Bragg 2024: Promoting Healthy Lifestyles

DeliveryRank meets Linda Boardman, the CEO of Bragg, a company with over a century of legacy in promoting healthy lifestyles. Under her leadership, Bragg continues to champion vibrant, healthful living by offering a diverse range of ingredient-led products. With a focus on making wellness simple and accessible, Linda upholds the pioneering spirit of Paul and Patricia Bragg, ensuring that the company's mission to help individuals live healthier and more vibrant lives thrives in today's world.

What inspired Bragg to create the wellness quiz, and how do you ensure it accurately matches users with the best products for their needs?

Since our founding more than 100 years ago, Bragg has focused on our wellness mission: to inspire and nourish vibrant, healthy lives. All of our products aim to make healthy eating easier and more accessible. Our wellness quiz makes it simple for consumers to match their interests—whether that be healthier cooking or a new way to get their daily dose of apple cider vinegar—to our Bragg product offerings. It’s a great way for consumers to discover new items, such as our delicious Apple Cider Vinegar Blends that combine appealing flavors like citrus ginger or honey and cayenne pepper, with the familiar kick of apple cider vinegar. 

Can you walk us through the development process of your new arrivals, such as the Renew and Balance ACV Supplements? What makes them unique compared to other products on the market?

One of our goals is to make wellness more accessible. To that end, we are continually evolving our product lines, such as offering new formats of our beloved apple cider vinegar, including our ACV supplements.

Bragg’s Core ACV Supplement provides the power of our Bragg Original liquid apple cider vinegar (ACV) in convenient capsules, along with the extra immune health benefits of Vitamin D and Zinc. We are particularly proud to be the only provider of Apple Cider Vinegar Supplements with 750 mg of acetic acid per serving—the clinically proven effective dose—making our products the only supplement that stacks up to a tablespoon of liquid apple cider vinegar. In fact, you’d have to eat 30 of the leading ACV gummies to get 750 mg of acetic acid!

Our ACV supplements offer the health benefits of our liquid ACV, plus some added wellness perks. The new supplement line includes:

• Balance ACV Supplement
  Made with Organic Sensoril® Ashwagandha, each serving of Balance supports your body’s natural ability to manage everyday stress, as ashwagandha helps regulate cortisol levels and improve stress tolerance.

• Energy ACV Supplement
  Containing six essential B vitamins, each capsule of Energy supports a steady flow of energy at the cellular level.

• Renew ACV Supplement
  Containing plant-powered phytoceramides, which act as a natural barrier to prevent moisture from escaping, each serving of Renew helps skin lock in moisture and smooth fine lines and wrinkles for a youthful glow.

Bragg has a long history dating back to 1912. How do you balance maintaining the brand's legacy with introducing innovative products and staying relevant in today's health and wellness industry?

Yes, we have a long history! Paul Bragg was a renowned health advocate who realized more than 100 years ago that we all share an innate desire toward “healthy.” It was this forward-thinking realization—that our bodies naturally crave a healthy balance—that led him to create Bragg Live Foods, which is one of the oldest independent natural food companies in the United States. While our portfolio of ingredient-led products has continually expanded over the decades—backed by more than a century of time-tested wisdom—Bragg remains passionately focused on helping each individual eat better, feel better and enjoy a more healthful and vibrant life.

Continuing Paul’s legacy, Patricia Bragg took the reins as CEO in the 1970s, expanding the brand’s reach while doggedly preserving Bragg’s high standards. When I joined as CEO in 2019, I became only the third leader in Bragg’s history (and the first outside of the Bragg family). It’s very exciting to carry on Paul and Patricia’s legacy and have the opportunity to expand their mission and product line to new channels.

As you may know, Bragg has produced the country’s #1 brand of apple cider vinegar for decades. When you find something transformative, you naturally want to spread the word. Paul Bragg knew that, and it was the spark that ignited his company. People have wanted Bragg’s health knowledge and resources for more than a century now, and we are still giving it to them. The only change is in how we get the message across. Paul used to rent out social halls for meetings to tell people about Bragg, while today we connect with people via social media. It’s still our mission to inspire and nourish people to live healthy, vibrant lives.

Your product range includes various Apple Cider Vinegar blends with unique flavors like Citrus Ginger and Cranberry Apple. How do you decide on new flavors, and what role do customer feedback and market trends play in this process?

Our Apple Cider Vinegar Blends are designed as a delicious way to get in a daily serving of ACV. These are blends of juices and spices that offer the perfect balance of wellness-boosting ingredients and Bragg Organic ACV. Right now, our blends include Honey, Honey Cayenne (Wellness Cleanse), Cranberry Apple and Citrus Ginger.

As we develop new products, we are always cognizant of health and flavor trends, working to bring Bragg’s wellness mission to life in new and flavorful ways. While consumer research is an important part of our innovation process, we are also not afraid to take a risk. When you have a delicious and versatile product like our Citrus Ginger Apple Cider Vinegar, for example, that can be used in water as a wellness drink, in a fruit salad dressing or in a mean cocktail (or mocktail), you know you have a winning item.

Bragg emphasizes using pure ingredients without additives like cane sugar and artificial colors. How do you ensure the quality and purity of your products, and what challenges do you face in maintaining these standards?

Well, first of all, Bragg’s quality standards are embedded in our DNA, having been at the center of the Bragg healthy lifestyle for more than 100 years. What has changed is our ability to ensure that our products consistently deliver on our commitments, thanks to new testing that wasn’t available back in the day. For example, we regularly test our Organic Apple Cider Vinegar on an array of quality measures, such as ensuring an ample level of live “Mother”—the beneficial bacteria and cellulose that fuels the fermentation process. While Bragg uses a natural fermentation process, some other vinegars are made from pasteurized or concentrated apple juice and add “Mother” back in after processing. As a result, the amount of Mother in a bottle of ACV can vary widely. Our testing ensures that we give our consumers the experience they expect. We also verify that our vinegar is consistently 5% acidity, so you can be confident in how it will perform in cooking or pickling.

Our biggest challenge is educating consumers about the visual implications of making a naturally fermented product. Often, shoppers go to the grocery store expecting every bottle on the shelf to look the same. This is a consequence of our modern food production systems, which often favor being consistent over being natural. However, just like there are variations between fresh apples, there is variation between batches of naturally fermented vinegar. Bragg’s ACV is made from 100% organic apples and is raw and unfiltered, made without added colors, flavors or preservatives. We use an array of organic apples that give our product its winning flavor. However, our natural process means the color of Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar may vary from bottle to bottle. The fact that you see a variety of colors is a testament to our all-natural process.

If you would like to find out more about Bragg, please visit www.bragg.com.