• 🍬 Issei Brings Cultural Significance To Candy
• 🔵 Flashfood Shifts To New Branding And Leadership
• 🏭 Scaling Up: Imagindairy Moves Into Industrial Manufacturing
• 🦑 Report: The U-Maine Researchers Upcycling Squid

U.S. consumers ordered groceries online less frequently in 2023 than the year before, contributing to a 1.2% decline in the channel’s total share of the grocery market, according to the monthly Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopper Survey. 

By the end of 2023, online grocery sales totaled $95.8 billion in the U.S. and the digital channel’s total share of the market dropped 18 basis points to 12.5%. 

🚚 Order frequency is not the only metric driving the decline of online carts. The total number of online grocery orders fell by a rate of 6%, building on the 4% downward trend recorded a year prior. Those declines were coupled with an increase in new monthly active users who ordered groceries only one-time, further diluting average order frequencies.

🏪 But not all channels fare equally. Price-value stores, specifically Mass and discount, emerged at the top following strong growth of their monthly user bases – increases of 15% and 12%, respectively. Supermarkets saw a significant, 4% drop in monthly users.

🚶 The shift in channel-specific buying behavior drove up Mass’ share of the online grocery market by 45% y/y while Supermarkets lost 29% of its hold due to its shrinking user base and declining order frequencies. 

🔁 Lastly, repeat intent rates play a large role in the emerging eGrocery divide. Overall, the number of consumers that believe they’ll order groceries online again dropped 63 basis points to 61% y/y. But when segmented out, the rate of mass consumers who will most likely use these services again jumped to 66% (a 48 basis point increase) while in Grocery, that metric fell 311 basis points to 54%. 

💭 "As Walmart grabs market share through its price leadership and omnichannel strategies, regional grocers find themselves in a precarious position. To remain competitive, they must intensify their efforts in improving customer engagement, offering tailored personalization, and building loyalty. This strategic shift is not just about weathering the storm of price inflation and intense competition, but about thriving in it," said Mark Fairhurst, global chief growth officer at Mercatus, in the report. 

The better-for-you candy category has become a hot spot for innovation this past year (with new product launches increasing 10%, according to Mintel). And with that push has come new ingredients, textures and global flavors – like mochi gummies from Issei.

🥇 During its year and a half on the market, Issei Mochi Gummies have expanded to about 870 stores, recently launching at Sprouts stores nationwide and partnering with Walmart after winning the Golden Ticket for its emerging brand Open Call 2023 program.

🤝 Founder and CEO Mika Shino is forging each retail relationships herself; as a first generation Japanese immigrant, she hopes to share the significance of mochi with Issei’s retail partners while also using those relationships to learn how to navigate the CPG industry.

💭 “I think anybody dealing with candy knows the lack of innovation in this space – any buyer, any food scientist, any retailer. A lot of buyers have said to me, ‘You’re in a white space, and that’s going to bring incremental growth,” said Shino. 

Read the full story about Issei’s origin and its strategy to build a clean candy brand on Nosh. 

Food waste reduction app Flashfood has promoted current president and COO Nicholas Bertram to the executive seat as CEO. The company’s founder and CEO, Josh Domingues, will become executive chairman and lead strategic expansion initiatives and corporate development.

🚀 The Toronto-based company has also relaunched the brand with a new logo as it prepares to continue expanding in North America; the man behind the rebrand, chief brand officer Jordan Scheneck, will now serve as chief customer officer.

🍌 In a letter posted on Flashfood’s website, Bertram said the company has “rerouted nearly 100 million pounds of food” and saved its customers “nearly $200 million on their groceries.”

🛒 Launched in 2016, Flashfood’s app and in-store coolers allow retailers to sell food that might be thrown out at up to a 50% discount to users. Flashfood services are available in over 2,000 stores across North America.

Animal-free milk protein maker Imagindairy unveiled today its has acquired 100,000 liter-capacity production lines that will allow the food tech startup to scale up into industrial  production. 

🐮 The production milestone will allow the company to sell animal-free dairy products at price parity with traditional dairy.

👏 The Israeli-based alt dairy maker also received a “no questions” letter from the FDA last month effectively deeming its ingredient as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), in addition to self-affirming its GRAS status in August.

💭 “It’s a substantial breakthrough and important step that will allow us to support mass-market adoption, transition to an industrial company and speed up the development of other milk proteins,” said Dr. Eyal Afergan, Imagindairy co-founder and CEO.

Researchers at the University of Maine, in collaboration with Rhode Island-based wholesale calamari dealer, The Town Dock, are working to develop new frozen food products using squid parts that are typically thrown away, as reported by The Boston Globe.

🤔 The two-year study includes two key components: devising new food products and investigating how to effectively freeze squid wings (which are usually discarded) while determining how short-term frozen storage impacts the quality of products made from them. 

🌊 Why is this research being conducted in New England? Sixty-two million pounds of shortfin and longfin squid were harvested in the region in 2022, according to NOAA data. Only 50% of the squid is typically used in food. 

🧑‍🍳 Researchers are working on turning the upcycled meat into a paste for various food products like cakes (similar to crab cakes), meatballs and dumplings with the goal of designed products for the food service and restaurants.