Foodmaker grows with ‘tasty’ frozen items

BOULDER — EVOL Foods, formerly EVOL Burritos, is about a lot more than just burritos these days.

The company that Phil Anson started in 2001 selling premade burritos to climbers in Eldorado Canyon has grown rapidly. Its natural and organic burritos, flatbread pizzas and “bowl” meals are now in grocery stores around the country.

Without doing any traditional advertising, Phil’s Fresh Foods LLC, doing business as EVOL Foods, has grown revenue 271 percent, from $1.55 million in 2008 to $5.75 million in 2010. The growth places the company No. 5 on the Boulder County Business Report’s Mercury 100 list of fastest-growing private companies reporting annual revenue of more than $2 million.

How do you catch a shopper’s eye in the grocery store freezer section without doing any advertising? It’s all about taste and about connecting with customers, according to Anson and to investor Brendan Synnott, owner of Revelry Brands in Boulder. It’s also about “lifestyle” branding — the freezer section didn’t really feature anything before EVOL to connect with “people who care about their bodies and the planet,” Anson said.

“At the end of the day, we sell frozen food. There’s nothing secretive that we can do, so the best thing we can do is have the most emotional relevance possible,” Anson said. “We’re authentic.”

That means sponsoring new “aspirational events” such as FestEVOL, which brought the popular rock band O.A.R. to Crested Butte in March. It also means interacting with potential customers through Facebook and getting profiled in popular media outlets, including Oprah, Shape and Men’s Health magazines, and the popular online site Hungry Girl.

All of the EVOL strategies appear to be going gangbusters, including the company’s recent name change from EVOL Burritos to EVOL Foods. The company has one of the fastest-growing brands in the country, based on market research, Anson said. Burritos include mostly organic flavors such as veggie fajita and tofu and spinach sauté burritos, along with a line-up of traditional flavors, including chicken, bean and rice; shredded beef; and pork and green chile.

Synnott is a big believer in making sure the EVOL food tastes good. Synnott and Tom Spier, former Bear Naked Granola executives who sold the cereal company to a division of Kellogg, invested in Anson’s company in 2009.

“Ultimately, to have people enjoy your brand,” Synnott said. “It has to be something that tastes great, and a lot of frozen food didn’t taste that good up to this point.”

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