CPG Week: Hot Takes From Expo West

[00:00:05] Monica Watrous: Welcome to the CPG Week podcast by BevNET and Nosh, your source for the latest food and beverage industry news. I'm Monica Watrous, Managing Editor of Nosh, here with my co-hosts, Brad Avery and Lukas Southard. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe on your listening platform of choice. On the podcast today, we are discussing what we saw, ate and drank at Natural Products Expo West. But first, Nombase is live. Over here at BevNET and Nosh, we have launched a new platform called Nombase to support professionals across the food, beverage, beer, spirits, health, and beauty industries. Our features include a CPG partner directory, AI-powered search, job board, press releases, and lots more. It's free to explore at Nombase.com. Expo West. Welcome back, guys. That was quite a whirlwind that we just experienced in Anaheim.

[00:01:06] Brad Avery: Yeah, I'm still catching up on sleep, and I know Brad is catching up on his health. So I hope everyone else is. I hope you're feeling all right, Monica.

[00:01:17] Lukas Southard: I had about two dozen different immunity shots and other vitamin D boosters and all sorts of health additives. Didn't work. Did nothing. I think I spent about 18 hours asleep on Sunday.

[00:01:30] Monica Watrous: Well, you needed that. At some point, I feel like maybe some of those might have canceled each other out.

[00:01:36] Lukas Southard: Who knows, but I definitely walked away with the Expo fever, the bad kind of Expo fever, the literal one.

[00:01:43] Monica Watrous: I think a few others on our team are in the same boat. I'm just kind of bracing for it myself. I always come back from a conference with some kind of crud.

[00:01:51] Brad Avery: I'm telling you, kombucha all the way, guys. You should just be like, you know, shotgunning kombuchas as much as you can and you'll never get sick.

[00:02:00] Monica Watrous: I feel like you need to find some wood to knock on right now, Lucas. Don't jinx yourself here on CPG Week.

[00:02:05] Lukas Southard: I'll knock on my brew doctor. There you go. Lucas is in the pocket of Big Kombucha. I really am.

[00:02:14] Monica Watrous: Oh, boy. Well, it's not Big Kombucha, but Big Kiffer or Keefer. I never know how to say it. I know we've talked about this before. But Brad, you had the opportunity to chat with Ed Smolianski, the brother of Lifeway Foods CEO Julie Smolianski and founder of a competing kefir company. What did he tell you?

[00:02:37] Lukas Southard: Yeah, he told me that he wants to be the kefir king of America. His words. We had a good conversation for a video interview that will be out later this week. We talked a bit about launching the new company, Pure Culture Naturals, which is, yes, a competing kefir brand with Ready to drink now. It's not on the market yet They are in production and they're working on getting product out to the market But this has been a long time in the works if you'll remember that this brand really began after Edward Smoliansky left Lifeway amid a ongoing family dispute with him and his sister who is the CEO of Lifeway and We didn't get too deep into the weeds there in our conversation. It was an area he didn't really want to discuss too in depth, but I do know that there's been a lot of hard feelings over the years between these two businesses. And so Edward Smoliansky setting out on his own is certainly interesting. This is someone who has spent his life in this category and mounting his own take on the product, certainly coming from a place of expertise. Lifeway itself was at the show and they were showcasing a new line of kefir-based salad dressings that they'll be launching soon.

[00:03:57] Monica Watrous: It's a really cool adjacency for Lifeway. And probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, all of the above seem to be everywhere at the show, along with protein. I can't count the number of protein call-outs I saw. Protein where protein hasn't been before in tortilla chips and pasta sauce, as well as new protein powered SKUs from companies who previously offered, you know, maybe a different lineup. An example would be Honey Mamas, which launched a line of protein crunch. refrigerated truffle bars and I also sampled a new high-protein SKU from mush the maker of overnight oats who is launching a 15 gram protein overnight oats cup and cookies and cream flavor using milk protein which is also interesting to me because previously their products had all been plant-based

[00:04:56] Brad Avery: And don't forget, Monica, as I like to call it, the OG protein snack category. Meat snacks were in abundance. I just wrote about it this week for Nosh, a story called Category is on Fire, Meat Snack Makers Go Deeper in Sticks. As the headline alludes to, meat sticks are still a big category and continuing to grow very rapidly. Many jerky producers and even biltong producers were opening up adjacencies in stick category because it is just kind of the go-to meat snack of choice these days for consumers. There was even some plant-based options before the butcher had one and I tasted actually a really good smoked salmon stick from Surf Snacks who used to make salmon jerky and they are actually pivoting into sticks alone because they just think that there's better margins and more demand in the stick category so along with all the protein infused pasta sauces out there there's just protein and it's good old-fashioned animal flesh form

[00:06:09] Monica Watrous: I tried that before the Butcher plant-based stick, and I was really impressed by the texture. It had the good snap of like a Slim Jim or something. There's a casing to it. The protein content itself in that product was relatively low. It was made with sunflower protein, and I believe the stick was about 45 calories and 2 or 3 grams of protein, but certainly offered an eating experience that was reminiscent of a meat stick.

[00:06:35] Brad Avery: Yeah, I was, I was pretty impressed as well. I'm a connoisseur of the meat sticks at this point. So I could, I could tell it was plant-based, but I've had some plant-based. Meat alternative sticks that are not great. And this one was something I could see myself eating and, you know, three or four grams of protein isn't bad for a plant-based option.

[00:06:56] Monica Watrous: I also saw a lot of partnerships and collaborations on the show floor, both in co-branded products as well as just cool activations at different booths where brands sample each other's snacks together. And some of my favorites were that Ithaca hummus and Graza olive oil hummus, as well as Firehook crackers with truff. Fly By Jing and Daily Crunch had their new product. I also saw Fly By Jing with Lundberg Rice. And Justin's is partnering with Rudy's and Fitjoy, the grain-free pretzel company. The Rudy's partnership is especially interesting because Justin Gold, the founder of Justin's, is now the head of innovation and strategy at Rudy's, so makes sense to put his namesake, Nut Butter, in their frozen crustless sandwiches. It was cool to see that actually being executed.

[00:07:58] Brad Avery: Yeah, and I actually talked to Justin Gold. They were the first booth I hit when I entered the show floor on Wednesday. And Justin was obviously really excited about the partnership, but he also said he was interested because when he first started working with Rudy's and taking on that chief innovation officer role, he really thought that there was a huge market for an allergen-free, nut-based Uncrustables like Sando, like they're making. And although it has been doing really well, really what consumers want is just a good old fashioned PB and J. And so partnering with his old brand, Justin's made a lot of sense. And as he called it, it was, it was unfinished business for him because this was something he'd wanted to do when he was even running Justin's and he couldn't get the bread right. And now he works for a bread company. So easy, easy, easy.

[00:08:53] Monica Watrous: Another cool thing happening from Rudy's is their new gluten-free Sando, which hasn't been done in this category. I was chatting with Adam over there at Rudy's and he said that even Uncrustables doesn't have a gluten-free SKU. It's a really challenging product to make, but somehow they have cracked the code. And I know I have some friends who have gluten-free diets who are super excited to finally have an option. Those were some of the trends we saw on the food side. And Brad, you were looking at a lot of the trends on the beverage side. Can you tell us about some of the things that caught your eye?

[00:09:31] Lukas Southard: Yeah, so certainly I was on the lookout for the continuing to grow better for you soda set. We saw a lot of those brands exhibiting and even though some of the big ones such as Poppy were not there at the show per se. Certainly their influence was felt with Bloom launching its own line, Spindrift was sampling its new soda line, and I also spoke with Perfy, another Beta4U brand that's been around for about three years now, and I had a good chat with Vasa Martinez, the CEO and founder of Perfy, and I even tried their pepperoni pizza soda that they launched which I said on this show a few weeks back that I would and I now regret deeply trying that.

[00:10:14] Monica Watrous: Was it better or worse than the pizza wine from Pizza Hut that we tried?

[00:10:17] Lukas Southard: I'd say it was actually worse because it just lingered in your mouth and I only had a single sip. They did have a very good new cherry flavor though that is an actual permanent line edition. And I'll say this about the pepperoni pizza flavor as well. It's gotten him the exact kind of publicity he was hoping for. He even mentioned that they'll be on the Drew Barrymore show. So, it's certainly gotten the eyeballs that they were hoping to find.

[00:10:42] Monica Watrous: Yeah, and that was a great way to launch an actual legit SKU, the Cherry Cola that you mentioned, which was one of my favorite sips from the show floor.

[00:10:51] Lukas Southard: This category is certainly getting saturated, especially with a lot of these new entrants that were debuting at the show. There is a question of how much space there is, but there's a lot of good innovation. There's a lot of interesting flavor plays that we're seeing start to emerge in this set. And brands are definitely trying to stand out. Monica, you were telling me earlier about Slice's activation. I didn't get over to their booth, but they had a vending machine on the show floor.

[00:11:17] Monica Watrous: Actually, it wasn't on the show floor. It was just off the show floor in the convention center. They had a full vending machine and it was free. You could try any of their SKUs by pressing the button. I tried the strawberry one and it was really delicious, but I loved the old school look of the vending machine because it sort of had that nostalgic branding that we've seen before from Slice, although with the modern sensibilities or approach that Suja, its new parent company, has taken with the brand. Beyond products, did you have any interesting conversations on the show floor about the big issues of the day? We saw some tariff whiplash take place while we were there where tariff started and then they were paused and now they're on again. As well as Maha, the Make America Healthy Again movement in full force at the show with a booth where you could earn Maha merch by doing pull-ups or planks in the booth. We were also going to be on the lookout for brands discussing concerns around supply chain shocks, egg prices, cocoa prices, coffee prices, all of the above. What were some of the big takeaways or observations that you had from the conversations that you had on the show floor?

[00:12:34] Brad Avery: One thing that I heard, along with a couple meat snack brands telling me that turkeys are a little bit harder to source due to bird flu, But one thing I was asking a lot of brands that I know either are based in Canada or do production in Canada was how they plan on dealing with tariffs that are still kind of up in the air. Um, so I did talk to a brand called Kefir Cult, uh, speaking of kefir, who makes kind of a coconut cult kefir probiotic yogurt. Um, they're based in Toronto and they definitely were worried about it. Granted, it's a pretty premium product that they're making right now. So they didn't think that they would have to take a whole lot of price increases, but they did express concern that if this stretched on, it could, um, impact their growth into the U.S. market because they're primarily distributed in Canada at the moment. We're at the show trying to kind of build more enthusiasm for the product here in the States. Another brand I talked to is called Maisley. They are a new corn fiber milk that does their production in Canada. And they said that they were already talking to co-packers to see if they could find somewhere here stateside that they could produce, because they are also trying to jump into the U S market and we're concerned about. if these tariffs could hurt them in the long run and really increase prices for them as well as to the consumer.

[00:14:14] Lukas Southard: Yeah, I had an interesting conversation, too, with at least one juice brand where they said that certainly they get a lot of their oranges from Mexico right now and that was going to hurt them. Although, you know, sometimes political motivation can feed into that. I was told that, you know, if it takes a little short-term hurt for the greater good, then they can bear with that. which I thought was an interesting stance. I think people had a lot of different varied feelings on the issue, but certainly the lack of clarity and the lack of certainty around what is going to happen is a real issue that no one can really fully prepare for because whether or not these tariffs are going to actually stick around or not is something no one seems to be able to say.

[00:15:01] Monica Watrous: I talked to several brands who use avocado oil in their formulations and they were telling me that their suppliers are saying that avocado oil is going to be more expensive because of tariffs in Mexico. So it's definitely something that people are watching. Avocado oil is growing in popularity as brands and consumers are moving away from seed oils And speaking of oil, I also saw several brands that were slinging beef tallow and at least one brand that had bottled chicken schmaltz. So it was interesting to see this growing interest in non seed oil options was in effect at the show. Overall, something that I observed, and this was echoed by a number of people on LinkedIn and in conversations I had at the show, is that there wasn't a lot of breakthrough or groundbreaking innovation, but a lot of small tweaks to packaging or product formulations, little refreshes, incremental innovation. I think that's a pretty good representation of where we are now, given the capital-constrained environment. It's risky to invest in innovation. Consumers may not even be looking for anything crazy or off the wall. They may just want to see new things coming from the brands that they like. But there was one product that really blew my mind from a brand from Denmark. I'd never seen this before but True Dates was the name of the product and it was Chewy dates that were coated in classic candy flavors like sour watermelon, sweet peach, cookie dough. I couldn't believe it. They were pretty simply crafted. I mean, it was like the dates, natural flavors, inulin, coconut oil, nothing crazy, but man, they were delicious. They tasted like a chewy candy.

[00:17:03] Brad Avery: easily the best thing that I tried at the show was true dates and it was it was just incredible it tasted exactly like candy I would have snacked on a whole bag but frankly they didn't have samples to give I when I was talking to the founder At his booth, he was saying that he had to like police his booth because people were coming up and grabbing bags that were not free samples when he turned his back and he was very adamant that he did not bring enough to to give out.

[00:17:34] Lukas Southard: My favorite thing I had at the show was a small brand called Evil Snacks, and I don't believe it was their first expo, but they're still, they were in the corner of the North Hall, and they said they were only in about 300 stores. It's a small operation, but these are crunchy mushroom chips, and they're oyster mushrooms that are kind of dried up and flavored like potato chips in a way, with sour cream flavor or a zesty tie, and they're delicious. I had to keep eating them. And they were launching a new banana chip as well. It's so simple, but it was just one of the best tasting products I had at the show. And for a very tiny company that seems like they're pretty young, I definitely thought this is something that should get more attention just because the product is so delicious.

[00:18:22] Brad Avery: Yeah, one more shout out I had is a brand called WowBao. They aren't a new brand. They're based out of Chicago and they kind of grew out of the restaurant, having a restaurant there in Chicago area. And they make boughs, obviously they were showing off their new soup dumplings, which were also good, but I tried their cheeseburger bough, which was very good. I would have had like three of them and they were showing off a sausage, egg and cheese bough during the breakfast hours that I missed, but I meant to go back and get it. And I forgot to. But everything they made at their booth was really incredible. And who doesn't love a cheeseburger bao, right?

[00:19:00] Lukas Southard: One more product that was unexpectedly delicious was Blue Hour. It's an instant scrambled egg in a cup, sort of like a ramen cup style. And it's just add water eggs, which when I heard the concept, I was alarmed. I certainly was very nervous to try it, but shout out to Nadia Spellman of Dumpling Daughter, whose booth was right next door, and said, no, try it. It's delicious. And the founding team there was great. They really have nailed the freshness of the eggs. It was a delicious product and one that I just thought was so much better than anything I could have imagined for an instant scrambled egg product. This is a small startup out of New York, so definitely shout out to Blue Hour.

[00:19:50] Monica Watrous: I snagged a cup, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet. But it was interesting to me how much egg-centric innovation was on the show floor at this time when eggs are so expensive. And obviously, these products were in the works long before the avian influenza has shaken the market and egg prices. But it's cool to see. I think it says people are looking for natural, recognizable sources of protein versus some kind of Franken-meat high-tech alternative. I really didn't see a lot of that kind of product at the show this year. Although Impossible Foods did have its booth, a really big booth, and they were showcasing a new steak tip product.

[00:20:35] Lukas Southard: Yeah, and I did ask about that. And certainly the response I got was, you know, it's challenging about the egg supply issue. It's definitely hard, especially for these smaller companies right now to secure the supply at a affordable rate. But, you know, there's not really much choice. You move forward and you do what you have to do. It's definitely strained, though, no matter what.

[00:21:00] Monica Watrous: I do have one question for you guys. Did either of you get one of the coveted Belgian Boys pink puffer bags that required security at the Belgian Boys booth because they were so in demand?

[00:21:15] Lukas Southard: Not this year. I got one of their French toast style bags a year or two ago, but this year I was out of luck.

[00:21:26] Brad Avery: I did think that the bag game had been upped this year. It seemed like every single booth had their own bag and I was approached at least a dozen times each day to take a bag from a different booth, which I know it's a easy way to market your brand, but it just seemed like, how many bags do we really need on the show floor? I actually took zero bags because I like to have my hands free and that's why I have a backpack. But, um, it, it did seem like, Bags were the trend for Booth swag.

[00:22:01] Monica Watrous: I did see that bags came in handy for a lot of people who had to walk in the rain leaving the convention center on Wednesday and Thursday using bags as umbrellas or covers. I know I did. Thanks for the bags. Next time, maybe give out umbrellas. Well, of course we have way more coverage than what we even talked about here. We barely scratched the surface. And if you want to see all of the product galleries, all of the video interviews, news recaps, so much more, become an insider at BevNET and Nosh. That wraps up this edition of CPG Week by BevNET and Nosh. Thank you to our audio engineer, Joshua Pratt, our director is Mike Schneider, and our designer is Aaron Willette. If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe on your listening platform of choice, and we will see you next time.