Terraz Food is engaged in the production of "pasta of the future" using crickets, spirulina and red lentils. This is a real super food with lots of protein, iron, calcium, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. Ivana Dvorakova talks about the emergence of an idea and steps towards creating a project.
Ivana first learned about the alternative protein by accident, but the idea of producing food from insects seemed very curious.
Few years ago I attended a lecture at the economics school about the fact that crickets and insects in general represent the future of nutrition. They were describing that it was a sustainable approach to feeding the world through its excellent nutritional properties.
I didn't know anything about this before the lecture, but I was intrigued. My friends and I tried the crickets and found them to be delicious.
A good idea sometimes takes time to mature, but it will definitely not leave you indifferent.
I recently revisited them when I started working in the healthy and sustainable food industry. I'm interested in environmentalism and that's how I got more and more into crickets. My colleague and I decided to be one of the first to show people this new option in nutrition.
We incorporated crickets into the food that everyone loves, which is pasta. We want to introduce them in a playful, cute way, and they taste delicious.
Business is always a challenge. Business in the field of sustainable development requires even more responsibility, because it is often a challenge to society with its now mundane approaches, for example, to food. How to change these traditions to make people's lives better? To begin with, it's worth thinking carefully about the business plan, but one way or another everyone will have to go their own way of trial and error.
Due to WorldStartup and the intensive training, we have been able to learn more about the market and go deep into what our company stands for and answer the hard questions. Thanks to attending food events, we realised that crickets are still very niche. We seen the opportunity to test and validate there our new products like spirulina and lentils pasta which perfectly created a healthy and sustainable portfolio of pastas and helped us to gain new customers.
Even if I have a good idea, do not forget that business should be flexible - it is important to understand the needs of people and give their customers what they really love.
The biggest problem was at the beginning were we were too much focused to cricket pasta, instead of seen the opportunity of a wider portfolio of superfood pasta. Unfortunately, crickets are still very “new” in Europe so it takes time to bring it to the customer and make the business profitable. Sometimes you loose the motivation to continue but luckily we see the progress and sales starts to grow. Not only in our vegan pasta but also in our cricket pasta. Now we have many satisfied customers, thats what matter the most!
About future plans
Terraz Food wants to grow in sales, be profitable, and be the trendsetters in the superfood pasta market. In the future, we would also love to open a Terraz Bistro.
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