Restaurant entrepreneur expands into premium freeze-dried meals

Sara Willis, a long-time Eugene restaurant entrepreneur, is carving out a niche in the backpacking food market with Luxefly Basecamp, a line of premium freeze-dried meals that prioritize nutrition and flavor. 

The business venture emerged from Willis’s disappointment with existing trail food options during a 2021 backpacking trip.

While Willis said she enjoyed the two- or three-day backpacking trips she has been on, the food choices she had left her uninspired.

“I literally had never tried any of these things, and I was so hungry,” said Willis of her first encounter with conventional backpacking meals. “It tasted OK, but it felt like I was full to the gills, but I didn’t feel good. It turns out that these companies put in fillers.”

From restaurant to trail

Willis grew up in Eugene, and as the eldest daughter of a family with 11 children, she cooked a lot. She lived in Northern California for a while, cooking and delivering meals to customers, then returned to Eugene and worked at Cafe Zenon, a landmark downtown Eugene restaurant that operated for almost 30 years before closing in 2008. She then moved to Mexico and worked as a private chef. 

Investors helped her open her first restaurant. Her mastery of Mexican flavors has followed her at most of the restaurants she has opened in Eugene, including June, Carmelita Spats, Asado Grill, Saucefly, and, most recently, Santo de la Torta on East 19th Avenue, which she is transforming into Siesta Seven sometime in mid-September. 

With her cooking and restaurant experience, Willis felt confident she could create a better backpacking meal. She spent more than a year in research and development, purchasing her own freeze-drying equipment and perfecting recipes.

In the freeze-drying process, food is first frozen to low temperatures, then the water is removed through the process of sublimation. After freezing, the atmospheric pressure is reduced, which causes the frozen water to sublimate, meaning it transforms directly from solid ice to water vapor without becoming liquid first. Gently heating the food while it is still at reduced pressure causes any remaining water to sublimate out. 

Removing the water leaves the food porous, so when water is added back during the rehydration process, the food readily absorbs it. For the most part, freeze-drying retains the taste, smell and nutrient content of the fresh foods. 

The company officially launched in late 2023 under the Luxefly Basecamp brand name, after obtaining U.S. Department of Agriculture certification. Willis is primarily selling direct-to-consumer and at outdoor-oriented expos across the country, but locally her meals are available at Capella’s Market, Sundance Natural Foods and Provisions Market Hall.

At the expos, she said, people pick up her packages and the first thing they do is look at the ingredients for additives such as whey protein or soy protein. 

“Some people don’t consider those additives or fillers, but we do,” Willis said. “It’s cheaper to put in whey powder than it is to put in sausage if you’re trying to get the calories up.” 

For her chili relleno meal, which is one of the most expensive per ounce, she uses burrata, because it rehydrates with a better texture than mozzarella does. The French toast meal comes with a packet of real maple syrup on the side, because ingredients with sugars don’t freeze-dry well. (The sugars can come out gooey.)

“There’s definitely some nuance,” she said, “but I dialed in the process and the ingredients. Even if you have a good recipe, it doesn’t always turn out the same when it is freeze-dried.”

Focus on health and nutrition

Many of the ingredients Willis uses are sourced locally, such as biscuits with gravy made with pork from Long’s Meat Market. 

Some of her competitors use dehydration methods that are faster and cheaper than freeze-drying, but retain only 60% of nutritional value. Luxefly’s freeze-drying technology preserves 90% to 95% of fresh food’s nutritional content, Willis said. But, the process takes approximately 40 hours per batch.

“It’s a big difference, and it costs a lot more to do that,” she said. 

Luxefly’s biscuits and gravy comes in a 3.5-ounce package intended to make one serving, and costs $12.50 when purchased from the Luxefly website. Luxefly’s ingredients are organic flour, rBST free butter, milk, heavy cream, salt, baking powder, organic herbs, and hormone-free pork.

Willis defends the price, even though other companies, like Mountain House, provide two-serving meals for less than a single serving of a Luxefly meal. 

“It’s better ingredients, better nutrition and better taste,” Willis said. “I grew up on an organic farm. I only eat food that’s good for me, even if it’s more expensive, and I just don’t even like working with food that isn’t high-quality.”

And many backpackers report that packages labeled as two servings actually provide just one serving in practice, because the caloric demands of hiking require larger portions than the manufacturers suggest.

Happy trails

Willis operates out of a 1,700-square-foot facility in west Eugene and is hoping to expand with more freeze-drying machines, which would give her the ability to make more than one recipe each week. 

Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many reporting Luxefly meals have transformed their trail experiences. Many backpackers eat a lot of high-energy foods such as candy bars so they can get enough calories. When coupled with backpacking meals that are high in sodium and other additives, the meals can be unhealthy, Willis said. 

Willis shared one recent customer message which said Luxefly’s food provides not only better nutrition, she said, “but having a delicious meal to look forward to changes the mental game on really long days.”

Beyond the backpacking market, Willis suggests people keep Luxefly Basecamp on hand as an easy meal option for emergency preparedness during power outages or simply for busy weeknights. The mushrooms and polenta meal with red Oaxacan mole includes mixed Oregon mushrooms sourced from MycoLogical Natural Products.

“You can throw that in a crock pot with any kind of meat,” Willis said. “Even though the bag might cost you $20, it would cost you more to buy all those things separately. And we already have perfect seasoning. It’s not just for trails.”