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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Outstanding Foods

Outstanding Foods Raises $10M Series A for its Plant-Based Pork Rinds and Puffs

Outstanding Foods, the company behind PigOut Pigless Pork Rinds, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by SternAegis Ventures, which previously led Outstanding Foods’ $5 million round of financing last July.

In addition to PigOut, Outstanding Foods recently launched the plant-based TakeOut Meal-In-A-Bag Puffs snacks. Coming in varieties such as “Pizza Partay” and “Hella Hot,” these puffs are non-GMO, gluten free, certified plant-based, soy-free and contain 21 grams of protein per bag. On its website, Outstanding Foods claims you can eat a bag as a meal. And while I do like their PigOut snacks, I’m not sure I’d serve myself a bag of “Chill Ranch” puffs for dinner anytime soon.

In today’s press announcement, Outstanding Foods said it will use the new funding to expand its retail footprint and its direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing efforts. Outstanding was part of the CPG D2C boom we saw last year, in which PepsiCo, Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and a host of smaller snack brands all made their products available for direct sale to consumers.

Launching D2C sales channels made a lot of sense in 2020 as the pandemic spurred on both initial panic buying (causing empty shelves at local stores) and had people minimizing any trips outside their homes. The pandemic also had us craving snack foods, so the ability to get them delivered to our door was a smart play that not only generated revenue for brands, but also allowed brands to fully own the customer relationship and data.

But Outstanding isn’t putting all its pigless pork rinds in one online basket, the company’s snacks are currently available in real world stores such as Walmart, Kroger, Whole Foods and southwest 7-11 locations.

Plant-Based Pork Rinds, Upcycled Cookies and Potato Nacho Cheese: The Best Alt. Snacks I’ve Tasted

I don’t want to brag, but being stuck at home for the past five months, I’ve become pretty good at snacking. Too good at snacking, judging from my most recent trip to the scale.

So when both Outstanding Foods and Startup CPG recently asked if I wanted to try out their wares — well, who am I to turn down free snacks sent to my door?

Outstanding makes Pig Out, the plant-based pork rinds. What’s funny to me is that when I’ve mentioned them to other people, they wrinkle their nose in befuddlement and are hesitant to try them. As if gluten-free, non-GMO, soy-free, vegan and certified kosher rinds made mostly from rice, sunflower oil and pea protein is grosser than rinds made from deep-fried pig skin.

Anyhoo.

Pig Out rinds come in flavors like Original, Hella Hot, Texas BBQ and Nacho Cheese. While the main taste is salty, they are delicious! My wife in particular was hooked on the Hella Hot flavor, lamenting that left to her own devices, she could eat the entire bag. (I could too.)

Meanwhile, Startup CPG is a service that connects emerging CPG brands with each other and investors. The company sent me 25 different products to try out, and these are the ones you should hunt and chow down as soon as you can:

  • 12 Tides seaweed snacks. Delicious puffs of organic kelp that are light, airy and satisfying. Plus the packaging it totally compostable.
  • Loca plant based nacho sauce. This potato-based cheese spread is akin to the “cheese” you find in a convenience store. I’m not going to lie — it smells to high heaven, but tastes devilishly good!
  • Renewal Mill chocolate chip cookies. Made from upcycled okara flour, these cookies are soft and chewy and a perfect sweet treat in the afternoon.
  • Kween Granola Butter. A spreadable granola with a lovely cinnamon tinge to it. My only complaint is the texture is a little gritty, but it is a nice sweet counterbalance to the saltiness of a Wheat Thin.
  • Jack and Tom jerky. I’m not usually a fan of jackfruit, but prepared and dried in this fashion, this is a great vegan alternative to meat jerky, and the spiciness is powerful, yet playful.

The sad part is that most of these snacks are more expensive than your standard CPG brands. But they are probably better for you (in moderation) and definitely better for the planet. Plus, most of these plant-based alternatives are just getting off the ground now and haven’t scaled up production to bring down prices yet.

But, since it looks like lockdowns won’t be ending anytime soon, it might be high time to invest a little more in your snack game.

Outstanding Foods Raised $5M for Plant-based Pork Rinds

Snack company Outstanding Foods announced yesterday that it has raised a $5 million round of funding led by SternAegis Ventures.

Outstanding currently makes Pig Out, a plant-based “pigless pork rinds,” in flavors like “Hella Hot,” “Nacho Cheese,” and “Texas BBQ.” The rinds are gluten-free, non-GMO, soy-free, vegan and certified kosher. The main ingredients in the rinds are rice, sunflower oil and pea protein, with a bunch of spices thrown in.

This funding round comes at a good time for Outstanding Foods, which sits at the nexus of a few trends happening right now. First, Outstanding is creating a plant-based alternative to an animal product at a time when sales of plant-based food are taking off, so there is definitely a receptive market for pigless pork rinds.

Second, this pandemic has driven people to stock up on snacks. The NPD Group recently found that snack food consumption is up 8 percent during this time of COVID as we all look for comfort foods.

Finally, while Pig Out is available in select stores, Outstanding also sells directly to consumers via its website. This is an increasingly common tactic for nascent food brands that are able to create a direct relationship with consumers through a variety of online channels like Twitter and Instagram. Magic Spoon cereal is only available online and Impossible Foods recently launched its own D2C channel.

The only issue for Outstanding Foods might be if its pigless pork rinds taste too much like the real thing. While this verisimilitude may appeal to flexitarians, the more ardent vegan and vegetarian community may be turned off by this realism, having given up meat and pork for a reason. Plus, just because something is plant-based doesn’t make it healthy — there’s still plenty of processing that goes into making these treats.

Regardless, with $5 million in fresh funding in the bank, now is the time for Outstanding to, err, pig out on its expansion plans.