The all-natural, environmentally conscious mindset remains on the rise as Red Gold, the largest family-owned tomato company in the world, is adding plant-based alternatives to their line of products, as consumer demand is soaring.
David Halt, vice president of Red Gold, discussed the demographics surrounding the need for healthier alternatives to condiments and sauces that normally contain meat. “Most of the research is saying that it’s not vegans, it’s flexitarians, people who are just making the conscientious decision to eat less meat,” Halt said.
Flexitarians see the value in cutting back on meat, whether for environmental, health, or social reasons, and want products that help them maintain their lifestyle. Red Gold is offering that exact solution by launching their brand-new, plant-based Italian sausage, and Bolognese pasta sauces. Both sauces were a part of Red Gold’s new initiative, ‘Plant-Based 3.0,’ their approach to catering towards wider audiences. Plant-based 3.0 combines natural products like tomato sauce with a plant-based protein, to produce an item that looks and tastes familiar, but doesn’t have the same drawbacks as conventional meat.
“We’ve taken vegetables and added them for the first time to plant based proteins,” Halt explained.
The first generation was plant-based burgers, plant-based 2.0 was chicken and seafood substitutes. 3.0 was the next step in the evolution for consumers because they’re already familiar with what tomato sauce normally is, so the experimentation was not so far out of their comfort zone.
Red Gold, like most companies, had to expand their inventory and think outside the box after the pandemic. Both the foodservice and retail side of the industry were affected when in-person dining came to a stop. Takeout and delivery were, “absolutely the biggest change [to the industry],” according to Halt. “Tabletop bottle-ketchup, self-serve condiment stations, all of that business disappeared.”
Portion control became the most important factor to businesses regarding the sale of Red Gold’s products. In a world where the social aspect of dining disappeared, restaurants had to begin training their employees on how to give out the right quantity of condiments, —a hot commodity during the pandemic— without overusing their resources or taking a financial loss. With more of an emphasis on portion control, ketchup packets and dunk-cups had skyrocketed in value for the foodservice industry. Red Gold had to start producing multiple sizes for to-go cups, in keeping with those trends.
While restrictions have been loosening up, there has been a steady mix of pre-Covid and mid-pandemic practices moving forward. “We’ve invested a higher capacity in portion control cups; bottles and dispensers have come back, but they’re not going to come all the way back to 2019 levels,” Halt said.
He noted that the return of ketchup bottles back to tabletops tends to vary geographically. There are shifts in terms of behavior according to different restaurants, their practices, and regulations in their area.
While the conventional processes may never return to the way they once were, 3rd party delivery systems have also had an impact on dining operations. Though they have become a regular feature throughout the past few years, they have also gained a reputation for encroaching upon small restaurants’ profits. Having the right mixture of maintaining quality while food is delivered, and steady profit margins are key for small businesses to allow for 3rd party delivery systems, without having them eat away at more profits than can be afforded.
“Until that [profit loss from delivery services] becomes a little more reasonable, or more transparent to the people buying the product, more restaurants will be willing to sustain it,” Halt said.
Being in both the retail and foodservice businesses, Red Gold has a unique perspective in terms of how America eats. They develop specialty brands; produce corporate distributors’ private labels; support their own brand; and provide for schools and universities, with that, there is a lot that can be done with the new portion control options and plant-based innovations. Moving forward, a strong prediction for plant-based 4.0 may be for foods that had never been on a regular palate before, made from alternative sources, items that customers would have to adapt to like jerk and fruity flavors.
Operators or distributors seeking more information or samples of Red Gold’s new Flexatarian condiment solution can find it at the Red Gold Foods website. Once again, Red Gold continues to in the listen to the needs of the operator and distributors that support them to create quality and cost-effective solutions.
