Carol Ortenberg

In April of this year, search engine Google released a report on food trends that claimed pasta was making a “comeback.” This week it seems that the tech giant was right in its prediction: two better-for-you brands moved their companies in a new direction by offering their consumers ready-to-eat meals centered around noodles.

“We The People of the American Pasta Sauce Company, in order to form a more perfect Plate…” So begins the “constitution” of The American Pasta Sauce Company, a new endeavor from Neal McTighe, the founder and owner of artisanal pasta sauce brand Nello’s.

Thirteen years ago Sarah Michelle Gellar was attacking supernatural villains as the star of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, with no less enthusiasm, she and her business partners Galit Laibow and Gia Russo are facing a new set of adversaries: Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker. The three entrepreneurs, who are longtime friends, are taking Foodstirs, their baking mix and kit brand, into retail.

After over twenty years in business, Kodiak Cakes has accepted the company’s first official investment from Sunrise Strategic Partners. The brand has seen rapid growth for its line of high-protein “Power Cakes.”

In news this week, Josh Tetrick, CEO and Founder of plant-based food company Hampton Creek, took a full page ad out in several newspapers to speak directly to Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for President. Yesterday he projected a massive version of the letter onto the sides of different buildings in Cleveland.

With pulse, nut, and plant-based product launches on the rise, many of today’s food brands are aiming to appeal to a new type of consumer: the flexitarian. No longer confined to one end of the meat and vegetable consumption spectrum or the other, this new consumer eats a mainly plant-based diet but occasionally adds in meat. It’s vegetarian-light.

If there’s one trend that’s become, shall we say, the heartbeat of new food products in 2016, it’s the pulse. To help further grow the pulse-based products market, several agricultural organizations have banded together to create two new consumer facing pulse seals. The seals, which will appear globally, were officially announced during the past week’s Institute of Food Technologists’ trade show in Chicago.

Serial food and beverage executive, founder, investor and advisor Tom First has departed First Beverage Group, where he was a managing partner, to join Castanea Partners and develop the fund’s food and beverage practice.

Over the past years, yogurt brands have tried to expand the day-parts where yogurt is consumed and shift the category from being seen as just as a breakfast option to that of a snack. In pursuit of this goal, Chobani, one of the pioneers of greek yogurt, is launching a line of savory, vegetable “Meze Dips”