Ibai Llanos and Gerard Piqué are the new founders of the Barcelona foodtechf Plesh

Health is one of the priorities in consumers' lives today. Tobacco and alcohol consumption is decreasing, and healthy options fill cafes, bars, and supermarkets. Sports are growing, and healthy eating is emerging as the most demanded option. However, who doesn't like a sweet treat now and then? Plesh is born with the intention of demonstrating that, just because its product is a guilty pleasure, it doesn't mean it's not healthy. Its proposal of sugar-free chocolate snacks has already captivated consumers, but also some celebrities. In their latest funding round, Ibai Llanos and Gerard Piqué have decided to become part of this revolution and, as of this Monday, they become co-founders of the Barcelona-based foodtech, along with Jaume Betrian, Juan Umbert, and Adrià Colominas.

"We want to reach the community through content creators," explains Jaume Betrian, CEO of the company, to The New Barcelona Post. Plesh's strategy had two phases: consolidate the product and gain an audience. In this second phase, the founders saw that they needed powerful figures who could boost the brand. Piqué, who had already been part of a first funding round for the company, has decided to take another step in this direction and join the team. Furthermore, he has done so accompanied by Ibai Llanos, one of the content creators with the largest community in all of Spain. Their incorporation, therefore, is a way to influence these young communities. "It changes the way brands relate to creators," says Betrian, who also adds that "it's about becoming part of a project and building it, rather than just recommending it."

The funding round won by the two public figures amounts to 3.75 million euros and will serve to maintain the company's growth and its expansion into these new markets. For years, content creators have changed the rules of communication. They have built their own channels, created communities capable of competing for attention with major media outlets, and demonstrated that it was no longer necessary to follow traditional models to connect with millions of people. Now, Llanos and Piqué want to apply this same mentality to another industry: food.

As the company has made clear, the two new founders bring completely different things to the brand and its growth. Llanos, on the one hand, has a great capacity to create new entertainment formats, connect with huge communities and turn them into active participants in the product. These qualities can make Plesh stop being an option to recommend and become part of a community's diet. “What interests me about Plesh is the possibility of building a brand in a different way. I didn’t just want to get to the end to collaborate with my name, but to be part of it from the beginning and help build products that grind me, as well as the brand and its community. I think that this is the really interesting thing about the project,” says Llanos.

On the other hand, Piqué has extensive experience creating companies and, more than a former football player, he can be considered an entrepreneur. He also has a large portfolio of creating entertainment platforms and new business models, which makes him a key piece in Plesh's growth, according to the brand itself. “I have always been attracted to projects that dare to do things differently. Plesh has a great product, a huge category ahead and a team with a lot of ambition. We enter to contribute our experience, help accelerate its growth and build a brand with potential to go far beyond Spain”, says Piqué.

A formula for success

Plesh's secret is an innovative recipe made by authentic experts. One of the shortcomings that the founders saw in the market when they started cooking this project was the possibility of having healthy proposals that would replace sweet snacks, without having to give up flavor or the sweetness itself. That is why, thanks to the work of experts like Lluc Dalmau —recognized for his work in haute patisserie—, they found the perfect mixture of vegetable fibers that replace sugar and provide 20% more prebiotic fibers and between 10% and 18% protein. "With this recipe we manage to trick the brain, generating substances like dopamines or serotonins related to happiness, but without these having been generated by a large amount of sugar in our body," Betrian defends.

More than 3,000 points of sale

Since its launch, Plesh has quickly managed to convert its proposal into a product with a real market presence. The current world gives high priority to healthy proposals and, if it is also ensured that these can be just as tasty as traditional snacks, their presence has more possibilities to grow. That is why the company is already present in more than 3,000 points of sale in Spain, with a presence in chains and spaces such as Carrefour, Alcampo, Bonpreu, Ametller Origen, Ca l'Ametller (or Cal Fruitós) and Areas. Its range includes different formats of chocolate snacks without added sugars, such as dragees and the new Crunch Bites, developed from its own combination of vegetable fibers to achieve sweetness and texture without resorting to traditional formulas in the category.

Thanks to its innovative formula, Plesh can compete with the chocolate giants that have historically monopolized sweet snacks. However, its proposal aims to raise the stakes and demonstrate that life is not made for suffering, but for taking care of oneself: “Why can't a sweet be just as healthy?”, Betrian reflects in this newspaper. Plesh enters the market with a clear objective: to win over consumers of traditional sweet snacks. With Piqué and Llanos on the founding team, Plesh assures that it will add capital, new partners, and a new way of building the brand to face its next stage.