• ⛔ Conagra to Close Wisconsin Birds Eye Plant
• 🤩 Eva Longoria Joins Siete As Investor, Advisor
• 😣 Consumer Reports: Lunchables Contain Too Much Sodium, Lead
• 📍 People Moves: Haven’s Kitchen strengthens sales team; Tillamook CEO steps down
• 🌶️ Trademarks, Trader Joe’s and Anti-Diet Dietitians

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The bots have arrived. But you probably already knew that.

In the years since ChatGPT debuted in late 2022, generative artificial intelligence’s rapid proliferation has already had a transformative effect on all manner of business, and the food and beverage industry is no exception.

This new technology is already being used today by brands and service providers to streamline R&D, supply chain management, marketing and more, from companies building robust, proprietary A.I.-powered product development systems to bootstrapped startups tapping into the free-to-use tools that have captivated mainstream culture.

Exhibit A: With no answers coming from search engines and consultants, Xeba Zareie, founder and CEO of Preme Foods, turned to ChatGPT to identify a natural, additive-free preservative for her line of functional puddings. 

“It gave me that answer in literally two seconds, whereas I’ve spent thousands of dollars and hours talking to people who are professionals in this space, and they couldn’t give me that answer,” she explained.

Others, like startup snack brand Rivalz or Latin American plant-based products company NotCo have raised millions of dollars to support their own in-house systems capable of identifying ingredients down to the molecular level and crunching the numbers to produce viable recipes, creating better-for-you food and drinks in a fraction of the time of traditional R&D processes.

Beyond product formulation, A.I. is poised to transform the business on nearly every level – so say entrepreneurs and analysts who have been working with the tech – providing easier and more accurate ways to process sales data and supply chain management, improved real-time forecasts, warehousing, marketing and more.

While some are viewing A.I. as an existential threat to their careers – if the machine can design a label as well as a human, what does that mean for trained branding professionals? – others see it as a new set of tools poised to make people’s jobs easier, not replace them. Or not yet at least.

You can read the full story now on Nosh. 

Check back later today for the latest episode of the Community Call podcast, where BevNET director of community Melissa Traverse talks with Rivalz CEO Peter Barrick, Offline Ventures investor Melissa Li, and Brad Avery to dig even deeper into the trends, benefits and limitations of A.I. in the CPG space.

This week, Conagra Brands announced the impending closure of its Birds Eye frozen food plant in Beaver Dam, Wis. In a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN), the company said the closure is expected to “improve efficiencies and effectiveness within its supply chain network.” 

• The Beaver Dam facility is expected to close around June 10, but warehouse operations will run until around January 3, 2025. 
• 252 employees will be out of work due to the closure.
• The company currently operates 42 plants across the U.S. and Canada, including the Beaver Dam facility, and two in Mexico, according to its website. 

Actor, director and producer Eva Longoria has joined Mexican-American food brand Siete Foods as an investor and strategic advisor, the company announced today. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

🌮 Siete is the largest private, independently-owned tortilla chip company and the second largest private, independently-owned snack brand in the country, with $400 million in retail sales and a presence in 37,000 stores. 

💭 Longoria said in a statement she is a “long-standing fan of Siete’s products” and “a fellow Texan who is dedicated to elevating Latinos in business.”

Consumer Reports (CR) called on the Department of Agriculture this week to remove Lunchables from the National School Lunch Program after finding the food kits contain higher levels of sodium than the store-bought versions. 

🧂 The USDA permits two Lunchables options – Turkey & Cheddar Cracker Stackers (930 mg of sodium) and Extra Cheesy Pizza (700 mg of sodium) – to be served through the program. The products sold at retail have (still pretty high) 740 mg and 510 mg, respectively.

🍕 CR tested 12 other lunch kits including Lunchables, Armour LunchMakers, Good & Gather, Greenfield Natural Meat Co. and Oscar Mayer; the firm found that several contained “relatively high levels of lead and cadmium,” though none exceeded federal limits. 

👎 All but one tested positive for phthalates, which are chemicals in plastic that are linked to several health conditions. 

Here’s a roundup of the latest people moves, board appointments and new hires from around the CPG space:

• Haven’s Kitchen has on-boarded Nathan Grismala as its new director of sales; he joins with a plethora of experience from Perfect Day, Chex Finer Foods and UNFI.
• Traditional Medicinals announced that Sheryl O'Loughlin (former Clif Bar CEO) and Caitlin Landesberg (founder of Sufferfest Beer Company) have joined its board of directors.
• Patrick Criteser will step down as president and CEO of Tillamook County Creamery Association (TCCA) after leading the dairy brand’s national growth over the past 12 years. Criteser will be succeeded by David Booth, TCCA's EVP of brand growth and commercialization.
• Consumer brand-focused Insite AI has added a slate of retail industry executives to its board including former Walmart merchandising VPs David Scogin, Joe Grady, Jody Pinson and Philip Freehling. Valerie Wilson, former VP of category management at Albertsons, also joined.

Why are BevNET senior reporter Brad Avery and CMO Mike Schneider thinking about baked beans? Listen to this week’s CPG Week podcast to find out (and hear a CPG Week-exclusive musical rendition). 

Also get the team’s take on three food news stories from the past week including the simmering trademark infringement debate captivating the chili crisp category, Trader Joe’s questionable private label innovation program and the tactics of major food makers to push anti-diet messaging.

Listen now on Nosh and subscribe to get a fresh episode every week.

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