Three years ago, Chef Jeannine Sacco was cooking Jambalaya, discovered she was out of rice, ransacked her cupboard for a substitute, and found a packet of whole grain steel cut oats. The results blew her mind; the entrepreneurial juices started flowing;...
Lancaster, PA-based Neat Foods – a small, but rapidly-growing player in the plant-based foods category – has been acquired by Atlantic Natural Foods LLC, which makes canned vegetarian products under the Meatless Select and Caroline’s brands.
Most juices – even the super-premium high pressure processed (HPP) ones – don’t contain a ton of fiber, says Juiceology founder & CEO Felipe d’Avila, who has carved out some white space in the category with flash-pasteurized, aseptically-filled refrigerated...
From NatureBox to VEGA Coffee, BeanGenius, and LoveWithFood, new online subscription services targeting snack lovers, coffee aficionados, and foodies are popping up almost every week. But what will distinguish the winners from the losers in this market?
Not so long ago, an organic beverage brand boasting ‘adaptogenic super-herbs’ would have had a fairly niche audience. Today, it’s a very different story, says Sheryl O’Loughlin, former CEO of Clif Bar and co-founder of Plum Organics, who has just moved...
Union Kitchen: Inside a food and beverage incubator
To make it in the highly competitive food and beverage segment, startups need to listen to consumers and evolve to meet changing demands – even if that means letting go of their “baby,” says the founder of Momme Meals.
High-pressure-processing (HPP) – which gave birth to the super-premium juice category – will also play a disruptive role in the baby food market in the next five years, predict the founders of Once Upon a Farm, a new baby food brand in a pouch that will...
Quest Nutrition has a somewhat ambitious mission statement (“Our goal is to end metabolic disease,” says president Tom Bilyeu). But while it may be some time before the El Segundo-based firm can tick this particular goal off its checklist, its progress...
If services such as Blue Apron target people that love to cook and prepare meals, but don’t always have the time or energy for meal planning and grocery shopping, TableRunner appeals to people that want restaurant quality meals at home but don’t have...
Mayor Rahm Emanuel cut the ribbon to officially open the new corporate headquarters for SPINS, a move that gives the company greater access to top talent to continue its impressive growth.
If you didn't make it to Chicago last week for the inaugural Food Vision USA event, you missed a truly awesome ensemble of industry experts covering everything from our nutritional needs on a manned mission to Mars to the challenges facing small...
FOOD VISION USA: How to maintain a challenger brand mentality as a mainstream player
Chobani’s Flip ‘mix-in’ platform is operating at a run rate of $300-$350m and could be the next one billion dollar brand in yogurt, says Chobani, which is planning to take the brand into savory territory next year with the launch of novel sweet and spicy...
Big brands have always sought to convince us that by purchasing their mass-produced wares we are expressing ourselves (although it’s hard to argue that buying a Coke – even with your name on it - is a bold expression of individualism). But how can food...
In the hyper-competitive beverage world, it’s hard to imagine a brand pioneering a new beverage category using a mission-driven business model aimed at restoring the rainforest would still be around 20 years later, let alone growing at an average rate...
If you’re going to launch a gourmet organic, vegan and gluten-free bakery business, L.A. is probably the place to do it, acknowledges Karma Baker’s founder Celine Ikeler. But if you plan to stick around, you’ve got to make products that will appeal to...
It’s a joke emblazoned on a thousand t-shirts and coffee mugs (I’m on the See-food diet… I see food, and I eat it…). But could we learn something from it? Apparently so, says a new study from Cornell University, revealing that the foods we leave out on...
Two well-known players in food financing – former Silverwood Partners MDs Michael Burgmaier and Nick McCoy - have started a new boutique investment bank focused on the consumer products industry called Whipstitch Capital.
The ‘healthier’ snacks market is awash with non-GMO, gluten-free, and ‘no artificial’ claims, while corn syrup is out and ‘real’ (cane) sugar, coconut sugar, and agave syrup are in. But are these products really delivering in the nutritional stakes, given...
VEGA Coffee is based on a simple – but surprisingly novel – concept, says founder Noushin Ketabi: What if the farmers who grow coffee, actually roasted and packaged it as well, and then sold their ‘farm-roasted’ product directly to US consumers via an...
When Dr Lior Lewensztain first started pitching That’s it fruit bars to retailers, pretty much everyone he talked to wanted in. Three and a half years later he is in tens of thousands of locations nationwide from Starbucks to 7-Eleven, and sales are still...
Check out who is moving onwards and upwards at Enjoy Life Foods, ConAgra Foods, Smithfield Foods, Harmless Harvest, Hain Celestial and Walmart, in FoodNavigator-USA’s latest round-up of new hires in food and beverage.
When Vermont Creamery debuted aged goat cheese 15 years ago, almost no one in the U.S. had heard of this French-style cheese with its telltale wrinkly rind and creamy interior. But the risk paid off, as the line is now the company’s fastest-growing, prompting...
Impossible Foods, one of a new wave of Silicon Valley-backed companies promising to “transform the global food system”, has raised $108m in its latest round of financing, and says its first product – a plant-based burger that precisely replicates the...
The tortoise - rather than the hare – is often the winner in the retail food and beverage industry, says Hartman Group’s SVP James Richardson, PhD, who says we can all learn lessons from six disruptive brands in health & wellness, from Hint Water...
‘Challenger’ brands – anarchic, agile brands which disrupt established categories – are Davids outmaneuvering industry Goliaths. And Chobani is probably the perfect example, going from zero to a billion dollars in less than a decade. But what happens...
If GoGo SqueeZ and Munk Pack have proved that fruit pouches aren’t just for babies, nomva, a new food brand co-founded by Suja Juice founding member Caroline Beckman, is hoping to take the concept one step further with HPP (high pressure processed), organic...
San Francisco-based ready to eat popcorn maker 479 Degrees has raised a new round of capital from some high profile investors including KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky and Emil Capital Partners, which has also pumped cash into fast-growing brands including...
Which promotions work best? 50% off, or buy one get one free (spoiler alert, they might be the same, but they’re not equally effective)? And are fewer, deeper promotions better than frequent, more moderate deals?
A product only aficionados – and hipsters - had heard of a couple of years ago, cold-brew coffee is rapidly becoming an established part of any forward-thinking retailer’s beverage set. But the market has grown so explosively that a shakeout seems inevitable,...
Facing a slew of unsavory Chicago food truck regulations in 2011, Amar Singh opted to park his Curry Cruiser truck for good to pursue a line of Indian-inspired cooking sauces and spices that had flavored his street food eats.
FoodNavigator-USA's latest pick of entrepreneurs to watch in the US food and beverage market features a clutch of firms developing truly innovative concepts from cultured nut milks to drinkable savory yogurt, oatmeal-to-go in a pouch, gourmet meaty...
'The frozen smoothie packs have been generating triple-digit growth for the past three years'
It’s flaming pink, packed with fiber and magnesium, fruity, but not too sweet, and growing like crazy in the frozen smoothie pack market, says Chuck Casano, who is on a mission to do for Pitaya what Sambazon did for açai berries and KonaRed is doing for...
Plant-based beverage firm Califia Farms has secured a $50m investment from New York-based private equity firm Stripes Group, capital it says will be used for “deepening production and distribution capabilities, R&D, new hires, and sales and marketing”.
The American Egg Board (AEB) has rejected allegations by Hampton Creek that it “engaged in numerous illegal activities” in order to undermine the San Francisco-based firm, which is now calling for a Congressional investigation into the AEB’s behavior.
Sometimes the most disruptive food products are less about blue-sky innovation than taking something familiar, adding a new twist, and creating a completely new category, says Ripple Brand Collective founder and CEO Scott Semel, who has seen his latest...
'Nowadays, a food crisis starts when the Food Babe is on line two'
In an era of shorter consumer attention spans and heightened suspicion about food science, the packaged food and beverage industry can take a page from the world of pop culture and bring food science down to earth with humor and proactive transparency.
High-pressure-processing (HPP) – which is fast-becoming de rigueur in the super-premium juice category – has also played a key role in the growth of one of the coolest players in the hummus market: Hope Foods, which burst onto the scene in 2011 with its...
Food is fun, says the self-described ‘serial optimist’ and ‘crowdfunding Jedi’ behind 500-calorie vegan ‘drinkable supermeal’ Ambronite. But not every eating occasion can be an epic, Mediterranean-style gathering fueled by wine and great conversation,...
Not so long ago, pouches were just for babies. Today, they’re fast-becoming the go-to format for companies looking to stand out from the crowd in healthy snacks, say the founders of Munk Pack, who have combined fruit with gluten-free wholegrain oatmeal,...
With its gourmet savory yogurts now gracing shelves at 800-900 stores in the US, Blue Hill is now looking to challenge the nation’s palate again, this time with a new range of veggie- and fruit-packed drinkable yogurts that it hopes will bring the brand...
Check out who’s moving onwards and upwards at Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, ConAgra Foods, Hershey, Kraft Heinz, Sambazon, Califia Farms, and KonaRed in FoodNavigator-USA’s latest round-up of new hires in food and beverage.
First came Siggi’s, then Smári Organics. But can the husband and wife team behind Saga Dairy (Viking Icelandic Yogurt) – the latest entrants to the niche, but growing ‘Icelandic-style’ yogurt category in the US – emulate their success?
Taylor Collins on reclaiming meat as a superfood, finding ‘badass investors’ and managing triple-digit growth
Revenues at EPIC Provisions more than tripled to $6.8m in 2014, and are on course to triple again to $20m in 2015 as the EPIC brand - which first hit shelves in 2013 – continues to lure new consumers to a category (premium meat snacks) that has rapidly...
Co-founder: 'The deal we have done means we retain control'
While news that Coca-Cola and Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division have invested in organic juice brand Suja probably didn’t shock anyone that’s been tracking its jaw-dropping growth trajectory, it’s hard to believe that Suja is still less than three...
How about a glass of red wine, crackers… and some vegan cheese? If the prospect fills you with horror, says Miyoko’s Kitchen founder and TV chef Miyoko Schinner, you’re not alone. But try some of hers, and you’ll never look back, she insists.
Will Dave's Killer Bread retain its edgy appeal without its co-founder and namesake? FoodNavigator-USA (FNU) caught up with CEO John Tucker after bakery giant Flowers Foods coughed up a cool $275m in cash to buy the organic baker from the founding...
Many a tea lover has settled for coffee or an energy drink when desperate for an energy fix. But Zest Tea hopes to change that with its high-caffeine brewed teas.
'We switched from glass to aluminum cans, and the brand just exploded'
Back in 2011/12, nerves were getting very frayed at Hiball Energy, which was doing a steady trade in upmarket energy drinks in elegant glass bottles, but “losing more and more money”, recalls founder Todd Berardi. In May 2012 he switched to aluminum cans,...
