• 🆕 Gallery: New Products Team-Up
• 🤝 Bar Manufacturers Merger
• 🏃🏼‍♀️ DoorDash Sets New Records In Q1
• 🏓 Quaker Hosts Pickleball Academy
• ⭐ Walmart Is Getting ‘Better.’ But Will Brands Benefit?

Our Home is starting to look like Our Mansion. The emerging snack brand platform, previously known as Powered by Real Food From The Ground Up, continues to expand via M&A, today announcing it has acquired cheese-based snack brand Sonoma Creamery. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

The move comes exactly a year since Sonoma sold off its fresh cheese business to The Atalanta Corporation. At the time, CEO John Crean told Nosh that the company was cutting out fresh cheese to continue shifting toward a snack-intensive focus, which it had been working to do since launching its first cheese crisp in 2014. (Reminder: Sonoma has been around since 1931, and fresh cheese was its core focus up until the last decade).

"This acquisition expands Our Home into the cheese snack category, reinforcing our position as a leading independent better-for-you snacking platform. Sonoma has a 90+ year history in the cheese business and its quality of products and manufacturing process delivers the best tasting and most premium cheese snack on the market," said Aaron Greenwald, founder and CEO of Our Home, in a press release.

Under Our Home, it's fair to say Sonoma has achieved its snack focus and will join a portfolio with a strong presence in the category, with brands that include Food Should Taste Good, Popchips, Real Food From The Ground Up and YOU NEED THIS. The Our Home platform also acquired R.W. Garcia and Good Health brands from Utz in January, a deal that brought two new manufacturing facilities under its wing.

Alongside the Sonoma Creamery transaction, Our Home will gain an additional production facility as well as the brand’s warehouse in Sonoma, Calif. 

Sonoma Creamery currently makes two crisp lines – Cheese Crisps and Pizza Crisps – in nearly 10 different flavors including Tomato Basil, Habanero Lime and Bacon Cheddar. The products are made with natural ingredients and rBST-free milk and sold through UNFI and KeHE to retailers including Kroger, H-E-B, Raley’s and Food Lion. 

Go Deeper: Catch up on Sonoma Creamery’s cheese divestment and trajectory under Crean’s leadership.

This week’s new product gallery reads something like a superhero team-up comic, thanks to a few eye-catching co-branded releases. Here’s a sneak peek: 

🍪 Mondelēz-owned brands Oreo and Sour Patch team up for a limited-edition product collaboration that’s both sour and sweet. The cookies are available for purchase at retailers nationwide with a SRP of $4.49 per 10.68 oz. package.

🧈 That’s so fetch! In honor of “Mean Girls”’ 20th anniversary, flavored butter company Churn partnered with the iconic film to launch Churn x Mean Girls Hot Honey Butter.

🧁 Snack cake maker Tastykake is gearing up for the upcoming release of The Garfield Movie with a limited-edition line of Garfield-themed orange snacks including the brand new Cat Nap Cupcakes. 

Keep an eye out for the full new products roundup on Nosh later today.

Pittsburgh-based TruFood Manufacturing, which makes branded and private-label nutrition bars, has merged with Bar Bakers, a similarly positioned Southern California contract manufacturer. The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but it did include investment from Manna Tree and TruFood managing company, Mubadala Capital.

⭐ The goal of the merger is to create “a scaled industry player with a significant footprint across product categories and geographies,” the companies said in a press release.

🏭 TruFood operates four production centers (three in Pittsburgh and one in Long Island, N.Y.) and makes snack bars, chocolate products and baked goods.

🍪 Founded in 2013, Bar Bakers produces similar private-label products as well as cookies and wafers out of four manufacturing centers in Los Alamitos, Calif.

Who said food delivery was dead? Online delivery platform DoorDash is doing quite well despite mixed signals on the state of e-commerce and delivery. In a glowing earnings report this week, DoorDash reported it had set new records in total orders, revenue and marketplace GOV (the total dollar value of orders completed on its marketplaces, including taxes, tips and any applicable fees). Let’s look at the numbers:

• The company logged 620 million orders during Q1, a 21% YoY improvement.
• Revenue was up 23% to $2.5 billion with the net revenue margin increasing to 13.1%, up from 12.8% in Q1 2023.
• Adjusted EBITDA was at an “all-time high” with $371 million, compared to $205 million during the same period last year.

💬 The company attributed the quarterly gains to “improved logistics quality and efficiency,” which helped to expand product selection, decrease prices and increase delivery speed and quality.

Quaker is serving up a series of free pickleball pop-up events this summer as it embraces its role as the Official Partner of the Association of Pickleball Players, inviting players of all skill levels to “step into the kitchen." (ICYMI: The Kitchen is a seven-foot zone on each side of the pickleball net and a non-volley zone… no sinks and stoves included).

🏆 The "oat-fficial" tournament will take place in Chicago Ill., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., as well as San Diego and Newport Beach, Calif. And of course, oats will be served as courtside fuel. 

When the world’s largest retailer launches a private label brand of better-for-you and affordable food and beverage staples, it stands to reason that their customers will benefit. But how will Walmart's new bettergoods brand impact its existing CPG suppliers? The Taste Radio crew weighs in.

Listen to the episode here.