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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Alltown Fresh is Revamping the Convenience Store with Kombucha and Avocado Toast

Pull into any gas station to fill up and grab a snack, and chances are your options will be potato chips, sugary sodas, and one of those hot dogs shriveling under a heat lamp.

Unless, that is, you’re near Plymouth, MA. Around there, you can swing by Alltown Fresh, a fancified convenience store which opened in January of this year and offers high-quality coffee, kombucha on tap, house-made healthy food and smoothies, WiFi, and even a small selection of groceries.

Oh yeah, and you can fill up your car, too. Alltown Fresh’s parent company is Global Partners, a fuel company that owns and supplies roughly 1,000 gas stations throughout the Northeastern U.S. But Alltown Fresh doesn’t position itself as a gas station that happens to have pretty good food. “We want to flip that paradigm,” Alltown Fresh’s SVP of Retail Operations Ryan Riggs told me over the phone. They want their store to be a place you seek out for its food and beverage options first, and to fill up on gas second (or not at all).

Yes, there are already gas station convenience stores with QSR’s like Subways or Dairy Queen’s attached, but Alltown Fresh’s offerings — with greens-filled smoothies, Moroccan chickpea bowls, and quinoa porridge — are next-level healthy. But for those who are loyal to their road trip junk food, don’t fear. “You can still get your Snicker’s,” Riggs told me. The unhealthy food just won’t be the only option.

Choice and customization are key to Alltown Fresh’s business plan. Customers order fresh food on a kiosk touchscreen inside the convenience store, and can even customize toppings and sizes. The store also has a limited selection of groceries like dry pasta and tomato sauce, as well as a bulk section where people can stock up on nuts and grains. In future, it would be a smart play to add meal kits to the mix so commuters could stop by and swipe a kit for dinner along with their cold brew or smoothie. Alltown Fresh also has grab-and-go options like bowls and sandwiches ready for quick purchases.

The prices are higher than typical gas station fare, but for what you’re getting, they’re actually pretty good. The Green Smash (avocado, chia and pumpkin seeds on toast) is $6, and a Chili Chicken grain bowl is $13, and a small latté is $2. Considering that a latté from Starbuck’s can set you back about five bucks at this point, that’s a steal.

The company is also prioritizing plastic-free packaging, and uses chiefly recyclable, biodegradable options for the prepared food section. Obviously it’s a lot harder to get rid of plastic when it comes to the brands on Alltown Fresh’s shelves, especially when a lot of them are packaged snacks and bottled beverages, but Riggs said that they were trying to offer as many plastic-free options as possible.

As someone who has been on her fair share of road trips and often ends up subsisting off of diet soda and Cheez-Itz, I think Alltown Fresh has hit on a great concept. The store combines a few trends we’re seeing in consumer dining preferences: personalization, healthy food, and, above all, convenience, in a way I haven’t seen before. The closest comparison I can make is The Goods Mart in L.A., which is also trying to redefine convenience stores as sustainable and healthy — but they’re more bodega than gas station stop.

Riggs told me that they’re hoping to open more Alltown Fresh locations in 2019 and 2020, all of which will be in New England. Now if they could just make it to Seattle so I can fuel up on more than just a bag of sour cream & onion chips on my next road trip, it would be much appreciated.

Eat Your Veggies: Frecious Spreads into U.S. with Squeezable Plant-based Purées

Food companies are always looking for new ways to make healthy things taste as good as non-healthy things: pasta made of chickpeas, coffee full of vitamins, meat made out of lentils.

That’s exactly what Noemie Delfassy hopes to do with Frecious, the Swiss startup that turns vegetables into creamy whipped spreads. She got the idea for the company when she was an overworked young professional looking for nutritious, freshly-made food that took little-to-no time to make.

“I wanted to make something that got its luscious, creamy texture from veggies and nuts, not animal fat,” she told me over the phone. So she blitzed together fresh produce with sprouted nuts to make an airy spread, and Frecious was born.

In 2014 she started sharing her creation in her home of Geneva, Switzerland and soon had chefs calling her to ask for her tarragon cream or whipped zucchini. “It’s amazing how fast news travels when you have a unique product,” she said.

Delfassy’s first big break was when Poilane, the lauded French bread company, purchased her vegetable creams to spread on their open-faced sandwiches. Soon she was selling to hospitals, schools, cafeterias, and fast-casual establishments throughout Europe.

Now, Delfassy is preparing to launch Frecious in the U.S. “There’s more of an ecosystem for food innovation here,” she said. “Consumers are much more hungry and open to new foods, as opposed to Europe where they’re more traditional.”

Frecious will move both its office and production facilities to the U.S., though Delfassy said they would continue production and sales in Europe. She plans to launch the company by Q1 of 2019 out of Los Angeles, selling Frecious spreads in single-serve packs which can either be used for meal prep or eaten on their own.

Delfassy is currently exploring retail channels for her product, but told me that it could be available everywhere from restaurant wholesale to grocery retailers to grab-and-go spots in coffee shops, gyms, and offices. She didn’t reveal pricing information, but said that each single-serving pack would cost something between a candy bar and a fresh smoothie.

An array of Frecious puréesi

As of now, the Frecious team is just Delfassy, a couple freelancers doing marketing, and a small production crew. The company has raised some funding from European investors, though Delfassy wouldn’t disclose how much.

Frecious participated in the first edition of the European PepsiCo Nutrition Greenhouse accelerator last year. Big Food companies are seeking out smaller startups with trendy products to add to their CPG lineup.

Though Delfassy didn’t indicate that she has any plans to sell Frecious, it seems like it would be a great fit for PepsiCo’s portfolio. The spreads are healthy, snackable, and plant-based, rolling together three growing consumer trends. I could see them being a big hit with time-squeezed millennials, especially ones who are health-conscious and looking to eat more vegetables.

Delfassy’s choice to start in L.A. is also smart. The city is known for its penchant for wellness and its slavish obsession with trends, and Frecious ticks both of those boxes.

Several companies are also trying to create easier, tasty ways for consumers to eat their vegetables. Supermarket shelves offer chips made of sweet potatoes and kale, or pizza with a cauliflower crust. Kencko makes powdered produce that people can mix with water in order to drink their fruits and vegetables.

It’s too soon to tell if Frecious will whip up excitement for their creamy vegan spreads in the U.S. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they were successful in helping people eat their veggies.