Making your product stand out in the marketplace is a challenge for any company, but this is especially true in the competitive convenience-food space.
That is why Four Acre Foods, a company based in Co. Meath, has painstakingly spent the past two and a half years ensuring that its new milk drinks would make an impact with consumers.
URBÓ is a range of premium, flavoured milks produced on a farm in the heart of the Boyne Valley.
Company
Áine Farrelly explained to Agriland that the company was founded by four family members, including herself, Peter Farrelly and Pierce Fleming.
The whole milk used for URBÓ is supplied exclusively by her brother and co-founder, Pat Farrelly, a third-generation dairy farmer who produces milk year round using robotic milking machines on his farm in Kells.
“He’s very much into the process around the production of the milk. He is a very strong believer in quality milk, how to produce quality milk and look after the animals.
“All of that feeds into the quality of the milk that he produces. He has very strong views around that,” Farrelly said.
“We very much saw that milk wasn’t often featuring on the shelves really in convenience shops other than in 1-2L containers that people were bringing home and putting in their fridges.
“We could see among ourselves and among our friends that people were looking for healthier ways to snack on the go.
“We thought we saw a space and we wanted to explore whether we could do something with that and put milk back on the convenience shelves, but without losing the goodness of milk, the natural healthy benefits of it,” she added.
Product development
Farrelly said that they did not fully appreciate the journey it would take to bring their idea to fruition.
The company worked with Teagasc on extending the shelf life of milk without losing any of the goodness and how the finished product could be packaged in an aluminum can, as opposed to plastic.
“It was really useful for us to be able to test everything we wanted to do before we went out and bought big, expensive equipment,” she said.
The company was then selected to take part in the FoodWorks programme run by Teagasc, Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland.
Farrelly said the nine-month accelerator programme for Irish food and drink start-ups was “transformational” for them.
“That really helped us hone our idea. It forced us to think long term and it really challenged us in terms of our ideas and what we wanted to do. We changed a lot of our thinking through that process,” she said.
Four Acre Foods also worked with Bord Bia on market research and consumer preferences which showed that people are keen to increase their intake of protein and Vitamin D.
“We were able to ask people what was important to them. Our product is high in protein, it’s high in vitamin D, it’s low lactose,” she said.
The research also revealed that the flavoured milk people most wanted was chocolate, with a growing trend for coffee too.
However, Farrelly explained that getting a flavour correct is a very long and slow process.
“To get chocolate right we tested close to 20 different cocoa powders. You’re testing at various sweetness levels, testing vanilla levels and all sorts of different potential ingredients to bring out the best in the cocoa powder that you’re using.
“This is not a product that’s targeted at kids. That changes the type of flavour that you go with.
“Everything about a product that’s targeted at adults will be different to one that’s targeted at kids, but fundamentally the flavour will be very different,” she said.
URBÓ currently comes in cold brew coffee and chocolate flavours with more varieties in the pipeline.
Export market
The choice to use an aluminum can for URBÓ was not only based on sustainability, but allows the product to “fit in” on the convenience shelves in shops, while also being easily transported.
“We very much have ambitions for export market and we wanted to make the product in a way that it would easily travel to other locations.
“The product should be consumed cold, but it can be stored and transported at ambient temperatures.
“It just needs to be chilled before it’s consumed. So that’s the real beauty of it and that’s what makes it an ideal export product, and that’s what the retailers like about it,” Farrelly said.
URBÓ, which officially launched in May, is now sold in almost 100 shops and online.
The company is particularly targeting convenience shops and garage forecourts and aims to have the product available across Ireland by the end of the year.
“We’re now at the stage where we’ve had a couple of retailers ring us up because they’ve heard about the product, which is great,” Farrelly said.
Four Acre Foods is exploring export markets in the UK, Germany and Spain where there is already a developed market for flavoured milk.
“There are products that are full of sugar and full of sweeteners, so what we want to do is bring a healthy version of that.
“We’ve done a lot of market research in those locations and we think that our product would be a really good fit,” Farrelly said.