Editor's note: This story is part of a cover package on how New Seasons Market and Market of Choice have helped elevate hundreds of local food and beverage startups.
Brazi Bites products are available in frozen food sections in 16,000 stores nationwide. The company, founded in 2010, has four product lines and 16 items. In 2018, it sold a majority stake to investor San Francisco Equity Partners.
Looking at the company’s current state and where it has been, co-founder founder and Chief Marketing Officer Junea Rocha gives a lot of credit to the Portland food and beverage ecosystem. And, in particular the patience and education given by local retailers like Market of Choice and New Seasons.
“The word patient is important,” she said. “Our industry is fast paced and cutthroat. To move bigger, to Fred Meyer or Kroger or Whole Foods, you have to know the business. Market of Choice and New Seasons are more patient.”
The reserved areas in store and the education sessions for local makers are hugely important, she said. It is where she learned to navigate the industry.
Brazi Bites is now a growth brand. The company expects revenue around $25 million this year. As it has moved national it has expanded its co-packing relationships and gone to a distributor model. There is more cost associated with a distributor but the experience the management team has gained working with local groceries has helped limit surprises.
“What New Seasons and Market of Choice do for young brands, like Brazi was a decade ago, is to be patient and give you a little runway to learn and to come up with a model that works for you,” she said.
“You get into Fred Meyers, it’s Safeway, it’s go time,” she added. “At the highest level is Costco. Can you operate in that system? Can you manufacture at that scale? Do you understand pricing structures, distributors, brokers, promotional planning?”
Brazi Bites makes gluten-free, Latin-inspired frozen foods. Its flagship product is frozen Brazilian Cheese Bread, based on a recipe Rocha developed using ingredients she could find in the U.S. that could sate her longing for a snack from her native Brazil. It has 20 employees.
Rocha is now an active contributor in the ecosystem that she initially tapped into. In the beginning she used the Get Your Recipe to Market program at PCC. She networked and eventually met the local forager for Whole Foods (pre-Amazon acquisition).
“The Portland ecosystem is one of the best in the country in terms of its uniqueness for support,” she said. In addition to the local retailers there’s support organizations and importantly, a culture of peer support.
“It’s part of how rich our Farmers Market culture is. Our food ecosystem from the ground up, the value of the community to create products that taste good and have clean ingredients,” she said. “That is ingrained in our community.”
