Planting Hope is looking to steal market share from almond milk in a plant-based category with “shockingly” little brand awareness, according to the company’s founder.

The brand’s Hope and Sesame Sesamemilk is now available to Canadian consumers in five flavour SKUs, including a Barista Blend, through Amazon and natural grocers in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia for a total of roughly 300 distribution points.

Julia Stamberger, CEO and co-founder of Planting Hope, tells strategy it’s not looking to convert conventional dairy consumers. “The opportunity for us, from a category perspective, is sesame versus almond milk.”

Almond milk currently holds 60% of the category in grocery, but is declining slightly of late.

“Almonds have significant sustainability issues, they are very low in nutrition, but are performing well as they offer an unsweetened product that truly has no sugar and lactose,” she admits.

According to Stamberger, the last plant-based milk category innovation came from oats, which holds 25%.

The problem, she says, is that the plant-milk consumer does not recognize brands, but categories.

The opportunity for Hope and Sesame sesame milk, Stamberger says, is that it is nutritionally comparable to milk, unsweetened and is well-regarded by baristas. Plus, sesame is popular with growing Asian communities and other populations where lactose intolerance is high.

On the design side, Hope and Sesame aims break through a brand block with very little carton differentiation.

“Our rainbow carton is our barista,” Stamberger says. In the shelf stable set, there’s a lot of white and blue. To break through, Hope and Sesame went strongly with colour. When first developed, the look and feel was more “culinary,” but after focus group testing, it went with the idea of magic, a play on the brand name.

“Our packaging is covered with our sesame characters, and talks about nutrition, sustainability, and the rest,” she says. On the principal display panel, it’s able to claim eight grams of complete protein, a highly important differentiator, especially against almond milks.

Stamberger says a fuller, shopper marketing campaign is likely coming in Q2.