• 🍬 Sow Good’s Fruitful Pivot to Freeze-Dried Candy
• 🗓️ New Hope Slims Down Expo West Schedule
• 🧑‍⚖️ Kroger, Albertsons Ordered To Provide Texts
• 😵 Ahold Delhaize Closing Undisclosed Number
• 💪 Canada Bulks Up Lupin Production

Since shifting from freeze-dried fruit and veggie snacks to freeze-dried candy last year, Sow Good has seen an impressive rise in product demand and accelerated distribution growth. Those gains have even helped the Irving, Texas-based company hit profitability as Q1 2024 net income reached roughly $510,000 versus a net loss of $1.4 million in the prior-year period. 

⏪ Launched in 2021 by Claudia Goldfarb and her husband, Ira, Sow Good leverages proprietary freeze-drying technology at the company’s 20,000 sq. ft. facility. While the brand started off selling freeze-dried snacks, soups and smoothies, Sow Good CEO Claudia Goldfarb, said they were “delicious and amazing,” but ultimately didn’t sell.

📱 The decision to pivot to freeze-dried candy was driven by the novelty product’s explosive popularity on TikTok, and the shift has proved to be a fruitful one. In Q1 2024, Sow Good posted net revenue of $11.4 million, a 20% sequential increase from Q4 2023. 

👀 Earlier this month, the company also began trading on NASDAQ, priced at $10 per share. The uplisting generated $13.8 million, and Goldfarb believes it will expose the company to more institutional investors and drive shareholder value. 

⏩ Looking ahead, Sow Good plans to dedicate the remainder of FY 2024 to growing retail distribution through expanded partnerships with Target and new placements at Kroger, Dollar General and 7-Eleven. By the end of the summer, the brand expects to be in 16,000 stores nationwide.

Learn more about how Sow Good successful executed its category pivot in the full story on Nosh.

Tell your family you’ll be home sooner than expected: Natural Products Expo West will no longer extend into the weekend, according to an announcement this week.

⛔ The show will now end on Friday at 2 p.m.; previously it extended into Saturday afternoon. The North Halls will now only be open for two days, Wednesday and Thursday.

🔀 Another big shift: All halls will now open on Wednesday at 10 a.m. It remains unclear if the Fresh Ideas Tent, a one-day co-located event on Wednesday, will return in 2025. 

📝 “Our goal with this schedule change is to increase ROI for Exhibitors, reduce crowding, allow space for more buyer-only hours, and simplify the product discovery journey,” the announcement reads. 

Key employees of Kroger and Albertsons must provide text messages and handwritten notes as evidence in the Federal Trade Commission’s case to block the grocers’ proposed megamerger, according to Law360.

✍️ An in-house judge in a ruling dated May 22 said it would pose no “undue financial burden” for the companies to comb through the material nor be duplicative of the millions of documents already produced by Albertsons. 

📶 The messages in question have been corroborated by witness statements gathered during the discovery phase. Just last week the FTC accused the grocery execs of deleting the messages. 

📱 Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell said documents produced in the investigation stage include “text messages where respondents' employees convey that they view each other as competitors, report on visits to each other's stores, and discuss pricing and competition” as well as written notes “from a Kroger marketing officer questioning a proposed strategy for certain stores in relation to a strategy by Albertsons, and from an Albertsons executive's notes regarding a Kroger earnings call."

Supermarket group Ahold Delhaize USA announced during an investor presentation last week it would be closing an unknown number of underperforming Stop & Shop stores. The European grocery operator currently owns just under 400 Stop & Shop locations in the U.S. as well as the Food Lion, Giant Food, The Giant Company and Hannaford banners.

🛒 The announcement came as part of its “Growing Together” initiative that it would “take decisive and deliberate actions to ensure a stable and thriving future for Stop & Shop.” 

📈 In comparison, Ahold Delhaize plans to accelerate the expansion of Food Lion and Hannaford brands.

💭 The company also said it sees a future in more private label products and plans to invest in about 1,000 targeted remodels and new stores.

A new cluster project focused on plant-based protein source lupin was unveiled last week by Protein Industries Canada. The project is led by Lupin Platform, PURIS Holdings (maker of AcreMade) and YOSO Canada and will see our northern neighbor expand its lupin ecosystem.

🚜 How will they do it? The project will increase farmers’ adoption of lupin, increase processors’ access to the plant, and see new plant-based protein products come to market. 

🍳 On the CPG side: The partners will “develop, scale-up and improve new and existing CPG products and ingredients” that range from plant-based eggs and dairy to flour, bakery mixes and B2B powders. 

💸 The project has garnered a total investment of $6.2 million with $2.6 million coming from Protein Industries Canada and the rest supplied by the three commercial partners. 

💬 “De-risking innovation is crucial to fostering a more dynamic marketplace for growers, processors and manufacturers alike. Investments into this type of platform technology will help Canada reach our goal of a $25 billion ingredient processing and food manufacturing sector,” said Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada.