• 🆕 ICYMI: Hot New Products
• 🐟 Above Food Lists on NASDAQ
• 🧑‍⚖️ Kroger/Albertsons Hits Another Roadblock
• 🍓 How Fruit Waste Becomes Electric
• 🥳 Happy Birthday to the Barcode
• 🎩 How ‘Fancy’ Became Trendy

Nutrisco has acquired majority ownership of LiveMore Superfoods®.  LiveMore offers smoothie blends at major US retailers. This merger will allow LiveMore to be vertically integrated and expand globally. Nutrisco is of one of the leading economic groups in Latin America, with annual sales of $30 billion, and is building a purpose-driven portfolio. Learn more

Watching the latest season of FX’s hit show “The Bear” felt like the CPG industry’s version of a Super Bowl commercial blitz. In between the action of Season 3 was a packed menu of brand deals, with over 25 sponsors, including food and beverage brands like Hellman’s, Talenti, Stella Artois and Coca-Cola. These partnerships – which weave seamlessly into a show about the restaurant industry – showcase the power of brand integration, one of the most effective ways to reach ad-averse consumers in today’s streaming era. 

According to an Adweek article by Meilani Weiss, EVP of brand integration at R&CPMK, streaming audiences are unreachable by traditional advertising and skew younger and wealthier than audiences watching traditional TV. Integration lets brands tap into networks or productions and weave their products into the content itself rather than paying for media placement with a direct buy. 

“The Bear”’s second season racked up 853 million viewing minutes for the week of June 19-25, more than twice its top viewing minutes in 2022. With even more viewing minutes expected for Season 3 – which premiered on June 26 – partner brands will get plenty of eyes on their products. 

Ahead of the Season 3 premiere, searches for the term “Hellman’s” began trending upward among U.S. consumers and are currently in line with search rates on February 11, when it debuted its “Mayo Cat” ad spot during Super Bowl LVIII, per Google data trends. The term “Stella Artois” is also currently seeing a search spike, its highest over the past 12 months.

How can brands land these coveted deals? According to the Adweek article, some networks offer buys to secure guaranteed placements in their most popular shows while others require brands to go through production partners (individual vendors for the networks). Some networks even require on-set partners to get products into shows. 

Above all, authenticity is key. Having actors eating, drinking or interacting with a particular product gives a brand credibility that traditional advertising does not – but it can’t be forced. 

“It will always still go back to the question of “Is my product a seamless fit?” and a lot of research should be done on the brand’s side to know that or not. If it’s not, it becomes a logo slap and either a 50/50 of someone going to search it or it just simply getting glazed over,” said Kendall Dickieson, founder of Flexible Creative, an agency whose clients include Graza, Chubby Snacks and Barcode, among others. 

She added that brands should consider what these partnerships bring from a content angle and how they can push positioning and awareness. For example, Dickieson says a brand could put together a seeding to creators and influencers featuring their product and elements that complement “The Bear” or whichever show they are on. 

And so, dear reader, I leave you to ponder this question: Are brand integration deals worth the effort and expense, or is there another way forward for brand advertising in the streaming era? My inbox is always open at sgolden@bevnet.com. 

In case you missed our weekly new products roundup on Friday, we’re bringing you a brief overview of what’s inside:

🍒 Granola butter brand Oat Haus teams up with food blog Ambitious Kitchen to launch its newest flavor, Cherry Pie. The new offering, which is said to taste like cherry pie à la mode, is now available for purchase via the brand’s website for $12.95 per 12 oz. jar. 

🍪 In the middle of a growth-packed year with new distribution and innovation, BTR Nation partners with Blue Bottle to create its new Spiced Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough superfood bar. 

☀️ Just in time for summer cookout season, 5-Hour Energy is giving big grill energy with the launch of its 5-Hour Energy Inspired Energizing BBQ Sauce. The caffeinated sauce features a sweet and tangy Peach Mango flavor and has 60 mg of caffeine per serving.

Check out the full gallery on Nosh.

Above Food continues to buoy itself in the public markets. Only two months after the company announced the failure of its SPAC merger with holding company Bite Acquisition Corp. and one month after acquiring better-for-you pasta maker Good Wheat, it seems to have brought its public company pursuits back to life. 

📊 Above Food announced today it will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbols “ABVE” and “ABVE.W.” The newly combined company, dubbed Above Food Ingredients Inc., includes common shares and warrants of Bite Acquisition Corp. (formerly NYSE AMERICAN: BITE) and Above Food. 

✅ The combination of Above and Bite was approved at a special meeting of Above Food shareholders on June 7 and officially closed on June 28. 

🎣 In addition to Good Wheat, Above’s portfolio includes Loma Linda, TUNO, Neat, Eat Up!, Modern Menu and NorQuinn.

🗣️ “We are thrilled to begin trading today… and look forward to demonstrating the value of our unique seed-to-fork platform with investors, which brings together regenerative agriculture, value-added ingredients manufacturing, and consumer products into one differentiated solution,” said Above Food Ingredients Inc., founder, president, CEO and executive chairman Lionel Kambeitz.

The multi-year road to merging two of the country’s biggest grocery companies in a $24 billion deal has hit another obstacle as a Colorado state judge last week refused to dismiss a bid by Kroger and Albertsons lawyers to throw out the state’s attempt to block the merger.

❌ The grocery stores’ legal team has pushed to throw out the Colorado AG’s arguments to block the merger based on a U.S. Constitution clause that supersedes state antitrust laws in commerce crossing state lines.

🏛️ In May, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that there is nothing stopping a state court from blocking a deal regionally even if the companies operate across state lines.

🤔 The judge’s order left some room for interpretations, stating that the “request for a 'nationwide injunction' as the term is commonly used’” but “that is not to say that there could not be some other business agreement between defendants that would apply to other areas of the country that would not illegally impact competition in Colorado.”

The Hain Celestial Group is now seeing the fruits of its sustainability investments at its manufacturing facility in Histon, U.K. The company’s plant is now using an anaerobic digestion system onsite to process food waste from its jams, jellies, marmalades and maple syrup to create biogas that generates electricity.

⛽ The biogas production doubles the energy produced from fruit waste and generates 25% more green electricity to meet the facility's requirements.

🏞️ The initiative kills two birds with one stone (fruit). It is part of Hain's Global Impact Strategy to reduce GHG emissions by 42% in its facilities globally by 2030 while targeting 100% renewable energy use and 90% diversion of food waste from landfill across its global portfolio by 2025.

🌝 The Hoboken, N.J.-based company that manages snack brands like Garden Veggie, Terra Chips, Earth's Best and many others recently appointed Chris Jenkins as its Head of Impact to spearhead the Hain Celestial’s sustainability initiatives.

It’s such a ubiquitous part of life and commerce that most people don’t spend much time thinking about (if any time at all) that there was life before the barcode enabled us to buy whatever we wanted. Those black bars just celebrated their 50th scan-iversary last week.

🧾 On June 26, 1974, a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit gum at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio, became the first ever product to be scanned and sold with a barcode.

↗️ The GS1 US, a non-profit organization responsible for issuing authentic barcodes to new products, estimates that today around 10 billion items are scanned daily.

🌐 The tech continues to evolve. Beyond the rise of QR codes in the last decade, GS1 US is also now developing a new scannable code system that it hopes will be ready for mass adoption by 2027.

Why are some concepts that were once derided as too esoteric for mainstream consumers now viewed as cutting edge and trendy? The hosts discuss the topic during their recap of the 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show and also highlight rooibos-based drinks, a “breakfast martini” and THC powders.

Listen to the full episode now.