Soylent is trying to win over mainstream shoppers by selling meal-replacement drinks in flavors such as strawberry and chai at 7-Eleven and Walmart.

The startup's tech-y roots and cult following in Silicon Valley alienated many people who saw Soylent as a company bent on forcing the world to abandon food in favor of a milky liquid.

Now, Soylent is trying to convince mainstream shoppers it doesn't want to replace food. "We love food," CEO Bryan Crowley told Business Insider.

Silicon Valley loves Soylent. Now, the meal-replacement drink is ready to win over Middle America.

In April, the meal-replacement startup announced that Soylent will be available in 450 Walmart locations across the United States.

The deal follows Soylent's debut in more than 2,500 7-Eleven locations. Before the 2017 7-Eleven deal, Soylent was solely available online, on Amazon, and on the brand's website.

It's a surprising progression for a brand that was originally seen as "the end of food" for the tech-obsessed Silicon Valley crowd. However, the company has realized that people don't want food to end — and is now trying a different tack to cash in.

The end of 'the end of food'

Rob Rhinehart, who stepped down as the company's CEO in late 2017, introduced the first iteration of Soylent in 2013 as part of an experiment to swap food for raw ingredients to save time and money. Rhinehart engineered Soylent to be "open-source" — encouraging people to tinker with its recipe — and positioned the brand as a tech startup.

Soylent quickly gained a cult following with the Silicon Valley set, which was impressed with the company's emphasis on efficiency and collaboration. People started converting to 100% Soylent-based diets and sharing the results.

"Soylent is a community of people who are enthusiastic about using science to improve food and nutrition," Chris Dixon, who works at venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote in a 2015 blog post after the firm invested $20 million in Soylent. "If you look at Soylent as just a food company, you misjudge the core of the company."

However, the cult of Soylent turned many others off from the brand.

"There's this misconception that we're all sitting there in our all-white-and-black office, drinking Soylent and doing powder," Soylent's CEO Bryan Crowley told Business Insider, referring to the powdered form of the product.

Now, Soylent wants to change that misconception, which Crowley says was primarily sparked by zealous fans — though he admits the company fueled the fire.

"We love food," Crowley said. "We're not trying to replace food."

Winning over Walmart shoppers

While the mission to create more sustainable food remains, Soylent's message under Crowley aims for relatability.

"Now we're actually focusing on ... eliminating all those times when you make an unhealthy, or unsatisfying, or unsustainable, or expensive choice because you don't have access," Crowley said. "Or, you skip a meal because you don't have access or the money."

Being a more convenient, cheaper meal option — instead of replacing food for a diehard few — means getting Soylent into 7-Elevens, Walmarts, and bodegas across the country.

It also requires rolling out different products. As recently as 2016, Soylent had only one flavor — Soylent Original — available in powder or liquid form. The drink was designed for function, not taste.

However, since the debut of Soylent Coffiest in August 2016, the chain has added flavors including Cacao, Nectar, Cafe Vanilla, Strawberry, and Cafe Chai, as well as the currently discontinued Soylent Bar. Walmart locations won't carry the original drink — which has been described as "milk leftover from eating a bowl of Cheerios" in its flavor — but will stock Cacao, Vanilla Latte, and Coffiest.

Looking forward, Soylent is exploring more flavors, fungi-based products, and things that are personalized for different shoppers' nutritional needs. And, while Soylent recalled its Soylent bars after customers began vomiting, the company hasn't given up on products that look more like what the average person thinks of as food.

"I think we're working on what we'd call our chewable platform," Crowley said. "We don't have anything against chewing. That's an important part of any eating experience."

Despite the move towards the mainstream, Crowley says that Soylent is still distinct from other protein powders and meal-replacement shakes.

Crowley mentions Soylent's mission to leverage technology to make nutrition more accessible. But, he also emphasizes more practical attributes — that Soylent packs a more all-encompassing nutritional punch and, he says, tastes better than any competitors.

"At the core of it, you have to create a product or a series of products that people like and they really want to drink," said Crowley, who drank a bottle of Soylent throughout the interview.

He continued: "Anyone can make a really functional product that doesn't take good."