• 🛑 UNSTUCK Initiative Ends At Year Three
• 🍎 Organic Sales Reach Record High
• 🎣 PANOS Nets Smoked Salmon Supplier
• 🛒 Walmart Lay Offs, Corporate Workers Relocated
• 🧀 New Culture Scales Manufacturing, Lowers Costs

This morning the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics released April’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, which showed that food prices rose slightly (0.2%) from March. These results come after a year in which food prices have risen 2.2% overall. Though this sounds like good news for shoppers, let’s dig into by-category numbers to get a granular picture of what today’s results really mean.

Here’s the good news:

• Meats, Poultry, Fish, And Eggs: Decreased by 0.1% last month and increased 1% for the year. 
• Fruits And Vegetables: Down 0.2% from March but up 1.7% since April 2023.
• Non-alcoholic Beverages: Declined 0.3% and increased 2.3% in the last year.
• Food At Home: Up 0.1% for the month and up 1.1% for the year.

As for the less heartening bits:

• Cereals And Bakery Products: Increased 0.3% since March and 0.6% for the year.
• Dairy And Related Products: Up 0.5% over the last month but down 1.3% for the year.

What does this all mean? In comparison to the complete CPI, which showed a 3.4% monthly increase across all indexes, food is tracking down; yet, food prices are more volatile and fluctuate heavily month-to-month as seasonality and other factors in the supply chain impact a product’s on-shelf price.

In the National Retail Federation’s May Monthly Economic Review, economists reported that the pace of economic growth had slowed in the Q1 2024 but “the economy remains resilient.” NRF analysts said that inflation is expected to remain about 3% over the next year with consumers “willing to spend on both goods and services despite ongoing cost pressures.”

That’s not to say consumers are not worried about prices, and their wallets are taking notice. Shoppers recently surveyed in Numerator’s April Consumer Sentiment Tracker said they were prioritizing money saving techniques to cut costs, including using coupons/discount codes (43.7%), cooking at home (42.9%) and shopping for items on sale (42.7%). All of these metrics were up compared to last year.

UNSTUCK, a nonprofit organization by the Tent Partnership For Refugees, has ceased operations, according to director Nick O’Flaherty. The organization worked to create jobs for refugees, primarily in Colombia and Peru, by aligning a brand’s supply chain for one or two products with suppliers that hired displaced individuals. 

🥭 The initiative launched in 2021 with a single co-branded Chobani yogurt SKU and added five new brand partners the following year, including GoodPop, La Colombe Coffee Roasters, Petit Pot, Pitaya Foods and That's it.

🔀 O’Flaherty told Nosh late last year that the organization had reworked its model once again to reduce friction. (ICYMI: Chobani chairman and CEO, Hamdi Ulukaya, also founded the Tent Partnership For Refugees)

⏯️ While the initiative has been paused, Eric Lallert, CEO of Petit Pot, noted the significant, lasting value the program had, including helping emerging brands forage mission-aligned supplier relationships. 

🔊 “Our coalition’s ambition and bold leadership has shifted mindsets and norms both here in the U.S. and in sourcing countries – opening up employment opportunities for refugees for years to come,” O’Flaherty said in a post. 

Go Deeper: Learn about UNSTUCK’s approach.

U.S. sales of certified organic products reached a record $69.7 billion in 2023, up 3.4% from the year before, according to the 2024 Organic Industry Survey released yesterday by the Organic Trade Association (OTA). Here’s a taste of the results:

• Overall, the increase in dollar sales was largely driven by pricing; however, higher unit sales were reported for up to 40% of the products tracked in the survey. 
• The price gap is shrinking between conventional and organic, signaling more growth for organic products in 2024.
• Produce remains the largest organic category, growing 2.6% to $20.5 billion. 
• Organic grocery – which includes breads and grains, condiments, and packaged and prepared foods – grew 4.1% to $15.4 billion in sales. 
• Organic dairy and eggs sales climbed 5.5% to $8.2 billion.

PANOS Brands has acquired smoked salmon supplier The Santa Barbara Smokehouse for an undisclosed amount. 

🥗 The deal comes several months after PANOS purchased Tessemae’s Salad Dressings & Condiments. Other portfolio brands include Walden Farms, KA-ME, Amore, Andrew & Everett, Better Than Milk, Mi-DEL, Sesmark and Chatfield’s. 

🐟 The Santa Barbara Smokehouse markets the Cambridge House brand of artisanal smoked salmon products in foodservice and retail channels.

Walmart is slashing hundreds of corporate jobs and requiring remote employees to return to offices, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. 

😞 The retailer also has asked workers in smaller, tech-focused offices in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto to relocate to central hubs including its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, as well as New Jersey and Northern California. 

📝 In a memo to staff, chief people officer Donna Morris said: “We believe that being together, in person, makes us better” and that it helps “strengthen our culture as well as grow and develop our associates.”

Animal-free dairy company New Culture announced a new partnership with CJ CheilJedang this week to scale up manufacturing and unlock commodity-level pricing for its casein-free mozzarella. 

🐮 As a leading supplier of bioproducts made from microbial fermentation, the partnership with CJ CheilJedang means that New Culture can now produce its proprietary cheese stretch ingredient at a large scale and low cost, the companies claimed in a press release.

💸 CJ CheilJedang first invested in New Culture in 2022; the animal-free cheese company also has a partnership with ADM and backing from Kraft Heinz, venture capital firms Mayfield, Future Ventures, Ahren Innovation Capital and SOSV, as well as investors S2G and CPT Capital.  

💬 “Our partnership with CJ CheilJedang facilitates access to some of the largest and most sophisticated fermentation facilities on the planet to truly transform the dairy industry,” said New Culture co-founder and CSO, Inja Radman.