News

BevNET & NOSH will host our next Investor Speed Dating event next month on Thursday, May 20. Speed Dating is a virtual event series designed to facilitate direct, one-to-one connections between emerging food and beverage brands with a variety of industry gatekeepers and experts.

Label this one as a step back for Tofurky. Turtle Island Foods SPC, maker of the plant-based meat brand, along with food advocacy organization The Good Food Institute (GFI) last week lost an appeal to block a Missouri labeling law that would make it a crime for plant-based meat producers to represent their products as containing real meat.

Recess Mood takes the New York-based brand into a different state of mind. While the flagship product offered a sense of “calm, cool and collected” through a combination of hemp extract and adaptogenic herbs, Mood is positioned as a caffeine and CBD-free “uplift” delivered via a proprietary blend of magnesium L-theorate.

In this week’s Checkout, Post Holdings acquires dry pasta brand Ronzoni; sugar-free gelato and chocolate bar maker Bon AppéSweet is named the winner of The Empower Project; synthetic honey maker MeliBio raises $850K; Anheuser-Busch breaks grounds on a $100 million EverGrain facility; and brands celebrate April Fools’ Day with creative product launches.

Despite sustainability being a fairly standard aspiration for progressive food and beverage brands, there are times when the implementation of environmentally friendly measures can still be an arduous process. With the launch of the working group Band of Brands, Quinn Snacks founder and CEO Kristy Lewis hopes she can ease some of this burden and help food and beverage companies have a bigger impact on the supply chain.

March saw several snack brands expand into new categories, from Hu’s grain-free cookies to LesserEvil’s toddler-friendly puffs. Check out the second part of March’s new product gallery for more of the month’s new releases, including frozen treats from KIND, Yasso and Halo Top and an upcycled baking mix collaboration from Renewal Mill and Burlap & Barrel.

Check out the gallery for some of March’s notable product launches, including new breakfast launches from Mason Dixie, Path of Life and The Pinole Project, fresh flavors from BTR Bar and Your Super and Omsom’s Disney collaboration.

After leaving its imprint in the pizza category, Caulipower is looking to grab cauliflower-curious consumers of another favorite food type: pasta. It’s the first salvo in what the company’s CEO said will be a year of innovation.

Plant-based start-up platform LiveKindly Collective announced yesterday the close of a $335 million funding round as the company looks to extend its brands’ reach to new geographies, while also growing its portfolio through new acquisitions and strategic partnerships.

Looking to straddle the confection and nutritional bar categories, bar brand Mid-Day Squares announced this week the closing of a $4 million funding round that will allow the outspoken Canadian company to expand further into the U.S. market. The four-year-old company expects to have $10 million in revenue for 2021, its co-founders said.