Whole Foods Embraces Smoothie-in-a-Bag
If ever there were a generation that demanded instant, healthy snacks, it’s today’s on-the-go, run-don’t-walk, Silicon Valley-influenced professional class. En masse, they represent an entirely new phenomenon: devoted to their work, working impossibly long hours, yet deeply informed about nutrition and determined to take excellent care of their bodies.
This is the market that startup Nomva hopes to tap into with their product, launched in late 2015. Nomva is a portable, organic fruit-and-vegetable smoothie laced with probiotics, served up in a squeezable packet that won’t leak in your gym bag. The company, based in Los Angeles, has all the buzz and momentum usually associated with the latest VC-courted tech startup — in part the result of Nomva’s intimate relationship with Valley legend Peter Thiel. Nomva co-founder Caroline Beckman received a 2015 Thiel Foundation fellowship, which provided her with mentoring and time to develop the company alongside her co-founder, Nina Church. The fellowship also came with $100,000 in investment, a small part of the $3 million the company has raised to date.
Additional early funding came from the likes of Zico Coconut Water founders Mark and Maura Rampolla, as well as organic beverage company Suja Juice CEO Jeff Church, who happens to be Nina’s father. Lead investors in Nomva’s later Series A round included Evolution Media Partners and Taylor Fresh Foods. Evolution is a joint venture between Evolution Media Capital (EMC); Creative Artists Agency’s affiliate merchant bank, TPG Growth; and Participant Media. That head-spinning combination of heavy hitters gives Nomva an unusually diverse and powerful network of backers in the food, lifestyle, and entertainment sectors, not to mention the financial and marketing industries.
Even in the context of their over-achieving generation, Beckman and Church have packed a lot of business experience into their young careers. Beckman was founding vice president of special projects at Suja Juice beginning in 2012, while the Stanford-educated Church worked as an executive intern at the same company. After that early shared experience, they committed themselves to creating a healthy new food product that would meet the needs of their ambitious and demanding demographic.
Early results in the real marketplace suggest that their offering is hitting the right spot for their target consumers. As one Whole Foods Juice Bar employee gushed, “We cannot keep them on the shelves, the company has to restock them everyday. People love them.” According to the company, Nomva is all-natural, healthful, and processed to retain both fiber and nutrients from its original plant-sourced foodstuff. The product’s principal flavors are apple, blueberry, carrot, strawberry, and kale. Its handy $4 “pouch” packaging is convenient, attractive, and fun to use, but Nomva is also sold in larger, more economical containers. In a clever departure from expectation, Nomva is not shelved with other juices and beverages; instead, it is being placed next to yogurts to underscore its digestive probiotics and status as a potential meal replacement.
