Carol Ortenberg

This month chocolate brand Taza Chocolate launched its first snacking product, Dark Bark, in Whole Foods Markets nationwide. The brand will highlight the bark at this week’s Sweets and Snacks Expo.

Last week, plant-based snack brand Peeled Snacks announced the close of a round of fundraising led by Seurat Capital. Investment bank Whipstitch Capital served as an advisor to Peeled for the deal.

The issue was discovered when a consumer submitted a complaint to the USDA. Osso Co-Founder and CFO Toran Hilmer told NOSH that the complaint was submitted as an “anonymous tip.”

This week natural products retailer Whole Foods Market held its 2017 second quarter earnings call. After weeks of speculation about a possible sale and pressure from activist investors, the market was eager to hear how the retailer would respond.

The U.S. organic market is valued at $40 billion and even mainstream products like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing have embraced organic line extensions. But as consumer demand for organic products has increased, the industry has responded in turn with more products, more availability and lower prices.

Longtime bottling and sales executive Chuck Muth announced his retirement from Coke in 2016, but apparently he couldn’t retire from Seth Goldman, his former boss at Honest Tea. The visionary environmental entrepreneur and the execution-focused beverage guy are reuniting, this time around Beyond Meat, the plant-based protein brand where Goldman serves as executive chairman.

Just as parenting is a capital and labor intensive endeavor, so too is raising a brand — especially one experiencing a growth spurt. Last week prenatal nutrition company Premama announced the official close of a $3.25 million Series B round in March of 2017. In total, the brand has raised $4.65 million over the last 18 months. The Series B round was led River Hollow Partners, while Series A lead investor Cherrystone Angel Group also took part.

Today dairy processor and distributor Dean Foods announced a minority investment in Boulder, Colorado based Good Karma, a producer of flaxseed-based, dairy alternative food and beverage products. Originally a private label manufacturer of dairy-alternative milks, Good Karma developed its own branded CPG line in 2014 and expanded beyond beverages to yogurt in late 2016.

From the start, KIND Snacks has been an innovator. To learn about how the company iterates that innovation, Project NOSH spoke with Jon Lesser, Senior Director of Marketing, during Natural Products Expo West. Here’s what he had to say.

This week Venice Brands, a new consumer-focused VC fund, announced an investment in The Osso Good Company, a producer of frozen bone broths. In addition to putting dry powder behind the bone broth company, the deal marks the first investment for Venice, which was launched in January of this year and is an offshoot of Monogram Capital.