• 🥨 What a Twist: Snack Vets Launch Pretzelized
• ⚽ Frito-Lay And Rockstar Take The Pitch In Leagues Cup Partnership
• 📚 Nosh Book Club
• 🐮 Avian Flu Detected in Cattle in Several States

One tech company is looking to make drop-ship distribution a viable model for early-stage brands to scale up. 

Mable was originally created to help independent grocers source from small, regional businesses and emerging food and beverage brands. But over the past four years, the tech platform has grown beyond its roots and recently activated its first major partnership with convenience, grocery and foodservice distributor McLane. 

🛒 Through McLane’s new Emerging Brands program, powered by Mable, brands selling on the platform can now opt in to receive orders from any retailer in McLane’s network. The brand still handles its own fulfillment, but the marketplace platform opens up access to a greater number of retail partners.

💬 “We've all been working in silos, brands limited to our own geographic locations, retailers limited to what is carried by their distributor, and distributors limited to large brands that can afford mass distribution,” said Kendra Bennett, CMO of Bon Bee Honey, which has been selling on Mable since September 2020. 

Bennett claims that Mable’s model has connected retailers and brands in “an unprecedented way” that allows for greater discovery in the procurement process and easy, direct-order fulfillment. The platform has also allowed Bon Bee to diversify its channel strategy, she said, and catalyzed its DTC business due to the greater exposure.

🌾 Maine-based Better With Buckwheat, formerly The Maine Crisp Company, has also used the platform to diversify its channel strategy. According to CEO Lewis Goldstein, the platform has allowed them to sell to everything from a small Northeastern chain of gas stations to Lamplighter Brewing, which operates multiple locations across Boston.

“Mable is an integral part of our strategy to offer our products to specialty retailers, foodservice and retailers that are looking to explore selling higher-margin premium products to their customers,” Goldstein said.

Check out the full story on Nosh for more about how it works and all the details about where it began.

Snack industry veterans Samuel Kestenbaum and Jason Cohen have launched Pretzelized, which is … pretty much what it sounds like. The new brand adds a pretzel-like texture to snacks like pita chips and crackers.  

🧂 The Pretzel Crackers (Cheddar, Sea Salt and Honey Mustard) have a “crunchy pretzel outside with a bite-sized cracker inside,” and Pretzel Pita Chips (Everything, Sea Salt and Buffalo) feature a “crunchy pretzel outside with an artisan pita chip inside.’

🛒 According to the brand’s website, the company built custom, proprietary machinery to “transform two snacks into one.” The oven-baked products are sold in Kroger, ShopRite and Fairway stores.

🍪 Prior to Pretzelized, Kestenbaum led That’s How We Roll, the maker of Thinsters (Cohen was a co-founder) and ParmCrisps, for nine years. The brands were acquired in 2021 by the Hain Celestial Group, where Kestenbaum previously served as director of sales and marketing. 

PepsiCo is betting spectators will grab a bag of Lay’s and crack a can of Rockstar while they watch the Leagues Cup. The food and beverage maker announced a multiyear sponsorship of the World Cup-style soccer tournament that features all teams from the Major League Soccer (MLS) and LIGA MX.

🥅 The partnership includes exclusive Lay's packaging, in-stadium experiences and, beginning July 1, opportunities to win tickets to various matches including a grand prize of a trip and tickets to the Leagues Cup 2024 final.

🍪 Along with Lay’s and Rockstar, the deal includes PepsiCo Mexican snack brands like Sabritas potato chips and Gamesa cookies.

🤔 The announcement comes after Rockstar recently unveiled its 'You Can Own Any Moment' campaign centered around the claim that the drink “delivers sustained mind-body energy,” according to a clinical study funded by PepsiCo.

We always keep our eyes peeled for new books written by and about folks in the food industry. Perhaps the most notable to recently capture our attention is Yale University agricultural policy fellow Austin Frerick’s “Barons: Money, Power, and The Corruption of America’s Food Industry.” 

🐮 The book details the stories of several corporate food titans – including Mike McCloskey, chairman of Fair Oaks Farms, and a German family who took over the global coffee industry –  their rise to power and the consequences for everyone else. 

🤔 Possibly one of the book’s most important takeaways is that despite the fact there are dominant players in everything from berries to dairy and pig farming, “a fair, healthy and prosperous food industry is possible — if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.” 

📖 Elsewhere, The Better Meat Company CEO Paul Shapiro’s re-released “Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner Around the World” details alt-meat’s potential to transform the food system with new science and ethical insights.

🍝 Food writer and podcaster Dan Pashman – known for creating new pasta shapes like cascatelli – released “Anything’s Pastable,” a cookbook with recipes featuring 34 different pasta shapes. 

🍸 Chris Hunter, the co-founder of Four Loko and Koia, penned “Blackout Punch: An Entrepreneur’s Journey from Chaos to Clarity.” The book explores the serial entrepreneur’s journey from turning Four Loko into a national sensation to being fired by his own partners to finding “a new reality.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently investigating a detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that was recently found among older cows in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico. It is believed to be the cause of decreased lactation and low appetite. 

🕵️ As of March 25, unpasteurized, clinical samples of milk from the sick cattle collected from two dairy farms in Kansas and one in Texas have tested positive for avian influenza. Based on findings in Texas, the sickness appears to have been introduced by wild birds.

🥛 At this stage, there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health. 

Marguerite Zabar Mariscal, the CEO of Momofuku, the admired restaurant group founded by David Chang, and Momofuku Goods, a brand of restaurant-quality pantry items inspired by modern Asian cuisine, explains how “a conscientious objection” to complacency has fueled constant improvement and why she’s intent on building companies that have “optionality.”

Check out the full episode here.