From The Winter 2004 Issue of Natural Grocery Buyer

Proteins Pack Profitable Punch

Information, imagination lead consumers down every aisle

Connie Guglielmo

The national obsession with weight control has led to an equally supersized fascination with low-carb diets—and low-carb products.

The latest eating regimens include plans prescribed by Dr. Robert Atkins; Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades in the Protein Power diet; the South Beach diet; and the Carbohydrate Addict’s diet, among others. The basic premise calls for dieters to drastically limit consumption of carbohydrates and increase their intake of high-protein, and in some cases, high-fat foods, such as eggs, nuts and meats. The industry has responded to these popular diet plans with thousands of offerings for low-carb devotees.

The Low Carb Connoisseur, an Anderson, S.C.-based retailer, was started in 1997 by entrepreneurs and self-proclaimed low-carbers Elaine Payne and Lynn Whitfield. The company caters to health-conscious consumers looking for low-carb foods. Today, the company carries 450 to 500 low-carb products in about 20 categories, including breakfast foods, baking and cooking products, pasta and pizza, chocolate and candy, protein bars, and crackers, breads and tortillas. Payne says she and her partner—and their employees, who develop low-carb recipes for use in their stores’ cafes—carefully check the products’ ingredients labels and try each to make sure tastes measure up to the Low Carb Connoisseur’s name.

Laying the foundation
Despite its specialization, the Low Carb Connoisseur does not carry fresh produce, dairy or meats. “The foundation of the diet is to be found around the perimeter of your grocery store—the produce, dairy and meat sections,” says Payne. “We help customers with shopping, menu planning and by providing the products that supplement that diet.”

For retailers trying to cater to low-carbers, providing information is one of the keys to success, says Kathie Wrick, a principal in the food, health and nutrition practice for TIAX LLC, a technology-assessment consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. “The issue for the natural food shoppers is that some of the products that market themselves as low carbohydrate might contain ingredients that are not recognized traditionally as natural,” says Wrick. “Science has taken some of Mother Nature’s natural ingredients and tweaked them. There are additives and synthetics that are tools food formulators use to create low-carb food. So for retailers, I would say the full disclosure to natural food shoppers needs to be made.”

That’s precisely the tack that natural foods supermarket chain Wild Oats is taking. Because many of the specially formulated low-carb products on the market are not natural, Wild Oats won’t carry them. But its management wants to help consumers find natural and organic foods that do fit in with their weight-management goals. “[We want] to help people who want to eat a balanced diet and not just survive on these bars and packaged foods,” says Sonja Tuitele, spokeswoman for the Boulder, Colo.-based chain. The company has begun placing signs on more than 700 products that have no more than 10 grams of carbohydrates per serving. Signs are appearing on meats, eggs, cheese, seafood, nuts and olives, to name a few. Tuitele notes that in The South Beach Diet, author Arthur Agatston, M.D., advises people to avoid processed foods. “He says to use whole grains, nuts, good vegetables, clean protein,” she says.

Of course, the signs at Wild Oats also point out packaged foods that do meet the chain’s ingredients standards. The stores also offer a “carb-conscious” shopping list as well as reviews of popular low-carb diets. The “carb-conscious” program is taking the guesswork out, Tuitele says. “Customers can grab the products knowing we’ve already read the labels for them.”

Based on diet plan recommendations, producers of high-protein foods are encouraging retailers to propel interest in low-carb foods into purchases of their products. “I think we are experiencing the very beginning of this trend,” says Jesse Laflamme, a member of the family that runs Monroe, N.H.-based Pete and Gerry’s Organics LLC.

“Consumers on this diet are health conscious, and are interested in and more willing to pay a higher price for premium organic and cage-free eggs like ours.”

Retailer awareness
To that end, Pete and Gerry’s is talking to retailers about the low-carb trend. “We are trying to make retailers aware that consumers are becoming more and more interested in organic and cage-free eggs, and that high-protein diets are accelerating this trend.”

Michael Cooper, chief executive officer of Meyer Natural Foods LLC, a beef producer that supplies all the hamburgers for the T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant chain, says TGIF has been pushing the Atkins diet in its advertising and promotional programs. Retailers, he says, should do the same.

Interest in eggs as part of a low-carb, high-protein diet drove egg prices to a 20-year high in December, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture

“I believe the low-carb, high-protein diet interest is here for real,” Cooper says. “As the nation addresses the overweight nature of our population, fueled by ready access to inexpensive food products and supersizing, there will be many paths to better health. The low-carb path will be in strong demand by a substantial enough segment of the population to attract more investment in the efficient production of beef [and other] proteins.”

He adds, “While not the only factor, we are betting our company’s future on continued growing demand for natural beef proteins.”

Connie Guglielmo is a free-lance writer and novelist in Los Altos, Calif.