Alice Moradian, CEO of Earth Bite, has a mission. She wants snack shelves to be filled with environmentally sustainable and nutritious snacks, and also free of commercial logistics.
“LogTrade will enable us to place temporary shelves or boxes ‘anywhere’ there is a demand,” says Alice. “This opens up more sustainable business models for us as producers and whoever has an available spot.”
Earth Bite is a no-nonsense, raw vegan bar with insanely high nutrition levels. Producing a nutritious product is about more than flavor to Alice Moradian and the company. The demands on the raw ingredients are high, she explains, since anything connected to ecology and cultivation has a measurable impact on the amounts of vitamins, minerals, and environmental toxins in the final product. And it is also here, with a focus on the little things, that the long journey started for Alice and her co-founder and sister, Ani Moradian.
“When we started to look for nutritious snacks in Sweden, we were surprised by how long the lists of ingredients were,” she says. She goes on to explain how the situation was similar in California.
At the time, Alice had just returned from spending an extended amount of time on the American west coast, where even though access to fresh locally grown produce made it easy indeed to eat healthy without having to compromise on flavor or the environment, she hit a dead end as soon as she wanted to buy some nutritious snacks.
“I’m fundamentally skeptical about selling anything through a store and letting them take such a large percentage. It also means I lose control of the whole supply chain.”
Alive Moradian started Earth Bite when she was in college. She launched the products in April 2018, a little more than a year before she graduated.
INTERMEDIARIES ARE TAKING TOO MUCH OF THE CAKE
Today, Earth Bite can be found in three vitamin-zippy, fiber-happy flavors, and they are available via several different resellers. Alice explains how she is working hard to reduce production costs, since wholesalers, distributors, and resellers naturally “eat” a large portion of the cake. The business has also been affected by the pandemic, as the stores where Earth Bite has been selling the most are located at Stockholm and Gothenburg central stations.
'The chain store also owns the whole shelf,” she says, and that, she explains, creates a catch-22 for a small, informed producer who wants to acquire a good portion of the market.
“I’m fundamentally skeptical about selling anything through a store and letting them take such a large percentage. It also means I lose control of the whole supply chain. When I’m selling the products to a wholesaler or a store, I can’t track when they have been sold, when they’re selling best, and what flavors are sold out first. If a reseller stops buying from a wholesaler, I won’t know.”
“The chain store also owns the whole shelf,” she says, and that, she explains, creates a catch-22 for a small, conscious producer who wants to acquire a good portion of the market.
The tests we’re currently doing, where products can sell themselves in hotels, are incredibly exciting because it not only gives me control of what sells but also when the products sell the most. Imagine when we have more sites up in more locations.
“The chain store can say that it wants more sustainable products and healthy alternatives, but if it doesn’t then promote us, our products won’t sell and will be taken off the shelf, which means that the chain store’s and the larger brands’ unhealthy alternatives win anyway—they have much bigger financial muscle.
THE WORLD IS FULL OF POTENTIAL “LOCATIONS”
When Alice Moradian met Fredrik Svedberg, CEO of LogTrade, and understood that the technology and business development LogTrade is offering help address the growth-hindering dilemmas and challenges producers and brand owners face, she jumped on board immediately.
“The tests we’re currently doing, where products can sell themselves in hotels, are incredibly exciting because it not only gives me control of what sells but also when the products sell the most. Imagine when we have more sites up in more locations.”
For Alice, this will open up an entirely different kind of flexible, time-controlled distribution, where she will always own the relationship with the end customer and can also always deliver the right amount of product to each location.
“The hotel, or whatever place it is, doesn’t even have to restock—LogTrade’s system or I will make sure that that’s handled. Everything takes care of itself,” says Alice. She then explains that the cut the owner of a location needs to take for providing her space is an entirely different cup of tea.
SUSTAINABILITY AND COMMERCIAL LOGISTICS
Earth Bite has been on the market for two years. While the co-owner felt she was ready to move on to new challenges last summer (she has stayed on as a strategic partner), Alice feels like she has only just gotten started.
“We’re working on many exciting new things right now. The bars will continue to be important for us, but I’m also developing some completely new health food products. I’m turning Earth Bite into a lifestyle brand where the new products are not only good for your physical health but your mental health as well.”
For Alice Moradian, the interest in health and wellness started when she was a child. Her mother is a medical doctor with a strong interest in holistic health and the impact nutrients have on our wellbeing.
“What you eat does matter, not only to yourself but also to the planet,” says Alice, who agrees with LogTrade that this makes it important that it becomes easier for people to get what they truly need when- and wherever they are.
A product is not more sustainable than the weakest link, and the weakest link is often the commercial logistics.
