Food Industry News, Insights, and Education for the CPG Community

Retailers are gatekeepers between CPG brands and consumers, so today we are going to take a temperature check on how shoppers are navigating in store.

Dallas, Texas-based tortilla chip and salsa brand Xochitl has become the second brand to join private equity firm Forward Consumer Partners’ portfolio.

The pair aims to partner with established and scaling food and beverage brands with an existing core portfolio and market traction.

Several months after landing stateside, The London Dough Co.’s cookie dough snack platform – Doughlicious – has gone nationwide with Whole Foods Market, expanding its partnership with the natural grocery chain.

Nestlé taking aim at consumers using GLP-1 drugs with a 12-SKU line of frozen foods under a new Vital Pursuit brand set to launch in Q4 2024.

Last week, more than 1,000 exhibitors took to Sweets & Snacks Expo 2024 at the Indiana Convention Center to showcase their latest innovations, ranging from freeze dried candy to better-for-you snack puffs to reformulations of existing products.

Naturally Chicago’s Locally Made program launched last year to provide a pathway for brands into retail and support them once in store.

This week Coconut Cult unveils a wedding-inspired limited-edition flavor, Eggo gets onboard high-protein waffles and Stellar Snacks puts a little mustard on its braided pretzels.

National drugstore chain CVS Pharmacy is the latest retailer to debut a revamped line of private label food and beverage offerings, announcing today the launch of Well Market, a new store brand featuring a variety of wellness and next-gen snacks and drinks.

Actual Veggies has brought in a bit of new cash as it readies itself to more than double the footprint of its plant-forward, veggie burger lineup via a slew of new retail partnerships over the next six months.

The CPG Week team gives their unadulterated takes on “Unfrosted” before diving into the week’s news related to snack trends, cocoa prices and an update on Foxtrot.

Discussions ranged from between combating rising cocoa prices to capitalizing on seasonal opportunities and injecting global flavors into savory snacks.

So if there were no fireworks going off on the deal front last quarter, that’s because they had a long enough fuse to extend into April.

Cocoa prices have been on a wild roller coaster ride over the past year, and there may be no end in sight.