Halifax Startup Wants To Dethrone Boost and Ensure With Plant-Based Meal Replacements
HALIFAX—A pair of seasoned Halifax entrepreneurs hope to move in on the meal replacement market with their new, plant-based nutritional drinks.
Former TruLeaf CEO Gregg Curwin and professor and former Panag Pharma president Dr. Mary Lynch plan to launch their products across Canada this fall.
Their startup, Novagevity, recently closed a round of angel funding and this week secured a $300,000, interest-free loan through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s Business Development Program.
Curwin, who retired as CEO of TrueLeaf in 2018, told Huddle he was pulled back into the startup world last year when Lynch approached him with a plea: help me give sick people more nutritious meal replacement options.
Curwin, who has watched his own sick family members struggle to meet their nutritional needs, said Lynch’s concern about the dearth of options for sick people swayed him.
“We’ve got to do something Gregg, this is a major problem, I can’t keep giving patients basically liquid sugar,” Curwin recalled Lynch saying.
“She looked at me, kind of with pain on her face, and I thought oh wow. I wasn’t planning on going back into the startup world right away but… that really was the light bulb.”
Since that conversation in early 2019, Novagevity has grown (the company has seven employees but could have as many as two dozen by next year) and Curwin says he hopes its first products will be on the market by November.
Curwin says Novagevity will start by releasing two plant-based meal replacements drinks under the brand Sperri.
The drinks are “designed to create an alternative choice to Boost and Ensure” and are being created with the help of scientists at QE2 Health Sciences Centre.
Curwin says Novagevity’s goal is to “not just to create a meal replacement, i.e. get this many calories, get this much fiber, get this much protein, which is kind of the jargon on the market today.”
“We’ve looked at this a little deeper to understand [meal replacements] as they’re related to human health, and gut health, and inflammation and immunity.”
As Dr. Lynch said in a recent Novagevity news release, she believes there’s an opportunity in the market for the kind of product the company will offer.
“There is a significant unmet need for an organic, plant-based, meal replacement that can be tolerated by patients with medical conditions,” she said. “We look forward to providing our patients a vegetarian option that actually tastes good.”
Curwin says Novagevity will aim to sell Sperri at pharmacies, hospitals, and long-term care homes, but that the company will focus most of its efforts on online sales.
Eventually, the company hopes to offer other plant-based “nutraceuticals” aimed at helping people with diabetes, inflammation, and other conditions. Curwin says they will likely even offer products capitalizing on the medical uses for CBD.