BALTIMORE — Before Kraft Heinz introduced its Lunchables Grilled Cheesies frozen sandwich, the startup A Friendly Bread offered an adult version of the concept that uses sourdough bread. Lane Levine, founder of A Friendly Bread, wanted to offer consumers a convenient frozen product that would be perceived as a premium item.

“I originally began (this) as a fresh bread business in 2018 and started selling at farmers markets and doing bread delivery,” Mr. Levine said. “When we would be at farmers markets, customers would come up to me and show me photos of what they were doing with my sourdough product; turning them into gourmet foods.”

The ideas inspired Mr. Levine to begin experimenting with his bread and turn it into his grilled cheese sandwiches. Grilled cheese night dinners at a local apartment complex is where he developed flavors and learned how well the sourdough bread transformed into a grilled cheese sandwich.

“We brought premade ones (grilled cheese sandwiches) so it would be easier to heat them up at the event,” Mr. Levine said. “I also had them sitting at home in the fridge and friends would start heating them up and that’s the first time it hit me to make a packaged product that was scalable because you could preserve it through freezing or refrigeration and you could get a lot more value out of an individual loaf of bread.”

Since launching the frozen grilled cheese sandwiches in March 2022, Mr. Levine’s target audience has grown from work-from-home millennials to grandmothers enjoying the sandwiches with their grandchildren.

“Our initial target audience out the gate was the millennial who is busy all day in meetings, and they can take 10 minutes to throw the sandwich in the toaster oven, sit back, work and it’s done,” he said. “But we also found that an even more devoted demographic is older women, specifically (those) who are only cooking for one and don’t want to make a whole thing about it but also want something comforting but high quality. It’s also the older ladies within the categories of grandmas getting them for their grandkids and sharing them.”

Mr. Levine said specialty retail has been the company’s sweet spot and the product has gained entry in Fresh Market, Giant Food, and The Giant Co., both owned by Ahold-Delhaize.

“We’re more concerned with growing recognition on a regional basis in the mid-Atlantic and the East Coast more broadly,” he said. “If we do launch with more conventional stores, as long as we’re able to do demos and build awareness, we’re willing to give it a try in our region.”

Mr. Levine also is giving direct-to-consumer a go, but said the business currently is mostly retail focused.

“Online really isn’t our focus, it’s really hard to ship,” he said. “We started to see a few orders come (in for a) full case of grilled cheese (sandwiches), but logistically it’s just not our wheelhouse.”

The company also has identified demand on college campuses, convenience stores and quick foodservice.

“College campuses are perfect because, like Starbucks, you get the grilled cheese and they’ll heat it up for you in their TurboChef,” Mr. Levine said. “So, at these college campus coffee shops they’re able to do the same thing with ours — throw it into a TurboChef, it takes 90 seconds and it’s done.”

Mr. Levine said they also are doing research to see if the product can be stored in refrigerated sections of stores and outlets.

“We’re currently doing shelf-life testing with a lab right now because within the quick-service setting, it makes it that much more convenient to grab it out of the fridge, slap it in the oven and it only takes 45 seconds instead of 90,” he said.

The company is currently self-manufacturing its products.

“We started 5 ½ years ago in this shared commissary called B-More Kitchen and we’re still there (because) it’s allowed us to grow into different business models,” Mr. Levine said. “We do the whole process, we use real sourdough — we are feeding our starter and are mixing, shaping, and baking the bread. We bake the bread and refrigerate it for at least a day because we want the sandwich to have a clean slice.

“We have an industrial slicer, where we slice cheese then slice bread and then we hand assemble the sandwiches, cut them down the middle, put them on sheet pans in the oven for five minutes to get the melt going, take it back out, freeze them and then we bag and seal them.”

Mr. Levine believes his product is in a new, but promising category.

“While it’s in its first year of existence and people often don’t go into the grocery store looking for grilled cheese (sandwiches) in the frozen section, it’s been a little slow uptake but once people start to notice the category, I think it’ll build velocity,” he said. “We’re going to slowly grow our number of doors as opposed to trying to blow up our door count.”

Mr. Levine hopes with the launch of Kraft Heinz’s Lunchables Grilled Cheesies earlier this year, smaller grilled cheese businesses like his may benefit from a larger manufacturer leading the way.

“It’s kind of a larger company giving their blessing to a new category and, hopefully, using their marketing money to educate the public about that type of product,” he said. “We may have a customer who now knows about frozen grilled cheese and they go to that section and they see the Lunchables might be for kids, but also want something that’s a little higher end for adults, they might reach for ours and are comfortable doing that because they already know something like that exists.”

 

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