‘We want to make it easy for anyone to eat more plant-based foods’: Outstanding Foods CEO

Heidi Chung
·Reporter
·2 min read

The plant-based meat craze is expanding to the snack aisle. Most meatless meat-like products imitate beef and burgers. Well, now there are pork-less pork rinds, recently debuted by the Outstanding Foods brand PigOut.

“We want to make it easy for anyone to eat more plant-based foods,” Outstanding Foods co-founder and CEO Bill Glaser told Yahoo Finance’s YFi PM. “We started with snack foods, which are accessible. Everyone eats snack foods. And so our focus is providing nutritious and protein-packed snack foods that taste like meat.”

Courtesy of Outstanding Foods
Courtesy of Outstanding Foods

The Los Angeles-based company launched PigOut Chips publicly Feb. 7, with four different flavor varieties: Original, Nacho Cheese, Hella Hot and Texas BBQ. Each bag contains 25 grams of pea protein and is free of gluten, GMOs and soy.

“If you're replacing a meat product for a plant-based product, you want to get some of the nutrients that you're used to,” Glaser explained. “And so peas are a very concentrated way, and they have a texture that works well in a lot of different products, whether it's a snack food or a burger. And so pea protein and a variety of other legumes are not only popular in plant-based foods, but they're also functional.”

Glaser teamed up with chef Dave Anderson to develop the plant-based pork rinds. Anderson previously led product development at Beyond Meat (BYND) and helped to develop the Beyond Burger. “Dave is a genius,” Glaser said.

Glaser has been consuming a plant-based diet for over 30 years. “I had always thought about doing a plant-based business, but I wanted it to be something that can make an impact, and not just sell vegan products for vegan consumers.”

Glaser teased that bacon is coming next. “We're working on a variety of different bacon products. We have a bacon snack food. We also are working on a strip.”

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Heidi Chung is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @heidi_chung.

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