The $200 Bean Club

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Read time today: 2:58 min

Hi friend,

It’s Friday morning. You are reading VITAMIN C 🍋.

I hope you are having a fantastic summer so far.

I spent two weeks in Italy eating my way through every regional pasta shape I could find - that's also why the last newsletter edition took a break.

But now I’m back and fully recharged.

So here we go, five insights about food trends and food innovation that deserve your attention:

A new study looked at the Big Five personality traits and sustainable eating.

Openness to experience was the strongest predictor. People who score high on it had 60% greater odds of eating sustainably. Agreeableness added another 40%. Extraversion pulled the odds down by 20%.

So maybe sustainable eating has less to do with discipline and more to do with curiosity.

That changes how plant-based marketing could work. Instead of leading with CO2 savings, it could lead with novelty and experimentation.

Breakfast, the study found, is the easiest entry point. Dinner, tangled up in social habits, is the hardest.

You can read the full study here.

America’s hottest food club right now isn’t about wine, steak, or supplements.

It’s about beans.

Steve Sando runs a private Bean Club called Rancho Gordo with 30,000 members and nearly as many stuck on the waitlist:

At $200 a year. For beans.

But these aren’t just any beans…

They’re high-quality heirloom beans selected by Steve, the so-called bean king, whose 40+ dry varieties, including unique ones like Christmas lima beans, cost ~$7.50 a pound.

Unlike cheaper commodity beans found at supermarkets, these ones are fresher, meaning they cook faster and, most importantly, taste better.

He founded the bean company in 2001, back when legumes were considered cool to few beyond Steve himself, but his obsession is finally paying off.

Since 2019, Rancho Gordo’s sales have tripled, per WSJ.

Today, the company sells 2.5m pounds of beans each year

I LOVE this idea!!

It plays into the protein hype, the fibermaxxing trend, plant-based movement and the experience economy.

More about the bean club here.

A few years ago, upcycled food was everywhere. Spent grain bars, ugly fruit, then it quietly disappeared from the mainstream.

Now it's back, and the reason has shifted.

↳ In 2021, upcycling was a sustainability story

↳ Today, it's a frugality story

Economic uncertainty changes how people relate to waste. It stops feeling abstract and starts feeling personal. The same instinct fills thrift stores, fuels pantry-clean-out cooking on TikTok, and revives nose-to-tail butchery content.

As the economy feels unstable, people want to feel virtuous and in-control, and buying upcycled is one way to show that.

SPINS data shows Upcycled Certified sales grew 42% in 2024 in the US. Misfits Market launched bread made from upcycled brewer's grain.

I have big hopes for this category!

I remember feeling very cool going to the first frozen yoghurt shop in Berlin (Yoli) in 2010.

But despite a few standout shops, frozen yoghurt ( or fro-yo as the 20y old me called it) has stayed a niche category in Europe compared to ice cream.

That might be about to change.

Frozen yogurt is seeing renewed demand in the US, with servings up 26% to roughly 87 million in the twelve months through March, according to Circana data.

Analysts attribute the shift primarily to Gen Z consumer behavior: Gen Z isn't drinking as much, exercises more, and reads labels. But nobody wants to give up dessert entirely. Fro-yo sits exactly in that gap: sweet enough to feel like a treat, "healthy-ish" enough to skip the guilt.

↳ It's not about being healthy

↳ It's about feeling like you made the better choice

Add oversized toppings bars, warm lighting, and a bowl built for a photo, and you've got a product people want to be seen with, not just eat.

Curious to see when this renaissance will hit Berlin or Amsterdam the way it's landing in Manhattan.

Ötzi the Iceman has been sitting in an Alpine research freezer since 1991. Turns out he's never stopped fermenting.

Scientists found cold-adapted yeast strains still colonizing his mummified remains, spores that trace back to the Alpine glaciers where he died. They cultivated four strains and tried baking with one.

The verdict, from the researcher who made the dough: "It was very very good."

This is weird and fascinating at the same time.

More details here.

Stay awesome,
Lia

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