Dive Brief:
- Alternative meat company Juicy Marbles is launching a new Baby Ribs product. The debut follows a soft launch of a similar product which was sent to a limited number of consumers for testing in August 2023.
- Similar to its original plant-based product, the bones of the ribs are edible, made with soy protein and can be incorporated into different snacks and broths like jerky or stock for a soup.
- The launch comes as the company aims to bring innovation to the depressed plant-based category. Since the company’s founding, Juicy Marbles has sought to create products that have unlimited usage for its consumers — its steaks, for example, come in unseasoned, whole cuts.
Dive Insight:
After gaining consumer insights from the original rib product launch last year, Juicy Marbles created a new recipe for the product — Marble 3.0 — which promises a clean-label with no thickeners or binders and created the edible bones to be as versatile for consumers as possible.
“We’ve gathered feedback from thousands of curious eaters. Since more than half of our customers aren’t vegan, the research showed us a stupidly simple truth about food: we all want our food to be tasty, but we want it to be nutritionally sensible as well,” said Vladimir Mićković, co-founder and chief brand officer at Juicy Marbles in a statement.
When the company develops a new product, it tailors it to the home consumer, he added.
Mićković said the company’s products stand out because they previously didn’t exist in the market. They also have been versatile enough so the consumer can use them across multiple occasions.
“When we created Juicy Marbles, there were already tons of plant-based nuggets out there, and our product was different in the sense that it was unseasoned,” he said, “A burger, for example, you’re not going to buy a plant-based patty, chop it up and use it for something else, but we designed our products to be unlimited in their use.”
The company launched in 2019 with a whole cut of plant-based steak. Its new Baby Ribs will “feature a similar groundbreaking texture.”
Juicy Marbles also wanted to maintain the “primal eating experience ribs are known for.” This was key in the development of its own edible plant-based bones made from soy protein.
When it comes to developing new products, “the challenge really doesn’t lie in creating any product,” said Mićković. “It’s when you want to do it at scale. That’s what the real challenges become.”
This challenge is one Juicy Marbles is still overcoming.
“We have so many crazy prototypes of different things, from lamb racks to bacon and bones and things with different fat layers and flavors,” he said. “But then the challenge begins once you want to actually sell that at scale, and hopefully at an affordable price.”
