Modern Plant Based Foods (MEAT.C) sold out their kitskitchen soup 14-pack within a day of being listed on the Costco website.
kitskitchen is one of the subsidiaries of Modern Plant, and their key offering is plant-based soups with natural organic ingredients that are free of dairy, wheat, preservatives and additives. This indicates two things: first, the obvious, that getting products on shelves with a big box retailer like Costco leads to fat returns, and secondly that there’s a growing interest in Modern Plant Based Foods in the ready-made soup market.
“The kitskitchen Costco launch went exceptionally well and we are extremely proud of how the well soups were received by Costco members. We are committed to growing our brand across all channels and the partnership with a global powerhouse like Costco allows consumers anywhere in Canada to purchase our plant-based soups and have them delivered directly to their homes. We hope to expand our partnership with Costco with more products in the coming future and this opportunity opens up accessibility to our delicious soups allowing more households to buy our products and we’re excited to satisfy the growing demand,” said Joni Berg, co-founder and CEO of kitskitchen Health Foods.
Modern Plant Based Foods is a Vancouver-based Canadian food company offering plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy. They also offer soups and vegan snacks, with their offerings showing up in restaurants and retailers across Cnaada, including their own Modern Wellness Bars located here in Vancouver.
These guys understand that no matter how good your product is, or how in demand, you’ll eventually need to find a way to cast a wide net to bring in as many customers as you can. That means getting products on shelves in the places where people go. For medical weed, that’s Shopper’s Drug Mart. For game developers, that’s the app store on one of the major phone brands, and for something like gourmet vegetable soup, that’s somewhere like Costco.
Costco was one of the only places open during the pandemic, and while it’s weird to think of a big box retailer as being a hub of social interaction, that’s basically what most of the big box stores turned into. They were the places we went to be among people, but not with them. As such, these stores did exceptionally well, while others that may be considered decidedly less essential, such as the average Mom and Pop grocery, did not. That’s hardly fair, but sometimes what’s sensible isn’t fair. Given that we’re circling COVID-19 Delta variant edition, and potentially another eight to ten months trolling the aisles at Walmart (or Costco) for toilet paper, it’s not a bad bet for Modern Plant Food Based to get their products on shelves there.
“We are pleased that our products have sold out at Costco in less than 24 hours of listing. This shows the obvious excitement and demand for our soups. Our company is transitioning from a niche product supplier to a global food product server. In recent months we have secured significant partnerships and shelf space with some of the leading grocers and distributors in the food industry. As we continue our transformation of becoming a mainstay on shelves, we will be looking at adding more brands and innovative products to join our existing line of non-GMO plant-based products,” said Tara Haddad, Founder of Modern Plant Based Foods.
Modern Plant is up three cents and presently trading at $2.25.
—Joseph Morton