Client Spotlight – Spoon Cereals
Award-Winning Small Batch Nutritious Breakfast Cereals
- August 5, 2024
- 10:47 am
" It’s been a dream using NutriCalc for NPD. By developing then taste testing different formulations, we can find the perfect nutrition & taste combination... ...It's significantly streamlined our process, saving us considerable time & effort. "
Spoon Cereals, an award-winning breakfast cereals producer, have found NutriCalc®’s ability to design recipes that deliver on nutrition goals, product claims, & HFSS compliance, a winning formula.
We spoke to Spoon Cereal’s Operations & Product Manager, Sophie Hall.
Tell us about your business?
Spoon Cereals are a UK-based breakfast company that were founded with the mission to make breakfast better. Better tasting, better for you, better for the planet. We are passionate about creating sustainably produced granolas that don’t compromise on taste or nutritional value. We use quality, good for you ingredients baked in small batches, which means fresher granola and less waste.
Spoon is the brainchild of sister and brother-in-law, Annie Morris and Jonny Shimmin. Inspired by Annie’s healthy addiction to a bowl of cereal at all times of the day, in 2013 they decided to sell their fresh homemade bowls of cereal to busy and hungry commuters from their pop-up cereal bar.
After pitching to high profile investors on the BBC TV programme Dragons’ Den, longtime Dragons, Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones saw potential in the brand’s vision and have been a significant part of Spoon’s business journey.
As a socially and environmentally conscious company, here at Spoon we are committed to becoming B Corp certified in 2024.
Tell us about your product range?
Our most popular granola variety is the 2* Great Taste award-winning Cinnamon + Pecan flavour. However, our newest addition, Peanut Butter Granola, developed in collaboration with ManiLife Peanut Butter, is quickly catching up and has recently also received a Great Taste award! Our range also includes Almond + Almond Butter, and Low Sugar options.
We also have some exciting new recipes in the pipeline for launch later this year. For example, we have developed a porridge which is based on circular farming principles, and were very lucky to be awarded a grant from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to support this. We are also in the process of developing our NOOPS range of naturally tasty, high fibre, low sugar cereal.
Who is your customer base?
Spoon have gained a loyal customer base, gradually expanding our presence in top retail stores and online suppliers nationwide and across Europe. Major supermarkets and independent stockists include Waitrose, Ocado, Morrisons, and Migros (in Switzerland).
Alongside major online stockists, Spoon’s online shop supplies direct to end consumers.
Why did you decide to use NutriCalc?
When looking at nutrition calculation software, we found the layout of NutriCalc to be very user-friendly, plus the software has lots of ingredients in the system already. This allows us to get a quick view of a recipe before adding our own personalised nutrition information and costs.
Also, as a small team, it is great to have the amazing customer service that NutriCalc offers if we ever need anything.
How has NutriCalc benefitted your business?
Using NutriCalc has significantly streamlined our process. We can input all our ingredients from various suppliers and utilise this data to plan our NPD.
It has proven to be extremely beneficial for NPD work, allowing us to swiftly calculate factory recipe specifications and develop multiple iterations of the same base recipe with slight variations. We then taste test all recipe formulations to find the perfect nutrition and taste combination.
Additionally, NutriCalc helps us to cost engineer recipes, ensure they’re HFSS compliant for supermarkets, and calculate how much of each ingredient is needed for front and back of pack claims on our product packaging.
This essential tool has saved us a considerable amount of time and effort!
How have you found NutriCalc’s customer support?
We have found the customer support to be amazing. Whenever we have needed it, our phone calls have been answered extremely quickly and our questions are always answered accurately.
Why did you choose NutriCalc’s Premium-tier plan?
We chose the Premium plan to access NutriCalc’s HFSS Scoring and Product Claims reports, as these are the primary features we use it for – they have been incredibly beneficial for us!
For more information on Spoon Cereals, visit: www.spooncereals.co.uk