Meet Confetti’s one-of-a-kind vegan vegetable chips!
Story by Sean Yeo | Photos by Confetti Fine Foods
It's three in the evening, and you're in the mood for chips; what comes to mind? Pringles, Lays? You decide to head to the supermarket, but it occurs to you that perhaps all that extra salt isn't what you need right now. You think about the flavour you should go for, but you've tried them all before.
Enter Confetti Snacks, a company seeking to revolutionise healthy, guilt-free snacking. Founded in 2015 by 34-year-old Singaporean Betty Lu, Confetti has won numerous awards and is the only vegetable chip to feature on the Michelin Guide.
The spark that started Confetti Snacks came when Betty was hiking in the mountains in British Columbia. During the trip, she grew frustrated with the lack of suitable snacks to bring along on hikes and decided to experiment with making her own vegetable chips.
She seasoned the chips with spices that reminded her of home, and after receiving surprisingly good feedback from her friends, Betty decided to return home and start Confetti Fine Foods.
But beyond healthy, guilt-free snacking, Confetti has a bigger mission.
"During my round the world trip, I visited a lot of farms and observed the literally billions of metric tons of edible produce that is wasted. No farm in the world can accurately predict how much the supermarket wants, so a lot of them produce in excess and within a week or a few days, it starts spoiling," shared Betty.
As a result, up to "2.9 trillion pounds of edible produce are thrown away every year simply because of a crop surplus or because they are deemed imperfect due to aesthetic reasons," Betty laments.
By using ugly produce - that is, vegetables that are misshapen or oddly sized, Confetti wants to be part of the solution. Their innovative approach filters perishable produce out of the cycle of waste by extending the shelf life of vegetables from a few days to a few years, helping to promote food security. In addition, this prevents the otherwise wasted produce from ending up in landfills and contributing to global warming.
The company works with regional wholesalers and farmers to source produce that are cosmetic rejects. A hyper localised strategy is what Confetti aims for in the long run - to keep shipping costs low and get their snacks from farm to table with maximum freshness.
So, Confetti’s chips are healthy, sustainably sourced and optimised for freshness, but what about the taste? Vegetables aren't usually known for their great taste, right? Wrong!
Confetti's vegetable chips are crunchy, light and airy and celebrate colourful low starch produce like carrots, radishes and okra. When it comes to flavours, Betty looks to her team's experiences for inspiration. Particularly Confetti's Chef in Residence, Mitch Prensky, the former Culinary Director for Hyatt Hotels in Manhattan.
"Because he is a chef, he has a very refined palette and a very creative mind. Before we launch anything, we normally ask him first," Betty said.
Her team's ideas for flavour pairings come from many sources: walking down supermarket aisles, talking to Michelin starred chefs, checking out food bazaars and different restaurants.
"Taste is very much like the perfume industry where there are top, middle and base notes," she explained.
By compacting Asian and Singaporean palettes into a snack, Betty wants to "use snacks as a social glue to bring different cultures together and celebrate racial harmony."
This higher goal ensures that Confetti's chips stay true to the depth of the original dishes. It also gives the brand its unique appeal and helps drive rotation on the shelves.
The team behind Confetti is young. Betty herself is a millennial and most of her team are too. “They view themselves as a team of millennials marketing to millennials, which is a good thing," she said.
However, Betty still believes youths are in the best position to imagine the world of tomorrow. As a former maths teacher who taught kids between the ages of 8 and 12, she always found herself continually surprised by the unexpected ideas they would come up with.
This was demonstrated in a recent case competition held by Confetti - MarkeTHINK. The company brought teams from different local universities together to design a line of gourmet snacks that they could market themselves. Ideas never before seen like: designing snacks using the hawker concept, creating snacks based on the colour of the rainbow to suit a persons’ mood and using ugly vegetables to create a line of chips with accompanying dips were discussed.
"Youths don't think inside the box, they think beyond it. They have a lot of creativity, passion and energy and that can really drive the future," she mused.
In the coming year, Confetti is looking to continue its expansion overseas and launch a new low-fat, vitamin-rich addition to its range of flavours. This timely addition will give greater options to those spending more time at home and who seek a healthy, guilt-free alternative to popular options. It is also looking to develop new complementary verticals to its snacks that also celebrate colour and real vegetables.
Confetti will continue to work with leading research institutes, food scientists, universities, and students to create unique, healthy and tasty snacks.
One chip at a time, Confetti is looking to change how we snack.