• ☕ Craig Dubitsky And Robert Downey Jr. Partner To Make Coffee “Happy”
• 🧊 Five White-Hot Frozen Food Trends in 2024
• 🏈 TB12 Nutrition Merges With Mike Repole’s NoBull
• 🧑‍⚖️ Instacart Sued for Allegedly Downplaying Competition Pre-IPO

The meal delivery category is consolidating quickly. California-based manufacturer FreshRealm announced this morning it had acquired the U.S. operational assets and supply chain infrastructure of global meal kit provider Marley Spoon for $24 million. Alongside the deal today, Marley Spoon announced its acquisition of food-as-medicine meal platform bistroMD. 

The deal will see Marley Spoon transfer ownership of three production and fulfillment facilities in Newark, N.J., Tracy, Calif., and Dallas, Texas to FreshRealm, bringing the company’s total number of facilities to eight.

FreshRealm has become a strategic player in the evolving meal-delivery space providing scale, increased production capacity, and order fulfillment capabilities for a variety of brands. In June, distressed meal kit brand Blue Apron offloaded its operational infrastructure to FreshRealm as well.  

Moving forward, FreshRealm will handle fulfillment for Marley Spoon platforms, which includes Martha Stewart’s Martha & Marley Spoon, Dinnerly and now bistroMD. The newly asset-light business will continue to operate under existing brand names and platforms but become “empowered to focus even more on its brand, customer experience and front-end operations,” a company representative told Nosh.

“FreshRealm’s platform will drive innovation, lower fixed costs and prove the quality Marley Spoon is known for while delivering better unit economics,” the representative added.

The deal is expected to increase the scale of FreshRealm’s operations and provide growth opportunities for the company’s Fresh Meals platform, a key area of growth in its Blue Apron partnership; the segment also includes direct-to-consumer meal delivery, private label and branded product offerings for restaurants as well as for food retailers like Publix, Kroger and Walmart.

A representative for FreshRealm said that it “will bring on most of Marley Spoon’s U.S. operations and fulfillment teams,” but would not disclose if there would be any labor force redundancies or lay-offs as a result of the acquisition.

The news is the latest in the consolidation and restructuring of the meal-delivery business. In September, Blue Apron was acquired by the Wonder Group for $130 million, a deal which came thanks to the sale of its infrastructure, according to Blue Apron CEO Linda Findley. Bolstered by the perceived opportunity in the space, Whole30 also recently launched its own meal-delivery platform Made By Whole30.

Iron Man now has a coffee brand. Marvel movie star and emerging entrepreneur Robert Downey, Jr. is teaming with CPG industry veteran Craig Dubitsky to launch happy products, a bagged coffee brand with a simple philosophy: “Coffee makes us happy. Now happy can make our coffee.”

🎯 The bagged coffee is available ground, whole bean and in K-cup pods in three roasts (Astonishing Dark, Miraculous Medium and Extraordinary Light) as well as two varieties of instant coffee sticks. It will launch today in Target, on Amazon and direct-to-consumer.

😁 The ethos of happy products is manifested in its alignment with the largest mental health organization in the country: National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). The nonprofit was given an equity stake in the company to help support that mission.

🌿 The brand has also created a fully transparent coffee supply chain using blockchain technology to align itself with traceable sustainability measures.

Read the full story on Nosh.

Conagra released its Future of Frozen Food 2024 forecast last week highlighting emerging trends in the $78 billion U.S. frozen food market, ranging from air-fryer designed foods to a larger focus on smaller portions. Here’s a taste of its top trend predictions: 

🌶️ Global cuisine reigns supreme. Per the report, Asian-inspired fare remains a favorite, led by triple-digit growth in dumplings, wontons and gyoza over the past four years. Predictive social media analytics point to Indian flavors as the next big influence in the freezer case. (Think aloo tikki and paneer butter masala).

🧇 Morning meals heat up. Frozen breakfast sandwiches notched double-digit volume and velocity growth during the past four years, reaching $2.3 billion in sales. Croissant sandwiches, breakfast burritos and biscuit sandwiches are leading the charge, but don’t sleep on frozen waffles, a $1.2 billion segment that grew 31% during the period. 

🍗 Kid-friendly foods. Children’s frozen food generates more than $248 million in annual sales and has grown 122% over the past four years, according to the report. Parents are seeking claims such as clean label, free-from and high protein in the space.

Tom Brady will merge his health and nutrition brand TB12, along with apparel company Brady, with CPG legend Mike Repole-owned sneaker brand NoBull in an effort to create a ​​complete wellness company.

🤝 Brady’s businesses will be renamed under the NoBull banner and he will become the company’s second largest shareholder.

💰 Repole, the founder of BodyARMOR and Vitaminwater, purchased a majority stake in NoBull last year and intends to transform the brand into a “billion dollar powerhouse” with Brady onboard, according to CNBC.

💭 The partnership has been in the works for nearly two years, said Repole: “We found that even though we go about things a little differently, we get to the same place and we have the same core values.” 

Instacart has found itself entangled in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging the company “negligently prepared” documents by overstating its growth potential ahead of its 2023 IPO. 

📝 In the suit filed in California federal court, shareholder Andy Dean Stephen also claims Instacart downplayed the extent of the competition it faces in the online grocery shopping and delivery market. 

🛒 The San Francisco-based grocery delivery company filed for its IPO on August 25, and completed the offering on September 19, priced at $30 per share, giving the company an initial valuation of roughly $10 billion.

📉 However, on September 22 Reuters published a report revealing that Instacart faces “heavy competition” from DoorDash and Uber in the “slowly expanding” grocery delivery market. The company’s stock fell $0.65 following the report. 

📂 By October 2, research firm Gordon Haskett filed a complaint regarding Instacart’s alleged misrepresentation, which resulted in share prices falling an additional $2.73. 

Go Deeper: Where Will Instacart Go After The IPO? Grocery Experts Weigh In