News

At this year’s Natural Products Expo West, it was clear that plant-based proteins are becoming a key ingredient class across almost all categories. In the following video, Project NOSH Editor Carol Ortenberg speaks with one of the entrepreneurs behind Healthy Skoop, which produces plant-based nutritional blends.

The all-natural, vertically-integrated jerky company closed on a $5 million funding round shortly before Expo West and is now trying to push East from its California base. The minority investment came from Monogram Capital Partners.

The deal was unanimously approved by the company’s board of directors, with the exception of The Fresh Market founder and chairman Ray Berry, who recused himself from negotiations pertaining to the deal.

It’s hard to imagine ever calling condiments a “hot category,” but alternatives to big brands like Heinz and Hunt’s have been gaining speed lately, either through the premiumization of process and ingredients, updated brand propositions, or even scientific advances that eliminate products like animal fats. Attention has come to the category through investors, who have… Read more »

Today upstart jica-based snack brand, JicaChips, announced the closing of an over $1 million round of funding from several investors, including accelerator firm and investor AccelFoods and natural foods strategy and brokerage firm Presence Marketing. While the raise itself is notable, it capstones a week of announcements from AccelFoods about major investments in brands that have graduated from its accelerator program.

Yesterday, insect-based protein snack bar company Exo Foods announced the closing of a $4 million Series A investment round led by CPG incubator and private equity fund AccelFoods. Also investing in the round were a pair of venture capital funds, Start Garden and the Collaborative Fund, as well as celebrities like the author Tim Ferriss, the rap artist NAS and the endurance athlete Amelia Boone.

This morning, Good Culture announced that it had closed a $2.1 million Series A fundraising round, with Christopher’s new private equity fund, CAVU Venture Partners, and General Mills’ new venture fund 301 INC leading the investment.

Jonathan Sebastiani’s new consumer products incubator and venture fund Sonoma Brands announced its first investment, in healthy snack food company Dang Foods. Dang founder Vincent Kitirattragarn says the investment “is a dream partnership” that will help the brand scale even faster.

Joining the lineup will be highly respected industry consultants Bob Burke, John Maggiore, and Jeff Grogg, who will guide attendees through a lesson on ways pricing and margin interact, supply-chain hotspots that can bring up the cost of ingredients and manufacturing, and how best to plan for in-store promotional costs and to deploy those promotions most effectively.

United Natural Foods (UNFI), the country’s largest distributor of natural products, announced this week the acquisition of Haddon House Foods, a specialty and natural foods wholesaler based on the East Coast. The acquisition is expected to help bolster UNFI’s sales in these sub-categories, which have been secondary to its natural foods business. However, looking beyond the distributor itself, the question still remains what the move will mean for smaller brands that were carried by Haddon House.