BEST OF BRITISH: VELOFORTE
Seeking a new approach to cycling nutrition, we meet the couple using their Italian heritage to mix things up.
Wearing head protection is par for the course on a Cycling Plus photoshoot, but protection from my head? After seven-and-abit years on the job, this was a new one on me. So it was that I found myself in a northwest London industrial unit, wearing an unflattering hairnet, being shown the ropes of baking one of Lara Giusti’s energy bars in her ‘innovation’ kitchen. She’s the co-creator, along with her husband Marc, of Veloforte ( https:// veloforte.cc), a London-based nutrition brand that eschews what Marc calls the “synthetic gloop in tubes” that dominate much of the sports nutrition market in favour of their personalised take on a baked Tuscan delicacy, panforte. It’s a calorific – each 70g Veloforte bar contains almost 300 calories – natural mix of fruits, nuts and spices from a dessert that originates from 13th century Siena, close to Mark’s ancestral Florence home, and indeed making use of an old and, of course, top secret family recipe. Before this Marc had spent two decades building up other people’s brands, including Audi, Bentley and Rolls Royce. “But I’ve always wanted my own business,” he tells us later in the garden of the couple’s Chiswick home. “I just never knew it would be in bars! Then again, I’ve an Italian father and grew up surrounded by huge Italian lunches…” Perhaps it was inevitable he’d end up in the food business.
Adversity leads to success
Like many good ideas taking to life, Veloforte started off the back of adversity. At the end of 2015 Marc’s appendix burst, a “pretty hideous” situation that put him in hospital for a long spell. His convalescence focused his mind and got him back on the bike to train for an event, the Rapha Manchester to London. He looked carefully at how to fuel for such a demanding ride, concerned about avoiding any products that might cause gastric distress. With the help of Lara – already an award-winning baker – he made versions of the bars they sell today – a remix of the panforte that has been in his biscuit tin his whole life.
“We took the booze out, chopped up the nuts and slightly altered the fruit and nuts to have the right carbohydrate and protein balance,” says Lara. “Then it was about inventing flavours that would stimulate the taste buds as well as fuel the ride.”
Part of it was also about creating a product that was a match for the fortune folk spend on the rest of their cycling habit: “It’s amazing how much people spend on their bikes, clothing, shoes, only to chuck into their bodies whatever they can find from the shelves,” says Lara.
Then, Marc says, “we looked at the taste/performance/natural triangle. When you look at the nutrition market place you realise that every single product fails on one or two of these. A gel, for example, isn’t natural and tends not to taste very good. A bar might taste good but does it have enough calories?”
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the pair gave their fledgling business “an experimental poke” by heading to Majorca to feed riders of the 2016 Dallaglio Cycle Slam. Cooked in their home kitchen, the bars were wrapped by Lara and friends and taken “very unashamedly” to Majorca. “At this point I still had my other career and it was nothing but what seemed like a good idea,” says Marc.
The Cycle Slam riders, through devouring the bars, thought them a great idea, with riders declaring morning gel amnesties and going all-in on their bars, reports Marc.
“When we arrived home we got a call from Virgin, who’d heard we had some super food – and could the brand have it? It was doing the Virgin STRIVE Challenge, which was the Matterhorn mountain in the Alps to Mount Etna on Sicily, completed through climbing, swimming, running and cycling, and wanted us to fuel 350 riders for 28 days. So we made a ton of bars, again in our home kitchen, and took them to Italy.”
Again the response was beyond expectations, to the point where Marc could consider giving up the day job.
Growing team
In the two years since, they’ve – to relief all round – been able to move out of the home kitchen, first to the unit in Kilburn, then, as they expanded and demand increased, to a larger shared food production facility in London.
“The Cycle Slam riders, through devouring the bars, thought them a great idea, with riders declaring morning gel amnesties” MarcGiusti
“We try and challenge taste buds. You might taste sweet bits, you might taste savoury bits, it’ll take youonajourney” Lara Giusti
This husband and wife duo have made an addition to the team, with Steve Marson, who worked for 20 years at Halfords, coming on board in charge of logistics. Steve had been taking part in both the Cycle Slam and Virgin events and got in touch, eventually joining the team. “He’s been a wonderful addition,” says Marc. “There have been a few bits of serendipity in terms of what it’s like to start a new company. If we’d gone out to look for that person, we’d probably never have found him.”
Starting your own company can be fraught, never more so in our politically turbulent times. The company buys a lot of products, such as Sicilian oranges, from mainland Europe, and have a large European direct-to-customer base. “Oh, it’s been great fun,” claims Lara, tongue firmly wedged in cheek. “Super easy!” says Marc. “It’s going to be a problem,” he adds, in reference to the terms of the UK’s departure from the EU, “we’re just not quite clear how.”
Keepingitreal
Veloforte isn’t the first nutrition company to produce ‘real’ food for cyclists, but it’s an industry dominated by synthetic products. First and foremost, Marc believes, the reason for this is commercial convenience – “faster, cheaper, easier to sell it to a distributor… Of course, at a chemical level you can optimise sugar delivery and faster digestive passage, I’m not saying for one moment it doesn’t work” – he just finds it “deeply unpleasant”.
Sustaining cycling performance is individualised. Gel manufacturers might advise you to eat three gels an hour to fuel performance, but whether your body – and wallet – is able to tolerate such an amount is open to debate. There’s a balance to be found in consuming natural food like Veloforte produce and manufactured products like gels. Professional cycling teams are sponsored by a nutrition company, who supply them with their gels, bars and recovery shakes, but study a rider’s musette – the bag of food and drink handed to them during a race – and you’ll find plenty of proper food, jam sandwiches and rice cakes for example, particularly in the early and mid-part of races. In the latter part of a race, as the pace ramps up and when their body needs fast energy, something like a gel comes into its own. If you’re not in a race, eating three gels an hour through training, or a seven-hour sportive, would likely see you experience a Tom Dumoulin-esque dash to the toilet.
For many companies, the path to sponsoring a pro team and getting their name on a jersey is a prestigious and necessary journey to go on, with the promise of exposure and validation. Might we see Veloforte in the WorldTour?
“We have looked into it,” says Marc. “The first thing to bear in mind is that it’s really expensive. It’s for the brands that are looking to take a particular position in a sector. I don’t believe our customers care about or follow the pro teams’ cause enough to make it worthwhile. We are, nevertheless, feeding a significant number, just not as sponsors. There are others who we help support because they’re up and coming teams, but we’ve no interest in being emblazoned across someone’s chest anytime soon.”
Aside from that, and as it is with a bike manufacturer or a wheel maker, being part of the “performance story”, as Marc refers to it, can be a difficult place to be. “If riders are performing badly, it’s very unlikely that it’s a direct correlation to your food, but you become somehow connected. We love the pro game, no question, but for us it’s not a relevant playing field. We’re small and the teams are big – it isn’t always the end game.”
Flavourmakers
The end game for Veloforte seems a way off yet. Currently its product range is made up of three energy bars – Classico (citrus fruits, nuts and spices), Ciocco (dates, almonds and cocoa) and Di Bosco (red berries, almonds and pistachios), all firm favourites in the Cycling Plus office. More are on the way soon, with ideas for drinks and recovery products floating around. Both Lara and Marc were keeping their cards close to their chest when we spoke, with Lara more than willing to give us trial samples but less so when it came to telling us what they were or what was in them. All we knew was that they hit the spot.
“We try and challenge taste buds,” says Lara. “You might taste sweet bits, you might taste savoury bits, it’ll take you on a journey.”
A journey that they hope, as long as it’s fuelled by their product, will keep you going and going and going...