Little Spoon set to disrupt the baby food category

Fresh, organic purees for babies use HPP to preserve nutrition and flavor, and extend shelf life. Packaging is a cup with integrated spoon that is simply and stylishly decorated.

Each variety has its own 'food geometry' pattern made up of images of the ingredients in the puree.
Each variety has its own 'food geometry' pattern made up of images of the ingredients in the puree.

With the mantra, “Your baby food should never be older than your baby,” San Francisco-based Little Spoon Organic, LLC is shaking up the baby food category, making fresh refrigerated organic baby food products available to a mass audience.

Three entrepreneurs, Angela Vranich, Ben Lewis, and Michelle Muller, founded the company in 2014 after serendipitously crossing paths in their efforts to find an alternative to highly processed, shelf-stable baby foods. In 2013, Vranich and Lewis began working on developing a baby food product pasteurized using High Pressure Processing (HPP) after they saw how the technology had drastically changed the juice market. At the same time, Muller was trying to expand her New York City-based fresh, organic baby-food delivery service, but needed a way to extend the three-day shelf life of her products. Their shared interests launched Little Spoon.

In March 2015, the company introduced its Little Spoon Babyblends products, comprising three lines of organically grown, non-GMO fruit and vegetable blends for different stages of baby’s growth. The products are pasteurized through HPP and are packaged in convenient cups with attached spoons that are decorated with clean, contemporary graphics designed to appeal to moms.

HPP preserves nutrients, extends shelf life

For Little Spoon, freshness is the key to its product; HPP is the means of delivering that freshness in a retail environment.

Says Vranich, “The [baby food] pouches and jars currently on the market use a traditional pasteurization method whereby extremely high heat and long hold times are used to kill off harmful bacteria. This allows manufacturers to make a shelf-stable product that can, in some cases, sit for as long as three years on a grocery store shelf. Using such high heat kills off harmful bacteria, but in the process, it also kills most of the vitamins and nutrients naturally found in the food that make it worth eating in the first place.”

HPP uses a high level of isostatic pressure transmitted by water to cold-pasteurize products after they are packaged. “Under these conditions, bacteria react in the same way they do under heat, except the taste, color, texture, vitamins, and nutrients of the food are unadulterated, resulting in the safest and most nutritionally dense food possible,” explains Vranich.

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