Oob is launching this month with its unusual concept of green-tea-based drinks with popping ‘super fruit pearls’.
Leonardo Laforgia: It was on a trip to Cambodia that I tried bubble tea and was instantly inspired by the incredible combination of textures and flavours. With Oob, we set out to create a new category, that of ‘encapsulated nutrition’.
Leonardo Laforgia: The range has been in development for over 16 months due to the technical and manufacturing challenges associated with bringing to market a new breed of soft drinks.
Leonardo Laforgia: Oob customers are committed to leading a healthy lifestyle. In particular, we have found its health benefits and unique feel have scored with ‘millennials’. The London launch is set for 1 September 2014. There seems to be plenty of appetite for smart new ways of delivering nutrition.
Leonardo Laforgia: Oob ingredients are from natural origins whenever possible. From the juice of grapes ripened on the hills of Tuscany in Italy, to the precious juices of acerola and acai from the tropical rainforests of South America.
Leonardo Laforgia: Our pearls are made of a delicate membrane derived from seaweed, with a luscious core of superfruit juice. The tasteless seaweed dissolves in the mouth, unlocking a unique taste experience.
The flavours are Apple Green Tea with Lychee pearls, Cranberry Green Tea with Acai Pearls and Mango Green Tea with Acerola pearls. The unique nutritional profile convinced us of their potential; I had no idea that acerola has 36 times the amount of vitamin C of oranges!
Leonardo Laforgia: Attaching a fat straw 1.1cm in diameter and 18cm in length to a bottle for the retail market was not an easy task. Creating a bottle to look like two conjoined pearls was not easy either!
The straw is wide enough to allow the approximately 7mm pearls to be sipped and create a fusion of flavours with the tea.
Leonardo Laforgia: All of our drinks are manufactured within the EU in a secret, state of the art facility.
Leonardo Laforgia: Our drinks contain only natural caffeine that occurs in green tea. For each bottle, there is an average of 8.9g of caffeine.
Leonardo Laforgia: The need to keep a natural feel for the range often clashed with the manufacturing requirements for the processing of our ingredients. We decided to balance taste, calories and appearance by using grape juice in order to sweeten our range, rather than using chemically derived sweeteners.
Leonardo Laforgia: The drinks are full of antioxidants and vitamins harnessed from green tea leaves and delicious superfruits. One bottle of Oob offers 100% RDA of eight vitamins.
The high vitamin content in OOb drinks ensures a wide range of health benefits, from improved hydration and mental performance to reduction in tiredness and fatigue.
The green tea ingredient provides a natural caffeine kick, while the daily dose of vitamin C helps to keep the immune system healthy. Oob can also be a welcome addition to any beauty regime, as the antioxidants such as niacin and biotin help to boost the appearance of hair, skin and nails.
Leonardo Laforgia: Oob will be available in selected retail stores and high end department stores. With listings secured with Ocado and Holland & Barrett, we are also looking at expanding into convenience and grocery soon.
Leonardo Laforgia: Well, one of the beautiful things about Oob is that there’s so much more that we can do with the range. Development opportunities, flavour- and format-wise, are multiple and really appealing at this stage. Encapsulated nutrition as a new way of delivering taste and health to consumers is a very exciting space and it’s literally in its infancy.
Can we combine science and earthly ingredients (in the shape of pearls) to make tastier health and healthier taste more accessible? I believe this is the challenge Oob is best placed to address and we look forward to investigating this further with amazing combinations.
Leonardo Laforgia: We aim for Oob to become the world’s favourite pearl drink. We have so far received requests from 22 countries, including South Korea, Japan, US and Germany. Although very different, these markets clearly value and recognise the need for innovation.
In five years time, I’d love to see Oob on sale in these countries. The first step is to identify the right partners in order to enter these markets.
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