• 🐮 Once Upon a Farm Mooves into Dairy
• 🛒 Southeastern Grocers Divests Hispanic Banners
• 💲 Plant-Based Steak Maker Lands “Chunky” Investment
• 🧀 Daiya Embraces Dupe Culture

We’re still thinking about all of the innovative products we saw at the Winter Fancy Food Show earlier this week. From cauliflower-packed puffs to dehydrated fruit-based brittles to freeze-dried salsas, emerging brands are experimenting with ingredients and processing technologies to develop healthier and more sustainable spins on snacks and staples.

🍌 Has Brittle Entered The BFY Candy Conversation? Candies like peanut brittle are most likely thought of in the same sentence as the Whitman’s Sampler. So when two new better-for-you brittle candy brands exhibited during the show, we were intrigued to learn that both treats had been developed by parents for their young children – with lower-sugar, clean-ingredient snacking habits in mind. 

Tam’s Sweets showed off her homemade nut butter-based Soft Brittle for the first time in seven plant-based varieties while fellow Fancy Food Show newcomer Monkey Brittle also exhibited its own vegan-friendly iteration of the snack, made with dehydrated mashed bananas, tree nuts and raisins. 

🌽 Puffs Take On New Base Ingredients: Snack category newcomer Caulipuffs showed off its 4-SKU line of avocado oil-baked puff snacks. The brand is the brainchild of Mezcla cofounder Joey Rosa and wife Thai Lan Tran. Elsewhere on the floor and hot off its “Shark Tank” debut, Like Air exhibited its 4-SKU sweet and savory non-GMO corn puff snack line. Like Caulipuffs, the products are also baked resulting in a light and airy texture. 

🍜 Elevated Convenience Meets Global Flavors: Some brands are innovating on both flavor and format with the aim of capturing the attention of younger consumers with clean label global cuisines packed in quick, ready-to-heat meals. For example, asian-inspired sauce and condiment brand Watcharee exhibited its new Gen Z-positioned brand 9Thai which features three Noodle Bowl SKUs, in addition to Sriracha and chili crisp products. 

🥶 Powder To The People: ‘Just Add Water’ products have become a source of innovation for companies peddling everything from aguas frescas to sipping broth and salsa. These freeze-dried innovations are billed as convenient alternatives that allow for low-cost direct-to-consumer shipping and carry a longer shelf life than their traditional, liquid counterparts. 

Brands including Art of the Broth, Tuyyo, Salsa Queen and Chutnefy exhibited their takes on fresh foods made into freeze dried powders.

Read the full story on Nosh for more details on the innovation trends we took note of during the show.

Once Upon a Farm (OUAF) recently made its first venture into the dairy category as it looks to fill a gap in kid-positioned no-added-sugar dairy-based pouches with the launch of its new A2/A2 Whole Milk Shakes. 

🥤 The shakes come in Triple Berry, Strawberry Crème and Banana Crème flavors and were crafted in partnership with certified organic regenerative dairy farm Alexandre Family Farm.

💭 “It’s important to bring innovation to the natural channel and to differentiate that assortment somewhat from what can be found in broader channels and other retailers,” said OUAF co-founder and CEO John Foraker.

⏩ Looking ahead, OUAF is slated to release a second dairy-based product line – Whole Milk Smoothies – at retailers nationwide in February. Foraker noted that the brand sees a lot of opportunity to grow in the space. 

Check out the full story on NOSH. 

Southeastern Grocers (SEG), the Florida-based operator of the Winn-Dixie and Harveys supermarket chains, announced it has completed the divestiture of its Fresco y Más banner to Fresco Retail Group, LLC. 

🛍️ The Fresco y Más grocery banner was founded in 2016 and primarily serves Hispanic and Caribbean communities throughout South, West and Central Florida.

⏪ The move follows an August announcement that European grocer ALDI plans to acquire Winn-Dixie and Harveys from SEG; the announcement marked another key piece of the ongoing consolidation in grocery.

⏩ Under the proposed agreement (expected to be completed in the first half of 2024) ALDI will acquire SEG in an all-cash transaction that will include roughly 400 stores in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. The retailer is expected to convert some stores to ALDI banners while continuing to operate others as Winn-Dixie and Harveys.

Chunk Foods has closed a $22 million seed round after initially raising $15 million in late 2022 and a $2 million pre-seed round before that. The additional $7.5 million reported today comes with a new strategic partnership with Latin American meat and dairy producer Sigma Alimentos.

🧑‍🔬 Founded in 2020 and headquartered in both New York City and Tel Aviv, Chunk uses a proprietary solid state fermentation process to make whole-cut meat alternatives from cultured soy and wheat. 

🤑 As part of the deal, the plant-based alternatives will be used in Sigma’s Better Balance product line. The company has also received investment from Cheyenne Ventures, Fall Line Capital, The MIT E14 fund, Stray Dog Capital and Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition.

🥩 The products are currently on menu throughout Florida at steakhouse chain Charley’s Steak House, in addition to a range of traditional restaurants on the East Coast. 

Dupe culture – rooted in making trendy, luxury products accessible to the masses – has been gaining popularity in fashion and beauty spaces, but what about in food? This week, plant-based cheese brand Daiya activated Fromage Forgery in NYC to showcase the brand’s new self-proclaimed “uncanny cheese dupe.” 

🥪 The main draw featured The Bear star Lionel Boyce acting as Fromage Forgery’s salesman, encouraging people to nab a nibble of Daiya’s recently reformulated dairy-free cheese (crafted with the Daiya Oat Cream blend) in grilled cheese form. 

💰 This new iteration of Daiya’s dairy dupes follows a multi-million dollar investment in fermentation technology last year. The brand’s Daiya Oat Cream blend is now the key component in Daiya’s dairy-free shreds, blocks and sticks. 

⏪ The activation comes just months after Daiya transformed NYC’s iconic Two Boots pizzeria in the West Village into a pop-up Slice Shop for the plant-based curious.