Petaluma entrepreneur takes a new approach in crafting protein powder

As the global supplement market rapidly escalates toward $200 billion in annual revenue, it’s nearly impossible for any new business to develop a product that’s truly unique and that grabs consumers, but eager entrepreneurs are still at it.

Bygg Foods, the latest venture from local health food entrepreneur Smári Ásmundsson, 54, aims to mix a progressive and environmentally-conscious approach with the latest developments in food science.

The flagship product is NØRSE CØDE, an “upcycled” barley-based protein powder.

Ásmundsson originally crowdfunded the effort through Kickstarter and got his first 98 customers through the online fundraiser. Although the fundraising efforts helped with some of the cost, the ultimate goal was to get a feel for the demand of the new product.

The rest of the businesses is funded by Ásmundsson.

If you’re familiar with Ásmundsson, his newest product’s ethos is not likely to come as a surprise.

In the 1950s, protein powders first began to make their way into people’s lives, but back then, they were made with a combination of whey, soy and dehydrated egg powders. In the last 70 years, pea protein has become increasingly popular for vegetarian and vegan-oriented consumers. In keeping with the ingenuity that made his last company, Smári Organics, such a success, NØRSE CØDE utilizes a proprietary blend of pea, rice and “upcycled” barley proteins.

“Upcycling” is the process in which the reused byproduct or waste material of something is then utilized to make a new product.

By dehydrating and extracting the proteins from the leftover barley in the beer brewing process, Bygg Foods is “upcycling” the barley and using the amino acids in conjunction with pea and rice proteins to create their proprietary NØRSE CØDE protein powder. The combination of the protein sources consist of all nine essential amino acids that the human body does not produce on its own.

Meats, dairy and eggs contain all of these essential and nonessential amino acids, often referred to as the building blocks of protein, but plant-based diets often require a bit more dietary creativity to achieve the recommended levels of daily protein consumption.

The man behind the product

Ásmundsson is a native of Hafnarfjörður, Iceland; the third-largest town in the nation and about six miles from Reykjavik.

He fondly remembers delivering flowers as a young boy to earn some spending money and once, he hand-delivered flowers to Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the then-president of Iceland at Iceland’s version of the White House.

Ásmundsson studied photography in Southern California and his photos appeared in major magazines like Vogue and Rolling Stone. Then, in 2009, he welcomed his first child and decided to slow down.

“I wouldn’t even know my kid if I kept on the same advertising-photography trajectory because I was traveling two, three, four weeks at a time,” Ásmundsson said. “And I was also becoming more passionate about food and advertising, so I kind of decided to make a complete 180 of my life … and enter the ‘food world.’”

In 2008, Ásmundsson and his family relocated to Petaluma.

“I like small towns and Petaluma is kind of the only small town that is about an hour away from SFO — from a major airport,” Ásmundsson said. ”So it was, kind of, a no-brainer; it’s a great town to live in. I love it here.”

Petaluma’s reputation for farm-to-table dining, agriculture and craft brewing was just a bonus for the family.

Diving into the organic food business

In 2012, Ásmundsson started his first company, Smári Organics. Their first product was SMÁRI, an organic Icelandic-style skyr, a creamy yogurt that's been a provision of Icelanders for nearly 1,000 years. Like its more well-known Greek-style alternative, Icelandic skyr is thicker and more protein-dense than traditional yogurts. Unlike Greek yogurt, though, skyr contains rennet, a complex group of enzymes found in the milk-bacteria mixture, which makes the product closer to a cheese than other yogurts. SMÁRI, however, didn’t use rennet and instead opted for a special straining method to make the skyr.

Ásmundsson has introduced several products over the last decade that combine his Icelandic roots with America’s need for on-the-go food products, including a ready-to-drink protein-infused cold coffee beverage called KAFFI.

“In Iceland, people are much, much closer to nature and closer to the source of food,” Ásmundsson said. “People cook more. They don’t consume fast food. Nobody eats in their car — there is a different relationship to food there for sure.”

Then, a local Whole Foods market began to sell his skyr. He recalls shamelessly hanging around the dairy section at the market and waiting to see if anyone would buy it and, when someone grabbed the first cup of SMÁRI off the shelf, he was overjoyed before realizing that it was one of his friends.

The skyr was a hit in Whole Foods in California and New York, which gave the entrepreneur the confidence to expand the brand’s catalog in 2019. Then, like many small businesses that struggled to survive during and after the pandemic, Ásmundsson shuttered Smári Organics in 2022.

“With the yogurt, I wanted to have it high-protein. I wanted to have it as low-sugar as possible, and I wanted to have it organic,” Ásmundsson said. “It turns out, being organic was our Achilles’ heel. People weren’t willing to pay that price for a nationwide brand at that time.”

Ásmundsson began his next project without skipping a beat.

Family, friends offer good advice

Emily Callaghan, Ásmundsson’s partner, may not be directly involved with the business, but she’s undoubtedly contributed as a designer and consultant. She is a designer and creative coach. She’s currently teaching at Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.

“I’m the bonus in-house consult for thinking and bouncing ideas around,” she said. “We talk a lot about his work but I’m not the idea-haver, for sure. Just more, kind of, nudging ideas his way.”

In a more hands-on capacity, Ken Burke, a serial entrepreneur who founded and led MarketLive, Inc. in Petaluma as an eCommerice provider until its acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in 2015, was neighbors with the family in Petaluma. He helped in an advisory capacity for both Smári Organics and now with Bygg Foods.

“I’d be working out in my garage and he’d come over and ask for business advice,” Burke laughed. “Smári is amazing at building something that is really elegantly-engineered from a food perspective with simple or complex ingredients, but also pure ingredients. He makes delicious products, that’s really his forte.”

Burke and Ásmundsson see Bygg Foods as more than a supplement brand, noting its environmentally-conscious approach to food and nutrition. This makes their target audience 30- and 40-year-olds who traditionally care more about the quality of the product and it’s environmental impact.

While NØRSE CØDE can act as a form of meal replacement, like any other protein powders, Ásmundsson is hesitant to put the “replacement” label on the product, which he said may come with additional regulatory requirements and definitions for what constitutes a “meal” versus a “supplement.”

NØRSE CØDE can be blended with dairy milk, vegan milks or water. Ásmundsson says the chocolate flavor works well with the malty palate of the barley, and it’s surprisingly filling. He added that’s likely due to the addition of prebiotic fiber.

The product is found in the Ásmundsson household, too.

“For my 15-year-old, he and all his friends, they all drink it and they’re like, ‘This is like chocolate milk,’” he said. “I think health food needs to be delicious, otherwise I think there’s going to be much, much fewer people that consume it.”

Getting their name out there

Bygg Foods is planning on introducing one or two more flavors by the end of 2024 and the team is looking to develop other products outside of the protein powder. They currently have a stainless shaker for sale on their website.

“I think of (Bygg Foods) as a lifestyle brand,” Burke said. “I haven’t talked to (Ásmundsson) that much about, you know, ‘How do you really define the brand five years out?’ But I would say that it’s much more of a lifestyle brand that has a collection of products that leverage eco-environmental and clean nutrition that people can identify with.”

Callaghan agrees.

“The need that it’s really going after is overall wellness plus well-sourced and kind ingredients,” Callaghan added. “Functional’ and ‘wellness,’ to me, could be beauty, it could be a lot of different things. I think there’s an opportunity in that space.”

Bygg Foods plans to distribute NØRSE CØDE entirely through their website for the first six months of production in order to gain a better understanding of customer demand before moving onto larger online distributors like Amazon by the end of 2024. The goal is to make it into national retailers like Whole Foods and, ultimately, international distribution, Ásmundsson said.

As of now, Ásmundsson is the company. There are no employees at this point and in order to get his products to customers, he packs bags of NØRSE CØDE at the factory in South San Francisco himself.

“The reception has been incredible,” Ásmundsson said. “I got an email from somebody yesterday that said, ‘I bought two bags, one for me and one for my dad, and now I don’t think I’m going to send my dad the bag because I’m about to be done with the first one.’”