Canadian Food Business
With increasingly busy lifestyles, Canadians are often too rushed to properly eat, or to eat at all. They want quick and convenient foods to incorporate into their diets, and they don’t want to have to read labels.
Mostafa Shaker is CEO and Co-founder of Tudo, a New Brunswick-based company that provides a convenient and healthy energy booster option. Tudo’s individually packaged fruity drink uses ingredients found in nature, such as flax, mango, and banana, with no additives. Each package produces a 500-calorie drink when mixed with 500 mL of water, enough to replace a full meal and the proper nutrients to fuel the day.
“There’s a lot more expectation now to be putting in more work hours and not just being on top of your workload, but having a good work-life balance,” he says. “Sometimes, your nutrition can suffer, so we’ve created solutions where nutrition no longer has to suffer, and you can make sure you have the nutrients you need to keep sustained energy while maintaining a very active on-the-go lifestyle.” Shaker says in the convenience food market, Tudo is the only vegan, dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free, and nut-free product. “There are other products out there, but most of them have one of these allergens or dietary restrictions.”
Shaker says he wasn’t interested in putting chemical ingredients he didn’t understand into his own body. He wanted to create a product that saves people time and uses natural alternatives that are available.
The co-founders also aimed for Tudo to be comparatively lower priced to give consumers more affordable options. “We knew from the beginning that the cost of Tudo would be very important to its success,” says Dave Brown. “The meal replacement market is getting increasingly crowded and in order to get noticed we would need to be both the highest quality and affordably priced. Research was thus focused on finding ingredients that were nutritional powerhouses. We used linear programming to optimize the formulation for nutrition and cost, and ran many models to find the best combination of results with what is an enjoyable taste to consumers.”
And while powdered meal replacements prove to be efficient, Shaker adds that people are looking for even more convenient foods. “There is definitely a market for powdered foods, but I think the future of this industry will veer away from powder and look for more convenient ways for some people to replace their meals, with more soluble foods that you can drink and consume right away.”
As Tudo strives to help improve the lives of busy people, Shaker says, “I feel like nutrition is extremely important. If you are trying to sustain a certain level of productivity or are setting out to do something amazing, your nutrition needs to come first. If you’re not fueling your body well, you won’t be able to do much of what you’re trying to do.”
