Whipping Up a Bright New Idea

Imagine this: a new, better-for-you product category conceived of by a food scientist. It seems that entrepreneurial ventures often are started by people who suffer from a personal dietary or health challenge, or parents who want healthier foods for their kids, or investment bankers, or even attorneys who sleuth the sector for opportunities to hit it big.

But that’s not the case with Whipnotic, a whipped cream maker that Tracy Luckow and her sister, Lori Gitomer, started in 2019 and that is now redefining a long-sleepy segment of the dairy category. Another remarkable thing is that Conagra didn’t do something like this sooner to refashion its iconic Reddi-wip line for the modern food consumer.

What the sisters have done with the initial help of resources from their alma mater, Cornell University, and $850,000 in financing from family and friends is to finally bring more healthful sensibilities to packaged whipped cream toppings, which have been a staple of American desserts for decades and have provided the finishing touches for coffee-house baristas since Starbucks hung its first shingle.

Whipnotic eliminates corn syrup, which Luckow says is its biggest nutritional departure from Reddi-wip. The brand also highlights being “keto friendly and gluten-free.” More important, it comes in four fun flavors (and, soon, more). Most important, Whipnotic provides an extra experiential element with a patented device that infuses the topping with flavor components in a complementary stream as the cream is dispensed from the aerosol can.

“We basically wanted to make whipped cream much more multi-sensorial,” says Luckow, the food scientist and longtime CPG manager who is president of Whipnotic. Gitomer is the CEO. “We thought in terms of sensory cues that were unique flavors, and a stripe of color, and we also wanted aromas to be part of the experience as well,” she says.

Whipnotic Takes Off

Consumers, retailers, and investors are following the Whipnotic scent. Whipnotic recently picked up $2.5 million in seed round venture funding. The brand already is sold in about 1,000 stores in 28 states, including several divisions of Kroger, and expanding distribution among coffee chains and other foodservice outlets is a big push as well. Whipped cream is a $2.5 billion market in the United States, Luckow says, and even at a retail price premium of about 20% to category leader Reddi-wip, Whipnotic will reach the $10 million sales level “very soon” after less than two years in the market.

“It’s not easy launching a food product,” says Catharine Young, executive director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell AgriTech. But, she continues, “One of the secrets of success is developing a unique product that appeals to wide elements of the population. Targeting innovation in whipped cream is very savvy because people of all ages love this treat.”

Luckow entered the food business in R&D with PepsiCo, then moved to Danone and, finally, Sabra, progressing up through executive roles and broadening her capabilities along the way. Gitomer entered the media business and became a vice president at NBC Universal. But from early sisterhood, they mutually scratched an entrepreneurial itch.

When Luckow examined the food business looking for an opportunity for the sisters to go out on their own, she noticed that whipped cream remained basically unchanged, unlike other dairy categories. “The category was only segmented on a fat level, so we figured there was room for disruption,” she says.

Cutting sugar and eliminating typical category ingredients such as corn syrup and yellow 5 food dye was the relatively easy part in formulating Whipnotic. More difficult was figuring out how to add fruits and other infusions that Luckow and Gitomer knew would be crucial to the overall consumer experience. They developed a plan to combine cream with fruit essences, or caramel or chocolate syrups, as a can dispensed them separately, but found that no existing manufacturer could make the cans for them.

So they decided to invent and patent “swirl technology,” an extra nozzle atop the aerosol can that dispenses liquid flavors in a showy cloud of color. The technology itself, Luckow says, offers even more commercial possibilities than just Whipnotic. “There’s a lot of runway,” she says.ft