Walking up and down the aisles at Natural Products Expo, you’ll see chia everywhere—in chips, granolas, beverages, cookies and bars. But it wasn’t always that way. When Janie Hoffman, the founder and CEO of Mamma Chia, founded the company in 2009, the superseed hadn’t yet gone mainstream.
Educating consumers is important, Hoffman said when explaining how to go about popularizing a new ingredient, but the first thing brands have to do is hook shoppers with taste.
“You have to be passionate about the ingredient, but at the end of the day, if your products don’t taste delicious, it’s really not going matter,” she says. “If you’ve got them on the taste, and then you have these great nutritionals behind it, then you’re able to educate them on the product.”
Oh, and don’t underestimate the power of presentation. See more of Hoffman’s insight in this video from Natural Products Expo East 2015.
