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PLAYING WITH THEIR FOOD

KIDFRESH USES HEALTHY, FUN FOODS TO ENTICE CHILDREN TO EAT THEIR VEGGIES

By Molly Knight

Tired of fighting the vegetable wars with your kiddies? Well, Kidfresh has got your back.

New York City-based Kidfresh wants to serve nutritionally conscious consumers by serving their children food that is tasty, healthy and fun: organic carrot wheels, butternut squash macaroni and cheese, piggy-tail pasta with tomato sauce and turkey meatballs.

Kidfresh says it expects to be operating in about 50 locations by 2013, including stand-alone stores, stands inside large grocery stores, and kiosks at shopping centers and airports.

Currently, the company operates one stand-alone store, plus stands inside three Whole Foods stores in New York City. Kidfresh is in the process of entering all the Whole Foods markets in the Northeast, says Matt Cohen, the company's founder and CEO. “It's just a question of putting distribution in place,” he said. Kidfresh also operates a handful of kiosks at the JetBlue terminal in New York's Kennedy Airport and is looking to open stands inside Kings Super Markets and Balducci's stores and in FAO Schwarz toy stores.

Such a healthy, grab-and-go food retailer for kids has been a long time coming, sources say. “There is absolutely a market for the children of parents who shop at Whole Foods,” said David J. Livingston, an independent supermarket analyst and consultant in Pewaukee, Wis. (no business relationship with Kidfresh). “This is something we haven't yet seen, and I'm surprised it's taken someone this long to come up with the idea.”

Inspiration struck Cohen on that fateful morning three years ago at home in New York City, just after he had stumbled out of bed. His wife, Ariane, asked him to prepare a lunch box for their 3-year-old son, Jonas, but dad was profoundly uninspired and unenthused by what he found in the kitchen. “I was scratching my head in front of the fridge at 7 a.m.,” said Cohen. “And it struck me that I either had to make him something nutritious from scratch, or fill his lunch box with a bunch of processed food. I thought it was strange, because grown-ups have so many specialty food stores, but there were none for kids.”

Cohen, a management consultant who was born and raised in Paris but has lived in New York City for the better part of 15 years, turned to a friend, Gilles Deloux, a former executive at Paris-based food company Groupe Danone, with the idea for Kidfresh. Deloux agreed that fast and easy options for children were limited to fast-food chains that rarely consider nutritional value and portion size.

Convinced that they had identified a bona fide hole in the market, Cohen and Deloux spent the next two years meeting pediatricians and talking to people in the community to find out what healthy alternatives to doughnuts and cheeseburgers children might actually eat. Doctors said that childhood obesity was feeding a sharp rise in diabetes and high cholesterol levels. Parents of children with attention-deficit disorders, gluten allergies, and even autism told the partners how difficult it was to find prepared meals that met the dietary needs of their children, while still appealing to their taste buds.

With all of this in mind, Cohen and Deloux opened the Kidfresh store, in New York City, in January 2007. Their philosophy was not to outlaw such perennial yet pernicious favorites as pizza and hot dogs, Cohen says, but rather to reinvent them. “We like to tweak and sneak,” Cohen said of the company's preference for whole grains over white flour and for topping pastas with vegetable purees. “Our pizzas are made with whole wheat dough, organic, low-fat mozzarella cheese and fresh tomatoes. An organic chicken or turkey hot dog on a whole wheat bun is actually a balanced meal.”

Cohen says Kidfresh does most of its business in individual “mix and match” portions, while the next most-popular items are prepared dinners, then lunches. Gluten-free pancakes with maple syrup go for $2.75, natural alphabet potato stars (star-shaped “french fries,” though not actually fried) cost $2.25. A dinner package consisting of the piggy-tail pasta with free-range turkey meatballs, organic tomato sauce and sugar snaps costs $6.69. A lunch box with a free-range turkey sandwich, organic mashed green beans, organic string cheese, organic raisins and all-natural apple juice runs $6.49. Sure, the selections cost more than junk food —a six-piece chicken McNugget happy meal at the McDonald's in New York City's Union Square costs $4.29 — but they offer more too, the company says.

But will parents be willing to pay a premium? Grocery industry observers think so. “One of the things we've observed recently is tremendous growth within the organic baby-food sector,” said W. Frank Dell II, president of Dellmart & Co., a retail analyst firm in Stamford, Conn. “Fueled by continual product recall, we see parents who will spend more to buy this kind of food for their kids even though they won't buy it for themselves.”

Higher price points means Kidfresh will do best in areas with dense, high-earning populations, sources say. “It's not going to go over well in small-town Arkansas,” said Livingston. “But cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco will definitely respond to Kidfresh. Whole Foods has already done a lot of their homework for them. If they stick to the same markets Whole Foods has entered and keep the concept fun, they are going to do well.”

Fun should be no problem. The 1,200-square-foot, stand-alone Kidfresh store's light and airy feel and bright colors are reminiscent of the cheerful interiors of Pinkberry, the Los Angeles-based frozen yogurt chain. It contains an activity room where children can be read to or participate in cooking classes. Paper plates colored by youngsters adorn one wall, and shelves of books are stacked against another. A large, open window to the kitchen allows children to watch staff pack and prepare foods. In the front of the store, children and their caregivers sit at tables and eat lunch opposite the Kidfresh bar, which serves fruit smoothies, cupcakes and ice cream, and even coffee and tea for the adults.

Cohen says the most popular item at the bar is the “shapewich” — a sandwich the children design themselves. Children not only choose what goes into their sandwiches, they select from nine designs, such as happy faces, hearts, hands and feet.

These shapewiches will be included in the grab-and-go kiosks in shopping centers, Cohen says. The kiosks will have what Cohen calls a Willy Wonka-type machine that lets children pick the size and contents of their shapewiches and then crank them out.

Cohen says he has fielded inquiries from France, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, and that there has been particular interest from Japan, where the company has been featured on two television programs and in a number of magazines. As a result, the Manhattan store is now included on a Japanese tour bus schedule. “I think Kidfresh fits their culture of cute and convenient stores,” said Cohen. “We are definitely interested in opening stores there, but first we have to conquer the U.S. market.”