• 🤝 Inside Voyage’s Ingredient Deal With Cargill
• 🍟 Taco Bell, Secret Aardvark Unite Over Nacho Fries
• 🍦 Sacred Serve Shutters
• 🪧 UNFI vs. NLRB
• 🏭 Our Home Completes Manufacturing Acquisition
• 💕 Kraft Heinz, Mattel Make Barbiecue Sauce 

Voyage Foods will now exclusively supply Cargill with its peanut- and hazelnut-free spreads and cocoa-free chocolate innovations. The partnership is set to broaden Cargill’s climate-friendly and allergen-free ingredient portfolio while providing Voyage with distribution, logistics, sales and technical support.

🍫 Along with buoying consumer demand for vegan and allergen-friendly options, the deal could also help reduce supply chain costs for Cargill as cocoa prices hit record highs in the last year.

🤝 The partnership marks a huge step forward for three-year-old Voyage as an ingredient supplier, which it sees as its best path to making an impact as a sustainable food maker. 

🏭 Voyage raised a $22 million investment at the end of 2023 which, in part, has gone to expanding the company’s capacity with a new 300,000 sq. ft. facility coming online this year.

Read the full story on Nosh for details on how the deal came together and what impact Voyage expects to see.

In celebration of the return of Nacho Fries (for the 11th time…), Taco Bell has teamed up with Portland-based hot sauce company Secret Aardvark to launch a new twist on the fan-favorite LTO, Secret Aardvark Nacho Fries. 

🌶️ The new, limited-edition offering, which will be available starting April 25 for $4.99, features a Serrabanero Ranch Sauce crafted from green tomatoes, roasted tomatillos serrano and green habanero peppers blended with ranch. 

♻️ The return of nacho fries also marks an expansion of Taco Bell’s partnership with TerraCycle. The fast food chain’s Sauce Container Recycling Program has grown to accept any brand of sauce packets, 2 oz. souffle cups/lids, sauce dipping cups, and coffee creamer pods. 

After seven years on the market and over a million pints, pops and scoops served, plant-based gelato maker Sacred Serve has closed up shop, according to a post on LinkedIn from founder Kailey Donewald. 

🥥 The Illinois-based company sold a 5-SKU line of frozen treats made with regeneratively farmed, upcycled coconut meat, sourced in partnership with Harmless Harvest. The products gained national distribution at Whole Foods stores last year.

♻️ Sacred Serve packed its plant-based gelatos in plastic-free, fully recyclable containers, a first for the industry, it claimed.

💬 “Launching back in 2017 I had one singular intention: heal the world through food. Tactically that meant enabling people to make healthier choices by getting healthier products onto shelves for them to choose,” stated Donewald in the post. 

The acronyms are at it as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled in favor of 80 UNFI drivers with Teamsters Local 79 in Florida, rejecting a plan by the distribution company to outsource jobs to J.B. Hunt, a non-union transportation business. The union drivers will now keep their jobs and a union election will be held May 4 and 5.

🚚 The NLRB is now investigating “whether UNFI also committed unfair labor practices” by subcontracting J.B. Hunt drivers, the Teamsters said in a press release yesterday.

✊🏼 Teamsters organizing campaigns are currently underway at UNFI facilities in Pompano Beach, Florida and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. However, Tom Erickson, director of the Teamsters warehouse division, accused UNFI of “shameful and illegal” union-busting to stop its drivers from joining.

🤝 For Context: The Teamsters have been quickly adding UNFI warehouse drivers around the country to its ranks. In January, 150 Sacramento, Calif.-area drivers voted to unionize and last month drivers in Atlanta, Ga. opted in. Last year over 1,000 UNFI drivers joined the Teamsters union, including in Arizona, Connecticut, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

Our Home announced it has completed the acquisition of two new manufacturing plants – located in Berlin, Pennsylvania and Fitchburg, Massachusetts – from Utz Brands, Inc. The added production muscle will “significantly scale Our Home’s existing platform and footprint” to seven facilities in total, the company said in a press release.

🤝 The two new plants were first announced when Our Home (formerly known as Powered by Real Food From The Ground Up) acquired R.W. Garcia and Good Health brands from Utz in January in a deal that was valued at approximately $182.5 million.

🍿 Our Home now operates a vertically-integrated salty snack business that includes the RW Garcia, Good Health, Food Should Taste Good, Popchips, Real Food From The Ground Up and YOU NEED THIS brands.

Go Deeper: Our Home Buys From Utz.

Thought Barbiemania was over? Think again. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the iconic doll meaning Barbie-themed food and beverage collaborations continue to climb. The latest entrant to the pink-themed-universe is Kraft Heinz’s Barbiecue Sauce.

⏪ Heinz UK first teased the sauce in an Instagram post last year – alongside a bottle of “Kenchup” –  asking fans whether the company should “make this dream team a reality.” 

😋 Barbiecue Sauce is a smoky, limited-edition BBQ-flavored mayo inspired by the fans’ overwhelmingly positive response to last year’s virtual collaboration with Mattel, according to Kraft. The sauce, exclusively available in the U.K., is currently sold out but there will be one last limited drop of 500 bottles. 

In other Barbie food related news, we can’t get enough of these Drunk Barbie Birthday Cakes, which come with their own, uh, sauce...