Page 42 - bne_Magazine_September_2017

42 I Eastern Europe bne September 2017
find the ingredients she needed in Russia, the only alternative was to import the raw materials, which, of course, would increase the cost.
In addition, she learned that the equip- ment she needed to manufacture bars that would last without preservatives wasn’t available in Russia. She found
it in Germany. It was top-quality, but German equipment isn’t cheap, adding to her start-up expenses.
The reason she was so pernickety about the equipment was that she was deter- mined Bite would have the same six- month shelf life as Russian products with preservatives. That required special equip- ment to eliminate bacteria that could spoil the bars before the six months were up.
Although eliminating bacteria in the manufacturing process was crucial
to reaching the shelf life she wanted, Shifrina also learned that non-standard packaging would be needed.
“We use a three-layer package,”
she said. “It prevents light from penetrating, prolonging the shelf life.” For the first six months, BioFoodLab sold Bite only through online food
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stores in Russia. As word grew about the bars’ quality, and the marketing team learned more about selling
a healthy snack bar, the company switched to brick-and-mortar sales.
and also has the greatest potential for growing sales. Some of the
big Russian names selling Bite are the supermarket Perekrostok and specialty-foods chain Azbuka Vkusa.
“Russia’s edition of Forbes magazine named BioFoodLab its Startup of the Year in 2013”
This included health food stores, coffee- shop chains, department stores and other retailers, and the company went into profit after only eight months.
It has since added thousands of points of sale and some glittering names to its stable of distributers. The biggest name in Europe to date is Sainsbury’s, Britain’s second-largest supermarket chain. BioFoodLab has also cracked the difficult-to-penetrate Japanese market, selling bars through Rakuten, the country’s second-largest online retailer. And it has a toehold in
the United Arab Emirates too, where healthy ingredients are crucial to sales.
But the domestic market remains the biggest source of revenues
As Bite gained momentum, BioFood- Lab opened its own website with international delivery to market the bars in a model Russian media have favourably compared to the online sales vehicle created by Jessica Alba’s The Honest Company. It also promotes the bars on social media. But most
of its sales continue to be from brick- and-mortar locations, with more than 8,000 points of sale in Russia alone.
Consumers want wide food choices these days, so BioFoodLab started
with five Bite flavors, but is now up
to eleven, Shifrina said. It takes an old-fashioned, let’s-see-what-works approach to creating flavours, she said.
“We buy dried fruit, mix it in various