Bee Free: A Health Food Brand Born to Help Win the Fight for Autism

 A Commitment to Local Supply Chains 

Wiese’s original experience with the world of gluten-free food alternatives found that most products were full of chemical fillers and stabilizers. Her research, however, told her that healthy and delicious gluten-free foods could be made from an organic, healthy, and clean ingredient list. “When I first got started trying to make gluten-free recipes, I was making everything in this tiny little rented kitchen in the middle of the night, which was the only free time I had,” she relates. “I was sourcing the eggs from a gal down the street that had a few chickens in her backyard. I was buying honey down the street from a neighbor who had beehives. I bought my apples locally from the farmer coming from the other direction. It’s always been really important to me to help my local farmer, grower, and producer to keep it all close to home. As we’ve grown, we have attempted to maintain that relationship as much as possible.”

As the company has scaled, its purchasing habits obviously have also had to change. However, the company has continued its commitment to supporting local supply chains as much as possible and creating solid relationships with the companies that provide them with the needed raw materials.

“I no longer can buy honey in a five gallon pail from the honey farmer down the road because now we buy truckloads of it,” Wiese states. “With scale, we have changed a bit, but we do source our honey from Ohio, which is our neighboring state. We chose those honey producers because we went to visit their farm. We wanted to meet them and see how they run their family owned business. We saw there was a lot of synergies with the ethics of our own company, and so that’s how we chose our honey producer. We continue to use that same method with every ingredient that we source, because we want to have a relationship and we want to know that people that produce our raw materials. We really attempt to develop solid relationships with all our suppliers even though they’re on the other side of the world.”

Third-Party Certifications: A Way to Show Brand Commitment to Shared Consumer Values. 

In 2016, Bee Free invested in several third-party certifications, including Paleo certification and Grain-Free certification. Before that, the company had also received a gluten-free certification. As the company grew, it found that its gluten-free product line was exactly what its consumers were looking for. They found that many of their consumers showed intense brand loyalty, and their customers validated their products, which fit many of their needs for their specific dietary requirements.

“We were also responding to what was hot and trendy in the consumer packaged goods market,” Wiese explains. “We’ve tried our hardest to really stay a step ahead of what consumers are looking for and demanding. We feel like that’s a good position for us to be in, and continuing to really listen to what our consumers are asking for helps us to continue to grow.”

One of the ongoing hottest trends in health food markets is gluten-free, grain-free products made with natural ingredients, low sugar content, and food products with third-party certifications. “Our certification with the Paleo Foundation has really helped validate our product and our brand out there in the marketplace,” Wiese believes. “When our consumers validate the quality of our products, not only with their purchases but also through their support on social media and other places, that really gives us strength. We really believe that our third-party certifications really help us build confidence with our customer base. And that’s a really big deal.”

For Bee Free, their gluten-free, grain-free, and Paleo certifications were a natural fit precisely because these values were essential to their customer base. “If you’re somebody who has a severe reaction when you eat gluten, it’s understandable the need to be really specific about the foods that you choose to pot into your body,” Wiese says. “Given that was a part of our customer base, it was really important to build that confidence with our consumers from the very early beginnings of our company. Because we took the time to get to know our customers and what was really important to them, we understood the need to show a clear commitment to those standards. This allowed us to create a higher trust level, so our customer could be assured that a product truly is gluten-free.”

With their certifications, Bee Free can showcase their shared values with their loyal customer base at the front and center of their packaging. “This allows us to get our values and commitments out there in front of the eyes of the consumers who truly value that,” Wiese says. “We take health and safety very seriously, and we knew we needed to have somebody else involved in the process. Third-party certifications, then, provided another factor and another level of trust for our consumers. “

Because the company was started as a direct response to helping Wiese’s son with autism, the gluten-free and grain-free certifications also provided an attractive, organic, and natural pathway for direct marketing strategies to consumers dealing with similar issues. “The education piece was certainly a part of the reason we invested in these third-party certifications,” she says. Many people don’t have the necessary information, and just providing that information is helpful. If your family has anyone with special dietary needs, and you’re the primary buyer or cook for your home, understanding the benefits of certain types of diets is essential.”

Wiese wanted Bee Free’s products to offer educational value to families while giving them a better-tasting food option, a higher level of confidence in the clean ingredients, and a deeper level of trust and connection with the brand. When all of those things come together, the consumer typically makes it a priority to spread the word and share their new knowledge with other friends with the same struggles or issues. From a marketing perspective, consumers sharing that knowledge that the brand may have been able to communicate also leads to “word-of-mouth” advertising for the brand.

“Over the years, we have created this really amazing, tight-knit tribe, as we like to say, of consumers and others who learn from us along the way. They believe in us and we do life right alongside each other. It is really, really unique, and it’s really special. And I feel really blessed to be part of it,” Wiese says.

The Increasing Need For Third-Party Certifications for Retail Markets 

Bee Free initially decided to put its third-party certifications on the back side of its packaging. Recently, they overhauled their packaging design and decided to put that certification on the front side. Not every casual consumer takes the time to inspect the backside “fine print” on the back of the food items they purchase. “We just moved all those certifications to the front of the packaging so that it was crystal clear to our customer from our commitment to what those certifications entail. Having that certification is one way that consumers can connect, and they can know right away who you are and what you’re all about,” she says.

Furthermore, their third-party certifications have proved to be an invaluable part of advancing into different retail markets. “With our retail buyers, we know that trust and transparency are extremely important. They don’t only want to hear a claim that a company is gluten-free. Rather, many of them are actually requiring food brands to get certified,” she claims. “Today we’ve found that it’s not always just our choice whether we want to make certain claims, but a prerequisite wherein it is the retail buyer that saying: Okay, that’s really great what you’re claiming, but we need a third party certification so that we can feel really confident about putting this product on our retail shelves and in front of our consumers.” 

Of course, the major retail companies have an absurd amount of data and information about what consumers demand regarding health, clean ingredients, and verifiable information regarding the nutrients and ingredients in a given food product. These retailers know that their consumers demand transparency and truth. In a market dominated by too many greenwashing practices, retailers are quickly learning that unverified claims can cause severe damage to consumer trust, confidence, and loyalty. Thus, the increasing importance of third-party certifications for health food brands wanting to break into the excessively competitive retail markets.

Wiese knows from first-hand experience that building a health food brand from the ground up is a challenging task. “I feel like brand building is really a group activity,” she says. “The people behind the brand are responsible for directing their marketing strategies to drive brand growth. But beyond that, whenever consumers share our story, or lessons they’ve learned from us, or a recipe they’ve made with one of our products: all of these also help to drive brand growth and increased visibility.”

She also believes that when third-party certification organizations take the time to reach out, talk to brands, and learn their stories, that’s also a part of helping to drive this whole process of building a successful brand. “There are so many brands out there, and having somebody take the time to shine a spotlight on our brand and want to help share our story is really important.”