the baby-formula industry that made room for ByHeart and Bobbie — and led to the shortage this year — have been brewing since the 1950s. The postwar baby boom introduced new customers, and developments in formula-making brought convenience that outweighed the cost. Similac came to market in 1951, followed a few years later by Enfamil . They remain the predominant formulas today.
Modi encountered the industry’s barriers to entry right away. In 2019, she and her co-founder, Sarah Hardy — Modi’s “work wife” from Airbnb — launched a trial with 100 families in San Francisco, offering a “companion” formula for toddlers. But confusion about its marketing, and whether it could be safely served to an infant, got the attention of the FDA, and Bobbie voluntarily recalled its product.
The aesthetic and ethical preferences of millennials have followed them into parenthood. Instead of Pampers, there are Jessica Alba’s plant-based diapers printed with avocados and sweet potatoes; instead of Desitin, you can buy Kristen Bell’s diaper-rash cream, packaged in millennial pink; and if Gerber doesn’t feel good enough, Jennifer Garner sells squeezable pouches of organic baby goo.
Both start-ups insist that the stuff inside their cans is what attracts parents. “People come to us for a simple reason: ‘Baby eats it, baby doesn’t spit it up, and baby shits it out well,’ ” Kim Gebbia Chappell, Bobbie’s vice-president of marketing, told me. But they have both put effort into making parents feel good about the choice they’re making.
The FDA also announced that it was considering allowing European imports permanently. Both Bobbie and ByHeart support this in the short term, but a lasting shift would put them in a bind. Modi has long argued that European formulas were special and that its domestic imitation of them was the crucial advantage Bobbie offered to parents. Now, she was arguing that we should be wary of anything crossing the Atlantic.
reeveswiedeman