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I’m just going to say it: This is one of the most exciting Complete Food product lines I’ve seen in five years of running this website, with huge potential to change mainstream eating.
I’ve got to thank @MrFloppy for cluing me into this since he spotted the accidentally released thumbnail that had me instantly reaching out to Jimmy Joy to find out more. Because just seeing a photo of one of the pots got me super excited.
Why? Because here in the UK instant noodle and rice meals are hugely popular. Pot Noodle are the undisputed king of these kind of lunchtime snacks and whilst a lot of people treat them as persona non grata due to their nutritional content; 175 million pots are produced each year and 300 are said to be eaten every minute.
And then there’s all the other brands, there are loads of ‘just add hot water’ instant meal on the shelf at my local supermarket, here’s part of the selection at my local shop.
I can’t lie here, my diet is something like 90% Complete Foods and has been for the last few years, but when I’m not getting my complete nutrition on I’m extremely partial to quite a few of those kind of meals. They’re absolutely the chink in my nutritional armour and a regular meal choice that I love no matter how aware I am of their nutritional deficiencies.
I’ve felt less bad about eating them over the last couple of years because challenger brands have launched with a heavy focus on healthier ingredients and better macro balances that taste as good as they are nutritious. But what happens when a company like Jimmy Joy takes sight of these and thinks, yeah, we can do better?
The Plenny Pot!
Jimmy Joy have been thinking about savoury products for about three years now but it’s never really come to anything with the shakes. The idea around Pots though, that formed last year – fast forward 12 months and here we are!
Three flavours are available at launch providing Jimmy Joy’s typical 400 calories per meal; of which 20% come from protein, 29.3% from fat, 45% from carbohydrates and 5.8% from fibre. It’s a good balance and, naturally, they’ve absolutely nailed the packaging.
As curious as I was? Here’s what you can expect from each flavour.
Creamy Cajun Pasta
Plenny Pot is a healthy, convenient, and nutritionally complete instant hot meal that is balanced in nutrients and 100% plant-based. It also contains pro and prebiotics for a healthy gut! We topped it all off with our high-quality mix of 26 essential vitamins and minerals to make sure you’re not missing any of the good stuff.
Vegetable Korma Rice
We set out to find a solution on how we can combine ‘traditional food’ and ‘complete food’. The most obvious way was to combine whole food with the knowledge that we already have on what the body needs and how to make convenient, tasty and affordable meal. Fast forward 12 months and here we are!
Nino, JimmyJoy
Tikka Masala
The timing is interesting since there’s another Complete Food brand that just launched a very similar product: Huel. Their Hot & Savoury line is a rice and quinoa mix released on October 18th. There are three similarly great flavours available (Tomato & Herb, Thai Green Curry, and the newly released Mexican Chilli) but there’s big difference that make Plenny Pots far more compelling in my opinion: pack size.
Whilst Plenny Pots come in retail ready single meal pots, Huel opted for 14 serving bags and sending out a subtly branded black pot for mixing (in the UK at least). Huel’s route is great for bulk purchases of course, but it’s not quite instant, the pot isn’t all that exciting, and I’ve had some real trouble with consistency when preparing meals.
On a very simple level; whatever I’m getting wrong when I scoop out the Hot and Savoury powder for a meal means the flavour can be absolutely spot on, too weak, or too strong – particularly towards the end of a bag – and try as I might I just can’t seem to get it right. It’s always lovely, but not once have I made a meal that looked anything like Huel’s marketing shots. Single meal pots on the other hand; the experience is going to be the same time after time.
And like I said: retail ready, which is where I get excited because as much as Ready To Drink bottles hitting stores is helping to mainstream Complete Foods there are still lots of people that need convincing that a drink is better than a sandwich. Plenny Pots though, these would fit in perfectly on supermarket shelves and they’re a meal that doesn’t need explanation. With this packaging, in these flavours, they’re eye catching and an incredibly easy choice to make compared to less healthy options.
Unfortunately it doesn’t sound they have retail plans just yet. When asked about it Nino told me”Retail is the easiest way to reach the masses and give legitimacy to our business. On the other hand if we go retail then this means we have to ship it to the retails warehouse, then the retail ships it to the stores, from there people drive to the retail store, etc etc. We try to think how our products can reduce impact on the environment and going retail feels counter intuitive. Going retail also makes us slower in terms of launching new formulas. We can think of a new formula today and launch within few months, so to speak. This is way more difficult and slower when our products are also in retail stores all across Europe. “
That all makes sense but I’m a bit disappointed I won’t be able to pick these up in stores. Plenny always ships quickly though so I’m not too worried. I am curious what’s next for Jimmy Joy though, because they’re smashing it right now and as much as they’ve done already… it’s clear this is still really just the beginning for them and I think they’re definitely one to watch over the next few years.
We have some really cool stuff that we are working on that nobody is probably even thinking about at this point.
Nino, JimmyJoy
Pricing, how could I forget this, is set to be £2.96 / €2.98 per meal or a little cheaper on subscription.
All in all this is a great on-board into Jimmy Joy and you just know people are going to ask about the Pots when they see them, and probably end up trying them, the drinks and the bars too, and maybe some will carry on with a journey to better nutrition.
So yeah, super exciting, and I got mine on the way the second they went on sale. Europe, you can get them from JimmyJoy.com now, America, you’ll have to wait until 2021, but they’re coming – with talk of it taking around 12 weeks, so that could be as soon as February.
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