New Brunswick’s Tudo Wants to Make a Mark in the Health Food Industry
Dave Brown and Mostafa Shaker are busy guys.
Brown is the co-founder of Mycodev, a biotech company based in Fredericton and Shaker is a marketing and communications specialist at Revolution Strategy in Saint John. One day over a year ago, when the friends found time to have dinner together, they had a realization:
Their nutrition kind of sucked.
“We often work for 65 to 80 hours a week and I’d say most of the time our nutrition kind of suffers because we don’t have time for breakfast. We eat lunch at our desk,” Shaker says. “You skip so many meals. Then you get home and you’re tired and you don’t want to cook.”
They figured the vast world of health and fitness would offer some sort of meal replacement that would fit their needs, so they did some research. They were looking for something that would not just fill their appetite but would be actually nutritious and affordable. They found nothing they were happy with.
“We were just trying to see what solutions were out there that would help us still stay fairly healthy and at the same time not having to compromise our nutrition because of our busy lifestyle,” Shaker says. “We realized while everything that was out there would do the job for substituting a meal, it’s not necessarily as healthy or affordable as we’d want it to be.”
Unhappy with the products available, Shaker, Brown and their friend Marc Gauvin, owner of marketing and consulting firm Momentum, decided to create their own.
For over a year, the team worked with a nutritionist and a food chemist to create Tudo, a vegan, dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free and nut-free drink mix. The powders are manufactured and packaged in Fredericton with imported all-natural ingredients. Shaker says it’s for anyone who is busy and on-the-go.
“It has the nutrition of a full balanced meal. So you don’t have to worry about what you’re eating,” he says. “You don’t have to worry about it being unhealthy. It’s a shake, so you mix the powder with water, you shake it, then you drink it.”
After some early customer testing in Fredericton’s tech/startup communities, Tudo (which means “total” in Portuguese) soft-launched at the end of November. Shaker says so far the product has received a lot of support. Thanks to recent media attention last week, he says they’ve sold over 600 packets over the span of three days.
“Everybody is very excited about the idea and sees the value in it,” he says. “It’s great.”
Yet, there’s quite a bit of competition in this market. Tudo’s biggest competitor right now is a U.S. company called Soylent. However, Shaker says the other competitors on the market don’t contain all-natural ingredients.
“We’re really uniquely positioned that way,” he says. “We’re also one of the few North American healthy alternatives that low on price. We did a lot of research not just on the science side but also on the operational side to make sure we keep the cost down low.”
Tudo plans to have an official launch in January. They’re also looking to raise $50,000 from investors to help do that. Long-term, Shaker says Tudo plans to expand into other products as well.
“We’re really looking into innovating the health food industry and working on providing solutions that are not out there right now,” he says.
“Our vision for Tudo is not to replace all your meals. Our vision is for you to be able to replace breakfast, lunch, or maybe both if you’re busy one day. Most of our products are going to be focused on those two meals.”
Tudo is the only company of its kind in Atlantic Canada. Though what it offers may appeal to a customer base worldwide, Shaker says they are determined to keep the company based in New Brunswick.
“We feel very strongly about being in New Brunswick because we love New Brunswick and we all have so much to give back to it,” he says. “We feel really strongly about having it headquartered here and based here. We want to give back. We want to grow jobs and that’s we’re looking into local ingredients as well.”