and they start with real wine and they remove the alcohol. So they have what appears to be a proprietary process in doing so. Pass this to John. And I'm passing the Campari type product to John here. And he's going to... Actually, let me try it. Let's go to that as well. I think I'm... How is it, Mike?