June 2021

Ensure the right problem is being solved and then solving it in the best way possible.

“We had ambitions to scale our table fish business. However, it became apparent a key constraint was the reliable supply of high-quality fingerlings (baby fish). 

It occurred to us that this constraint was not just particular to MainStream but was shared by every other Barramundi company on the planet. 

We needed to further investigate both the industry itself and the end consumer to inform our strategy.”

Make sure you understand the needs, wants and desires of your customer or end-user at the deepest level possible to ensure you are solving their unmet needs.

“We conducted extensive consumer and trade research. We did this on two levels, both directly as a business but also through framing research questions at an association and industry level with the Australian Barramundi Farmers Association (ABFA).

Consumers told us that sustainable farming practices with no antibiotics or hormones was important – ultimately giving the market a better-quality product than what was imported. They wanted a safe and trusted seafood offering. They wanted to know that it came from a locally domiciled, sustainable producer of premium seafood. But what we heard the most, was the desire for more consistent product quality. 

With FIAL’s help, the trade research we were able to perform through ABFA – whose members collectively account for over 90% of production – revealed structural supply chain issues and inconsistent quality standards across farms. 

It also revealed that Australian Barramundi was being undercut by imported products, misrepresented as Australian origin. 

It’s not about protectionism. The industry is comfortable with half-price product sourced from Southeast Asia so long as it is recognised as imported product. It simply isn’t the same as premium Australian grown Barramundi, which at its best is recognised as being right up there with the best eating fish in the world.”

Generate innovative ideas to help solve those needs and desires. Take the best idea and pursue further to find the most feasible for the company, most viable commercially and most desirable to the customer.

“We had to think of a way of restructuring the supply chain. What if we grew our own improved fingerlings? That would enhance not only our own product consistency, but we could sell them to the wider industry, and not just here in Australia but to overseas markets too.  

It would be a way to differentiate the product and drive consumer trust and demand for Australian-made across the board.”

Take the best idea and turn it into a realistic outcome so that it can be tested and critiqued so that any flaws can be identified and re-designed. The final prototype is tested and validated.

“We checked in with our customers throughout our business journey. Whether from a supply chain perspective – shortening that supply chain to provide a fresher product, from a packaging or a branding perspective, or even to the extent of how we harvested and despatched our product to maximise quality. We’ve received feedback from our customers, and along the journey we’ve responded.

With the fingerlings, we undertook – and still undertake – continuous stock improvement. Through genetic selection and various stock improvement methodologies we provide what the market wants. Our fish are a lot more rotund and whiter because what we hear from the market is that they prefer a thicker wagyu type fillet cut with a lighter flesh colour. We improve these traits with our selective breeding program.”

Use what we have learned about the customer to inform how we proceed.

We had no aspirations to be a supplier of seed stock or fingerlings when we started out on this journey.  Our ambitions were with scaling our table fish business.  But now we knew that it made sense to start a breeding program. We could control the quality and consistency to our own farms, as well as to the rest of the industry.

It was a gamble, but it paid off. It took less than three years for us to become by far the world’s biggest supplier of fingerlings.

We recruited people to come into the business from other sectors, to bring a wider experience. In fact, almost all of our senior executives have come from outside of the aquaculture industry.

We commissioned a branding and creative agency, going through a very comprehensive process to arrive at the right brand name, the brand portfolio, and then all the brand assets across numerous touchpoints. 

By understanding what the consumer needed we realised we needed to disintermediate our supply chain. We implemented a forward integration of our business into processing and packaging and relationships with our distributors that was more strategic instead of transactional – explaining the size of the prize and their role in helping achieve that means.

We now have the capacity to scale without being reliant on third party providers in hatcheries, production, processing and distribution.

It also means we now have a much greater connectivity with trade – the restaurants and retailers buying our product, as well as the end consumer through our online business. This allows us to have much stronger relationships and easier feedback loops. 

Collaborating with others in the industry through the Australian Barramundi Farmers Association (ABFA) was critical to our success. With FIAL’s assistance, we collectively commenced an ambitious program of provenance testing (through chemical evaluation of the product) and implemented a national quality framework.

We’ve had a long-standing collaboration with a number of universities including RMIT, James Cook University, University of Melbourne and Deakin. Mainly, we have needed their expertise with breeding, to make sure we get the profile of fish that the market wants.

We have also undertaken considerable research into Golden Barramundi. A rare genetic mutation, it occurs naturally in 1 in 8 million fish. We have sought to identify the molecular markers that lead to the phenotypes and the golden characteristic.

We are now at 1 in 20. This could be a game changer. It’s a highly differentiated, bright white fleshed premium fish that could offer the market something entirely new.

We sit it on the nexus of advanced manufacturing and agriculture. Deep consumer insight and market demand has driven our capital investment. 

This technology is supported by the development and implementation of our own proprietary enterprise management system, built over multiple years and specifically designed for complex aquaculture operations.  

Our consumer demands sustainable practices, but it’s a core part of who we are too. 

By eating our Barramundi, they are saving the oceans one fish at a time. 

With existing forecasts for per capita consumption of fish due to population growth and changing diets, the aquaculture industry will need to triple in size by 2050! 

We operate on a zero net discharge basis, meaning that when we’re using water from the surrounding environment, we discharge that water as clean as it came into our farm. 

We also don’t waste our waste! We commissioned James Cook University to complete analysis on the compositional profile of our waste to determine whether it would be a suitable fertiliser. Unsurprisingly to us it’s a wonderful organic fertiliser. Our waste also ends up in pet products.

Consumer insight brought clarity on what the product needed to be – a highly consistent fish, with firm, white succulent flesh and mild flavour. 

Due to our rapid distribution channels and short supply chain, we can have Sashimi grade fish from farm to plate within hours. Just what the customer ordered!

We can also prove that it is Australian, sustainably produced, premium seafood, worthy of a premium price point. 

This has built valuable brand equity and fostered growth – for us, as well as the domestic premium Australian Barramundi market.”

“My partner, chef Shaun Quade and I, felt that existing dairy alternatives to cheese tasted terrible!

Research also told us that those cheeses were made from only two formulations, either from nuts or coconut oil. Expensive to produce, not environmentally sustainable or allergen-friendly, these two formulations had been used for years. The category was ripe for innovation.

We thought that if we could create an insanely tasty cheese out of plants, that would appeal to everyday people (not just a small audience of vegans) they will happily buy it as an alternative. That’s a much larger consumer base to build a business around plus we wanted to rather aggressively avoid targeting vegans as vegan cheese has a terrible reputation. If we were to have any success at all, we simply couldn’t be put into that category.

If we could make it from ingredients close to the source of production – not importing whatever is cheapest or easiest, and upcycle food waste, even better. We could genuinely shift consumer behaviour in a meaningful way.

After a lot of experimentation in our kitchen, we felt we had a formulation that worked – fermented ‘imperfect’ cauliflower and hemp. Now we just had to turn it into a product!”

Make sure you understand the needs, wants and desires of your customer or end-user at the deepest level possible to ensure you are solving their unmet needs.

“I’m a behavioural economist by background, I also ran my own marketing agency in the Food and Beverage Sector, so I had my finger on the pulse of consumer insight and trends. 

From extensive research, I knew that the market for plant-based food was going to explode at some point. Veganism was already popular, maybe not mainstream, but it was clear what direction the industry was heading. I think that businesses that aren’t looking in that direction are soon going to get left behind. It’s the exact same with sustainability. So, there was no point us using ingredients that we already knew were not eco-friendly – nuts for instance. It’s just not environmentally sound or business resilient. 

Research also revealed where the biggest market would be – the US. California, specifically, was the epicentre of all things plant-based. Not only was there a receptive market there, but there was also a large pool of investors.

Independently to my research, Shaun was telling me about the customers coming into his restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney with an increasing number of special dietary requests. This wasn’t always easy for the restaurant to manage, juggling different iterations of every menu item and it certainly wasn’t much fun for the customer. It got us thinking that if there was one foolproof option, it would help the restaurant as well as the customer.   

I should mention that this research doesn’t ever stop. We are always updating our audience personas. We update them about every two months. In this space, trends are moving so quickly, and people are changing their tastes and preferences so rapidly, it’s critical to stay on top and respond accordingly.”

Generate innovative ideas to help solve those needs and desires. Take the best idea and pursue further to find the most feasible for the company, most viable commercially and most desirable to the customer.

“Shaun is an R&D wizard, known for delighting customer’s senses with unusual ingredients in his restaurants! He tried all sorts of combinations of ingredients.

It was after serving up a cauliflower dish and seeing all the leaves and stems and bruised bits going to waste that he started to experiment with it and try out different fermentation techniques. 

Not to use the active ingredient to make our customers high, but to see if we could use hemp waste in any way, as well as give our brand an appealing edge. 

With FIAL’s help, we were chosen as one of six Australian-based start-ups in the Seeds of Change Accelerator (a partnership with FIAL and MARS Food Australia) to fast-track the growth of innovative food-focused businesses.

We got some key help thinking through how to design our business model, what channels of distribution we were going to go after, how we were going to grow and getting the right mentors around legal advice and strategy. It was really pivotal.

Within two months of being in the Accelerator program, we had attracted our first round of venture capital, and had moved to the US to commercialise the concept.”

Take the best idea and turn it into a realistic outcome so that it can be tested and critiqued so that any flaws can be identified and re-designed. The final prototype is tested and validated.

“Shaun tested out the cheese on discerning restaurant customers. He was watching their expressions, getting immediate feedback and tweaking the formulation multiple times. This is how we arrived at the final formulation of fermented ‘imperfect’ cauliflower and hemp. The process was very iterative.  

We were lucky that restaurant environments generally have an international clientele, so we could try it out with visiting Americans. As we had identified that market as key, we were heartened to get such a great response.  

As part of our day jobs, we also took part in some pop-up dining events in the US backed by Tourism Australia.

By that time, we had multiple cheese products – around 35. We had butters, creams etc and we could try them all out and see what resonated. 

We talk to our customers constantly. One of the benefits of being a start-up, is that we enjoy a close relationship with our customers. After we launch a new product, we contact them personally, not through some e-mail marketing campaign. They are happy to tell us how it was received, if the packaging was ok, or if there was anything we could have done better.”

Use what we have learned about the customer to inform how we proceed.

We’re the first commercial plant-based cheese brand that’s using cauliflower and hemp as the basis of our products. Based on consumer feedback, we launched initially with three products: Hemp Seed Goat Cheese, Hemp Seed Cream Cheese and our Cheese free Cheese sauce. We have managed to crack the flavour of the product so that it is in no way a compromise compared to real cheese. It simply wouldn’t have appealed to the market, as much as it has.

Initially, we launched direct to consumer in the US, but this was a marketing play, simply to build brand awareness. Now we are also selling to retailers across the US with a view to opening up food service in the future – once the restaurant trade is more secure post-COVID.  

We have patented our product in the US, and we’ve already extended our patent and trademark into the EU, Australia and Canada.

We knew our business model needed to reflect the values of our customer and market. We designed a model that replicates the manufacturing process in the markets that we’re selling the products, hiring local workers and using ingredients from that geography. 

We have been extremely structured and strategic in how we’ve built the brand. We worked out very quickly that we had to avoid the vegan audience in our branding and messaging. It’s really important to us that we get traction with a broader audience first, of just everyday people that are just interested in trying something that is novel, that is healthier for them, that’s more sustainable and avoid being pigeonholed as just yet another vegan product. We’re doing something wildly different, and it was important that this was communicated through our brand identity and all brand touchpoints, our packaging design, and our digital channels for example.

Our visual identity is sleek and sharp, it has a minimalist aesthetic of black and white. Just like the high-end restaurant that it was borne from, it needed to exude luxury and differentiation – it couldn’t be the basic, tree-hugging stuff of other brands. We knew this would appeal more to the audience.   

We have very strict rules around the photography and styling of our products and the tone of voice to use in marketing.

We have 100% local supply chain. It’s important to our customers, plus it’s just the right thing to do. 90% of cauliflower in the US market is grown here in California, and of course there is a sizeable trade in hemp. 

This has become ever more important to us since COVID-19 as we saw others struggle with their supply chains where even one link missing caused major issues for the whole chain. We definitely see the benefit of building as local a supply chain as possible, with local co-manufacturing, local workers and so on. 

At the moment, it is actually more difficult and expensive for us to source imperfect produce from farmers. The infrastructure is not properly there yet, but we do it anyway, because that’s part of our commitment as a company. 

We’re comfortable with change. If we need to design and redesign our systems and processes to achieve a better outcome, then we will. 

There was no manufacturing facility in the world that could do what we needed it to do, because no one’s ever done a product like this! If we were just another plant-based cheese company doing one of those tried-and-true nut or coconut oil formulations, we would have been fine. But we weren’t, we had to create something entirely new! 

We use a co-packing facility, but we needed to buy and custom design the equipment we needed that would give us the taste and texture profile that our customer expected. Our last funding round helped us with this. Shaun didn’t have to change his kitchen bench top recipes, they worked at scale, which is extraordinary!

We’re very conscious of the overall environmental footprint we make in producing Grounded products. This aligns with our consumer’s values too. For that reason, exporting our products to the other side of the world just doesn’t make sense right now. But here in the US where we sell online, we work hard to provide the most sustainable packaging solutions. We use recycled and recyclable carboard boxes. We use recyclable plastic for our tubs and pouches, but we’d really rather not use it at all. Unfortunately, options are limited right now for wet food-safe alternatives. 

Our ice packs that are packed with the cheese to keep it cool contain a biodegradable, nitrogen-based gel that doubles as plant food. And depending on a customer’s location we have to use different types of insulation, like RenewLiner. It is PET plastic sourced from 100% recycled plastic water bottles. It’s been recognised by the Cold Chain Global Forum as one of the most sustainable, temperature-controlled packaging materials available. Which is basically like winning an Oscar for cold chain logistics.

Overall, we believe that plant-based dairy alternatives are key to building a more sustainable and secure food supply chain for future generations. We choose not to use nuts in our products because they’re extremely resource-intensive to process (and use far too much water). Cauliflower scraps and hemp, on the other hand, are far more environmentally resilient. 

The future of dairy is completely unsustainable. The amount of water and environmental resources needed to manufacture dairy cheese is ridiculous and from an economic perspective, small-scale farmers don’t get compensated fairly for their efforts. The entire system is archaic and inefficient.

We’ve set out to change that, and our consumers feel the same too.”