Jerrod Adkins spent seven years perfecting the recipe for a low-carb, high-protein sandwich bun, and the tenacity with which the Charlotte-based entrepreneur worked recently paid off in a big way.
Adkins, founder of UnbelievaBuns, recently announced the startup had inked a deal with national food-service distribution company Sysco. The partnership, he said, will help scale the company and move his product into restaurants across the country.
“We’re a mission-driven brand, and in order to achieve our mission, we need UnbelievaBuns to be available on menus everywhere,” he said. “This partnership with Sysco is key to help us achieve those results.”
Adkins' desire to create a healthier bun option came around 2012.
"I was always into health and fitness, mostly body building, and I’d have one cheat meal per week that was always a burger. I was always asking myself, 'Why couldn’t a burger be healthy?'" he said. "So I changed to a leaner beef, which cut off 100 calories, and really everything in between is low calorie. The only thing left was the bun."
Unable to find a bun that met his nutritional needs — low in carbs, high in protein — Adkins set out to create one. He worked with four different bakers to try and find a recipe that met his needs but still tasted good. Dissatisfied with the results, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
"I figured out that I had to do it myself ... It took me six years to perfect the recipe after a lot of research and trial and error," he said. "After that, I was comfortable enough to go to a commercial bakery, where it took almost a year to get the recipe to scale up."
During that time, Adkins still didn't know what he would call the finished product, until friends and family who tasted the buns unknowingly planted the seeds. He said the response from most people was that the buns tasted unbelievable in comparison to similar bun options.
"At that point, the name hit me like a ton of a bricks," Adkins said, and in 2019, he launched UnbelievaBuns to the public.
The bun's flavor and texture is similar to a wheat-based bun, which is what Adkins said separates the product from other healthier bun options.
Adkins credits his network in Charlotte for helping make the Sysco partnership a reality. UnbelievaBuns is currently available in various health-food shops, bars and restaurants throughout the city, including Legion SouthPark, Rhino Market, Fahrenheit, Hickory Tavern and Berrybrook Farms.
"We had a couple of our accounts in restaurants, the chefs and owners basically talked to Sysco. Chef Gene at Legion played a major role in really pushing for the product," he said. "Everybody has been surprised that we got into Sysco especially during Covid, because they weren’t bringing in new vendors. It took more than a year to get everything finalized."
Now that he's got a major distributor in place, Adkins plans to expand the company's product offering.
"We’re trying to grow this thing similar to an Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat," he said. "That’s our same strategy. We wanted to get the bun established, and we’ll be coming out with bread loaves, sub rolls and flat breads."
Adkins is also working to get UnbelievaBuns into major grocery stores in Charlotte and around the country.
"We’ve talked to several regional chains, and the chains tested and liked the product, but they needed us to be in distribution, so we’re hoping to capitalize on that," he said. "We definitely want to get onto more restaurant menus and major supermarkets. We’ve presented to a couple of the big players and are hoping those deals come through."
