Credit: Niramaya Foods
How Cuisines Travel the Grocery Aisle Without Getting Lost
Real change shows up in the brands that smuggle the future into formats we already trust.
Raymon Loewhy had a name for this kind of progress–MAYA: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.
The idea is embarrassingly simple: push far enough to feel new, but not so far to break the mental model people already use to navigate a shelf.
Heritage flavors are where MAYA does its best work.
If you introduce them as novelties, they get treated like souvenirs: interesting once, then forgotten. But if you wrap them in a format that already has a daily slot in someone’s life, they stop being exotic and start being a random evening snack.
You can watch this happen in real time with Niramaya’s naan pretzels. No one needs a tutorial for a pretzel; the “advanced”” part is in the seasoning–jalapeño chutney, tandoori BBQ, sweet jalebi. It reads as a familiar snack first, cultural story second.
Dar Baklava’s Snacklava is another good reframing. In most minds, baklava is a holiday sugar bomb (or they don’t even know what baklava is). The velocity is not that good either. But Dar trims the sugar dramatically, turns the portions into bites, and puts the emphasis back on nuts over syrup. That move changes the occasion from once a year dessert to something you might keep in a kitchen drawer as a rather high protein pick me up, without erasing what makes baklava, baklava. Heritage keeps its spine, usage gets upgraded. That’s MAYA.
Vital Halva takes an even bigger leap but lands for the same reason. It is a halva that is in barm form, and it speaks in a language shoppers are fluent in: grams, fiber, sugar, protein. Everybody knows how to use a bar: grab and eat.
People assume that the hard part of the cultural translation is education but usually it is the interface. Format, occasion, label. Change those and you change the slope of adoption.
The reason Loewy’s idea outlived its era (it started in the 20th century) is that it respects something deep about us: we want to move forward, but we grip the railing as we climb. Food and beverage founders who ignore that railing end up with beautiful products that never cross the chasm. Founders who design the railing, who decide which part is “advanced” and which part is “acceptable”, rewire the aisle. When you do that, you expand the set of things a shopper can imagine eating every day. That’s how cuisines travel without getting lost in the packaged food industry.
A Game Changer in the Natural Color Industry
For years, it was assumed that natural colors could not achieve the same brightness as synthetic ones.
But the emerging biotech companies are breaking this bias.
Take a look at the picture above. You’ll see that our latest ingredient partner’s spirulina-based blue colors are as bright as synthetic ones and remain stable throughout their shelf life.
This matters A LOT because color is one of the first promises a product makes.
When the hue is vivid and consistent, trial goes up. And the pressure on CPG manufacturers to switch natural colors is only increasing because of the deadline on the synthetic dye bans.
These blue colors can be applied to confectionery, beverages, ice cream, syrups, sauces, bakery, supplements, beauty products, any category you can imagine!
If you want to upgrade an existing product–or launch something new–with bright, consistent, natural color, reach out to us. We’ll connect you with our partner and show you what it looks like in your formula.
That’s it for this week.
If you’re building something in CPG and need the right supplier or co-manufacturer to make it happen, Chapter Foods can help. We match brands, brokers, distributors and retailers with partners who are ready to move.
And if you’re a manufacturer looking to unlock new business or source higher-quality ingredients, we’re your direct line to the right buyers and better suppliers.
Can Koyuncu, Co-Founder & CMO