• 🥣 General Mills: Cost Savings Help Salvage Sales Slump
• 🚚 Armored Fresh Goes On National Oat Milk Cheese Tour
• 🥚 Shell Shock: Egg Prices Earn 2023’s Most Searched Inflation Topic

Food is great. It's probably why you are reading this newsletter and it's also why we are here – excitedly tracking all that goes on in the business of what we make for others to eat everyday. In the past year, one group in particular (🧑‍⚕️) has caught on to the wonders of food, leading doctors and health officials to increasingly buy into the idea that fruits and veggies may be an effective tincture to improve overall health and combat diet-related diseases. 

At the beginning of the month we shared industry insight on how the pharma-fueled side of things (read: Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs) could change eating habits. And today, we are going all in on its alter ego (think: produce prescriptions) and how the concept of food-as-medicine has captured pieces of the food industry at the very same time. Here are some highlights:

🏢 Policy: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed and adopted a Food as Medicine initiative in September that includes provisions for “diet-related research and programmatic efforts” like medically tailored meals for older adults.

🛒 Retail: Over the past year, two of the country’s largest grocery retailers – Walmart and Kroger – in addition to Instacart - have rolled out new programs that allow medical professionals to recommend foods and guide patients through grocery shopping. Instacart’s platform now features a “virtual food pharmacy” that allows health care providers to even order groceries to patients.

🥗 CPGs Convene: Health and wellness focused payment platform TrueMed recently partnered with plant-based meal company Daily Harvest to allow customers to purchase food with their pre-tax FSA/HSA dollars. That means DH customers can use healthcare dollars to buy nutrient dense foods and order collections designed around gut-friendly foods, heart healthy meals, Whole30 principles and more. 

💰 New Ventures: Last week, Season Health raised $7 million to develop and scale its food-as-medicine programs. The four-year-old platform has taken a similar approach to WW (formerly WeightWatchers), integrating dietician-backed recipes, nutrition consultants, pre-prepared meals as well as grocery delivery services (executed in partnership with local retailers) into a single app. In January, Free From Market also raised $2.1 million to scale similar services. 

🔬 Research: A new report from Tufts found that the implementation of food as medicine programs in the U.S. could help avoid 1.6 million hospitalizations and save $13.6 billion in healthcare costs in one year alone. 

We’ll surely be tracking this movement well into 2024 as CPGs find ways to align themselves with doctor’s orders, but for now it's time to start brainstorming fruit and veggie focused New Year’s resolutions… 

Sales struggled to keep pace in Q2 with the price increase-driven, double-digit dollar sales growth of the same period last year, General Mills reported on an earnings call yesterday. Let’s look at the numbers:

• Both net and organic net sales dropped 2% in Q2 but on a 2-year compound basis, net sales were up 1% and organic net grew 4%.
• Cost savings led to margin growth of 170 basis points (34.4%).
• Operating profits also increased 2% to $812 million and rose 13% on an adjusted constant currency basis.

💬 “When the consumer is stressed and results are hard to come by, one of the things we’ve seen successful companies like ours do is reinvest for the future,” CEO Jeff Harmening said on the call. 

Check out the full story for more on GM’s push to maintain on-shelf availability and where it is investing resources for the year ahead. 

South Korean alt-dairy food tech company Armored Fresh announced today that it is hitting the open road. The cheese wheels will be ready to roll on Jan. 2. with the company traversing the U.S. in hopes of connecting with grocery, food service and QSR buyers. 

🧀 The sampling events will bring buyers a taste of the brand’s new dairy-free Oat Milk Cheese Slices as well as yet-to-be-released innovations.

🏙️ The appropriately named ‘Armored Fresh Oat Milk Cheese Tour’ will begin in New York and end in California with stops in “all major metropolitan destinations.” Tastings will feature a curated menu and be developed by Armored Fresh’s U.S. sales team.

🤔 Armored Fresh launched the Oat Milk Cheese Slices in July and it also produces a line of Almond Milk American Cheese Slices available at select retailers nationwide including Fresh Thyme Market and Town and Country Foods.

2023 was the year of the Great American Egg Price Freakout. And it’s official because “why are eggs so expensive?” has been named the most searched inflation-related phrase this year. While egg price increases have slowed significantly since peaking at $4.82 per dozen twelve months ago, prices still remain elevated. 

🐔 Consumers may continue to experience egg price sticker shock in 2024. Just last week Cal-Maine Foods temporarily halted production at a Kansas facility after some of its flock tested positive for avian flu. 

⚠️ According to the USDA, the 2022-2023 spread of bird flu has been the most detrimental on record for the U.S., impacting hundreds of poultry farms across nearly all states and more than 72.5 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have been wiped out since the outbreak began in February 2022. 

🤔 According to The Humane League, there are approximately 1.2 billion broiler chickens alive in the U.S. at any given time. While egg prices have moderated, the avian flu continues to spread, meaning another egg price spike could be coming.