The pickle war seems to keep fermenting as Grillo’s Pickles has filed a second lawsuit alleging pickle plagiarism.

• On June 27, Grillo’s filed a lawsuit against its now former co-packer, Patriot Pickle, alleging the company stole Grillo’s proprietary recipe to produce a line of “nearly identical” pickles for Whole Foods Market.
• According to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Patriot obtained Grillo’s recipes during a nearly decade-long co-packing relationship in which the former manufactured, packaged, labeled and shipped a portion of Grillo’s pickles. 
• Looking ahead, Grillo’s is requesting that Patriot remove any pickle products manufactured using its confidential and proprietary information from the market and return all materials containing its recipes. 

The news comes after Grillo’s in January filed an injunction in a New Jersey federal court claiming that hamburger chain Wahlburgers misled consumers with its Wahlburgers At-Home packaged pickle line – produced through Patriot Pickle – by falsely claiming their pickles are “fresh,” “all-natural” and contain “no preservatives.”

Read up on the suit on NOSH (and btw, did you know there's no pickle emoji!?)

Westrock Coffee Company is in the spotlight once again.Only three months after acquiring influencer-forward Bixby Coffee, the publicly traded private label coffee producer and brand incubator has locked in $75 million to continue along its upward trajectory and finish expanding its Conway, Arkansas facility with new RTD and extraction capabilities.

• The investment came from a mix of both new and existing investors with HF Capital (an OG investor from the company’s IPO phase) contributing $50 million while a new backer, the Herbert Hunt family, added $25 million to top it off.
• With the new capital, Westrock’s facility will get new high-speed can, glass and multiserve bottle lines, bag-in-box and bulk lines, two additional can lines, a product development lab and an FDA-certified pilot plant to create new coffee, tea, and both dairy and plant-based milks.

Even though over the past week the FDA gave the go-ahead to serve chicken that's only sort of chicken, it apparently has beef with those making "special" Cheetos and Doritos. Yesterday, the agency sent warning letters to six companies producing Delta-8 THC edibles in the form of candy, chips and cookies, among other food formats that can “easily be mistaken” for popular snacks, and gave them 15 days to remedy the situation. Late last year the agency sent warning letters to CBD makers for similar practices. However, this D8 THC crackdown comes ahead of the 2023 Farm Bill reauthorization which industry experts believe may bring implications or oversight to the alternative-cannabis space.  

Go Deeper via the NOSH Podcast: Will Regulation Smoke Out THC In CPG?

• Learn about the latest departure from General Mill's venture arm 301 Inc
• Read more about updates from the meal kit space