• 📉 Kraft Heinz Misses Earnings
• 🧀 Schuman Acquires Cheddar Brands
• 📦 Daily Harvest Adds No-Subscription Box
• 🙈 No Evil Foods Halts Operations
• 👀 FDA Releases 2025 Priority Deliverables
• 👻 KDP Catches A GHOST, Olipop Plays Ball & Whole Foods’ 2025 Trends

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Halloween isn’t the only holiday this week… It's also time for many publicly traded CPG companies to report Q3 earnings! Don’t be spooked by the arcane financial documents from Mondelēz, Kellanova and Utz, though: we’ve done the heavy lifting for you, and siphoned out some bite-sized insights to snack on. 

Overall, the snack sector remains strong: each company posted organic net sales gains, driven by volume/mix growth. Utz saw organic net sales growth of 1.9%, while Kellanova posted a 6% gain and Mondelēz came in at 5.4%.

The deal space around snacks also remains robust. See Mars’ pending acquisition of Kellanova as a key indicator that there is still plenty of interest and runway for the sector. Not to mention privately-held Our Home’s salty snack M&A blitz this year or yesterday’s formation of UpSnack Brands, spearheaded by the likes of Spudsy and Pipcorn. 

Back to the public sector… Utz emphasized that the company’s sales gains were largely led by volume growth among its branded business. That comes after a nearly two-year streak of consumers trading down to private label as grocery prices remained elevated. Whether consumers have simply begun to accept bigger bills at checkout, or they just couldn’t resist their Boulder Canyon brand chips any longer, we’ll leave that for you all to decide. Either way, the news means consumers may be going back to impulse purchases like branded snacks. 

Mondelēz also reported a sales and volume boost among its branded products, including Chips Ahoy, Ritz and Oreos, emphasizing that these items are winning in comparison to private label counterparts.

“Biscuit category volume is improving to flat to slightly up over the last three months in the U.S., private label volume share is declining, demonstrating that consumers remain loyal to their favorite brands… As a result our two largest U.S. brands, Oreo and Ritz, are gaining share year to date,” said CEO Dirk Van de Put, during a call with shareholders. 

The Mondelēz chief executive also shared details on its new approach to price-pack architecture, noting in the past few months the company has noticed lower-income consumers have become more concerned about the cost of their total basket size rather than individual unit costs. Mondelēz will introduce smaller formats of both Oreos and Chips Ahoy on the belief that offering packs priced below $3 will help reduce some of the burden for these shoppers. 

Kellanova shared its first financial update since announcing its pending acquisition by Mars. The company will hold a shareholder vote tomorrow on the deal and highlighted the strength of its portfolio since separating from WK Kellogg to focus primarily on snacks. 

“Our strong third-quarter results reflect once again our strategy and more growth-oriented and profitable portfolio as Kellanova. This performance is also a testament to the talent and engagement of a Kellanova organization that is executing at a high level as we prepare for our exciting next chapter as part of a global snacking powerhouse with Mars,” said Steve Cahillane, Kellanova chairman, president and CEO.

Go Deeper: Mondelēz Reports Strong Q3 Results Ahead of Upcoming Cocoa Price Pressure

Kraft Heinz Company posted sales declines and an income slump amid “near-term volatility” and “challenges,” said CEO Carlos Abrams-Rivera. The company’s three segments all reported net sales below the year-ago period with volume/mix down 3.4% overall. Kraft Heinz highlighted challenges with its Lunchables brand but said it is investing in new marketing campaigns and innovation to bring consumers back in. Here’s a look at some of the numbers:

• Net sales decreased to $6.3 billion, a 2.8% decline from Q3 2023.
• Operating loss was $101 million, which compared to operating income of $653 million in the same period last year.
• Adjusted gross profit margin was 34.3% rising from 33.4% in Q3 2023.

💬 “Certainly this year has been very different than I think many of us in this industry expected,” Abrams-Rivera said on the call. “A number of circumstances have changed. We are frankly reorienting to what the reality of the consumer is, particularly here in the U.S.”

Read a full account of Kraft Heinz’s Q3 Earnings on Nosh.

Schuman Cheese is adding premium cheddar brands to its portfolio with the acquisition of Trugman-Nash LLC from Allied Dairy, Inc. Financial terms were not disclosed.

🤝 The deal includes ownership of Old Croc, the U.S. market leader for Australian cheddar, as well as exclusive U.S. distribution rights for Organic Herd British cheddar brands produced by the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative.

💬 “This acquisition strengthens our position in the specialty cheese market by adding to our best-in-class portfolio of imported cheeses from exceptional partners all over the world,” said Ian Schuman, Import Business Manager of Schuman Cheese.

Daily Harvest has unveiled a new collection of no-subscription-required bundles available on its website and Amazon. Designed with the holiday gifting season in mind, the new Give Deliciously Collection features boxes packed with both meals and snacks.

🍽️ The collection includes boxes such as Winter Warm Up (SRP $124.99), Comfort Food Favorites (SRP $109.99), All-Day Best Sellers (SRP $139.99) and Best-Selling Smoothies (SRP $84.99). For every bundle sold now through November, the company will donate five meals to food bank partners.

👍 The new bundles build on Daily Harvest’s curated assortments and individual products available at retailers nationwide, including Target and Kroger. The DTC-native company isn’t the only meal delivery brand moving beyond subscription models either, with Blue Apron launching an Amazon storefront and Home Chef innovating at retail following its acquisition by Kroger. 

💭 "We know gifters are high-intent purchasers and historically, we've seen demand for Daily Harvest as gifts not only from our existing customer base but even more so from folks that are new to our brand," said Neeti Singhal Mahajan, Daily Harvest's VP of strategy & insights, in a press release. 

Plant-based protein brand No Evil Foods has ceased operations, CEO Sadrah Schadel shared in an email to Nosh this week. The North Carolina-based brand has weathered numerous ups and downs during its decade on the market including closing its in-house manufacturing, rebuilding with a leaner team and pivoting to frozen products.

The company sold a 5-SKU line of alternative meat products including plant-based sausage, chicken, chorizo, pulled pork and beef. The products were sold at retailers across the country including Sprouts and Whole Foods. 

🔊 “This was an incredibly difficult decision, and we're heartbroken to move on from a brand that meant so much to us and our community. For those with unfulfilled orders or subscriptions through noevilfoods.com, refunds have already been requested,” Schadel said. 

Learn more about No Evil’s fight for survival on Nosh.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released its 2025 priority deliverables, highlighting the areas the Human Foods Program (HFP) will focus on during its first full year of existence: microbiological food safety, food chemical safety and nutrition. 

🧪 In terms of food chemical safety, the agency aims to ensure that exposure to both environmental and processing chemicals, including contaminants and additives, is limited via pre-market and post-market safety evaluations. This will see the agency take a greater interest in all ingredients and substances that come into contact with food such as packaging and storage containers as well as ingredient innovations. 

🍎 In terms of nutrition, the FDA seeks to elevate and empower action on nutrition science, policy and initiatives including supporting food as a vehicle for health, implementing essential labeling schemes such as front-of-pack nutrition designations and updating nutrient content claim definitions as well as working to reduce diet-related disease and advance health equity. 

⏪ The release of priority deliverables is part of the agency’s recent efforts to increase transparency following its year-long, agency-wide reorganization efforts that effectively created a distinct HFP. In practice, this will help the agency more effectively uphold and regulate the safety of the nation’s food supply.

On this episode of CPG Week, the team breaks down Keurig Dr Pepper’s (KDP) $1 billion deal to acquire GHOST Energy. This includes a discussion of why this move is surprising when KDP’s other energy category investments come into consideration as well as how the integration of GHOST has the potential to open new distribution opportunities for emerging category brands. The team also talks about Olipop’s growing list of sports team partnerships and how it is putting together a novel formula for category disruption. Later, the chatter turns to all of the insights within Whole Foods Market’s recent 2025 trends list.

Listen to the episode now.

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