Planterra Foods’ OZO Hits Home Run With New Baseball Sponsorship
To the exciting and high-energy world of professional baseball comes the culinary mastery of Planterra Foods and its newest plant-based product line OZO, both of which are led by food services veteran Darcey Macken.
Buoyed by a new partnership with Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Cubs baseball team, the Planterra CEO continues a year of growth fueled by ambition and uncompromisingly high-quality products. Total Food Service spoke with Macken to discover all that Cubs fans will have to look forward to on their next trip to Wrigley Field.
Guided by a year of explosive growth, Planterra Foods’ brand OZO has become the newest tenant and official plant-based protein of Chicago’s iconic Wrigley Field and Cubs baseball team. As part of an initiative to grow the brand and spread awareness of plant-based eating, the company will offer plant-based concessions to hungry spectators; their menu includes all kinds of fantastic ballpark fare, including vegan hot dogs, burgers, and even chicken nachos. As intended by the company, their selections will permit fans to enjoy the treats they know and love without compromising their commitments to remaining flexitarian or vegan.
OZO’s new three-year partnership is a massive step in increasing brand awareness and exposure, as the company, led by Founder and Planterra CEO Darcey Macken, aims to increase their footprint in the plant-based market. While Macken’s career began outside of the culinary industry, she’s always had a passion for entrepreneurship and constructing thriving businesses. Beginning as a small-business owner, she eventually took on a position at Kellogg, launching her headfirst into the food services industry. Her time working for the multinational food manufacturing company led her to build Colorado-based Planterra and daughter company OZO from the ground up into a highly successful and innovative start-up. Macken’s steadfast leadership pulled Planterra through the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a company that is, today, stronger than ever and ever-focused on growth. She’s worked behind the scenes to build a manufacturing and office site and conceptualize “many new and innovative products that are all about the five senses.”
In a time as tumultuous as the post-pandemic, innovation is everything, Macken explained. Her primary goal? To steer plant-based cuisine away from imitation and trickery. “We’re not just creating perfect meat substitutes,” she pointed out, “but rather we’re reframing the way people think about plant-based food.” To do so, she and the Planterra team prioritized “flexitarianism,” or the idea that people can live both meat and plant-based lifestyles, when creating OZO. “We found that people were dissatisfied with current options in the market but were still very keen to incorporate plant-based products into their diets,” Macken found, “and so we asked ourselves what was missing from the market.” Using a different method of segmentation, which focused on different kinds of consumers as opposed to the different meals in a day, the Planterra team emphasized the convenience of their product. With an incredible research and development team, Planterra has succeeded in creating a “next generation of plant-based,” using a wide variety of ingredients such as pea and soy proteins to create versatile and varied products that are quick and convenient while also providing a culinary adventure with bold flavors.
Despite Planterra’s innovation and dedication to creating a stellar product, the road to winning the Wrigley Field partnership was not a smooth one. “The plant-based industry can be challenging,” Macken admitted; “People tend to use the mediocre performance of big names like Beyond on Wall Street to judge the market, when that’s not the case.” The CEO explained that the shaky performance of popular plant-based enterprise Beyond is not a barometer for what she believes is a promising industry. “The demand is definitely there,” she quipped, and right she is. Data indicates that plant-based sales increased by 27% in 2020 despite setbacks incurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that 57% of American households purchase plant-based products. OZO’s Wrigley Field partnership only shows that both the CEO and the data are indicative of a growing trend in plant-based eating that is only on the rise. To ensure that her brand continues to receive the recognition it deserves, Macken has prioritized educating chefs on proper preparation. “Cooking with plant-based ingredients can be really different from preparing their meat counterparts,” she described, “which means we’ve spent a lot of time in kitchens with both R&D teams and chefs to guarantee the best experience for everyone.”
The Planterra name is synonymous with promise, success, and quality, a fact only proven by the company’s incredible partnership with the iconic Wrigley Field and Chicago Cubs baseball team. The expansion of the brand to the ballpark fulfills Macken’s mission to spread brand awareness and plant-based exposure by bringing high quality, innovative and adventurous products to the mouths of hungry spectators. “Trust and believe,” the CEO assured, “that when you pick something OZO it will be an amazing experience!”
Learn more about Planterra at their website
