It’s a food and beverage manufacturer’s nightmare: the headline on People Magazine’s website announces you were sued in a class action because your 'always 100% natural' sparkling water allegedly contains an ingredient used in 'cockroach...
Swedish company Oatly will open its first US production plant in New Jersey next spring to support demand for its dairy-free oat-based products in the US.
As the laws legalizing recreational use of cannabis shift in North America, consumer interest and readiness to try cannabis-infused products is also evolving, recent research by A.T. Kearney revealed.
Just Add Cooking (JAC), a meal kit company founded in Boston in 2013, is looking for an extra boost of funding launching a WeFunder campaign with a $300,000 fundraising goal.
Kraft Heinz has committed $100m to launch the venture capital fund Evolv Ventures that will be focused on investing in emerging technologies in the food industry.
After setting up its head offices and production facility in Manhattan Beach, California, in June, plant-based yogurt and dessert brand The Coconut Collaborative has confirmed listings with several West Coast retailers and will appear on those store shelves...
LaCroix maker National Beverage Corp “categorically denies all allegations” in a lawsuit alleging it falsely markets its flavored sparkling waters as ‘all natural’ in a case attorneys say reflects heightened scrutiny of the components of natural flavors.
Sales of kid-friendly school snacks on Amazon grew 40% year-over-year to $350m in the first half of 2018, driven by the e-commerce giant’s heavy online promotion as well as consumers’ growing familiarity and comfort with shopping online for snacks, One...
Despite some fast food chains’ efforts to offer more nutritious food options with kids’ meals, 74% of kids still receive unhealthy drinks and/or side items with their meals when they visit one of the four largest fast food chains, a study by UConn Rudd...
Consumers that say they seek out products they consider ‘clean label’ are more likely to enjoy grocery shopping and are actively engaged in the food shopping process, a Packaged Facts report revealed.
San Francisco-based ReGrained, a startup transforming food waste into value-added food ingredients, has closed a $2.5m series seed financing round led by privately-held global product development company Griffith Foods with participation from Barilla...
Keeping ahead of the fierce competition within the food industry has required large, established companies to take a second look at how they approach innovation.
Talking Rain Beverage Company, maker of Sparkling ICE, wrapped up a record summer sales season for the brand with 15 million cases shipped to retailers across the US over a three-month period, and has entered the energy drink category with the launch...
Stryve Biltong is rapidly growing its presence in the US meat snacks category backed by a $10m investment from private equity firm Meaningful Partners.
After achieving dynamite success in Thailand where it competes with Lay’s potato chips, Thai entrepreneur Itthipat “Tob” Peeradechapan wanted to bring his seaweed snack chips to the US market and enlisted the help of Tim Minges whom he had met during...
Returning seasonal flavors such as pumpkin-flavored-anything tend to give products and food service outlets featuring the autumnal flavor a spike in sales as early as a month before the official start of fall.
Bare Bones Broth Co. is moving its entire product line from the freezer to the shelf-stable soup aisle to make itself even more convenient and affordable for consumers, founder and COO Ryan Harvey said.
Nearly nine months since launching its new sparkling water portfolio across its six regional spring water brands, Nestlé Waters North America has roughly doubled its household penetration compared to the same time last year.
Culinary exploration and convenience are at the top of many consumers’ wish lists when it comes to meal prep, and Chicago food startup FILLO’S Americas Made (parent company: Sofrito Foods) is aiming to fulfill both needs.
As more consumers fixate on sugar as a primary source of unnecessary calories and connect it to unwanted weight gain, manufacturers will need to re-engage shoppers with more nutritious options or else risk them opting-out of packaged foods and beverages,...
The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling on FDA to undertake “urgently needed reforms” to the current regulatory review process for food additives to limit the risk of adverse health effects that correlate with the use of some colorings, flavorings...
Americans are preparing and eating more meals at home (four out of five meals) than they did a decade ago, according to The NPD Group. To capture these at-home eaters, the food industry should focus less on where consumers are eating and more on what...
New Jersey-based FlavorHealth is aiming to commercialize a novel natural high-intensity sweetener with a flavor profile it claims is much closer to sugar than stevia by 2019 or 2020.
Starch can be found in nearly every corner of the CPG industry from shelf-stable pasta sauces and salad dressings to canned soups and jarred baby food because of its thickening and stabilizing properties. However, clean label options that deliver the...
This year, cell cultured meat vied with chickpea protein, animal-free gelatin and almond protein for the spotlight at the IFT annual meeting and expo in Chicago, while the clean label trend continued to gather pace. Check out part one of our gallery of...
Leveraging its established capabilities and market presence in flour milling, Ardent Mills is betting big on ancient grains with a new bolt-on business unit dubbed The Annex focused on scaling its supply of specialty grains for broader industry use.
The rise in sales and consumer interest of in-store fresh product offerings have challenged center-of-the-store items, but that doesn’t necessarily mean consumers have turned away from the middle aisles all together, Nielsen highlighted in its Total Consumer...
Senomyx has “achieved a fermentation strain proof of concept” for the production of siratose, a new zero-calorie, high-potency sweetening compound found in trace levels in monk fruit.
Tate & Lyle has introduced TASTEVA M Stevia Sweetener made from Reb M, which it claims tastes “remarkably like sugar” compared to other steviol glycosides.
The diverse and tech saavy ways of Generation Z or the iGeneration – referring to those aged 11-22 in 2018 – will have a profound impact on food and beverage formulations over the next several years, Mintel noted during a presentation at IFT 2018.
Sensient Technologies has acquired Mazza Innovation Limited, a botanical extraction technology firm based in Vancouver, Canada, strengthening its “seed to shelf” business strategy to innovate across the value chain for natural and organic ingredients.
The first time Innova Market Insights’ director of innovation, Lu Ann Williams, heard the term 'clean label' was in 2008, long before the term 'clean' started to infiltrate business to consumer marketing.
Big food manufacturers have increasingly recognized that their scale and robust supply chains aren’t enough to stay competitive and turn around years of little to no growth, and are refocusing their efforts on restoring consumer trust, says Rabobank.
The term ‘clean’ is popping up more and more in food branding and in consumer vernacular, but its definition is as foggy as ‘natural’ and ‘healthy,' according to Mintel.
While consumers still respond to the convenience of popping open a bag of chips, their mindset around snacking has expanded to products that promise a sense of culinary adventure, conscious-sourcing, unexpected ingredients, and satiating benefits.
Plant-based food options continue to win over Americans’ share of stomach and wallets accounting for nearly 20% of food and beverage dollars spent last year, according to a new report by Nielsen.
Porter Road, an online whole-animal butcher shop, is working to make buying meat online a habitual purchase for consumers by providing direct-to-consumer access to high-quality, pasture-raised, hormone-free meat sourced from sustainable farms.
SweeGen and Ingredion (which distributes SweeGen products in markets outside of China*) have secured the green light** to market the firm’s Reb M stevia in selected food and beverage applications and as a tabletop sweetener in Colombia.
Despite consumers spending more time and money online, more than three-quarters (78%) are wary of the freshness and 63% have food safety concerns for items that they buy online, according to Mintel.
World-renowned chef Thomas Keller once said, ‘Food should be fun.’ But to those who make the products we eat and drink, there is nothing fun about food and beverage labeling litigation.
The plaintiff behind a putative class action lawsuit accusing market leading light ice cream brand Halo Top of false and misleading representations will likely face an uphill battle to persuade a judge there is a case to be heard here, predict legal experts.
'Some of them have no intention of filing a lawsuit. The only intention is to line their pockets...'
You can’t beat a good courtroom drama, but if you’re monitoring the food litigation scene these days, you’re highly unlikely to get one, observed experts at a recent legal conference, who claimed that a small number of law firms targeting food brands...
Novozymes, a global producer of enzymes that controls roughly 48% of the market, is seeing its focus on food and beverage solutions and innovation pay off in 2018.
Keeping track of emerging food trends can be daunting, especially in an immediate, digital-centric environment, but there are a few constant principles to lean on in the increasingly cluttered, fragmented food and beverage market, according to Lynn Dornblaser,...
Bai Brands is the latest high profile brand to be sued over claims that the malic acid in its beverages is produced from petrochemicals and serves as a flavoring agent that should trigger ‘artificially flavored' labeling on pack.
Firms filing class action lawsuits have used actions aimed at companies making “natural” claims to springboard into a host of other vulnerable areas of labeling and packaging, according to an expert.
After one year as DanoneWave, to reflect the April 2017 merger of Danone and US-based White Wave Foods, the company has rebranded to Danone North America and has also become the largest Certified B Corporation (B Corp) in the world.
After two years of radio silence, during which some legal commentators – and several judges dealing with civil litigation on the issue – suspected it might die on the vine, the FDA has given its clearest indication yet that it will attempt to define ‘natural’...
EverSweet - the hotly-anticipated ‘next-generation’ Reb D and Reb M sweetener from Cargill and Evolva produced via fermentation – is now available in commercial quantities, say the partners, who have also struck a deal to explore whether other high intensity...
'I think you’ll see a mass exodus of CPG companies moving from polyols to allulose...'
Allulose is the sweetener generating the most buzz among food formulators right now, although many are waiting to see if the FDA exempts it from sugar labeling (it’s technically a sugar, but it’s not metabolized like one), before launching products featuring...
