Kristen Leigh Painter reported recently at the Minneapolis Star Tribune Online that, “Jen Biswas spent every Sunday afternoon chopping, steaming and puréeing foods for her firstborn when he was a baby.
“With her second child, now 11 months old, she doesn’t have to. A startup company called Raised Real sends her a box of flash-frozen food pouches — each containing preportioned, prechopped, age-appropriate ingredients combined to maximize her baby’s nutritional intake — whenever her stash runs low.
“‘Now, I can use that time to hang out with my kids,’ Biswas said. ‘It’s super easy and convenient and I don’t have to think about whether my child is getting the right nutrients.'”
Ms. Painter noted that, “The Minneapolis mom is part of a wave of busy new parents turning to delivery-based baby food as a way to save time on meal prep without compromising their child’s nutrition.
“People have long sought convenient shortcuts for getting meals on the table. But the recent cultural shift toward less-processed and fresh foods is leading to new alternatives to one of the most recognized of food conveniences, the baby-food jar. At the same time, consumers are experimenting with meal kits and grocery delivery that also save a step or two.
“Raised Real, founded by University of Minnesota grad Santiago Merea, is based in San Francisco with production operations in Shakopee. Schwan’s, based in Marshall and Bloomington, recently became Raised Real’s largest investor, helping Merea turn the company from an idea into a nationally distributed product in less than a year.”
The Star Tribune article added: “Raised Real isn’t the only company to recognize the opportunity. Once Upon A Farm, a company founded by a four-person team including actress Jennifer Garner and former CEO of Annie’s Homegrown John Foraker, delivers cold-pressed fruit-and-veggie baby food pouches in temperature-controlled cases to households across the U.S. And Little Spoon, with tubs of cold-pressed baby purées, designed products to encourage little ones to eat with utensils. There are a host of other early-stage companies offering different variations on the baby meal kit, or prepared baby food delivery model.”
