For Tyler Mayoras, fighting climate change began with his own dinner plate. To his surprise, many vegan options aren’t healthy. He started cooking for himself to include whole, nutritious ingredients, and Cool Beans was born. Cool Beans brings globally-inspired flavors to easier, healthier, more accessible plant-based products.
Nicole Astra:
Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. Joining me in the talk lab kitchen today representing Cool Beans is Tyler Mayoras. You call yourself a passionate impact investor and entrepreneur. Tell me about that drive that created Bool Beans.
Tyler Mayoras:
Yeah, I'm all about sustainable food and agriculture and trying to move our food system forward. So as a private equity investor, I saw some of the evils of the food system and I was trying to fix that, both with Cool Beans, as well as with the impact investing that I do.
Nicole Astra:
Really, this was birthed out of you creating food for yourself as a new plant-based eater.
Tyler Mayoras:
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I went vegan five, five and a half years ago, and when I did, I went vegan for climate change, but ultimately started to learn about the health benefits of plant-based food. So came up with the concept, because I was starting to make food, freeze it, wrap it into wraps and then take it to work and thought why isn't there good food like this available? Everything in the grocery store was kind of vegan junk food, and so we really wanted to create something that was whole food ingredients.
Nicole Astra:
Okay, so let's stay there for a second, because not only do we have some of your ingredients displayed and they're whole, they're colorful, this is what I want my kids to be eating, I don't really always have time for that. But when we go for the easier options, it's not always healthy. Not all foods are processed the same, right?
Tyler Mayoras:
Right, right.
Nicole Astra:
I've watched you cook these now in the studio, and what strikes me is I can see the ingredients. I mean, first of all, these do not look like a microwaved wrap. This is a microwaved wrap, it does not look like that at all. This is gluten free wrap.
Tyler Mayoras:
Yes.
Nicole Astra:
It doesn't even feel like that, it's not mushy. We tell the truth here on Talking Plant Protein, so I'm going to be honest with you, but that's what struck me first as you were plating these up was I can see all of the ingredients listed.
Tyler Mayoras:
Yeah, everything is whole food ingredients, and we just have beans, veggies, whole grains and spices. The spices bring the flavor.
Nicole Astra:
Okay, tell me what I'm about to taste, and then your-
Tyler Mayoras:
This is sesame ginger, which is our Asian flavor. So, obviously that's sesame and ginger and it has edamame and a few other things.
Nicole Astra:
It's sweet.
Tyler Mayoras:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that's going to be probably our bestseller in the future. That's a new flavor that we just introduced. Our current bestseller is tikka masala, which is an Indian flavoring and has chickpeas and cauliflower, and then Tuscan basil is another new flavor and that's spinach and tomato and basil. Then we have Moroccan gold, which is kind of a sweet potato, kind of sweet and savory. It's a Moroccan [inaudible 00:02:40], has millet and navy beans. Then lastly is spicy chipotle, and that's my favorite.
Nicole Astra:
Okay.
Tyler Mayoras:
It's very smoky and spicy.
Nicole Astra:
How do you settle on these flavors, the mix of spices that go in?
Tyler Mayoras:
Yeah, so we knew that younger and younger people have more international tastes and are interested in more international flavors, so that's really kind of where we started to center, and then we really just tried a lot of different things. So we had our food scientists create lots of different flavors, and then we tried them and figured out what ones did we like the best.
Nicole Astra:
Are you going to stay within wraps do you think? Or what's next for Cool Beans?
Tyler Mayoras:
Ultimately, we want to have a whole family of whole food plant-based products. So we've started with burritos, but in the future we'll probably have bowls and breakfast items and other things as well.
Nicole Astra:
Okay, and you have distribution across the US.
Tyler Mayoras:
Yeah, we are in 1300 stores now. Sprouts, Wegmans, Safeway Northern California, but expanding that and hope to be growing. We're just about a year and a half in so far.
Nicole Astra:
So, it might be easier to ask this question in reverse about the nutritional content. Maybe we should start with what is not in these?
Tyler Mayoras:
Yeah, we have no fake meat, no fake cheese. None of those analogs. We're zero saturated fat. For the most part, tikka has a little bit because of coconut milk, but really we didn't want any of that stuff, the fake stuff that really causes a lot of the nutritional issues with most vegan food.
Nicole Astra:
Well, it tastes fantastic, it is sustainable.
Tyler Mayoras:
Great. Yes.
Nicole Astra:
It is passionately driven, which we also love here on Talking Plant Protein. So I appreciate your time today, thank you so much.
Tyler Mayoras:
Thank you so much for having me.