Innovation

While creating her business in 2011, Elena Shifrina, was very concerned with a lack of healthy snacks on the Russian market. At that time, most of the Russian supermarkets offered only sweets with lots of sugar and wheat on their shelves. Elena wanted to change this and decided to create a new market niche of snacks, which can be both tasty and healthy. That is how a new product - Bitey - was introduced. As its mission, Biofoodlab aims to adopt and promote healthy lifestyle in Russia. This young and dynamic company produces a line of healthy vegan bars, which contain a lot of fruits, various healthy ingredients and no preservatives. Since healthy lifestyle is a rather new phenomenon in Russia, Elena Shifrina, had a vision to make this trend popular in her motherland. Moreover, an indispensable part of the concept of healthy snacks, which are marketed under the brand names of Bite and Bitey, is recyclable packaging. Thus, Elena Shifrina, is ahead of the Russian market in introducing sustainable products for conscious consumers.

Inspiration

Elena Shifrina was a model, then she worked in the banking industry and never thought of becoming an entrepreneur. But the project for the entrepreneurship class that she has made during her MBA program at Skolkovo (Russia) changed her life. Elena was visiting business incubators and Ivy League colleges on a study trip as part of her MBA. At that time, she got inspired by the culture of healthy eating habits at the American student communities in Boston. "Their culture of healthy snacks is very profound," told us Elena. She bought a lot of such bars in Boston and brought them back with her to Russia in order to create something similar. Having experienced what healthy eating habits are in the USA, she decided to open up her own business in Russia. She was so much taken away by the idea of making healthy snacks that she couldn't barely sleep. So she used her own savings to hire her first employee and launched her business within a year. Initially, Elena was inspired by the fact that there were no preservatives in the snacks that she brought with her from the USA, however, later it turned out that it was not completely true. At the time of sales launch - September 2012 - the company provided a unique product on the Russian market - health snacks in bars containing only natural ingredients.

Overall impact

At the beginning, the company did not have its own production technology. Elena did not like the idea of reselling the American product that is only packaged in Russia, as it was offered to her. She adopted a more complex approach. She hired a technologist and they began to elaborate the recipe of a perfect bar. It turned out that the preservatives were not used to produce bars by American companies, but they were added into raw materials. However, under American legislation companies are not required to mention this fact on the package. Even though Elena's technologist claimed that it was impossible to avoid preservatives, after 8 months of R&D they managed to achieve their goal: a unique recipe of a product that does not contain gluten, soy, GMOs and preservatives was created.

The recipe and the technology were not patented, as there are no patents possible in the food industry, according to the Russian legislation, as Elena told us. When her first technologist was soon head-hunted by the competitors and revealed to them the secrets of production, Elena said that she was not so much upset by this fact. She took it as a challenge and called the competitors her "followers." "It is another incentive to develop the product and create new ones," she said. Indeed, after that incident, the company did not stop innovating. The product developments have been actively expanding towards baby food niche: soft biscuits and eco sweets. The main motivation factor for the product line development was the daughter of the founder. "I wanted to create something really cool for her," Elena said. "Bite is a big part of our life: wherever you go, there's a bar with you everywhere." She believes that healthy eating habits should be brought up from childhood. Her daughter does not eat candy in general, only fruits and children's bars Bitey.

Now the market of healthy bars in Russia is growing rapidly and is not yet saturated. In general, the idea of ​​a healthy diet, according to Elena, came to Russia quite late, but now it is gaining more and more followers. Biofoodlab feels its responsibility as a pioneer; therefore, healthy living and food for Russians is a long-term goal and should be achieved in a comprehensive manner. Every conscious consumer who switches to healthy and natural products from regular sweets with high content of sugar is a big achievement for the company. Elena is confident that the culture of healthy snacks is the first step in achieving the future with a healthy society.

Business benefit

From the very beginning, Biofoodlab was very innovative in its business approach and operations. The founder, Elena Shifrina, decided to take a path of elaborating her own recipe of healthy snacks without just coping already existing American bars. Biofoodlab managed to introduce its product line to some of the high-end supermarket chains in Russia, which sell organic food, while low-end retail chains were quite reluctant to risk and put these innovative bars on their shelves. However, cautious consumers began to notice the bright packages and started buying the product. The recipe soon became popular in the food industry, so that competitors got interested in these bars and they head-hunted the technologist from Biofoodlab. This fact is a bright illustration, that business idea was successful and attractive for the followers. Healthy lifestyle is quite new to Russia and this means that the niche of organic products has enough potential to develop.

Social and environmental benefit

It was not easy to create a socially responsible business in Russia. But this start-up project became profitable already after 16 months from the start of production (in 8 months after the start of sales).

The practice of recyclable packaging is not yet a common practice in Russia. However, Elena was confident that environment- friendly packaging is very important for the organic product, so biodegradable packaging was used right from the first day of production, despite some additional costs.

It is worth noting that the company is not only focused on educating consumers, but also extends its high standards into the supply chain. "Our production operates according to the European standards, we cannot buy any raw materials of bad quality," declares Elena. Given lower standards of quality control in Russia, Elena is forced to buy up to 85% of ingredients from abroad. However, inspired by the example of such industry giants as Unilever and Kraft Foods, Biofoodlab works with local suppliers. Elena is very patriotically minded. It is very important for her to produce in Russia and create jobs locally. She believes that business environment is not a hurdle, but entrepreneurs should take an active part in changing the situation in Russia.

Bite bars can be too expensive for people living outside of Moscow and other metropolitan areas in Russia, that is why Biofoodlab is now working to create a new product, which will be cheaper, but still remain a healthy snack. Elena believes that every person in Russia can afford an organic snack once a day, once a week, or at least once a month.

Interview

Elena Shifrina, Founder