• 🆕 This Week’s Notable New Products
• 🍪 Ex-KIND Exec Launches Baking Mixes
• ❌ An Ode To Overdone Marketing Trends
• 🔀 Mark Samuel, Nona Lim To New Roles
• 🚢 Ports Go Back Online, For Now
• 🥪 A Brewing PB&J Battle, Class Action Lawsuits & Deceptive Labeling

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Nearly 30,000 new brands are introduced in the U.S. food and beverage market every year. That means raising awareness for your startup and capturing the attention of large retailers can prove to be a challenging feat. Meanwhile, retailers have been increasingly pressed to find new and innovative items to draw in consumers.

They know they need them: According to a report by multinational strategy and management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, 73% of consumers who tried different brands intend to incorporate new brands into their routine. Gen Z and high earners are most prone to switching.  

Enter retailer sourcing programs, which are designed to diversify the shelves of leading retailers with products from emerging brands. Over the past decade, numerous incubator, accelerator and pitch programs have cropped up across various retail channels, among them big names like Walmart’s Open Call pitch program, Target’s Forward Founders and Target Takeoff accelerators and 7-Eleven’s Brands With Heart showcase. 

We spoke with numerous founders about their experiences with these sourcing programs including what they wish they knew before and the unexpected benefits they walked away with. Here are some of their top takeaways:

Brand Readiness: While brands might get a leg up in learning how to fit in with the retailer running a sourcing program, they also have to understand that it comes at the cost of different resources. First of all, the programs take time. 

DEUX founder Sabeena Ladha, who was part of the Target Takeoff Food and Beverage 2021 cohort, estimates that her brand committed between 10 and 20 hours to the program. But there are real benefits. Target helps brands on important aspects of their business, like price pack architecture and scaling with co-packers, and it’s not just a pass-fail environment, she said.

Willingness to Pivot: One advantage of an incubation program is that founders can get a handle on the kinds of work they need to do if they plan to eventually work with the host retailer. That can help down the road, even if they don’t get into the store right away.

For Two Fish Foods – the CPG arm of Chicago-based restaurant Two Fish Crab Shack – this came in the form of additional certifications and food safety audits following Walmart’s Open Call last year. Walmart has its own food safety standards to which brands must adhere, said founder Yasmin Curtis. 

“After [getting the golden ticket] is when the real work happens,” she emphasized.  

All Eyes on You: Whether or not emerging brands land spots on retail shelves, these incubator and accelerator programs have another side benefit: they offer startups the opportunity to raise brand awareness. While any boosts a brand can get in its early days may seem like a win, it's important that startups consider all of the costs associated with a rollout before locking in commitments. 

Nosh Insiders can read the full story for more in depth info on incubator and accelerator programs. 

It's Friday, folks, and that means it's time to round up all of this week’s new product creations and brand collaborations. Here’s a sample of what’s in store:

🫐 Pitaya Foods, which touts itself as the fastest-growing brand in the frozen fruit category, has introduced a new line of smoothie pops available in Organic Acai & Blueberry, Organic Dragon Fruit & Mango and Organic Passion Fruit & Peach flavors.

👀 Noodle chip maker S’NOODS has turned a holiday favorite into a snackable chip with the launch of its limited edition Sweet Kugel Chips. The golden-brown chips feature warm spices of cardamom and cinnamon, caramelized vanilla and subtle notes of rich custard. 

☀️ Before the Butcher has unveiled its latest retail product, Cooked Plant-Based Breakfast Sausage Patty. The new option is soy-free, gluten-free and non-GMO and is fully cooked for quick preparation. 

Check out the full roundup of new products on Nosh.

Since the onset of the pandemic, convenience has been in high demand across the food and beverage industry. Lindsay Hancock, the former SVP of sales at KIND, is working to capitalize on the trend with the launch of My Better Batch, a line of premium baking mixes crafted to deliver homemade-tasting cookies.

🛒 The 4-SKU cookie mix line – which includes Double Chocolate Chip, Celebration, Classic Sugar and Chocolate Chunk varieties – is free of artificial colors and preservatives. The mixes are available direct-to-consumer, TikTok Shop and Instagram Shop for $7.99 each. 

💭 “Having [been in the industry] for many years, I realized that for something to go on the shelf, something else has to come off. We needed to have something special about this product to get it on the shelf in the first place,” said Hancock, highlighting the fact the mixes were designed to be “better than homemade” in terms of both taste and preparation time.

Insiders can learn more about the brand and its plans for scale in the full story on Nosh.

Nosh’s annual "Best Of" Awards commend companies, brands, individuals, products, ideas and trends from across the ever-changing packaged food industry. Submit nominations for yourself or others through November 1st.

Troubling patterns have emerged in the always-evolving and hyper-frenetic world of food marketing, where the quest for the next big trend often eclipses the pursuit of genuine value, according to one industry observer.

🤔 Ricardo Baca, the former newspaper journalist-turned CEO of wellness PR and natural products marketing firm Grasslands, shared his thoughts on three current food marketing trends he finds to be the most played out.

💬 “While it’s true that we live in a world where unverified health claims and hyperbole can move product in the short term, we also exist in a marketplace where a large segment of consumers pride themselves on not buying into the hype, on being independent thinkers who do their research,” Baca begins. 

Check out the full guest column on Nosh for Baca’s thoughts on functional foods, fitness influencers, health claim exaggerations and why he recommends a recalibration.

🧫 Frank Yiannas, the FDA's former Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy & Response, has joined Boar’s Head as interim chief food safety advisor in the wake of the meat processor’s deadly Listeria outbreak.

🥩 Meat snack maker Chomps has elevated Tim Bosslet as its first-ever chief financial officer. He has held progressively senior roles in finance since joining the company in 2019.

🍜 Noodle maven Nona Lim is the first female chair of color for the Specialty Food Association in its 70-plus year history, she announced this week in a LinkedIn post.

🍞 Mark Samuel has become president of gluten-free baker Unbun Foods, in addition to his recent appointment at Siddhi Capital supporting growth of its portfolio companies. 

File under: Bad, but could have been worse. Longshoreman and port workers along the East Coast and Gulf Coast are heading back to work this morning after the International Longshoreman’s Association (ILA) and United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) announced a tentative deal ending a short-lived labor stoppage late on Thursday.

📝 The deal, representing an amended 90-day extension of the just-expired labor contract, is a win in terms of workers’ wages – now set to rise 62% over the next six years, or about $63 per hour. But critical questions around automation, seen by unions as an existential threat to their membership, still need to be addressed in any long-term pact.

📍 As noted in Insider Daily earlier this week, a brief strike was unlikely to seriously rattle the CPG landscape, with retailers and suppliers able to plan contingencies ahead of time.

☕ Still, it will likely take weeks to unblock port traffic, which JP Morgan analysts said cost the U.S. economy some $5 billion per day. Prices for some commodities like coffee have already risen in response.

It’s not always smooth sailing in the CPG industry – especially as businesses get bigger and their brands are subject to more scrutiny from competitors and consumers. This week on the CPG Week podcast, Nosh managing editor Monica Watrous and senior reporters Brad Avery and Lukas Southard discuss a number of lawsuits that have popped up recently and why they all seem to be related to health claims.

🥜 Hear why J.M. Smucker is going after emerging brand Chubby Snacks for its combative marketing strategy.

🍞 Why is a three-year-old class action lawsuit against Flowers Foods-owned Dave’s Killer Bread back in the news? 

🥤 Get the details on the second deceptive labeling suit filed against Poppi this year and learn what it could signal for better-for-you branding.

Listen to the episode now.

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