By Carol Frank, Managing Director at MHT MidSpan
Boulder is fast becoming known as a town that wants to feed the world — all natural, gluten-free and vegan, of course.
Here in the foothills of the Rockies, where Coors at one time captured every beer drinker’s imagination with images of snowy stream water, Boulder is now more likely to offer something more along the lines of “Snowmelt Kombucha,” a brand by the Boulder company Rowdy Mermaid.
Not just Snowmelt Kombucha, either. The huge, locally produced and naturally concoctedcornucopia in Boulderand its smaller neighbors includes all natural sunscreen and skincare products (Goddess Garden), jerky-like meatand- vegetable bars (Wild Zora) and slow-crafted, coolbrew coffee (Nübrü), plus plenty of paleo-cookies and fair-trade teas.
That’s not to mention various animal-free soaps and scrubs as well as vats and vials of essential oils and, presumably, less-essential lotions.
No mini-metropolis hasmade a bigger mark in the natural food and skin care product space in recent years, perhaps. It’s a space with buzz, too. Nationally, retail and non-retail sales of natural foods alone grew 9 percent to $120.4 billion last year, according to the Natural Foods Merchandiser a trade publication based in – guess where? – Boulder.
And just like where there is smoke there is fire, where there are start-ups cooking up promising consumer products in a hot market sector, there are venture capitalists drawn to the heat, in this case, both local VCs and those from out of town.
Boulder Food Group led a round of $1.25 million in funding for three-year-old Good Day Chocolate, which has offices on Pearl Street in downtown Boulder, and makes an energy boost, a sleep aid and an anxiety-reliever, all chocolate-based and responsibly sourced. Already, the products have been placed in 20 Whole Foods in the state.
In 2015, the new Denver-based Colorado Impact Fund, a VC group that looks for socially responsible businesses, as well as those that produce natural foods, made its first investment in a Boulder business when it placed $3 million with Bhakti Chai, creator of chai beverages made with fair-trade tea and organic ginger.
Boulder has long been home to nationally known, natural food brands. Justin’s peanut butter and Celestial Seasonings tea are two. The city also is headquarters for (until just recently) publicly traded Boulder Brands, which owns Earth Balance, Smart Balance and Glutino and just traded to Pinnacle Foods for approximately $975 million, or just under 2X revenue.
Other businesses with footprints near the Flatirons include Boulder Granola, Boulder Organic Foods, BoBo’s Oat Bars, Justin’s Nut Butter, and Boulder Organic Ice Cream.
Why Boulder? Many businesses in the natural sector are born here because of the outdoorsy culture, healthy life style, socially active community and collaborative, post-hippie sharing economy, which millennials may be surprised to learn pre-dates Uber and AirBnB.
Boulder also has become renown in the VC world for its annual pitch slams, à la poetry slams, sponsored by Naturally Boulder, a natural products trade group. Entrepreneurs make 90-second pitches to potential investors and an enthusiastic local audience.
The best pitches win up to $58,000 in cash and business services.
This year, the aforementioned meat-and-vegetable bar won; the snowmelt kombucha(Rowdy Mermaid) came in second. The Boulder-based beverage company, which began almost two years ago on Kickstarter, makes several varieties of the fermented Japanese libation.
My favorite Rowdy Mermaid flavor, incidentally, is the No 2 Flower Grow, a caffeinefree booch with seasonal floral notes so intense the drink reportedly made a hedge fund manager quit his job and bolt to the isle of Crete, where the ex-pat presently is endeavoring to produce the perfect perfume.
The kombucha is GMOfree, too. Naturally.
Carol Frank is a Managing Director at MHT MidSpan