• 🆕 This Week’s Hot New Sips
• 📈 NIQ: Beverage Sales Accelerate
• 🚢 Ports Go Back Online, For Now
• 🇮🇪 Conor McGregor Joins Bucked Up
• 🍋 Lemon Perfect Personnel Changes
• 🥪 A Brewing PB&J Battle, Class Action Lawsuits & Deceptive Labeling

Full-service contract and private label coffee roaster Cascade Coffee, LLC, a portfolio company of Westward Partners LLC, is moving from one investment firm to another this week following its acquisition by LaSalle Capital. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Everett, Washington-based roaster is solely a provider for other coffee brands, claiming on its website that “we do not and will not own our own brand.” But Cascade does own its own 150,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility with six roasting lines, three flavor mixing systems and the ability to produce up to 65 million pounds of coffee per year.

In a press release, Cascade CEO John Gilbert said the deal marks the beginning of “Cascade 3.0,” a plan to “further expand our capabilities and build Cascade into the pre-eminent partner for coffee brands.”

“This transaction highlights continued strategic and financial investor appetite for high quality contract and private label food manufacturing assets,” said Ryder Thomas, VP of investment bank Cascadia Capital, which served as the exclusive financial advisor to Westward Partners in the transaction. “Cascade Coffee exemplified the attributes of a premium asset in this space, and we were grateful for the opportunity to work with the team to drive a successful outcome.”

The acquisition adds another sizable food and beverage manufacturer to LaSalle’s portfolio; the firm also owns companies such as Great Lakes Potato Chip Co., Advanced Refreshment, Westminster Foods and Gold’s Pure Foods.

The coffee sector has been a consistent space for M&A in recent years, from the roasting end to the brand side, like last year’s $900 million acquisition of La Colombe by Chobani. Last year, a Coffee Intelligence report suggested that consolidation in the global coffee market is “just getting started” as both roasters and traders have become hot acquisition targets, noting that the impact of global conflicts like the war in Ukraine have underlined a need for both and small coffee businesses to “consolidate supply networks and procure long-term trading security.”

Earlier this year, JDE Peet’s purchased Maratá’s coffee and tea business in Brazil, while this month an Arziona-based specialty coffee roaster, PRESS Coffee, acquired its own estate in Panama. Last year, the multinational Sucrafina Group picked up Oregon-based specialty coffee trading company Sustainable Harvest.

Catch Up On The Coffee News: Westrock Kicks Off New Era In Conway

From adaptogenic hot chocolate to winter holiday-inspired flavored water, the latest edition of BevNET’s weekly New Products Gallery features innovations spanning all sides of the industry. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s inside:

🍫 MUD/WTR dropped its latest limited edition product, Hot Cacao x Mirror. The new offering features a blend of lion’s mane, maca, cacao, ashwagandha and coconut sugar. 

❄️ In anticipation of the winter holiday season, Hint unveiled a Holiday Variety Pack that includes four seasonal flavors: Spiced Pear, Citrus Berry, Apple Cinnamon and Peppermint Bark. 

🧠 Brainiac Foods has debuted its new Neuro+ smoothie line, which it claims to be the most advanced pouch in the baby food category. Neuro+ features the Milk Fat Globule Membrane (MFGM), a nutrient found in breast milk proven to support babies’ brain development and immune system.

Stay tuned for the full roundup of new products on BevNET later today. 

Non-alcoholic beverage sales “modestly accelerated,” driven by “stronger” volume growth paired with “slightly softer” pricing in the latest two-week period ending September 21, according to the latest analysis of NielsenIQ data by Goldman Sachs Equity Research.

• Total dollar sales rose 5% in the two-week period, compared to 3.5% in the four-week period and 2.7% in the 12-week period.
• Volume growth jumped 3.8% in the two-week period, an improvement over 1.3% for the four-week period.
• Average pricing was 1.1%, falling slightly from 2.2% in the four-week and 1.8% in the 12-week period.

📊 Sales of sparkling water (8.5%) and coconut water (17%) showed the biggest gains by category while sports drinks (-0.5%) and ready-to-drink coffee (-2.7%) softened.

Check out the full report on BevNET for all of the results.

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

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.

Mixed martial arts superstar Conor McGregor – himself a budding beverage entrepreneur via Proper No. 12 Irish Whiskey and Forged Irish Stout – is embracing his “Notorious” side as the new face of energy drink and nutrition supplement brand Bucked Up.

⚡ The Utah-based company announced the partnership with McGregor on Thursday, accompanied by the launch of a two-SKU sub-line dubbed “Notorious Buck,” which will make its public debut at the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) show in Las Vegas next week starting Tuesday, October 8.

📈 Moving mainly through regional DSD distribution, Bucked Up has emerged as an unlikely player in RTD energy. It only entered the sector in 2019 – its original product was deer antler spray, sold as a recovery supplement – but those drinks are now generating over $45 million year-over-year (+86.9%) in MULO plus c-store, according to data from Circana (through Sept. 6, 2024).

🦌 The Notorious Buck launch will include new supplement flavors and apparel launches in addition to the energy drinks – available in Irish Apple and Orange – entering retailers nationwide in the first half of 2025.

Looks like big management changes at fast-rising flavored water brand Lemon Perfect, where, according to LinkedIn, industry vet and next stage growth wizard Jeff Popkin has joined as CEO, replacing Yanni Hufnagel, who is now titled founder and Executive Chair. Meanwhile, president and CRO Jim Brennan has also moved on.

• Brennan announced his retirement this week, three years after he joined the enhanced water brand as an advisor and board member in 2021. Prior to Lemon Perfect, he served as a sales exec at The Coca Cola Company for over 30 years. 
• In July 2022, Brennan took on the job of president and CRO and has helped the brand grow revenue from $3 million to over $70 million in retail sales by the end of 2024, according to Lemon Perfect.
• Brennan has also helped grow the brand from 5,000 doors to 40,000 over the past three years and, in the process, locked in growth capital from key investors like Beyonce.
• The company also recently added industry veteran Gui Weaver as CSO.
• We’re reaching out to Hufnagel and Popkin – more to come!

Learn more about Lemon Perfect’s growth by tuning into this discussion from BevNET Live Summer 2024.

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 Flower 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.