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Lehi Valley Trading Company, producer of High Valley Orchard, Arizona Snack Company and numerous private label products, launched SnackWorthy, a clean-label snack brand, last year. Encouraged by positive response from consumers, the brand announced during this year’s National Association of Convenience Stores show in Chicago, Ill., that it’s converting one of its most popular — and money-making — SKUs to the new line.

Just like the brands they seek to partner with, investment banks working the food and beverage space need to stand out from the crowd. Within its consumer and retail practice, Cascadia, based in Seattle, focuses on emerging food and beverage brands and companies involved in contract manufacturing. The group has quietly brokered 50 deals since 2010.

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.