When you think of exciting foods, oatmeal probably doesn’t make it to the top of the list.
Maybe it should!
One taste of Alternative Oats oatmeal may just turn your opinion of this common breakfast food on its head. Alexandria couple Chris and Melat Burger started Alternative Oats last year in order to create oatmeal and oat products that are fun, tasty and packed with nutrients.
Melat was not always a fan of oatmeal. “I always hated oatmeal,” Melat explained. “I was born in Ethiopia and I grew up in Germany so oatmeal was not a big thing. It looks like baby food that is smashed together or it was too sweet.”
That changed when she met Chris in 2013, while they both were attending grad school in D.C.
They moved to Chris’ native Michigan after school and bought their first home together which is where the idea for Alternative Oats was first planted. “There were no decent breakfast options for the area I was in, it’s very industrial, blue collar," Chris said. "I would buy those 16-ounce soup cups and on a Sunday I would go out and buy my coconut, my seeds a big thing of oats from Costco and I would make like 30 oat cups and they would just be stacked in the corner, and on the way to work we would each grab a cup.”
Friends suggested that they sell their oatmeal but the Burgers laughed it off at the time.
A few years ago, the Burgers moved to the DMV area so that Chris could pursue his career related to China, but the political and economic environment and eventually the pandemic forced Chris to shift to consulting for family manufacturing businesses. By January 2021, Chris began to seriously consider starting his own business.
“Let’s go create our own demand for ourselves — let’s go build our future from the ground up,” said Chris, describing his mindset. Oatmeal made sense as a starting point because it is shelf stable, tangible and has a smaller upfront cost.
Melat’s initial reaction to an oatmeal business was mixed. “There is nothing sexy about oatmeal,” Melat explained with a laugh. “Then, that first recipe he created, the Island Spice, which is pink, we were like 'OK, this is it …”
“Eureka!” Chris interjected.
The couple sent out hundreds of samples of their oatmeal blends to friends and got positive feedback and decided to move forward. By March 8, 2021, Alternative Oats was registered and business kicked off in June.
Melat, who works full time in retail purchasing and quality assurance for a large grocery chain, is also an artist. She designed the Alternative Oats logo and worked with a graphic designer to bring it to reality. They wanted to use bright, vibrant colors that match the fun and often colorful quality of their products.
The Burgers make their product in their suburban Kingstowne home. They were first certified by the Virginia Department of Agriculture to produce in the kitchen but quickly realized this was not conducive to everyday life. They decided to convert a downstairs playroom/guest room into a commercial kitchen space complete with epoxy floors, stainless steel work surfaces and equipment. It made sense because they were able to control the setting and it was less risk and cost than renting space at a commercial kitchen.
Two women work four to five hours each week with them to create the products. Their garage has been converted into a home office for Chris’ consulting work and a warehouse for storing raw materials, inventory and shipping. At times, there are up to 800 pounds of oats, 400 pounds of oat flour and 100 to 200 pounds of nuts, seeds and other ingredients on the garage shelves.
The Burgers, along with their 4 year-old son, started selling their product every Saturday at the Loudoun One farmers market for six months straight. There, they began to build a local following and learned a lot about customers' likes, dislikes and allergies and how best to market their products.
“It gave us a reliable sales cushion so that there was always something each week to pay down the card, to order more materials, to try to grow it,” said Chris. They stopped selling at the farmers market at the end of last year in order to focus on getting into wholesale and to grow the brand. Alternative Oats uses only clean, natural ingredients and no preservatives or artificial ingredients.
The standard recipes include very low amounts of real sugar. The oats used are gluten-free and organic. Right now, the recipes are 80 to 95 percent organic and they plan to shift to all-organic in time. All flavors are “accidentally vegan” except for Peaches and Cream which contains dairy. For allergy reasons, the Burgers have decided to remove peanuts from their recipes for now, but haven’t ruled out bringing it back in the future.
“You can’t satisfy everybody, you can’t cover for every allergy," said Chris. "At some point you just have to go with what is more important."
The products contain unique ingredients like pure peach powder, guava powder and dragon fruit which give the products their fun colors. The Burgers don’t cut any corners when it comes to their products. They fly in made-to-order peach powder from Malaysia because peach powders available domestically are all cut with fillers.
“We are starting with oatmeal but we want to be an oat-centered business," explained Chris. "Our philosophy is that oats are this super awesome component of a diet, they are a really healthy ingredient. There is more that can be done with them than just oatmeal."
They also sell oat flour-based pancake mixes, which came to them while they were working at the farmers market and were initially sold only to existing customers. Past pancake mix flavors have included Chunky Monkey, which contained peanut powder, pecans and chocolate, and a blue mix that contained butterfly pea powder and blue spirulina. Their Christmas recipe was extremely popular with customers to the point they would call to meet up with the Burgers in parking lots just to get their hands on it. It was red in color and contained pomegranate, pistachios, cacao and cinnamon.
The Burgers' future is looking as bright as their oatmeal. Because most of their customers have kids, they plan to launch a kid-specific oatmeal made with finer-chopped oats for quicker prep, no sugar and colored with fruit or vegetable powders. They will also attend numerous pop-ups now that the weather is warm and are available at more than half a dozen local coffee shops like Misha’s and Grounded Coffee.
The Burgers dream of someday opening an oatmeal and oat product factory in Alexandria, creating jobs and reinforcing their strong ties with the community.
“This house, this neighborhood, this community, this is our Alamo. That is a part of Alternative Oats,” Chris stated.
“Our neighbors are like our biggest promoters, every time we meet a new person they tell them these are 'the oatmeal people.' We have become the oatmeal people,” Melat added with a laugh. And when that happens, the Burgers smile with pride, because they know they have created something special – and it’s only just the beginning.
For more information about Alternative Oats, visit their website at alternativeoats.com.
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Bringing Oatmeal Back - Alexandria Living Magazine
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