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

Zico founder Mark Rampolla will step into an interim CEO role at plant-based snack food company Hail Merry, a brand where Rampolla is an investor. In emails today to friends and colleagues, Sarah Chapin, the current CEO of the brand, announced that she will be stepping down. The full transfer is expected to take place by the time the company’s third quarter ends, on Sept. 30th.

Last week, Whole Foods Market held its 3rd quarter earnings call, and with it laid out a slew of new information as to how brands will be able to potentially work with the retailer going forward. A common theme throughout the call was shifting from regional efforts to more global, streamlined processes. While the company said some of the options are still in the testing (or even conceptual phase) it seems the future holds some changes.

There’s something bubbling up in grocery store aisles. Fermented foods are growing — both in popularity with the American consumer as well as in the variety of products offered. At this year’s IFT Show, Innova Research detailed why this trend is on the rise and at the summer Fancy Food Show, Project NOSH spoke with some of the brands in the category.

Plant-based food and beverage private equity firm Powerplant Ventures today announced the closing of a $42 million fund. The fund is led by Mark Rampolla, founder of ZICO Coconut Water, Kevin Boylan and T.K. Pillan, co-founders of the Veggie Grill restaurant chain, and Dan Beldy, former Managing Director of Steamboat Ventures (the venture capital division of Disney).

As the summer comes to a close, several producers of sweets or snackshave seen recent wins in retail, adding hundreds of new accounts. The additions come after the busy summer trade show season.

In April of this year, search engine Google released a report on food trends that claimed pasta was making a “comeback.” This week it seems that the tech giant was right in its prediction: two better-for-you brands moved their companies in a new direction by offering their consumers ready-to-eat meals centered around noodles.

“We The People of the American Pasta Sauce Company, in order to form a more perfect Plate…” So begins the “constitution” of The American Pasta Sauce Company, a new endeavor from Neal McTighe, the founder and owner of artisanal pasta sauce brand Nello’s.

Thirteen years ago Sarah Michelle Gellar was attacking supernatural villains as the star of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, with no less enthusiasm, she and her business partners Galit Laibow and Gia Russo are facing a new set of adversaries: Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker. The three entrepreneurs, who are longtime friends, are taking Foodstirs, their baking mix and kit brand, into retail.

After over twenty years in business, Kodiak Cakes has accepted the company’s first official investment from Sunrise Strategic Partners. The brand has seen rapid growth for its line of high-protein “Power Cakes.”

In news this week, Josh Tetrick, CEO and Founder of plant-based food company Hampton Creek, took a full page ad out in several newspapers to speak directly to Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for President. Yesterday he projected a massive version of the letter onto the sides of different buildings in Cleveland.

The BevNET Podcast team quizzed Seth Goldman on a number of other topics, including the ongoing battle over GMO labeling and its impact on the organic movement, as well as the long-term future for Honest within the Coke system.

With pulse, nut, and plant-based product launches on the rise, many of today’s food brands are aiming to appeal to a new type of consumer: the flexitarian. No longer confined to one end of the meat and vegetable consumption spectrum or the other, this new consumer eats a mainly plant-based diet but occasionally adds in meat. It’s vegetarian-light.

If there’s one trend that’s become, shall we say, the heartbeat of new food products in 2016, it’s the pulse. To help further grow the pulse-based products market, several agricultural organizations have banded together to create two new consumer facing pulse seals. The seals, which will appear globally, were officially announced during the past week’s Institute of Food Technologists’ trade show in Chicago.

The combined forces of BevNET and Project NOSH descended on the Fancy Food Show in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago, and while the beverage team has already given its take, let’s face it — there’s a heck of a lot more solids on display in the aisle than liquids.