Collaboration over competition: How JUST Egg uses partnerships to give consumers options

Modern day competition has come a long way from its early Latin root, competere, which means to strive for something simultaneously with the same goal. Fortunately, some brands are taking that original meaning to heart and recognizing the value of using each other’s resources to lift one another towards a shared objective.

This is particularly true in the natural products industry, where competition also means collaboration, as well as a motivator to find partnerships well suited to a brand’s mission and goals. New Hope spoke with three brands, JUST Egg, ReGrained and Renewal Mill, to learn more about the impact of their recently co-created products with other brands. Find the story about ReGrained here and Renewal Mill here. These brands are showing exciting innovation when they lean on each other’s specialties and resources to create new products. In the second of this three-part series, discover why JUST Egg chooses to partner with others and examples of products that fulfill the spirit of competere.

Partnerships extend both brands' reach into plant-based

One of the upsides to partnering with a vegan or plant-based brand is reaching a whole other audience with different dietary needs. This opens up an additional revenue stream by expanding a brand’s reach. A brand can educate its current audience on various vegan alternatives and the sustainability that plant-based promotes. It also introduces plant-based for those who are alt-meat curious or health-minded. For brands seeking a plant-based option, partnering with a brand like JUST Egg creates an opportunity to create that alternative. For JUST Egg, it gets their product in more places and gives consumers more options to east JUST Egg. JUST Egg explained to New Hope that while they could invest in creating things like breakfast sandwiches themselves, they rather support brands who are already successfully making breakfast sandwiches and reach a plant-based product together.

JUST Egg recently teamed up with Mikey’s to create a line of plant-based frozen breakfast pockets. Mikey’s mission is to develop products suited to every person’s lifestyle, regardless of allergies or dietary restrictions, without compromising taste or quality nutritious ingredients. So a partnership with JUST Egg made perfect sense when approaching a plant-based version of its gluten-free breakfast pockets. Together they launched a line of Breakfast Scramble Pockets and Tex-Mex Breakfast Pockets.

New Hope Network spoke to Chief Revenue Officer Matt Riley, who oversees all brand partnerships at JUST Egg, about the collaboration experience.

Mikey’s Gluten & Dairy-free Plant-based Pockets with JUST Egg.

How did this collaboration come about? Who approached who?

Matt Riley: Well, we’ve had a lot of partnerships with other branded manufacturer products. We have relationships with Mikey’s, Crepini, Field Roast, Kellogg’s Incogmeato, Alpha Foods and others that are in the works, and many of them like that we are trying to change the food system with better-for-you plant-based foods. Anyone who’s interested in having an egg alternative is usually approaching us. We’re very proud of our brand, so we ask that they brand JUST Egg on the front and list JUST Egg as an ingredient. They’ve all been willing to do that, so we’re very proud of all the partnerships. 

We’ve intentionally not done exclusive agreements because one of our mission statements is that everyone should eat well. The idea that we would only let a certain group of consumers or a certain brand use our product doesn’t feel like a fit for us. Those products are fantastic items, and those brands have great consumer followings. We’re really honored to be partnered with them.

Field Roast’s Plant-based Breakfast Sandwich with JUST Egg and Chao Creamery Creamy Original Cheese

How did you market the release of these breakfast pockets?

MR: We work collaboratively with brand partners on comms if they want us to. We didn’t build a separate marketing plan to help launch Mikey’s, but we are more than happy to amplify the launch of these exciting new products through our social network, and we have done so and will continue to do so. It is great to let consumers know that JUST Egg is not only available folded or liquid in the grocery store. If you want it in a breakfast pocket, you can get it because it’s available now from Mikey’s.

How else would you say that being a part of these products benefits JUST Egg and, ultimately, consumers?

MR: It gives consumers more choices. We could certainly invest in manufacturing sandwiches or bowls or wraps as well. But those other brands/companies are doing it very effectively. So we’re giving consumers the opportunity to make a JUST Egg folded sandwich at home on their own by buying our products in retail, or if they want the added convenience of a Field Roast sandwich or a Crepini or Mikey’s Pocket, they can also buy JUST Egg in those other branded products and enjoy it in that fashion. So to me, it’s just about providing more choice, and because an egg is the most ubiquitous protein in the world, there’s a lot of interest. It was always a plan of ours to be part of an ingredient in other foods.

We made the conscious choice to allow other brands to use our brand because we feel like it’s genuine to our mission. We are genuinely trying to fix the food system, and I think we realize we probably can’t do it by ourselves. So the more offerings in the market that are better for you and the planet, we’re happy to support those. 

Read the first interview in this series with ReGrained here.

Read the third interview in this series with Renewal Mill here.