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

In earnings updates this week, Kraft Heinz, Kellogg and Nestle all detailed the recent surges they’ve seen as consumer habits have drastically changed toward eating more meals (and snacks) at home.

Since launching with a humble fruit-and-nut bar in 2004, KIND has evolved into a “global health and wellness platform” offering over 80 snack varieties. Now the brand is taking a step further, betting its success in bars and granola can translate to a successful extension throughout the grocery store.

In this week’s episode, you’ll see how we evolve our exploratory designs into the moment of truth – packaging, or as we like to think of it, the brand-in-hand. This is the moment where all the parts and pieces, from strategy to communication to competing at shelf, come together into an easy and understandable form for the consumer.

On Wednesday, more than two dozen brands took to Instagram Live for a series of discussions on racial equity and the Black experience in the food and beverage sector as part of the #OnTheMenuNow Initiative. The series of video conversations paired Black founders and CEOs with white brand leaders and covered topics including job opportunities, the pandemic and systemic racism.

The Better Meat Co. wants to reduce consumption of animal products. But rather than coming at the problem with an all or nothing approach, the company instead has pinned its hopes to incremental change on the part of both large meat producers and consumers alike.

After 230 years in business, King Arthur Flour has risen to be more than a flour producer. As it grows to feed the refreshed consumer interest in baking, the company last week announced its new name, King Arthur Baking Company, an updated logo and a handful of innovations to embrace dietary trends.

The nineteenth round of Elevator Talk Livestream features leaders from Wild Willett Food, reBLEND, Spicegrove, On The Rocks Cocktails and RX Water. This week’s special co-host is Vanessa Walker, the founder of Millennial Brands.

Meat snack brand Tanka is looking to take a bigger bite of the category. Native American Natural Foods (NANF), its parent company, last week announced it had closed a $2.5 million round of funding, led by socially conscious investor Candide Group on behalf of donor-advised fund Libra Social Investment Fund (which contributed $500,000). The raise came to help the brand in an ongoing struggle to retain shelf space in competition with other, often better-financed, brands in the category.

The economic fallout from the global COVID-19 pandemic represents an “extinction event” for many brands in the emerging CBD space, according to a new report on the state of the U.S. CBD market from Chicago-based intelligence firm Brightfield Group.

Welcoming questions and supplying stories from his own extensive experiences as a founder and CEO, Skae will speak to the BevNET and NOSH community from the perspective of someone who has worked to be nimble and creative — to help companies punch above their weight class — no matter the circumstances.

Hemp chips might cure your munchies if brothers Gary and Greg Avetisyan have their way. The duo recently launched Heaven’s Lettuce, a line of crispy vegetable chips made from hemp leaves, with the intention of usurping kale’s throne as America’s favorite cabbage cultivar.

In this week’s Checkout, The Hershey Company reports U.S. sales growth in Q2, Bogopa acquires two Fairway Market stores and retailers help launch new initiative to fight plastic waste.

Grocery delivery service Misfits Market announced yesterday the close of an $85 million round of capital led by Valor Equity Partners. Additional investors included Greenoaks Capital, Third Kind Venture Capital, and Sound Ventures. The funding will go, in part, towards helping the brand expand further into offering more center store offerings.

This week we’re sharing episode three of SprintToSuccess, a video series focused on demystifying the branding process for entrepreneurs in the food and beverage space. In this episode, we are turning the corner from strategy to creative.