Page 9 - Food & Drink magazine June 2021

and snack sustainably. In some of the initial trials, people responded really well to the product and the functionality of the bars, and were looking to eat something that isn’t always easily accessible.”
The snack bar names are connected to the times a person would want a snack – The 9am, The 3pm, and The Pick Me Up. The three flavours were iterated, Murillo says, “as we listened
to customer feedback and understood what our core market were telling us about what they wanted in a functional snack”.
“Each of our bars has a green tea level of caffeine, so creating a product that has a nice,
longer lasting buzz with the functionality, plus the story of having this upcycled, discarded, by-product, is something that has really caught consumers’ interest,” she says.
SOURCING BY-PRODUCT
To make its better-for-you snack bars, I Am Grounded uses the discarded by-product of coffee fruit – pulp, muselage and cascara – which is sourced from three farms overseas
that upcycle during their harvest. As the fruit is picked, the by-product is then taken and made into a concentrate, which is then sent to Australia.
Powell says that when starting I Am Grounded, it was important to sketch out an impact model as part of the business plan and go beyond measuring only the revenue.
“We’re a growing company but we wanted to find ways to give back even in these early stages
of the business,” says Powell.
“We track per product sold how much CO2 is diverted and we’re looking to partner with coffee farmers back at origin where we source from to assist them not just with revenue for the by-product concentrate, but also with infrastructure.”
The pair also donated
profit from its last Christmas campaign to Formemos Fundación, a school in Colombia caring for displaced and at-risk children, which also teaches them how to grow their own food and coffee for important life skills. Murillo says, “as we scale, we hope to make an even bigger impact”.
GROW BIG
Murillo and Powell continue to accelerate the growth of their business any way they can. Aside from the range being available on their website and Amazon, I Am Grounded has partnerships with independent retailers and Queensland- based distributor Real Friends, which has an exposure of
4000 stores, as well expanding distribution interstate as
it exhibits at trade shows
such as Naturally Good.
“Since we’re such a small team, every piece of feedback is so important and impactful for us. Every win is a milestone, and there are a lot of ups and downs. It’s challenging but
it’s worth it,” says Murillo.
In the pipeline, I Am Grounded plans to release a new range of snacking superfood bites in 120g packs. Coffee fruit will base the two flavour SKUs
– vegan protein and cocoa,
and banana and coconut. ✷
ABOVE: I Am Grounded founders Vanessa Murillo and Lachlan Powell have a goal to close the loop on the coffee production cycle.
BELOW: Coffee fruit by-product is being upcycled into new products such as snack bars and superfood bites.
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www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | June 2021 | Food&Drink business | 9
RISING STAR
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