News

In recent years, consumers have increasingly gravitated towards “fresh food,” looking more and more to the perimeter of the store for their purchasing decisions. Yet, with an altered shopping experience and increased stockouts at retailers, COVID-19 has significantly impacted consumers’ priorities and purchasing behaviors in the fresh food category, at times resulting in consumers either having to look at center store options or to head online for shopping.

In this week’s Checkout: FMI tries to show consumers COVID-19’s effect on grocery prices, Kroger capitalizes on sustainability trends with new innovations and Forager Project launches a campaign to mobilize voters.

Welcome to Market Share, a new show from NOSH where we’ll sit down with leading executives and thought leaders to discuss their careers in the industry — including the hurdles they’ve overcome — and to break down food industry trends and news. To begin the bi-weekly series, we’ll spend the first six episodes talking to some of the leading women in the industry, ranging from CEO’s to founders to retailer executives.

In an email today the Specialty Food Association announced the cancellation of the organization’s 2021 Winter Fancy Food Show, which was to be held in San Francisco on January 17-19. The annual trade show and conference highlights food and beverage producers targeting the specialty food channel.

Bare Bones continues to try to redefine what a bone broth company can be. After evolving from frozen to shelf-stable and instant bone broth offerings, Bare Bones has unveiled its latest pivot: SuperPowder collagen-enhanced instant creamer. The launch comes as the brand plans a further push into beverage products; with the ultimate goal to become a broadly recognized premium nutrition company.

After launching shelf-stable dressings and sauces last year, Tessemae’s has doubled its retail footprint while continuing to see growth in its refrigerated line. Still, there’s even more in motion for the family-owned company, and it extends beyond the salad bowl.

NOSH’s annual Best Of awards honor companies, brands, individuals, products, ideas and trends from across the dynamic and ever-changing natural food landscape. For the first time, the NOSH Best Of awards are accepting nominations for 2020. A nomination guarantees the person, company or product submitted is considered for the category chosen by the nominator. All nominations will be categorized and published on nosh.com once the application period closes.

It’s been 10 years outside the chocolate business for celebrated chocolatier Oded Brenner. But the globally recognized pastry chef and Max Brenner co-founder says he’s back, and now doing “exactly what I want to be doing” with a new, cacao-focused brand platform called Blue Stripes. After opening a Blue Stripes cafe, Brenner is now moving the line into packaged products: last month, the company introduced over 20 new cacao-based products online. Its Cacao Water is the first to launch into brick-and-mortar retail.

Nicole Ledoux, co-founder & CEO of seed-based food company 88 Acres, spoke about the thoughtful process of scaling from a local to national brand, why she credits in-house production as a significant competitive advantage and how a successful Kickstarter campaign provided the foundation for the brand’s retail launch and successive fundraising initiatives.

Pretzel makers since the 1700s, the Spannuth family launched commercial bakery Unique Pretzel Bakery in 1921 and its store brand in 1964. The company is now rebranding to Unique Snacks, hoping to build out a larger salty snacks platform.