Lydia Chatterton, Foodservice Account Manager at Bio&Me Talks Breaking Into On-Trade, Gut-Friendly Products and More!

Bio&Me, founded in 2019 by Dr. Megan Rossi and Jon Walsh, focuses on making gut-friendly products. The brand entered foodservice with an emphasis on "discoverability." We spoke with Lydia Chatterton, their Foodservice Account Manager, who highlights the challenges in adapting from grocery to foodservice formats and emphasises the importance of being truly foodservice-ready.

Join us at the Foodservice Summit on March 19th where Lydia will be spilling the tea on a panel about breaking into those under-the-radar foodservice channels.

Could you give me some background on Bio&Me? 

Founded in 2019 by “The Gut Health Doctor” Dr Megan Rossi and Jon Walsh (ex-John West and Nestle). They crossed paths and after a few enlightening discussions, Bio&Me was born.

Bio&Me is all about making good gut health more easily accessible to people. Dr Megan’s in-depth research in the area was used to develop the products. Gut friendly porridge, mueslis, granolas and yoghurts are our main product ranges and are going to be launching bars soon.

Can you tell me about Bio&Me’s journey into Foodservice?

Bio & Me had quite a lot of success in grocery early on and a lot of the manpower in the sales team was focused on grocery. However we knew that ‘discoverability’ was important and many of those ‘discoverable sites’ were in foodservice….getting into as many places as possible outside of grocery was key to overall brand success.  I joined the team at the end of 2022 to help drive Out-of-Home and Foodservice forward and start to build the many areas of this diverse channel. I’ve been working on our Foodservice strategy, which we have broken down into different sub channels as there are many areas to focus on. The past year we have focused on driving our growth in contract catering, building the right  route to markets for them and working with the end user sites to pull the volume through. Sadly it doesn’t just happen!  We are also developing other sectors such as travel and hospitality now that we have NPD that really works in these sub channels which early on in our journey we did not have. .

What things have you had to consider when moving into Foodservice? 

Our first major hurdle for Bio & Me was that most of our work to date had been in grocery, our product formats were grocery focused and we didn’t really have the ideal foodservice format. We’ve since launched porridge pots and kefir yogurt both in an on-the-go format which has opened up many opportunities for us in foodservice. We can’t wait to launch our oat bars as they’re perfect for foodservice too . You do need to keep in mind that your grocery format may not necessarily work in the foodservice channel. And many of the travel sectors may have certain requirements -  gluten free, vegan, no nuts, pots with lids on so making sure your product is truly foodservice ready is really important otherwise you waste your time.

You were hired as the Foodservice Account Manager, obviously the Bio&Me founders can see the ample opportunity in Foodservice? 

Yes! We appreciate that there’s a lot of opportunity for discoverability in Foodservice and if you are lucky there’s a lot of volume as well. We call it the nooks and crannies, getting into all those little places that get your discovered and make the brand visible. Some of those locations are also a captive audience and your brand is the only brand available which is also good for sales.

Do you have any golden nuggets of advice for brands looking to get into foodservice? 

Have patience. There are so many hurdles that crop up as you go through different tenders and review processes and it does take longer than a grocery listing. Foodservice can if you don’t know your way round end up expensive and low margin so you do need to ensure you know all your costs and factor them in especially with tenders. And if you can work with the end user sites, if they love you and you sell, the rest will follow.

Where do you think the opportunities are for challenger brands in Foodservice? 

There’s a lot of opportunity for challenger brands to help Foodservice, bringing on trend, new and exciting brands which are not found in grocery. Foodservice love this. Being authentic, having a strong unique proposition and targeted at the right sub channels is where the opportunity is. Health continues to be at the forefront so products that really address this consumer need, like Bio&Me and Gut Health, but also taste good, will win.