Challenger to Watch: Nuggs
It seems likely that the ’20s are the decade where global warming will get personal. Both in terms of the personal impact of our environment either being on fire or underwater and in terms of a growing personal desire to take action before it’s definitely too late. It will be the decade we realise we’re going to have to give up some of our toys.
For many of us, this will mean eating less meat – a bigger driver of greenhouse emissions than all transport (land, sea and air) combined - not to mention deforestation and water pollution.
Fortunately, it will also be the decade of new brands - and categories – helping to soften this blow.
For those of us still keen to have our cow and eat it, there’s been an explosion of plant-based/analogue/mock/faux meat* brands to rescue our carnivorous lifestyles. From the biggest fast-food brands to the supermarket meat aisle, imitation-meat is now rapidly becoming mainstream in a way tofu and Quorn, historically at least, never quite managed.
But for NUGGS – makers of a ‘chicken nugget simulation’ - becoming ‘mainstream’ is part of the problem.
For a category that’s so new - it’s not yet settled on what to call itself for example, it’s surprising how quickly the leading brands have adopted the codes and conventions of the old world of meat, with an added serving of environmental mission and a Next Generation narrative.
Great, but perhaps an opportunity missed to define an entirely new playbook.
So NUGGS is aiming to do just that.
With a former tech entrepreneur, Ben Pasternak as founder, NUGGS is looking outside its category at the world of tech for inspiration in how to disrupt this new status quo.
With a core purpose to make simulated nuggets go viral, it describes itself as a tech company, ‘engineering the world’s most advanced nugget technology™’.
This approach is embodied across every touchpoint of the brand – from its ‘features’ and ‘tech specs’ (read nutritional information) to user reviews and most interestingly, its release notes: each time NUGGS improve the recipe it releases a new product version (currently at NUGGS 1.5) – after all, consumers are far more willing to forgive a product that might not yet be quite right when they know you’re in a constant programme of incremental improvement based on their feedback.
If all of this has made you fancy a few nuggets (and you’re based in the US) then a box of simulated chicken nuggets are only a few clicks away – adopting a D2C distribution model, boxes of NUGGs can only be bought directly from the NUGGS website, either individually, in a double pack, or as a pallet of 420 boxes, but as the web copy says, you probably don’t need this.
*NUGGS is going for ‘clean meat’ – it’ll be interesting to see if this sticks.
