Boulder brands have a path paved for them by the “natural food mecca” legacy. But they face thicker competition than their predecessors while grappling with new consumer trends accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Natural food brands share a desire for sustainability and healthy ingredients fuels a healthy competition in Boulder’s natural-food scene. The city is already is nationally recognized as a launching pad for widely known natural food, beverage and products companies that were acquired and have customers beyond Boulder borders. Celestial Seasonings, a subsidiary of The Hain Celestial Group Inc.; Danone subsidiaries Horizon Organic and WhiteWave Foods Co.; and Izze Beverage Co., a subsidiary of PepsiCo Inc., are among the brands that shaped Boulder’s natural-food history.
But still-autonomous brands including Bobo’s, trade name for Simply Delicious Inc.; 1908 Brands Inc.’s Boulder Clean and kombucha-maker Rowdy Mermaid Inc. are defending Boulder’s reputation as a natural-food mecca.
Around nine years ago, Jamba Dunn, CEO of Boulder-based Rowdy Mermaid, was home-brewing beers during his free time in his garage when his young daughter asked if he could make something she could drink. He started making kombucha. She also enjoyed the fruits and flowers from their home garden and asked for those flavors to be incorporated into the beverage.
Dunn founded Rowdy Mermaid in 2013 with the goal of putting a plant-based kombucha with less sugar and without a vinegary taste on the market.
Today, Rowdy Mermaid is sold in more than 2,000 stores in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Its retail partners include Whole Foods, King Soopers, Natural Grocers, The Fresh Market and Sprouts Farmers Market.
Rowdy Mermaid also strives for sustainability and cans its kombucha rather than bottling it in plastic containers.
Dunn said that comradery comes before competition amid the Boulder natural food industry. Most companies share the same ethos of prioritizing sustainability and healthy ingredients, he said.
“On the one hand, you would assume that companies, specifically companies that are competing for the same category, would really be at odds with one another. But I think that there’s something different both in the natural foods industry, and also here in Boulder, where we’re all here for the same purpose,” Dunn said. “The goals that we’re trying to achieve are bigger than any of our individual companies.”
Rowdy Mermaid was named the breakout brand of 2020 by Naturally Boulder, an economic-development group that encourages networking and connects executives from different brands.
In an early draft of an economic impact study on natural foods and beverages by Naturally Boulder, Boulder counts more than 1,000 companies and 69,000 employees in the…
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