A word with Kate Stoddard, Trailmix winner, founder of Orchestra Provisions

Last week, a Boise native wowed the judges at the Trailmix food product pitch competition by highlighting an unusual ingredient – crickets.

The Trailmix judges looked for a startup with a compelling story and food products that were organic, healthy and environmentally-friendly. They also wanted something novel for the shelves of Albertsons Marketplaces. Orchestra Provisions, founded by Kate Stoddard, fit the bill perfectly with its cricket-based spice line.

As the first-place winner, Stoddard earned a $20,000 check, shelf space in the Albertsons Marketplace stores in Boise and Meridian, a one-year membership for the Trailhead coworking space and two days at the Chobani Incubator. Now in its second year, Trailmix was part of Boise Startup Week, which ran Oct. 7 to 12.

Stoddard founded Orchestra Provisions with the desire to provide sustainable sources of protein to a world where many people are looking for alternatives to animal protein. After growing up in Boise and graduating from Montana State University, Kate wound up in Salmon as a river guide. There she decided to put down roots and follow her passion for sustainability and health by bringing something new to the table.

She calls her products “gateway bugs” because consumers can get used to the idea of utilizing the health benefits of bugs without having to see, taste or smell them.

Currently, Orchestra Provisions sells a spice line with eight flavors ranging from curry to chai-spice. The products are currently available online and on the shelves of many health food stores across the state, including Treasure Valley locations: Boise Co-op and Roots Zero Waste Market.

The Idaho Business Review recently sat down with Stoddard to discuss her products, the benefits of eating crickets and the challenges she faced founding Orchestra Provisions. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you get the idea for Orchestra Provisions?

In my graduate studies, I had some research assigned for my courses on iron deficiency, and that’s how I got introduced to entomophagy (the practice of eating insects) because I found an interesting anomaly with a group of people in Africa who are vegetarians but they don’t have a lot of instances of iron deficiency and anemia. And what I found is that a large part of their diet are caterpillars, and they have a lot of iron. It was extremely nutritional because it’s not just iron. It’s protein and all sorts of other minerals and nutrients.

I got obsessed with the idea as I kept reading more and more. I started seeing that there were some prestigious universities funding research and small bits coming into the mainstream. Fortune and Forbes and NPR started to write about it.

How does the shock factor of a product with crickets in it impact your ability to attract customers?

People aren’t ready to put a whole bug on a salad. They don’t want to see the eyes and the head and the legs. And that’s exactly what I was thinking when I developed the seasoning line.

The more attention this movement gets and becomes mainstream and trendy, people aren’t shocked. What I’m seeing now is people coming to my booth and saying, “Oh yeah, I read about this!”

That means I’m in the right place at the right time. But a lot of people of course have not heard about this. The shock factor I believe is helping my business. In a room of vendors where I have bugs and everyone else has traditional foods, my booth is the most interesting. Whether people want to eat bugs or not, they want to come over and talk to me. When I get people in the conversation, they realize they can be part of a sustainable solution and want to try it.

What are the benefits to the environment and to the agricultural industry?

It’s almost overwhelming how sustainable this protein source is. Crickets reach maturation in 30 days. If you compare that to a cow, the turnover is creating more food more efficiently. To reach maturation in 30 days, they don’t require any hormones or pesticides. They require a fraction of the land, feed and water as other protein sources, and that includes the other popular plant protein sources on the market today.

They are really efficient at converting feed to body mass and edible protein. This was interesting to me because even when we do the plant-based diet, which is pretty sustainable compared to a lot of the other diets with animal protein in them, you’re still using a lot of acreage of land and a lot of water and taking minerals from the ground to do it. Crickets are almost regenerative because the waste that comes out of them is another product that can be sold as natural fertilizer.

How are the crickets raised?

The farm that I visited – ecoBalance in Hagerman – it’s in a giant hoop house. It looks like when you go to buy plants at a nursery. They keep it warm. That temperature is somewhere in the 70s that they like. What’s cool about ecoBalance is they use geothermal water to keep it warm. What I found most interesting is that the [containers crickets are raised in] don’t have covers over them. The crickets are happy in that space. They don’t jump out or try to escape.

What challenges did you face while starting Orchestra Provisions?

My biggest frustration was packaging. How do you calculate the sustainable impact of cricket protein versus the packaging it arrives in, balancing the cost of packing with the sustainability of it? What I ended up ultimately doing was metal tins. They are reusable. And I also built a model where we have a bulk bag so you can refill them.

One of the other challenges is that I tried to do this out of pocket. And it’s growing slowly and it’s working, but that becomes intimidating in the realm of packaging where you want to make sure each unit is cost-efficient, but also that you’re not putting a bunch of trash back onto the earth.

How will winning Trailmix affect your growth?

The networking that took place afterwards was invaluable.

And I won two days in the Chobani incubator in Twin Falls, and when I signed up for this competition that’s what I was most excited about. Crickets are unique in that there is still research to be done. We know it’s safe to eat them and that they’re healthy, but how do they combine with different ingredients? What are my limitations and opportunities?

And of course, $20,000 doesn’t hurt. Now I don’t have to go completely out of pocket, and it’s going to allow me to expand the product line.

More on Trailmix

Think “Shark Tank” for early-stage food products.

That’s the basic concept behind Trailmix, a pitch contest that returned for its second year on Oct. 9th.

Idaho-based yogurt company Chobani joined Albertsons, Kitchen 2 Shelf and IGEM at Trailhead to present this year’s event. The company rewarded all five finalists with two-day access to their Global Research and Development center in Twin Falls.

Tiam Rastegar, executive director of Trailhead, declared Trailmix their most popular event, noting that it has grown tremendously since its inception in 2018.

“Trailmix represents our focus, which is to serve early-stage entrepreneurs. The other aspect is the partnership aspect of the ecosystem building side,” he said. “Partnerships like Albertsons, Chobani, and so forth, are stepping up and recognizing that there’s a gap here for entrepreneurs. They need support to realize their ideas and go to scale, and we do that for them through Trailhead and Trailmix.”

When deciding a winner, Trailmix judges look for a compelling story behind the business, food safety in production, great branding and an environmentally friendly, organic and local product.

Kathy Holland, Albertsons Companies spokesperson, said customers are always looking for new, unique products on the shelves, and Trailmix is the perfect way to make it happen.

“Albertsons has been a supporter of Trailhead since the very beginning, so when they came to us with this amazing idea for Trailmix, we absolutely were on board,” Holland said. “We tried to get more innovative products on the shelves for our customers, who are always looking for different products, so it was just a great partnership.”

This year’s Trailmix winner, Orchestra Provisions, uses crickets as an alternative and sustainable protein source. Based in Salmon, Idaho, the company’s products are spice blends featuring ground crickets, which you can’t taste, see or smell.

Holland said she is excited to see last year’s Trailmix winner, Snacktavist Foods, thriving after recently being put on the shelves at the Albertsons store on Broadway, and she is looking forward to the new products.

“It’s super exciting to see the winner from last year’s pitch competition on the shelf in our store,” Holland said. “People are buying the product and absolutely loving it.”