• 🤑 Alt-Cocoa Investment
• 🤳 Will MrBeast Buy TikTok?
• 🥊 The Fight Over Candy-Flavored Claims
• 🥸 People Moves Across Food
• 🫚 McCormick's Q4 Earnings
• ✨ Fancy Food & Numbers Behind Adult Non-Alc

Fiber-focused foods have long fought obstacles: if they’re merchandised in the food aisle, they face an uphill battle against better tasting products; if they’re put in the digestive health aisle there’s just not a lot of traffic. 

Supergut founder and CEO Marc Washington understands that bad rap, which is why sampling in the digestive health set has become an important part of the six-year-old brand’s omni-channel growth strategy.

After cutting its teeth with demos at small, regional chains, Supergut brought taste-testing and education to Target earlier this month. 

Target is looking to always be “on the cutting edge” and “create experiential settings” for its shoppers, Washington said.

While sampling is new for Target – which has a strong reputation for helping direct-to-consumer brands make their first foray into retail – it has the opportunity to now give brands their first experience engaging with customers face-to-face. 

For Supergut, the opportunity to offer a gratis taste of its prebiotic fiber bar and powder products to a mass audience is growth and awareness gold. It is still early days, but Washington said his team saw a “material uptick” from the end of the year relative to the start of the new one. 

While Washington said costs associated with Target’s new sampling activations are comparable to other retailers, the biggest change was moving from Supergut-rep-run demos to events operated by third-party Target-contracted field marketers. 

• “It’s the kind of thing a brand should try somewhere else first to get some reps and understand how things go, what kinds of questions people ask, understand the logistics and the experience. Then take that experience to a Target[-like retailer]. Because…it's at a greater scale, and it's less under your direct control,” he said. 

Nosh Insiders can access the full story to learn more about Target and Supergut’s sampling strategy.

Israel-based food tech company Pluri landed a $6.5 million private placement from investor and entrepreneur Alejandro Weinstein. 

🤝 As part of the new funding announcement, the company also reported its intent to acquire a 71% stake in alt-cocoa company Kokomodo from Chutzpah Holdings and cell-ag gene editing platform Plantae, which are both under the control of Weinstein.

🔬 Pluri already makes cultivated meat and coffee under its brand Ever After Foods, while Kokomodo uses cellular agriculture technology to make climate-resilient cacao.

🍫 The move builds on the momentum behind cocoa alternatives as food and agri-tech look to solutions for skyrocketing prices that have remained elevated in recent years due to environmental factors paired with increased demand.

How are CPG brands acclimating to a new normal in chocolate? Read about the cocoa industry’s difficult 2024 on Nosh.

YouTube personality, Feastables founder and 2024 Nosh Notables designee Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson is part of an investor group making a bid to buy TikTok from Chinese parent company ByteDance. 

📲 In a video posted last week on the platform, Donaldson said, “Just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires. TikTok, we mean business… We have an offer ready for you.”

💸 Other prominent investors are reportedly in the running to buy the app before a law banning it takes effect. Those include Elon Musk, Kevin O’Leary and Frank McCourt.

Go Deeper: TikTok On The Chopping Block: How To Prepare For A Ban

Mondelēz International and Ghost Beverages are fighting to dismiss a proposed class action lawsuit claiming they illegally market candy-flavored energy drinks to kids. 

😝 The companies argued this week that reasonable consumers understand that the labels on products featuring Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish and Warheads candy trademarks represent flavors and are not an indication of safety for children, according to Law360.

💬 What they said: "The fact of the matter is … food is going to have a favorable palate, and a lot of flavors that appeal to adults might also appeal to children and that's the case here.” – Matthew Orr, attorney for Ghost Beverages

Some big names in food made some big appointments to their executive leadership teams this month. Here’s the latest in people moves from around the industry:

• The Campbell’s Company promoted Risa Cretella to EVP and President, Meals & Beverages, effective February 1. She joined the business last March and will now lead brands like the core Campbell’s soup line, Chunky, Pace, Prego, Swanson and V8 among others.
• Brian Johnson was named the new president and CEO of natural retailer The Fresh Market, after former CEO Jason Potter moved on to lead Grocery Outlet.
• Second Nature Brands appointed two new executives this week: Christopher Kodosky as CFO and Matthew White as Chief Customer Officer. 

Seasonings and spice producer McCormick & Company is crediting a 1% net sales increase in 2024 to pricing and volume growth. That includes $3.8 billion in consumer sales and $2.8 billion in Flavor Solutions sales, in its end-of-year earnings, reported today. 

• Q4 sales were up 3% year-over-year. 
• Consumer sales – which includes branded offerings like Frank’s RedHot and French’s – were up 4% to over $1 billion
• Flavor Solutions – which represents sales to industrial customers – rose 1% to $713 million.

💬 President and CEO Brendan Foley said in a statement the company hopes to sustain momentum in 2025 by “leveraging the demand for flavor” and emphasizing “brand marketing, new products and packaging, category management, and proprietary technologies” to continue growing.

The Specialty Food Association is taking a page from the Newtopia Now playbook, announcing it is changing the format and location of its annual winter show. 

📰 Nosh managing editor Monica Watrous was at the Winter Fancy Food Show last week and told senior reporters Brad Avery and Lukas Southard about how the news was received by attendees and what trends she saw in the final Las Vegas event. 

🍷 Later, the CPG Week team unpacks some numbers behind the alcohol moderation movement and why adult non-alc continues to grow even outside of “dry” months like January or October.

Click here to listen to this week’s episode.

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