Brazil: Naturinni’s Provolone Cheese Hits the Mass Market with Mini Kalzone’s First Vegan Offering – vegconomist

Brazilian food tech Naturinni Plant-Based has partnered with Mini Kalzone to launch the first vegan offering of the restaurant chain: a calzone filled with Naturinni Provolone and vegetables. 

Mini Kalzone, a casual dining restaurant specializing in calzones, juices, and smoothies, is a franchise beloved by Brazil’s surfing community with over 125 stores across Brazil. The chain offers a wide range of calzone flavors, including whole wheat and vegetarian, but until now its menu did not include a vegan option.

The market for plant-based foods is rapidly increasing in Brazil. Fazenda Futuro has been expanding its product line entering the plant-based milk category, NotCo has launched NPDs, such as its AI-powered chickpea-based cream, and Grano Alimentos (Grano Foods), a leader in the frozen vegetable sector in Brazil, has acquired Gerônimo Foods, a vegan meat and snack brand, to continue its expansion in the plant-based category.

Additionally, in 2022, the city of Salvador agreed to begin serving ten million plant-based school meals per year, and the plant-based equity crowdfunding platform Vegan Business has helped Brazilian companies raise a combined total of R$1.5 million. 

A vegan food tech

Naturinni is a food tech operating in the plant-based category since 2017. The company has developed vegan formulas using potatoes and eddoes, two kinds of starchy tubers. The brand’s provolone cheese can replace dairy cheese in snacks, pizzas, sandwiches, and calzones. The vegan cheese is soy, gluten, and lactose-free, made using starches. 

The company’s flagship product is vegan bacon made from hand-smoked starches, considered the best bacon on the market by vegetarian and vegan consumers. In 2019, the brand participated in three UK food events to showcase its smoked bacon. 

“We encourage small producers to stop planting tobacco, common in the region, and plant yams and cassava. Some already grow them, but end up feeding them to the pigs, as they do not know their potential,” Thiago Focking, co-founder of Naturinni, told the platform Globorural.  

Other Naturinni developments include plant-based pork crackling, vegan pesto sauce, and smoked dry tomato antipasto. The company supplies its product to vegan establishments in Brazil and has a DTC retail model.

“We pride ourselves on being a Foodtech that supplies to the best vegan establishments in Brazil and now working together with one of the most beloved franchises of the Surf crowd,” Focking commented on social media.

The new vegan calzone is already available at all Mini Kalzone locations.