2022-06-11 11:11:50
“If we’re there this year, I swear I’ll tattoo the logo on my ass.”
Half a year later, Bernat Añaños has half-heartedly fulfilled his part of the bet. On the first day of the music festival’s two weekends, he answered the challenge with a photo from the bright yellow stand of Heura, the plant-based protein brand he co-founded in 2017 with Marc Coloma. With his pants slightly down, he showed his almost 200,000 followers on Instagram the smiley face of the Catalan brand printed on his left buttock. Warning: the tattoo was actually a sticker (like the ones they gave out at the event to those who came to taste the dishes made with Ivy). However, the co-founder of the company makes a solemn promise to ARA: the real thing will come soon.
This attitude ofhold the bucket for me is what you can breathe in a company that last year had a turnover of almost 18 million euros (double the previous year) and that in a few years has gone from 40 employees to a workforce of 150 people. “We started knowing that we were part of a movement and we always wanted to put the community at the center”, explains Añaños, who is mainly in charge of Heura’s marketing and communication areas, while Coloma centralizes operations and the relationship with investors. How does a company turn its consumers into fans (or at least how does it try)?
When the COP26 climate summit was held in Glasgow last November, Añaños had no doubt that his role as a guest speaker was to draw attention to the fact that an event on this topic served beef to the their restaurants “We like to speed up the debates, and the one about the impact of livestock farming is crucial”, he emphasizes. His provocative statements and advertising campaigns also cost him a lawsuit from meat organizations Interporc and Provacino. The origin of the judicial complaint was a canvas with which Heura had covered a building in the center of Madrid with the phrase “A meat hamburger pollutes more than your car”. The pig and beef entrepreneurs considered this statement to be “disloyal, misleading and derogatory”, but the judge dismissed the precautionary measures and the case did not go further. “It is politicizing a fact that should be controlled by the data”, Añaños reiterates.
Of these actions evangelizers, however, the one he remembers most fondly took place in a town of less than 600 inhabitants in the province of Toledo. The company set up with a table and a camera in the main square of Aldeanueva de Barbarroya. The neighbors who came to chat were allowed to taste Heura’s vegetable sausage, without telling them that it was not made with pork. “They were old people who told us that they had slaughtered pigs all their lives, but when they discovered they weren’t eating meat they liked it even more. They said that this way the doctor wouldn’t scold them for their cholesterol!”, says the co-founder of the with a laugh start-up. Añaños also highlights the symbolism of other events, such as the launch of new products with a large musical barbecue in Barcelona’s Plaça Monumental, “an icon of animal abuse turned into a 21st century party”.
To understand the extent to which Ivy has unleashed a phenomenon of around it, the brand even has a name to refer to its most loyal consumers. The good rebels (“good rebels”, in Catalan) have also had two opportunities to become investors in the vegetable protein brand. The company has launched two campaigns of crowd equity (a type of micro-funding where the reward is in shares) through the Crowdcube platform. With the latter, in the month of April, they got more than five million euros. They reached the first million in just half an hour and Añaños explains that they already have 9,000 of these small investors.
Roger is one of them. He tried Heura’s spiced strips for the first time at the end of 2019, when he was looking for substitutes to reduce his meat consumption. “I’ve tried all the ones on the market and with no other I’ve had the feeling so similar to consuming meat,” explains this 27-year-old programmer. In the first round he arrived late, but in the second he decided to invest 150 euros. “Because it is a company in which I trust a lot, which is close and listens to its users”, he says.
anyone post d’Heura on social networks is always accompanied by a long list of customer comments with requests for new products, tastes and formats. One of the most recurring even has its own petition on the Change.org platform, with more than 5,000 signatories. They are fans of the brand who are clamoring to make a plant-based version of the whip. “It is a dry product and finding a standard that achieves the texture is very complex”, confesses Añaños, who does not close the door to the possibility that his research and development laboratory – which consists of a kitchen inside the offices where a fifteen people – I ended up finding the ideal formula.
The other recurring demand among its die-hard fans has to do with pricing. “We have set out to reach price parity by 2025”, he continues. With this, the entrepreneur refers to the fact that hamburgers, the nuggets and Heura’s sausages come in line with the prices of their carnivorous competitors. The macro context, with skyrocketing inflation and the consequences on the cost of certain foods due to the war in Ukraine, does not make it easy at all. “We have assumed this price increase. We believe that these products need to be even more accessible”, he says. In fact, he considers it good news that for a few weeks Mercadona has expanded its range of vegan products from the Hacendado white brand with some “marinated morsels” that also imitate the texture and taste of chicken, like Heura’s.
The company had a turnover of 17 million euros last year and has a workforce of 150 workers
The co-founder, however, recognizes that this effort to build “a very solid community” also entails a responsibility for the company itself. “Now we can’t disappoint them”, he adds. He is aware that a company that clings to its values and the image of a socially responsible project like Heura must also mark certain “red lines”. “There are certain people with whom we will never collaborate”, he says without naming names. At the same time, the company must follow the logic of venture capital like any other start-up. In the operation of 16 million euros that they closed last year the food technology specialist fund Impact Fooding also entered, as well as the managers Unovis, Lever VC, Capital V and Green Monday. In addition, its investors include the co-founder of Glovo, Oscar Pierre, and footballers such as Sergi Roberto, Cesc Fàbregas, Saúl Ñíguez and Chris Smalling. “We don’t come here to be a bluff and sell ourselves in two days”, says Añaños.
Until the end of the year, Heura plans to launch five more products, between new categories and renewals of existing ones. He also wants to add about 30 workers (he will have to move to larger offices) and continue with international expansion now that his vegetable protein is already present in points of sale in 20 countries around the world. The agenda of Añaños gives some hints of the intense summer that awaits them. He has had little sleep because the night before the interview with ARA he landed in Barcelona from Milan, where the company organized a dinner free of animal derivatives during Milan Design Week. After some meetings, the day will end again at the Primavera Sound stand. The tour will continue the following week and until August with Sónar, Cruïlla and Arenal Sound. The entrepreneur says goodbye with a slogan: “Change is possible if you make it attractive”.
#Heuras #meatfree #gospel