The Case for Frozen Muffins: How Unrefined Foods Is Bringing Whole Grain Nutrition to the Freezer Aisle

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1:20The best analogy is thinking about like coffee beans. If you can go to the grocery store, buy coffee beans or just the pre-ground stuff. And if you like coffee at all, you never would buy the pre-ground stuff. And it's the same thing with flour. It's not just that flour was ground like a year or two ago. It's also that they're taking out so much of the nutrients. And that's like white flour is truly like a nutritionless white powder that to the body acts just like sugar. Whereas if you're taking a wheat seed fresh milling it, first off, it has a ton of flavor. And so we like to say our muffins, if we made them with regular store-bought whole wheat flour, they would taste like cardboard.

1:59You wouldn't want to eat them. They taste good because the flour is fresh. And there's tons of protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals in wheat seeds.

2:12Hey, everybody. This is Caitlin Bricker, Managing Editor at Start at CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm sitting down with Melissa Bermudez, founder of Unrefined Foods, frozen muffins made with 100 % stone milled whole grains and real fruits and veggies. Melissa worked in finance and big ag before landing at her kitchen counter with three kids under three making stone milled wheat muffins and realizing she needed to scale what was working for her family. We're diving into why fresh milled flour tastes completely different than shelf bought whole wheat. Her video showing the shocking amount of added sugar in competing muffins, why she chose frozen over fresh as a way to change the food system, and her direct farmer relationship sourcing organic and regenerative wheat when only 2 % of U.S.

2:59wheat production is organic. Take a second to think about how many frozen muffin brands you've seen in the freezer aisle. For me, it's not many, if at all, when I'm in the grocery store. I think Melissa is really onto something and this is a brand that you should watch, in my opinion. We hear from founders on this podcast every week. If you're a brand and want to get new opportunities right in your inbox, text CPG to 833-605-7002. That's 833-605-7002 and we'll get you hooked up. As always, enjoy.

3:38Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin, and today I'm here with Melissa Bermudez, founder of Unrefined Foods. Melissa, welcome to the show. Hey, Caitlin. So excited to be here. I just saw you recently at one of our Boston Founder socials. It's always nice to connect with people who are building in CPG in New England. I feel like it's not a really happening place for CPG, but we find each other somehow. Yeah, no, there's some good examples in our area, too, of brands growing like Spindrift and One Mighty Mill. But yes, it's always a fun community. So what are you building?

4:14What is Unrefined Foods? Yeah, so we make frozen muffins with 100 % stone-melt whole grains and real fruits and veggies. I am very excited about your brand. People probably know this already about me if they've been listening. I am a mom as well, so I am always looking for a little shortcut in my life that's going to save me some time, but it's also going to be tasty and nourishing. And you are checking off all the boxes for that. Exactly. Yeah, that is 1000 % why we're here. We know families need packaged food, but a lot of the options that exist just don't make the cut. It's so unbelievably true.

4:51And you are the first frozen muffin brand that I have interviewed. And quite frankly, I don't really see frozen muffin brands at all, ever. I could probably name one. I'm not going to name it now because this is your time. Thank you. Yes, I know of one. I knew of zero when I started this. And I would say it creates its own challenges on the grocery side. With parents, though, it's a really familiar concept. I think so many moms are so used to freezing food like bread or meat or baked goods. They bake themselves. And that's what I was doing and was. The freezer is the place to be for high quality, convenient food.

5:31And we're just trying to make it more accessible for folks. There's so much that I want to unpack with you on this episode. But before we go into what you're doing now, can you tell us what you were doing before you started building Unrefined Foods? Yes, I have had kind of a meandering career when you look on paper, but it truly has felt like it's built to this moment, which is fun. I started my career in investment banking. I worked for J.P. Morgan for a few years and then moved to a hedge fund. And that's how I came back to Boston. Went to business school. And business school was actually when I got a lot more interested in rural economics.

6:04It sounds random, but it was actually like I've always been interested in our economy and how it works, which is how I ended up in finance. And I started working for a company called Walden Local Meat, which is also based here in New England. And that is also where I got just introduced to agriculture as an industry and food as an industry of like this. Our food system, in my opinion, is tied to every societal issue of our time, whether it's climate change or health crises or economic inequality. The really fun part of working for a meat company is my father-in-law is a rancher, actually. My husband grew up on a bison ranch, so that was like a direct line to speaking to an OG grass-fed rancher and like really truly practicing regenerative practices.

6:49So yeah, I did well in local meat and then actually also ended up in the big ag side of things, which I can talk about. But having both those perspectives of like our local food system and then really the food system feeding the planet is really what led me to focusing on a wheat based company, but also my own lived experience as a mom and what we just talked about, the struggles of feeding a family. I never thought about wheat before until I started really looking at the brands in the startup CPG community. You are one of three brands who are really focusing on wheat because for so long now, we've been focusing on gluten free.

7:27But now wheat really is coming back into the spotlight for all of its nutritional benefits, which before I used to be like, why the hell would I get whole wheat bread? Or why would I ever order a whole wheat bagel? at a muffin or at a cafe. Why would I get a whole wheat muffin? Why would I do any of these things? Like gross. Totally. It doesn't taste good. Yes. And now I'm like, oh, I get it now. Yeah. I'm so glad to agree to say that. It's very interesting to see this resurgence with wheat and what is the common thread between all three of you is that you are very passionate about this ingredient and you know your stuff.

8:07So tell us, why are you so passionate about wheat? Give us all the details. Well, when I see you next, I'll give you this Flour Power stickers and I will have a Flour Power t-shirt scene because no, I think there are so many factors at play here. My personal interest, and it's many, but probably just like as a mom trying to feed my kids, fresh milled flour from like a full wheat seed that is ground fresh, do nothing to it. It tastes amazing and it has a ton of nutrition. I think the best analogy is thinking about like coffee beans. If you can go to the grocery store, buy coffee beans or just the pre-ground stuff.

8:46And if you like coffee at all, you never would buy the pre-ground stuff. And it's the same thing with flour. It's not just that flour was ground like a year or two ago. It's also that they're taking out so much of the nutrients And that's like white flour is truly like a nutritionless white powder that to the body acts just like sugar. Whereas if you're taking a wheat seed fresh, milling it, first off, it has a ton of flavor. And so we like to say our muffins, if we made them with regular store-bought whole wheat flour, they would taste like cardboard. You wouldn't want to eat them. They taste good because the flour is fresh.

9:22And there's tons of protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals in wheat seeds. And so personally, I was never really interested in gluten-free. I didn't need it in my diet. But when I would look at gluten-free products and the ingredients lists, first off, in a lot of cases, there's almond flour, which like for little kids in schools is an impossibility. Or second off, there's flours that are like, what is this? Like, I don't know what this is. Whereas like, again, wheat seeds, it's just like truly the original superfood. I mean, wheat is something that we like as a society developed around.

9:54There's a reason in Gladiator it's the first scene is a wheat field. I have a confession to make. I've never seen Gladiator, but I know like the classic scenes that I've seen on the internet before. It's just like not my style, but I'll go looking for the wheat scene. I first met four months ago. I had never seen it. And my husband was like, we're watching it, Melissa. You need to watch this movie. And that it started and we were both like, oh my God, wheat. It's everywhere. So it was like, yeah, it was a cool moment. You touched on this, but you worked in Big Egg. Did that help inspire the path that you are on now with Unrefined Foods?

10:33Totally. Yeah. So the thing I did not realize until I worked in Big Agriculture was 60 percent of our cropland is three crops. It's corn, soybeans and wheat. And in a lot of states like Kansas, especially like a lot of counties, it's like 98 percent of farmland is corn and soybeans. And we really don't eat the corn and soybeans. Like it's mostly first off, like ethanol. It's like around 50 percent of the corn market is like going to industrial purposes. And ethanol production is like a huge part of that. And then like a lot of it's exported. And so I think there's this perception across consumers.

11:11Like if I buy organic strawberries, I can change our food system. And it's like, no, that is not. I mean, yes, that is important. And like when you think about the vast swaths of farmland in this country, which have like there's a lot of issues in the way we are currently industrially farming in this country. Like the crops to think about are corn, soybeans and wheat is the most produced commodity that we actually eat. And also of wheat, only like two percent of wheat production is organic. So all that to say in big agriculture, what I was doing was directly working to finance farmers. and my main realization like two things first off like wonderful people like I love Midwesterners I married one and like they just care about their families they care about living and creating beautiful lives for them they also are environmentalists at heart like they really care about stewarding the land they're farming on and they're just trying to survive in the system that this whole industrial food system has built and I just really realized like wow there's really not a lot of winners in this system.

12:17And so when I think about what we're doing from a mission perspective, trying to create alternative markets for farmers to avoid the commodity system is a huge part of that and why we're so focused on direct farmer relationships and sourcing organic and regenerative wheat. I love to hear about a direct farmer relationship because we are so far removed from our food. I mean, we are buying things that are in packages. Sometimes you can't even recognize the ingredients that are in your food when you go to eat it. It's in a bar, it's in a paste, it's in what have you. Totally. And then to hear brands like you that are establishing those relationships and nurturing them and really understanding where your ingredients are coming from, it's very enlightening.

13:01I think it's very admirable because it's not the easy way out. It seems like it would be more complicated to nourish those relationships and establish them than to not. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I would say like, first off, it's kind of quote unquote easy, because there's really not robust supply chains around stone milled wheat. So for us to build that supply chain, we have to have the connection on one hand. And on the other hand, like, back to your point, I am a parent living in the real world, and I need packaged food, and I want to feel good about the ingredients that are in it. And it's really important how those ingredients are produced as a person who cares about the impact our food system has on the world.

13:45So that's really what we're trying to create access to for parents, too. It's like, yeah, I can buy all the organic strawberries I want and I need something to feed my family right now while everyone is screaming. Absolutely. And I think you are raising a very good point. And I think probably a polarizing concern for people who can afford to live these purist type lifestyles where They're only cooking everything from scratch at home. They're not buying things in packages. I wish I had that life, but I don't. It probably never will be my life. So I do the best that I can, especially now that I'm a mom, too.

14:20My time that I had before, I don't even know what I used to do with free time because I don't have it anymore. I totally know what you mean. Yes. You do know what I mean because you are creating something for people just like me and my daughter. Yeah. And what you're doing for parents is so cool, so incredible, and it's working. And I just wish more people would understand what you're doing and hear about your brand because it really is a groundbreaking brand, in my opinion. So tell me more about that instance in your mind where you thought, okay, I'm doing this. I'm going to make a brand and it's going to be muffins.

14:58We're going to freeze them. And here it is. This is what we're doing. So yeah, that was quite a process for me. So Farmers Business Network, where I was before starting Unrefined Foods, like I mentioned, was a great experience. The best part about that was also just like the life I was able to lead at that time. I surprisingly ended up with three kids under three because I had a two and a half year old when I had twins. And I have to say, like with my firstborn, I was really good. My mom's a dietician. And I like really had a good sense of like, these are whole foods, like the purist lifestyle we were just talking about.

15:34Like, I think my first child would snack on sourdough crust and like roasted carrots. Also, he is a unicorn belt. Then we had the twins. And when we started packing lunches for school for their daycare, I was just like loading in all sorts of crap just so they would have stuff to fill their stomachs because I just had no time to do anything. And again, three children were screaming every morning. And the one thing that would make me feel good in the mornings, what I thought at the time were these huge batches of frozen muffins made with my stone milled wheat that I would put in their lunchboxes.

16:09They ate them every day. Also, we have an amazing neighbor who gives us so much zucchini in the summertime. Perfect. And it was one day I was standing at my kitchen edge shredding the zucchini that I was like, oh my God, I think this is the idea. Because I step back a sec. The work I was in, I did want to do something else. And I did want flexibility in what I was going to do next. And I really did want to start my own business. So that was like really the spark. Like, I think it is Muffet's with this stone milled wheat, the commodity I keep talking about all the time to anyone who will listen to me.

16:44So yeah, that was like really the spark almost two years ago, which is crazy. Wow. Okay. I have one child. Three children is just beyond my comprehension adding twins yeah they're so fun oh my god so you really do get it you get that the time saving is something that we need you get that the whole food ingredients is something that we need yeah so why frozen why not a fresh muffin yeah well i will say i kind of ask myself this every day because it would be a lot easier like as i'm sure you know anything shelf stable-ish which like a fresh muffin isn't, but it kind of acts like a shelf-stable product from a bakery perspective.

17:29So many bakery muffins, like they have to have like at minimum five-day shelf life. Our muffins have about a two-day shelf life. And the reason is because they're not packed with sugar. Your listeners would know like sugar is a preservative. Like most bakery muffins, it's usually the first ingredient, if not definitely the second. There's a ton of oil too. and they're just like a different ingredients profile. And for us, like we really wanted to create this homemade style muffin and very, very quickly realized with our own testing, like there is no way this is going to last, have the shelf life that a bakery buyer is going to want.

18:09So yeah, we just focus on making a really delicious, high quality muffin with really good ingredients and one that is moist that people are not used to experiencing, Don't like talking about that word moist, but like that's always the feedback we get. And that just wouldn't happen in the bakery case. And then I will add to just from customer feedback perspective, we hear all the time. So our format, it's for individually packaged muffins inside a box. It's meant to be like an uncrustable. Like you can take it from the freezer, throw it into a kid's lunchbox. It's ready by snack time. Or they're also parent friendly, too.

18:44Like parents can heat them up at home. They're super flexible. and that sort of like oh I can just take it from the freezer whenever I want as the parent like that gives them a lot of agency where I know I've heard from a lot of parents that muffins in the bakery case they sometimes want but then like the shelf life that expiration date will be sooner than they wish it would be so yes operationally it's tough but I do ultimately think like it's the way we do what we're trying to do and I really want to understand your perspective I mean I understand it, but I want everyone who's listening to understand your perspective.

19:19You and I have talked about this. You feel like the freezer aisle is how we're going to change the food system. So can you talk more about that with us? Totally. I mean, I think most people are well aware of like the pushback to ultra processed foods. And I think the only real way we have changed to product quality and ingredient quality is by using another preservative, which is the freezer. So I'm super bullish on the frozen section generally to deliver what customers are looking for today. Generally, for our entire grain system, like a big reason flour evolved the way it did to take out a lot of the good stuff, which includes oils in the wheat seed that can make flour go rancid over time.

20:04Like all those changes happened pre 1900, definitely before the advent of any of the changes in our food system now of like more like larger trucking and freight and moving things around the country. And then, of course, our entire cold storage system. If anyone, by the way, is interested in our cold storage system, I highly recommend the book Frostbite. It's like the most interesting nonfiction book I've ever read. She goes to like all these cold storage facilities in our country and around the world and like really understanding like how did we build up this frozen ecosystem that is truly like so new in our built environment.

20:42So all that to say, like, I think that as a technology, it's really interesting to consider like how this can change delivery of high quality ingredients and convenience, too. Like I said, I think parents are really on top of like, how do I as a parent use the freezer to supplement my day to day? But I do think there is a catch up process in the retailers to like meet parents where they are now. I would assume so because even now I'm seeing bars and other products that I typically wouldn't have seen in the refrigerated section. Now taking up that coveted space in the refrigerator, I can only assume it's the same deal for the frozen section.

21:21Very intrigued about this book. I love a good nonfiction book personally. It sounds like podcast too. I can't stop talking about that book and I read it also almost two years ago. So I highly recommend it. I love that it's sticking with you. I do totally agree with you that there is just this revival of frozen food right now. I mean, I can give you a very, very simple example of something in my household that we use frozen versus fresh pretty much constantly. Several nights a week, we are using frozen broccoli. We get the dinosaur sized bag from Costco and it's frozen and it stays in the freezer.

21:55We don't have to worry about the broccoli crowns becoming soggy or just like wilted in the refrigerator. And they're pre-cut. So not only is it saving me money because I'm not buying fresh, but I'm also saving time because I'm not having to stand there and cut my broccoli up and make crowns and make little small pieces. All I have to do is literally frozen broccoli into the pan and saute it and it tastes just as good as fresh and all the nutritional content is still there. Yeah. It's totally carrying over to what you're doing too, because I could go and make myself muffins right now if I wanted to, but I have to carry that mental load that you know you and I both carry being moms.

22:39It's just this checklist in the back of your mind constantly, and that's added too when it comes to meal prep. Now I have to think about, am I going to do a food delivery? Do I have time to go to the grocery store? What muffins am I going to make? I know. Yeah. Like, where am I even going to look for a recipe? Who's going to source me like a good, high quality, healthy recipe? Totally. You are doing something really cool for parents and something really cool for the frozen section. I really did not intend for that to be a pun since we're talking about the frozen section, but it just worked out that way.

23:14I didn't even notice. I told you said something. How much I talked about freezer puns. I'm very curious because for me, we mentioned this already. I'm not seeing frozen muffins in the frozen aisle. It's not something I've looked for before. It's not something that I have necessarily tracked or clocked in the frozen section before. I always think bakery when I think muffins. So how are you getting your consumers and your potential and current retailers to help educate the consumer and themselves about moving those eyes and those bodies over to the freezer section to find your product? It's such a good question because I think about it a lot.

23:52Because my like main question, basically want to talk to any CPG founder I meet about is how you cadence marketing and distribution. Because as a frozen brand, like the call to action is not you heard about us now come to our website and order. We are actually working on making that happen, but that's not our primary growth channel. And so what we've really been focused on is, OK, what's happening in the store, which for us, we've been able to test in a few different stores like placement. the more bakery items like pie crusts or by breakfast or sometimes if breakfast is small, like just a random placement.

24:30And we far and away do the best in breakfast. And I really think what's happening there is people are going to get their waffles and seeing our muffins and buying bowls. I really do think we're a category expander without other marketing happening. And then I will say I I know for sure when we drive traffic to a store or when people learn about us, about 50 percent of our target demographic doesn't shop frozen breakfast. And so that's what's been really important to us is finding the right distribution so that we can start to more efficiently get the word out outside of the store. Because I think it's like usually 70 to 80 percent of customers' lists are fully formed before they get to the grocery store.

25:10Like we need to make it on the list. And that is where we really do care about a marketing push. But we're also really trying to figure out like how and when because we are still working on that distribution. But yeah, part of the reason you and I just spoke recently is because we really are working on growing our distribution ahead of back to school season. We're really regionally focused here around Massachusetts and broader New England for that reason. So, yeah, that's how we've thought about it generally. But yes, marketing is going to be a big thing for us forever. And I'm glad you're talking about marketing because I have to draw attention to a video that you put up.