Philadelphia is launching a plant-based cream cheese

New York
CNN Business
 — 

Philadelphia Cream is launching a non-dairy version of its signature spread.

The plant-based cream is now available at grocery stories in Atlanta, Houston, Miami and other locations in the Southeast, with a wider rollout planned for summer 2023. The new variety is made with coconut oil and faba bean protein among other ingredients, and is designed to mimic the experience of eating traditional cream .

Philadelphia’s non-dairy cream cheese has a suggested retail price of $6.49, compared to $4.57 for traditional.

The brand’s owner Kraft Heinz

(KHC), has been focusing on driving growth by innovating within its powerhouse products like Philadelphia, including by launching plant-based alternatives, where the company sees room for growth.

“Plant-based has been outpacing the overall categories within all of dairy for quite some time,” said John Crawford, VP of client insights for dairy at IRI.

But with consumers trading down to more affordable options in the face of high inflation and concerns of a looming recession, pricey cream cheese made without dairy could be a hard sell.

Robert Scott, president of R&D at Kraft Heinz, said it took the company about two years to come up with the for the plant-based Philly.

The team focused on two major factors: Getting the product to melt and spread easily on toasted bread or a warm waffle, and making sure that it tastes like a dairy product — even if it doesn’t totally pass for regular cream cheese.

Philadelphia Is Launching A Plant-based Cream Cheese's plant-based cream cheese is available in the Southeast.

“Getting dairy notes in a plant base is hard,” Scott said, but he hopes consumers will notice buttery hints in the spread. “To get to butter … that’s a huge success metric,” he said, acknowledging that the…

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