Page 29 - Food & Drink Magazine July 2018

FUNCTIONAL FOODS
✷ THE BAR FACTS
EXPORT BEYOND
AUSTRALIAN
SHORES
Set the Bar, which is based in Mangrove Mountain in NSW, recently started distributing into Singapore and China and has plans to expand further into the Asia-Pacific.
“Around 12 per cent of adults in China are now suffering from diabetes, and an estimated 36 per cent are considered pre-diabetic, so this represents a huge market for quality low GI-foods and a great opportunity to help improve diets,” Set the Bar co-founder Adam Jones says.
“We’ve already begun formulating additional bar flavours and vegan variants, and are testing several new lines.
“Our ultimate aim is to be regarded as a wellness company which provides the highest quality, research-backed products that people trust from the first ingredient to the last bite. We really do want to set the bar for what healthy snacks and food products should be today, and moving into the future.”
ENERGY HIT
Formerly known as enrGIsustain, the newly formulated enerGi
Bio Bars are a professionally formulated low-GI snack bar designed to keep consumers’ blood sugar steady, help
them maintain a healthy weight, and ensure sustained energy. Positioned as ‘the in-between meals bar’, it
is targeted at diabetics, athletes, and the everyday health-conscious consumer.
The founders noticed a gap in the Australian market for snack bars that have research-backed health benefits, and wanted to create a product that could deliver real results.
Flavours include dark chocolate-coconut; berry; and mint, and they are sweetened with low-GI bee honey and xylitol. RRP is $4.95 per bar.
“There’s a lot of great research and knowledge emerging about nutrition and healthy living today, so it’s a great time to be involved.”
Once several stages of sampling and testing are complete, Set the Bar manufactures everything locally using specialised equipment. The manufacturing facility is HACCP-certified, and feels more like a clinical laboratory than a factory, Jones says.
TEETHING PROBLEMS
The first-year lows were as you would expect in any new business – and the high capital investment involved in getting to production was one of them.
“Working long hours without pay and finding out that the path to success is a long one were some of the hardest things,” Jones says.
“We may live in a digital age, but there’s still a lot of pavement-pounding and door-knocking involved in any startup, and plenty of rejection
to get past before you start to receive some acceptance. “We’ve been called ‘just
another muesli bar’ and ‘just another product for the wall of protein’, and it takes a lot of work and education to highlight our unique selling points and why we’re not just trying to make something different, but something better.”
There have been positives too, however. “Highs have been seeing the increasingly positive market feedback, securing national distribution, and working with each other as a brother and sister team for the first time,” Jones says.
“Once we rebranded and had our distributor Bio Living on board, it was great to get our range into more retail stores and have more people seeing our products.”
THE NAME GAME
While the launch of the flagship product was greeted with positive feedback, one of the company’s most important realisations was
that enrGIsustain was really hard to say and spell.
“Experience has taught us the value of launching new products into a market as carefully and inexpensively as possible,” Jones says.
“The fact is, you’re almost always going to get something wrong on the first trip out.
“We knew we had a good product, and believed there was a real gap in the market for us, but we also wanted to get the product out there quickly and then work with our customers to get it 100 per cent right.”
The other thing the company needed to work on was branding, according to Jones.
“Good nutrition comes with a lot of education, and consumers need to receive a succinct message, in pretty packaging”
Jones describes the brand name change to enerGi Bio Bars as “the culmination of everything we’ve learned over the past year”.
Brother and sister duo Adam and Sascha Jones head up the snacks company Set the Bar.
www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | July 2018 | Food&Drink business | 29