• 💰 Deal Dive: Daily Crunch, Rivalz and Kroma Wellness
• 🔀 Why Snacktivist Foods Shifted From CPG to Supplier
• ⏸️ WIRED: Upside Foods Pauses Expansion

First time CPG food entrepreneurs are faced with a number of challenges. When the realities of manufacturing, distribution and marketing are summed up on spreadsheets, it can be easy to lose sight of why a brand was launched in the first place.

Last month, Lexington Bakes founder Lex Evan launched Salt & Main, a platform dedicated to “celebrating other food founders” through written interviews, podcasts and, eventually, a quarterly magazine. While the premium brownie business brought them into the industry, this new platform allows for wider exploration into how food, culture and identity intersect.

“I want to talk about food in a way that will spark other people to want to start food businesses or to learn about the food industry,” Evan recently told Nosh. The platform goes beyond CPG founders and engages with food stylists, photographers, caterers and celebrity chefs. 

The goal? Give others a better understanding of how what we eat becomes central to defining one’s identity. Evan – who spent the past decade as a product designer for Johnson & Johnson – launched Salt & Main with a modern approach to brand building in mind. They spent years pitching the personal care company to invest in other media avenues, like podcasts to educate their consumers, to no avail.

“Modern brands need their own media,” Evan said. “For me to expand the [Lexington Bakes] brand and live into that purpose, it needed something beyond a product. It needs this media arm to execute on that purpose.”

The “media arm” needed to reach further than posts on Instagram or TikTok and has to serve a higher goal than just a blog tucked away within a company website. For Evan, this meant establishing an independent brand that could serve their broader interest in how food culture intersects with identity.

While owned media serves a distinct purpose compared to earned media, he believes the former can serve the dual purpose of feeding a creative desire while also providing an avenue to implicitly drive brand awareness.

“If [Salt & Main] helps Lexington Bakes in the process, great. But it's not the primary goal. I want to learn why people got into food in the first place. It's just sharing all our traditions around food, not just the business of food,” Evan said.

This masterclass focuses on key elements and critical questions every CPG leader must address to ensure their brand's success. You will learn to apply strategic thinking to your brand and get actionable insights for driving your brand to profitable & sustainable growth. Learn more

Investment news continues to roll in. Here’s the scoop on three notable funding rounds snack brands have closed this month:

🤝 Nut snack producer Daily Crunch raised $1.14 million of venture funding from undisclosed investors on February 7. 

• Most recently, the Nashville-based brand expanded to the East Coast with the launch of pantry-sized 5 oz. bags in all Wegmans stores. 

🍕 Rivalz, which markets a line of salty stuffed snacks (a better-for-you rendition of Combos), recently closed a $6 million in a seed round. 

• The snack scene newcomer offers its “dual-textured” veggie based bites in Late Night Pizza, Extra Chedda’ Mac and Spicy Street Taco Flavors in both 1 oz. single-serve and 6 oz. bag formats. 

🥣 Kroma Wellness added $5.2 million to its war chest on February 6 in a Series A venture funding round from undisclosed investors; the raise puts the company’s pre-money valuation at $9 million. 

• Founded in 2021, Kroma Wellness produces superfood snacks like Super Porridge and OMG Cookie Butter, in addition to protein powders in multiple varieties.

Snacktivist Foods, a regenerative agriculture-focused baking mix brand, is putting its CPG line on the back burner while it works to spearhead a new ingredient supply and brokerage service that connects private label producers, foodservice suppliers and other CPG brands to farmers using verified regenerative practices. 

🌾 The network currently includes sorghum, chickpeas, millet, brown and white rice, oats and wheat suppliers who can sell the ingredients either whole or in a milled flour format.

🗺️ The company also connects buyers and brands with regenerative suppliers outside its network and can help establish new verifiable supply chains for specific ingredients.

⚔️ Snacktivist has been working in the regenerative space for nearly a decade, but recent momentum and retailer interest has created a “double edged sword” with plenty of “collateral damage,” said Snacktivist founder and CEO Joni Kindwall-Moore.

Check out the full story for details on why Snacktivist is shifting gears on Nosh. 

Lab-grown meat company Upside Foods has halted construction at its planned 187,000 sq. ft. Glenview, Illinois plant, according to a report from WIRED yesterday. The company will instead focus on doubling down on its already-established facility in Emeryville, California. 

⏪ The Glenview plant – nicknamed “Rubicon” – was announced in September and expected to initially have the capacity to produce millions of pounds of cultivated meat products per year with the potential to expand to over 30 million pounds.

📧 In an email viewed by WIRED, Upside CEO Uma Valeti told employees that expanding operations at the company’s Emeryville facility would cost “substantially less” than constructing the first phase of Rubicon.

🚫 As a result of the shift, employees whose roles focused specifically on the Illinois factory have been let go. The “selective role eliminations,” as Valeti referred to them, have impacted 16 individuals across the company.

Gotham Greens co-founder and CEO Viraj Puri spoke about how he has maintained focus and managed new and complex responsibilities amid the development of the pioneering urban agriculture company, assessing when to accelerate growth and what he considers to be his biggest mistake and best decision.

Listen to the full episode here.