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

Last week, the 18-month-old Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA), in collaboration with the Soyfoods Association and Good Food Institute, hosted its first fly-in lobbying week in Washington, D.C. Representatives from dairy alternative producers including MALK, Good Karma Foods, New Barn and Oatly traveled to Washington to meet on Wednesday.

A week after finalizing the purchase of meat alternative company Sweet Earth, Nestlé USA today announced it’s widening its coffee portfolio with the acquisition of Chameleon Cold-Brew for an undisclosed sum.

The brand’s revamped packaging, designed by Nucleus Maximus, features a colorful design with a hand-drawn bear. To start, the bear will only be featured on GFB’s bar line, rolling out to 9,000 stores this month.

In a recent interview featured in this week’s episode of Taste Radio, Coogan, who recently stepped down as Soylent’s CTO, discussed how Soylent’s e-commerce-only model enabled the company to start collecting data on who its customer was, streamlining a path to retail.

In this interview recorded at NACS Show 2017, 4505 Chicharrones CEO and founder Ryan Farr discussed how he’s educating consumers about premium pork rinds, why consumers want natural options in c-stores and how the category fits into convenience retailers’ overall commitment to making healthier options more accessible.

Can collagen move from its fitness fan-base to mainstream? Vital Proteins and its new investor CAVU Venture Partners thinks so. Yesterday the the “collagen-boosting nutrition” brand announced a $19 million investment from CAVU to support its rapid growth.

The Kellogg Company and Mondelez Inc., the CPG leaders posted their first revenue growth in years on Tuesday during their respective quarterly earnings calls. While part of the growth is a result of the value of the dollar overseas, part of the success is due to how the two brands are innovating and strategizing.

Two coffee-forward brands are getting a jolt after receiving investments. Eat Your Coffee, an energy bar company using coffee as an ingredient and as its caffeine source, and Alpine Start, a maker of instant coffee, both announced last week that they raised funds.

CircleUp is hitching its growth fund to Helio. The online fundraising platform today announced the launch of a $125 million venture capital fund that will incorporate the proprietary machine learning platform as a tool to help guide investment in early-stage consumer and retail companies.

In the battle to attract consumers to clean label products, it’s about more than just ingredient certifications and claims. That’s what Irish global ingredient supplier Kerry Group found out as the result of research into labeling as the company tries to shape strategies that will guide its plans for customers’ innovation pipelines.

Over the past few years, center store brands have been hurting –canned foods in particular. Given consumers penchant for “fresher” foods, soup producers, including CPG leaders Campbells and Progresso, have been forced to come up with new lines to appeal to shoppers: First Campbell’s with its release of two lines of refrigerated soup and now Progresso with its recent launch of an organic canned soup line.

In this week’s episode of Taste Radio, we spoke with Hint’s Kara Goldin about how her experiences in the tech world helped shape the business strategy. Goldin also explained how she overcame early challenges of a food and beverage industry long dominated by legacy brands

Last week global food and beverage company Nestle finalized its purchase of plant-based food producer, Sweet Earth. Founded in 2011 by the former global VP of marketing for Calvin Klein and former CMO of Pepsi, the company offers over 50 frozen and refrigerated products, all using a variety of plant-protein sources, including beans, chickpeas, seeds, nuts and seitan.

The Project NOSH team works throughout the year to put together NOSH Live, an event where natural food brands can learn, breathe and find inspiration and partners to leap forward. The event is designed to create business conversations on stage that last through networking opportunities and on into the operation of their companies.