Tinned Fish for Men
Korean Erewhon, creatine cookies, food fear mongering
Happy Friday,
I’ve been traveling around to get you inside looks into the latest in F&B from the most exclusive openings, from Miami see my Nude sneak peek, to Vegas for Sweets and Snacks expo where I go to preview the new line ups from brands like Rotten and new brand launches like Snackish.
A few things of note before the long weekend hits—
Oasis is Going Through a Rough Patch
Oasis app became notorious for its reporting on the safety of water brands and filters (hence the name) and it eventually pivoted to all kinds of food and beverage products, similar to other apps like Localize, the founder has employed a technique of what can come across clickbait-y headlines like “100% of the top waters found with microplastics.” This allowed Oasis to quickly amass a large online following under the premisse of being a trusted source at a time where consumer distrust of the food systems are at an all time high, they are currently #8 app under health and wellness in the App store, the founder constantly boasts about how much money they are making, according to this post, their business is making around half a million a month in revenue. In a now deleted post, Jesse Goldman who works as growth lead at Oasis, shared he grew the app from 250,000 to 700,000 users in 3 months, unsure why the post was taken down, meanwhile founder Cormac Hayden recently shared photos of their team working on the app from a remote country at the “Oasis House”—their type of success is so coveted in the app builder world, this Reddit post from a year ago praised the playbook of the app, “What makes this so powerful is how the content strategy creates a perfect loop: viral Reels → app downloads → affiliate revenue → funding for more content.”
Can Oasis maintain it’s position, or has their credibility started to dry up? This week, James Murphy who is LMNT’s CEO caught the app misreading tests that had been published in Consumer Reports (the famous lead in protein powder article) Paris Martineau who was the original author commented on the post after finding out her own work is being used for the app’s benefit and hidden behind a paywall. James Murphy’s post went viral and more brands came out of the woodwork to share their own experiences with the app misrepresenting their products with low scores that were unfounded, see Angel Acres, Lineage Foods, Based and Sport Drink—beyond the misrepresentation, these scores are negatively impacting the brands directly, I asked Dr. Anthony Gustin if his brands Lineage Foods and Equip Foods had been affected by Oasis directly, he replied, “We have gotten complaints across various social media channels, our own content, and customer service for both brands. We can fix the comments we catch. I’m worried most about all of the people who never say anything and assume the worst.”
After I reshared a couple of posts around the issue and tagged them with concerns from other brands, Oasis messaged me directly, noting it was a bug in how they converted the measures from the Consumer Report’s lab report measured against daily serving recommendations, saying “Of course a product error like this is unacceptable. We removed the post immediately while we resolve the bug and are working to share the updated correct info. We truly want to build the most trustworthy transparent and community backed platform.” Soon after this more posts around noting discrepancies on how they evaluate brands came to light, in a reply Dr. Anthony Gustin says he found “over 100 egregious examples”, Oasis founder admitted “our product grew faster than we could sale (assuming he meant scale) our QC process”—pretty scary to realize considering they are “evaluating” +100,000 products, Oasis and their founder have been issuing correcting statements and his founder promises to do better as they scale, comments on some of their recent posts read like this: “Thank you for being transparent, but I’m beginning to not trust your reporting and your site. This is the second thing I’ve read today that you got wrong. The first was with LMNT electrolyte.” This development has also coincided with this story around Apeel and how misinformation ultimately doomed their business in the US, but also at a time where brands like Yuka are allegedly helping the food supply.
This story is unfolding and would love to hear from you, do you use Oasis? Has your brand experienced something similar to the above?
David Debuted Tinned Cod
Is this Fishwife for the boys? David debuted it’s Cod 2.0, which is essentially tinned Cod, branded by the illustruous Dayjob as usual. This is their latest launch before the upcoming ice cream drop, we also have a new brand from the umbrella company of David, Medici, here’s the first look at Hallpass.
We Are Entering a New Mrs. Fields Era
Ashley Field’s is the daughter of THE Mrs. Field’s and she’s soon debuting a line of functional cookies called Fields Good from creatine ones that promise focus to another who tout sleep as function. Can Ashley Fields become the Millenial Mrs. Fields? There’s a good chance of it.
Twelve is Happier Grocery Meets Erewhon
Hypebeast grocers continue to pop up around the world, Twelve at House of Shinsegae Cheong feels like an in between of Happier and Erewhon complete with viral smoothies and must have tote bags.
