Hampton Creek, the upstart maker of foods that incorporate plant proteins instead of eggs, has signed a deal that will significantly increase distribution of its products.
Foodbuy, which buys some $18 billion of food as the procurement arm of Compass Group, a food services company, has begun selling Hampton Creek’s Just Cookies, which are made without eggs, and will soon add Just Mayo to the products it sells to health care organizations, senior living groups, universities and other institutional food providers.
“Through this partnership, we’re tapping into this powerful, powerful infrastructure that determines what ends up on a lot of plates,” said Josh Tetrick, chief executive of Hampton Creek. “This extends the reach and impact of our products beyond anything we’ve done before.”
Hampton Creek’s products already can be found in several major grocery chains, where its Just Mayo, made without eggs, appears to have cut into sales of traditional mayonnaise. Unilever, maker of Hellman’s Mayonnaise, sued Hampton Creek, charging that the egg shape on Just Mayo’s label gave consumers the false impression that the product contained eggs.
The dispute drew even more attention to Hampton Creek’s products, and Unilever dropped the suit.
But Mr. Tetrick and others have long said that until restaurant chains and institutional food services begin using foods made from plant-based proteins into their menus, it would be difficult to make a dent in consumption of proteins derived from animals.
“We love being in Target and Walmart and Whole Foods,” he said, “but this is a world of head-turning scale, with flows of food through this system that are just enormous.”
Plant-based proteins have become something of a fad in Silicon Valley, attracting plate space and investment from the technocenti. Hampton Creek enjoys the support of Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Eduardo Saverin, one of the Facebook founders, among others, while Bill Gates and Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter, have invested in Beyond Meat, another plant-based protein company.
Both companies were founded as much out of a desire to mitigate the impact of animal husbandry on the environment and develop new sources of food to feed a growing population as they were out of a desire to improve nutrition.
That was one reason Foodbuy was interested in incorporating Hampton Creek’s products into its portfolio, said Tony Shearer, the procurement company’s chairman.
Mr. Shearer said his company had already taken steps to source more sustainable ingredients together with Bon Appétit, a food service and restaurant business under the Compass umbrella, buying things like cage-free eggs and seafoods that meet the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s standards aimed at preventing over-fishing.
“Those things are good, but at the end of the day, you’re just tweaking a traditional system that relies on a lot of animal protein,” he said.
Then Fedele Bauccio, one of Bon Appétit’s founders, introduced him to Mr. Tetrick, and he began to see a way to challenge that model.
Compass accounts for roughly one-third of Foodbuy’s business, Mr. Shearer said. Just Cookies, now being introduced, will become its standard cookie dough. Just Mayo will follow, and Foodbuy will offer both products to its institutional customers.
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