• 🚫 Acid League Closes Online Store
• 🥩 Growing Debate: Where Lab-Grown Meat Can Be Sold
• 🛣️ Catalina Crunch Takes “Avenue Of Growth” In Snacking
• 🤝 Harvest Group Strengthens Ties To Kroger

When the 30-day elimination diet, Whole30, announced the launch of its DTC heat-and-eat line of breakfasts, lunches and dinners last month, we’ll be honest, we were all scratching our heads at Nosh HQ. 

After the boom in meal kits throughout the 2010’s, and the heightened consumer demand, then bust around the arc of the pandemic, we wondered: why now? And how would this work for a diet plan meant to be followed only once or twice a year?

Whole30 co-founder and CEO Melissa Urban came armed with answers: the meals, branded as Made by Whole30, are intended to “transcend the program itself” and serve a population beyond those following the 30-day plan, she explained. 

In recent years, Whole30 has partnered with food and beverage companies to certify products that are compliant with its ingredient standards and has even experimented with its own CPG items. In 2020, it launched a line of bottled dressings, but Urban said that offering sucked away too much revenue and resources from its main growth priorities so it was discontinued last year.

🚚 That is what makes the Made by Whole30 meal delivery model so important. Menu offerings will rotate and vary based on the delivery area and are prepared by a network of chefs, caterers, restaurants and food truck owners in commercial kitchens across the country. That affords the company a flexible, asset-light supply chain model (which has been a hurdle for legacy meal kitters like Blue Apron).

In just over a month since launch, more than 18,500 Made By Whole30 meals have been sold, Urban said; 64% of customers have placed repeat orders. While those early results are promising, it remains to be seen how demand for Made By Whole30 holds up over time. 

The meal kit delivery market is set to grow at a CAGR of 15.3% by 2030, according to Grand View Research, with Millennials and Gen Z consumers primarily driving adoption. But the past two years have been rocky for long time players such as Blue Apron and Freshly. Even category leaders have had trouble retaining customers with 90% of Hello Fresh, Marley Spoon, Home Chef, Blue Apron or Sunbasket subscriptions canceled within one year, according to the WSJ. 

💭“I think the meal delivery space is going through a bit of a transition and has for a few years. Consumers want their meal delivery to be easy. They want it to be convenient. They want it to be fast,” Urban said.

Read the full feature on Nosh for more details on the vision for Made by Whole30.

Acid League is preparing to close its online shop at the end of the month. The brand’s online offerings became too expensive to produce, said co-founder and chief product officer Allan Mai, citing that its use of specialized ingredients, coupled with inflation and updated iOS terms, compounded in an unsustainable way.

💭 “We were over-indexed on putting out so many products that it got in the way of us developing the distribution that would allow more people to access our offerings,” Mai explained. 

🛒 Though the Toronto-based brand plans to dive back into innovation at some point (a core focus of its e-biz), it is currently looking to build in brick-and-mortar retail where supply chains are more predictable and it can better manage consumer demand. 

💻 Mai said the team initially considered simply raising prices on its existing site before quickly pivoting to envision what “DTC 2.0” will look like for the company. That means there may be hope on the horizon for a rebirth of Acid League online.

Learn more about how Acid League’s team came to this decision in the full story on Nosh.

By this point, most people have heard about cell-cultured (lab-grown, cultivated, etc.) meat. Despite the varied food tech-triumphs in the decade since Professor Mark Post first made a lab-grown hamburger, debate rages on how or even if this “climate-friendly” solution to animal protein production should exist. 

🇮🇱 Israel – a leading nation in food tech innovations – granted regulatory approval to Aleph Farms on Wednesday, permitting the startup to sell the world’s first, cell-cultured beef product.

❌ But here in the U.S., enthusiasm for the animal-free meat industry remains mixed. This month, Arizona state legislators put forward a bill that proposes to ban the sale or production of cell-cultured meat in a direct effort to support the cattle ranching industry.

😵‍💫 Florida has taken a similar approach to block cell-cultured meat sales in the Sunshine state and introduced a bill in November that is expected to go to a vote soon. Stay tuned and we will keep you in the loop…

Catalina Crunch is forecasting a future beyond the keto-friendly category with the appointment of seasoned CPG exec Doug Behrens as CEO last week. The low-sugar, low-carb cereal and snack maker has begun shifting focus from diabetic and weight-conscious consumers to the fitness-focused, athletic community.

🍫 Catalina’s recent launch of Dark Chocolate Cookie Bars has been a key piece of its efforts  “showcasing that there's better, healthier options out there,” said CMO Andy Van Ark.

🛒 The company is focused on opening more conventional and mass doors and expects to be in 22,000 locations this year. It will add Sprouts as a distribution partner in March, putting Catalina’s Pairings cereal line (launched last August) in 403 locations.

🏀 The strategy to position towards the athletic community materialized last Monday with the launch of the brand’s largest celebrity endorsement to-date featuring NBA’s Jalen Brunson and a LTO Honey Nut with Almonds cereal variety.

For more on Catalina’s snack strategy read the full story on Nosh. 

Food brokerage Harvest Group has expanded its services to Harris Teeter, deepening its connection to Kroger and creating an end-to-end service model with the largest grocery retailer in the U.S. as well as its affiliates Kroger Precision Marketing and 84.51°.

⬆️ Seasoned account manager Amy Claxton has joined the firm to lead the partnership with Harris Teeter. Claxton spent 6 years at the Kellogg Company and, most recently, held a variety of roles at The J.M. Smucker Co. for the last 11 years.

🛒 Harvest Group also liaises with retailers including Walmart, Sam’s Club, Target, Amazon and Costco to provide omnichannel management services in over 19 states.