Material sciences company Pangaia is hungry for more.
On Wednesday, the company revealed its new wellness vertical Pangaia Health, which marks its first foray into food. Pangaia Superfoods will be the initial offering, including its plant-based Super Super Bars, which tap a number of unique ingredients, including sweet prickly pear and goji berries.
The company has momentum, amassing celebrity followers like Harry Styles, Jennifer Lopez and Kourtney Kardashian. Pangaia partnered with Nordstrom in February for the retailer’s rotating pop-up series. Pangaia apparel is carried in 12 Nordstrom stores in the U.S.
Pangaia Superfood launches in the U.S. on Thursday and will be online only at pangaia.com to start. The first Super Super Bar will start at $35 for a pack of seven bars.
Not unlike its experimental apparel, Super Super Bars also tap into tech innovations like Incredo sugar, a fast-dissolving sugar that halves sugar use without compromising taste, and Meltec fiber, a sugar-free vegetable blend that uses vegetable fibers from corn and legumes that would otherwise be wasted.
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While the bars tout organic ingredients, they are not certified USDA Organic yet — and thus are not considered fully organic at launch.
“We see food as an enormous opportunity.…We’re hoping to launch anywhere from three to seven [products] throughout this year. Potentially snacks and beverages between now and the next two to three years,” said Ira Laufer, the chief executive officer of Pangaia Health. Having joined the company a year ago, Laufer was previously CEO of consumer packaged goods brand Just ( which was started by Will and Jaden Smith).
Personal products and supplements are also on the horizon. Laufer said. “We don’t really fit in a certain category. Yes, we are launching bars but we don’t really want to play in that bar category. We’re just using bars as a format. As a delivery system.”
The medium — and especially the material — is the message at Pangaia.
While the brand’s 365 core collection and denim are some fashion offerings, the material innovations like its Flwrdwn, an ethical alternative to down that is material created from dried wildflowers; FRUTFIBER, a less resource-intensive alternative to cotton, or C-Fiber, a blend of eucalyptus pulp and seaweed powder, are the focus of the collections.
“Our overall material philosophy is what we call high-tech naturalism,” added Dr. Amanda Parkes, chief innovation officer at Pangaia, “or augmenting what nature is already good at.”
Pangaia does what Parkes called “side-streaming,” or using all parts of an organism. “Part of our material strategy is really to return everything into the biocycle [the energy transfer between environments and species].…We are not using anything that’s fossil-fuel based. We can also be more efficient in the resources that we are using. Using all parts of the plants, increasing biodiversity, moving away from conventional cotton — it’s really this return to getting the earth back into balance.”
In addition to the bar’s ingredient innovation, its wrapper will decompose in home or industrial compost and the box is recyclable. Pangaia said it is also offsetting emissions related to its food vertical and has completed LCAs on 66 percent of its products, which it will release for its apparel products soon.
Pangaia is a private company and does not disclose funding sources.