• 🆕 BFY Cereal Maker Wishes On Snacks
• 👀 Cocktail Meat Sticks & Steakhouse Butters
• 🎒 Borealis Foods Brand Goes To School
• 🥮 Mondelēz Buys Evirth
• 🌱 What’s Up At The Planting Hope Company?
• ✌️ Foxtrot Opens Second Chicago Store

Ever since the pandemic, consumers have been increasingly demanding transparency in food supply chains with health, safety and sustainability becoming top drivers of those requests. In that vein, today Nestlé announced a new program that allows the outside world access into its factories, no travel required. 

The global consumer goods behemoth has launched a new “immersive factory experience” that – via a combination of virtual and augmented reality technology – will allow consumers to take a tour of its physical sites in numerous markets across Latin America following a pilot test at its Jalisco, Mexico, nutrition facility earlier this year. 

According to Nestlé, the technology program will allow it to “reinforce trust with many different stakeholders” and reduce the carbon footprint that comes with a physical factory visit. The company will expand its virtual experience platforms to new geographies and add its R&D centers to the program in 2025 and beyond. 

While the immersive experience claims it will provide a look into Nestle’s operations, it remains to be seen how deep of an understanding the experience (which is available in multiple languages including English, Spanish and Portuguese) will offer consumers about how and where that food came from before it reached the production lines. 

According to a recent survey conducted by YouGov in partnership with Whole Foods Market, Gen Z is “hungry for transparency” and placing an “overwhelming emphasis” on sustainability and product quality; 70% of Gen Z shoppers said they support climate-smart agricultural practices, and 55% claim they are willing to pay more for environmentally sustainable products. 

Nearly 68% of these consumers believe retailers should be providing insight into the sustainability of food products. While Nestle’s announcement did not signal that sourcing practices will become part of the program, plenty of mission-driven brands have embraced a variety of approaches in recent years. Take regenerative ag-supporting companies such as GoodSAM and Snacktivist Foods as examples, which have adopted QR codes to connect consumers with a product’s origins. 

Nestlé, Take Notes: Chocolate company Tony’s Chocolonely has also made drastic steps to improve visibility in the cocoa supply chain and has outlined methods other actors can adopt to follow suit. While mission-driven brands seem to be leading the way, Whole Foods’ survey suggests there is demand to be met for transparency beyond niche-positioned products.

“As Gen Z generates a higher demand for environmentally conscious products, we have continued to increase our efforts toward climate-smart agriculture and responsible sourcing practices. This generation gives me great optimism as we continue to protect our food systems for future generations to come,” said Jason Buechel, Whole Foods Market CEO, in a press release. 

Go Deeper: Tony’s Chocolonely Puts ‘Lock’ On Company Mission.

It's been a big year for grain-free, low-sugar cereal maker Three Wishes. The company launched a line of granola and is now unveiling a new 3-SKU line of chewy granola bars this week.

🎯 The new product is launching exclusively in all 1,500 Target stores where it will be sold for the next six months before expanding to some of the brand’s other retail partners.

🥣 The brand has bootstrapped its way into the cereal category, building up by bringing nostalgic flavors and a healthier ingredient deck to the crowded cereal aisle. It is looking to capitalize on brand awareness and its mission to offer healthier alternatives to continue expanding into mass and conventional retailers.

💬 “Cereal is a humongous category that’s super difficult to break in to…The fact that we were able to do what we did there gave me the confidence that people love the brand enough and the promises that we've embedded into it, we felt that the same things were missing in other categories,” said Three Wishes co-founder and CEO Margaret Wishingrad.

Nosh Insiders can read the full story to gain an understanding of Three Wishes’ growth trajectory.

🧈 Steak sauce brand A.1. is making its dairy aisle debut with the launch of A.1. Steakhouse Butter. The new product was crafted in collaboration with Epicurean Butter and will soon be available at retailers nationwide in 3.5 oz. tubs for $4.99.

🥩 Hand-crafted meat stick maker Vermont Smoke & Cure has joined forces with WhistlePig Whiskey to create Maple Old Fashioned Smoked Meat Sticks. The new meat sticks are slow-cooked in Vermont Smoke & Cure’s smokehouse using WhistlePig Whiskey, custom chips from whiskey barrel staves and WhistlePig’s Barrel-Aged Maple Syrup. 

ICYMI: Check out last week’s New Products Gallery for more notable product releases.

Borealis Foods subsidiary Palmetto Gourmet Foods announced today its Woodles noodles brand has expanded into more than 4,000 school lunch programs nationwide. 

🍜 The product is low in sodium and rich in whole grains, meeting the strict USDA guidelines, and is easy for cafeteria staff to prepare, according to the company.

💪 The launch will also provide schools with the brand’s Woodles Protein+ pasta variety, which is made with whole wheat and carries 15 grams of protein per serving. 

💬 What they said:"Our goal has always been to make healthy eating tasty, healthy and accessible, and we're proud to help schools meet their nutrition standards while making an impact on students' lifelong eating habits. We are working on expanding this offering across all states as we partner with school chefs to develop 'better-for-you' meals tailored for school programs." – Dr. Reza Soltanzadeh, founder and CEO, Borealis Foods

Mondelēz International announced today it has acquired a “significant majority stake” in Evirth, a manufacturer of cakes and pastries in China, to accelerate its growth in the category. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

💵 Mondelēz previously held a minority stake in Evirth in order to develop, manufacture and supply frozen-to-chilled cakes and pastries in China featuring brands like Oreo and Philadelphia. 

💭 “By bringing in Mondelēz’s brand experience, technical strength, and international network, Evirth can be better positioned to provide premium products for our customers and consumers,” said Linfeng Xu, chairman, founder and general manager of Evirth, in a statement. 

🤝 Mondelēz has been building up its presence in the cakes and pastries market through M&A over the past few years. In 2020, the company purchased Give & Go, a North American manufacturer of frozen-to-fresh brownies, cookies and cupcakes. In 2022, the Oreo maker acquired Chipita Global SA, a producer of croissants and baked rolls focused on Central and Eastern Europe. 

Publicly-traded, plant-based food platform The Planting Hope Company has seemingly gone dark since removing co-founder and chairman Julia Stamberger from the CEO role in June and announcing it would be executing a strategic review of the business.

🔀 At the time of the announcement, the company also put together an Office of the CEO to replace Stamberger, comprised of three independent board directors: Kevin Phelps, Scott Carter and Qing Meyerson. 

❌ Currently, the Shopify sites for all Planting Hope brands including its alt-milk brand Hope & Sesame, Right Rice, Mozaics, Veggicopia and Argo Tea are no longer active. All of the brand’s social media channels have also been inactive since the June announcement. 

📉 The company’s stock price, where it is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, has been trading near-zero since early 2024. The company has grown its platform via M&A and acquired distressed cafe and tea company Argo in August 2023. 

Foxtrot Café and Market’s resurrection continues with last week’s opening of a second location in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. The news comes less than three weeks since the next-generation convenience store reopened its first location after its sudden closure in April.

☕ The reopening of the Old Town location last Thursday brought the chain’s revived café-centric theme to the neighborhood, which places a greater focus on coffee drinks and prepared foods as well as grocery products.

🧑‍💻 Some Chicagoans are not excited by Foxtrot’s return. A number of former employees, patrons and vendors have taken to social media to express their unhappiness about unpaid product orders and employee severance not being included in the company’s revival post-bankruptcy.

😠 Audrea Straub, owner of Plantscapes, posted: “Former vendor here and still waiting for my payment from March.”

Read more about the return of Foxtrot on Nosh.