Prepared Foods New Products Conference Emphasizes Innovation
When Prepared Foods took its 31st annual New Products Conference to San Diego, it turned to some hometown heroes, Gayle and Philip Tauber, for the meeting’s keynote address.
The Taubers are better known as the 1983 co-founders of Kashi, the La Jolla, Calif., company that created a whole grain cereal pilaf for athletes and other health-conscious consumers. Today, Kashi is a multi-million dollar brand platform for the Kellogg Company, which purchased the brand in 2000.
Addressing the New Products Conference audience, the Taubers said the key to success—for any company, large or small—is to think and act like an emerging company.
The Taubers were a young, married couple with an entrepreneurial edge in the early 1970s. At the time, they spotted a market gap-opportunity and created their own company specializing in indoor plants. After developing that business, they later sold it and briefly partnered (in 1978) with Vince Gironda, a well-known Los Angeles bodybuilder, gym owner and trainer. Working with Vince, the Taubers soon were at the forefront of private training, the first co-ed gym as well as diet and supplement products for athletes.
Afterward, they moved to San Diego. With growing interest in physical fitness in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the Taubers could see growing interest in natural foods that were rich in protein, complex-carbohydrates with a low-fat, low-sodium profile. That led to their experimentation and development of Kashi pilaf cereal mix, which debuted at Natural Products Expo West in 1984. Kashi developed as many as 17 product lines during the next 16 years.