An internal accelerator at General Mills introduces a dairy brand without animal testing.
Under the Bold Cultr brand, General Mills, Inc. is making a foray into the dairy industry without using any animals. The brand was created by co-founders Illeme Amegatcher, Laura Engstrom, and Drake Ellingboe using G-Works, the company’s in-house accelerator. Its first offering is a plain-tasting cream cheese substitute manufactured with precisely fermented milk proteins. The product contains pea protein, palm oil, cultures, starches, gums, and non-animal whey protein from the food technology business Perfect Day.
Chief disruptive growth officer at General Mills Doug Martin stated that Good Cultr is targeted at people searching for dairy-free cheese substitutes that taste and feel the same.
The ideas produced by General Mills’ G-Works teams, he claimed, “are an example of our company truly thinking differently about how we innovate.” “It begins with identifying pressing issues facing consumers, creating ground-breaking solutions, and then leveraging General Mills’ size and resources to support those brands and spur rapid brand expansion. Bold Cultr’s inaugural product is unmistakable evidence that the company is exploring novel avenues for experimentation and learning beyond its core offerings, specifically in the untapped food business.
The cream cheese substitute is going direct-to-consumer via the e-commerce site of Bold Cultr and at a few Minnesota Hy-Vee stores. In the upcoming months, General Mills intends to increase the brand’s retail and digital presence after testing and learning with early foodservice partners. Rise Bagel Co., an artisan bagel business in Minneapolis, will start serving the product in January.
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Along with animal-free cheese slices and shreds, two more cream cheese varieties are now under development.
“A lot of the customers we spoke with want to be cruelty-free, but cheese is holding them back because the substitutes aren’t meeting their needs,” Ms. Engstrom stated. “We’re eager to reinvent cheese and take on this customer issue head-on.”
Increasingly, items like Graeter’s frozen delights and Nick’s, a keto-friendly Swedish brand, contain animal-free whey proteins from Berkeley-based Perfect Day. A company called The Urgent Co., which is associated with Perfect Day, sells cream cheese substitutes under the Modern Kitchen brand and cake mix and ice cream under the Brave Robot brand. On November 16, the business unveiled a range of plant-based protein powders under the California Performance Co. brand.