食品巨头并非不可撼动，这家公司已经崛起

为学校供应健康午餐的初创公司Revolution Foods正在继续不断占领超市。

本月早些时候，该公司在加利福尼亚州的奥克兰推出了一系列所谓的“成品晚餐”或“速食”产品【类似于“汉堡助手”（Hamburger Helper）】。购买这种产品的顾客可以享用加有香料和“晚餐英雄”（Dinner Hero）套装中配有的酱汁的全谷物食品，再加上一磅自己另外购买的蛋白质。与此同时，公司还推出了“早餐英雄”（Breakfast Hero）系列的预调煎饼面糊。

Revolution Foods的这一系列新产品，是为了与那些端坐于食品商店货架正中，缺乏创新的传统包装食品展开竞争。该公司已经推出了名为“午餐包裹”（Lunch Bundles）的系列午餐，与卡夫亨氏公司（Kraft Heinz）的“方便午餐”（Lunchables）竞争，另外还有“一杯装”（In a Cup）的面条食品。

这家食品公司得到了史蒂夫·凯斯的投资基金Revolution Growth（名字相似只是巧合）的支持。凯斯表示：“我儿时流行的许多品牌如今仍然很受欢迎。而当下，一些新的品牌和公司已经开始挑战这些“大食品公司”了。”在业内，“大食品公司”往往指那些传统的包装消费食品公司，随着消费者倾向于购买更健康、加工更少的食品，这些老牌公司遭遇了困难。

Revolution Foods也将目光投向了那些停滞不前的食品领域。公司的共同创始人和首席影响官柯尔斯顿·萨恩斯·托比表示：“我们要挺进食品商店业绩下滑的领域。那些领域的解决方案多年来没有变化，如今已经陈腐不堪。”

托比和她的共同创始人和公司的首席执行官克里斯汀·谷鲁斯·里奇蒙德认为，Revolution Food的优势来自不含人工原料的“真正原料”生产的营养食品，这是“大食品”公司正在仓促效仿的。例如，公司的“早餐英雄”系列产品，就是用全脂牛奶和真正的鸡蛋制造的。

2006年起，Revolution Foods开始为孩子们提供营养廉价的学校午餐，如今，他们每周会给14个州提供200万份学校餐。里奇蒙德表示：“我们发现了一个巨大的机遇，能够极大地改变我们给孩子提供食物的方式。”

在初期，家长们问Revolution Foods如何在放学后把这些食品带回家，再加上零售商有兴趣吸引“有使命感的品牌进驻”，这促使公司拓展了业务范围。他们建立了使命基金，将销售包装食品的总销售额的1%捐给需要帮助的学校。

公司从每日为孩子们提供午餐中总结经验，设计让消费者青睐的产品。例如，他们推出“一杯装”面条产品，就是因为他们发现向孩子们提供的十种最热门食品中，有三种都是面条类的。

目前，包装消费食品只占Revolution收入中很小的一部分，今年他们的总收入预计将达到1.5亿美元。不过该公司的食品已经进入了44个州的4,500家食品杂货店。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

Healthy school lunch provider Revolution Foods is continuing its march down the supermarket aisle.

Earlier this month the Oakland, Calif., company rolled out a line of what’s known in the food industry as “prepared dinner mixes” or “speed scratch” kits (think Hamburger Helper). In this case, customers take the whole grain, spice blend, and sauce that are provided as part of the “Dinner Hero” kit, and add a pound of protein that they buy separately. The company also rolled out a “Breakfast Hero” line of pre-mixed pancake batters at the same time.

The new products join a growing list of goods from Revolution Foods that are intended to compete with traditional packaged foods categories—those staples that tend to sit in the middle of the grocery store—that have not seen much innovation. The company already has a line of packaged lunch meals called Lunch Bundles, which competes with Kraft Heinz’s KHC 1.32% Lunchables, as well as an “In a Cup” product, which are noodle-based meals.

“A lot of the brands that were popular when I was a kid are still popular today,” said Steve Case, whose investment fund Revolution Growth (no relation) has a stake in the startup. “There’s a new portfolio of brands and companies that are really taking on what some have called Big Food.” Big Food–the sector’s shorthand for classic consumer packaged food companies–have suffered as consumers have shifted their dollars toward products they believe are healthier and less processed.

Revolution is also targeting categories that have experienced stagnant growth. “We’re going into a category in the grocery store that’s been declining,” says Kirsten Saenz Tobey, Revolution Foods co-founder and chief impact officer. “The solutions that have been in that category for many, many years are kind of stale at this point.”

Tobey and her co-founder and company CEO Kristin Groos Richmond believe Revolution Food’s edge will comes from a focus on nutritious products made with “real ingredients” that are free of artificial ingredients that Big Food companies are scrambling to remove from their products. Its Breakfast Hero line, for example, is made with whole milk and real eggs.

The company started in 2006 as a provider of nutritious, affordable school lunches to kids and now serves 2 million schools meals every week in 14 states. “We saw a huge opportunity to dramatically transform the way we feed kids,” Richmond says.

But early on Revolution’s co-founders started getting questions from parents about how they could take the company’s meals home at the end of the school day. That, coupled with calls from retailers interested in getting “mission-driven brands in the grocery store,” led them to branch out. The company has built on its purpose-driven roots by putting 1% of all its sales from its consumer packaged food items into a grant fund that goes to schools in need.

The company uses the insights its garners from serving kids lunch every day to design the products that end up in consumers’ shopping bags. Its “In a Cup” noodle line, for example, came about after realizing that three of the top 10 foods the company was serving to kids were noodle based.

Currently the consumer packaged foods part of Revolution’s business makes up a small percentage of its revenue, which is set to hit $150 million this year. But its products are already in 4,500 grocery stores in 44 states.