Friday, June 30, 2017
Q&A: How Nature’s Plus addresses consumer confusion
This week: New products from Nutpods, Oatmega, Tessemae's and more
Organika B2B
Thursday, June 29, 2017
5@5: Climate change to have biggest effect on South | Scientists creating heat-resistant cows
Why the Amazon-Whole Foods news enthuses retailers
Organic Trade Association honors organic pioneer, farmer and entrepreneur
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
5@5: Adverse events from cosmetics on the rise | Kroger CEO responds to Amazon-Whole Foods deal
Grocery, disrupted: 5 minutes with Future Market's Mike Lee
Saffron for postpartum depression treatment?
Hain boosts presence in store perimeter with Better Bean Co. acquisition
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
5@5: Farmers win $218M GMO suit against Syngenta | Amazon-Whole Foods could be good for independent retail
'Onerous' supplement labeling bill stalls in New York
Language matters when it comes to selling plant-based dishes
Retailer roundtable: What grab-and-go items move most at your store today?
10 ingredient suppliers changing the mainstream food world from the inside-out
Monday, June 26, 2017
5@5: Yoplait's new attempt at yogurt innovation | Target takes Hampton Creek products off its shelves
7 investors and brand builders on Whole Foods, Amazon and the future of grocery
Amazon buying Whole Foods: An opportunity for transformational change
Friday, June 23, 2017
5@5: The business of poultry production for big-box retail | Unilever's CMO is 'most influential'
Bee Better Certified seal could help consumers make pollinator-friendly choices
This week: Dagoba launches nonprofit fund | Natural by Nature makes organic grass-fed butter convenient
4 reasons your natural brand should share its story
Dean Foods buys Uncle Matt's Organic juice company
Thursday, June 22, 2017
5@5: A milestone moment for fake meat? | Danone's ambitions in healthy food
Cost-cutting, core brands take focus in Hain's first earnings report in more than a year
Should testing labs be open source to help with ingredient adulteration?
Natural products brand Earthy earns B Corp certification
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
How to onboard and develop an incredible retail team
Monday, June 19, 2017
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Dr. Bronner's invests in ocean conservation (by buying a boat!)
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Saturday, June 17, 2017
5@5: Vanilla shortage drives up prices | Making ice cream from food waste
Our love of 'all natural' is causing a vanilla shortage
Vanilla is a labor-intensive food—in Madagascar, where most of it is grown, flowers are hand-pollinated, and the process of harvesting and processing it takes months. The problem is that, in this clean label era, there simply aren't enough vanilla-producing orchids to meet demand for non-synthetic vanilla. And it's become so expensive that some brands and chefs are changing recipes and switching suppliers to find lower prices. Read more at NPR...
Portland is now making ice cream out of garbage
Salt & Straw is turning edible food waste into a limited-edition series of frozen treats. It's partnered with the nonprofit Urban Gleaners to collect all kinds of would-be wasted food, from root vegetables to leftover grains. It crafted creative ice cream recipes that incorporated the ingredients, like toasted baguette PB&J and Spent Grains & Bacon S'mores. Some of the profits will go to Urban Gleaners. Read more at Munchies...
Fruit and vegetable subsidies may work five times better than soda taxes
A new study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that a 10 percent subsidy on produce could prevent or delay more deaths from cardiovascular disease than a 10 percent soda tax. Read more at New Food Economy...
Palm oil industry confronts its human rights problem
Within the last decade, conflict palm oil has had a spotlight shone on its labor, safety and environmental issues. UNICEF and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil have now launched a partnership to promote the rights of children and working families in the industry. Read more at Fern's Ag Insider...
Boulder entrepreneur launches national ranking system for 'sustainable' eateries
The just-launched Good Food 100 lists the country's top restaurants and institutions working to make the food supply more sustainable. Cofounders Sara Brito and Jeff Hermanson worked with chefs and restaurants across the industry to look at the development and maintenance of food during their purchasing processes. Read more at Daily Camera...
Thinking outside the pill: A drive for delivery format innovation challenges the industry
Remember Think Gum, the chewable cognitive health supplement? Or Aerolife Energy, the wellness shot you inhale through a tube? What about the Unistraw—that pellet-filled pixie-stick that delivers wrinkle-erasers and other nutrients when you suck water through it?
Chances are, they don’t ring a bell.
These well-intentioned answers to the nation’s increasing pill fatigue are among dozens that have either ended up on the scrap heap or slowly faded into the Where are They Now? file, unable to break into the mainstream retail market. The reasons for their failure are diverse, say analysts, lawyers, and fellow entrepreneurs who are watching the “alternative delivery technologies” (ADT) market closely. Some flopped because they ran afoul of regulatory agencies with strict guidelines on what a “dietary supplement” is. Others ran into manufacturing hang-ups, or grew too fast for their own good. Others were too creative for their time.
No matter the reason, experts say all those stories—and those of the winners in the ADT race—can serve as a valuable learning opportunity for companies clamoring to distinguish themselves in a crowded supplement market.
“New formats are definitely top-of-mind for a lot of people in the supplement industry right now,” says Jana Vyleta, an analyst with market research firm Mintel. “But companies should be cautious. Consumers are willing to think outside the box, but only so much.”
Over the pill
No doubt: consumers are burned out on pills.
Half of adults take at least one prescription drug, and 11 percent take five, according to the Centers for Disease Control. One particularly telling 2015 American Heart Association survey showed that 8 percent of adults would be willing to die two years earlier instead of adding one more pill to their regimen.
What do they want instead? Actually, a pill, only less often, according to new Mintel research.
“The innovation that consumers would most like to see is a pill that can be taken once a week,” says Vyleta, noting that 83 percent of consumers said so in an October, 2016 survey. “I have not seen that in the over-the-counter market yet.”
Dissolvable tablets, mints, and hard candy were also a popular idea, the survey showed, with 72 percent, 65 percent, and 64 percent respectively saying they’d try a supplement in that format. But when asked about more exotic formats, consumers balked. Only at a third said they would consider trying a supplement delivered through a skin patch (as many are in Europe and Asia). Half or less said they’d be open to a gum, gel pak, or supplement-infused mouth spray.
“One of the challenges that you see in innovation is that if you are asking the consumer to radically change their behavior, the value proposition has to be much larger,” says Ben Lee, managing director of funds for CircleUp, a San Francisco-based firm that matches entrepreneurs with investors via an online platform.
That’s one reason gummies have continued to gain popularity, via blockbuster companies like SmartyPants (which CircleUp funded to the tune of $4.7 million), Vitafusion and Olly.
In addition to being familiar to consumers (who didn’t munch on gummie bears as a kid?), SmartyPants also offered convenience, packaging a host of different supplements into one chewable package that didn’t taste awful. And compared to the sugar-and-preservative-laden offerings that came before it, it was relatively clean, notes Lee, whose company invested in the company from its own investment fund.
“SmartyPants gave you an all-in-one that was made with high-quality ingredients in a convenient easy-to-take form,” he says.
From an investment perspective, it was the perfect hat trick.
Cautionary tales
For other entrepreneurs experimenting with new formats, things have not gone so well.
In 2012, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to Cambridge-based Breathable Foods, maker of the Aeroshot “inhalable” caffeine and vitamin B energy shot. The letter spelled out a fact that many entrepreneurs new to the supplement industry don’t realize: by definition, dietary supplements must be ingested.
“If you are not swallowing it, it is not a dietary supplement,” explains Jason Sapsin, a regulatory attorney with Denver-based Faegre, Baker, and Daniels.
That means supplement skin patches (which are widely available from U.S. companies selling online anyway) and products inhaled through the nose or mouth are technically unlawful under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
Aeroshot vanished from the market soon thereafter, but other companies continue to be stung for violating DSHEA in this way. In October, the FDA sent a warning letter to Source Naturals, taking issue with its progesterone cream and a sublingual melatonin product said to be “absorbed directly into the bloodstream, via the blood vessels under the tongue.”
A number of other companies have responded to the regulation by stating expressly that their “oral spray” lands on the tongue and is swallowed.
But there are other regulatory pitfalls that companies should keep in mind too, notes Sapsin.
In the liquid supplement department, size matters: “As it starts to approach beverage size, say 6-plus ounces, there will be more inclination on the part of FDA to say ‘Is this really a dietary supplement, or is this a food or beverage?’”
The FDA also frowns on “super-fortifying” food-like items (think chocolates, hard-candy, gummies). Put too much of a certain nutrient into something that looks like candy and a consumer runs the risk of overdosing while snacking, he notes.
For ethical reasons, he also discourages clients from putting any amount of a nutritional ingredient with serious side effects into a format that a child might mistake as a treat.
“It is one thing to say you are going to put something well-tolerated like Vitamin C into a gummy bear,” he says. “But if you are working with ingredients that have the potential to cause unintended side effects or be toxic when overconsumed I am going to advise you not to push the boundaries in terms of delivery mechanisms.”
Regulatory issues aside, there are also manufacturing challenges to contend with, notes Lauren Clardy, president of the Santa Rosa, Calif.-based consulting firm, NutriMarketing Group.
For a time, the idea of a chewing gum or gum strip (think Crest white strips) was a hot one, but companies soon found out it was exceedingly difficult to pack an efficacious dose into such a thin material. “There have been a large number of market failures in the chewing gum and quick-dissolve strip space,” notes Clardy.
Meanwhile, she worries that some alternative formats—in the name of innovation—pack a whole lot of unhealthy additives, lubricants, and fillers into their products during manufacturing while skimping on the ingredients that matter. As supplements get more condition-specific, this could become a real pain point for the industry, she says.
“You walk the trade show floor these days and you see some more deep applications for gummies, like heart health and cholesterol reduction. Have we done bioavailability studies to show that if you make it in a gummie formula you are still getting the same dose load?” she asks. “It needs to be done.”
The future of supplements
Despite great expectations, Think Gum—lauded in Time Magazine in 2008 as the next big thing—hasn’t published a press mention on its website in nearly a decade. Unistraw, launched in 1996, has done well in its birthplace of Australia but, despite small inroads in the beauty-from-within space, has failed to catch on in the United States.
But that is not to say that consumers are doomed to be stuck with pills, says Clardy.
“In some ways, it might feel like it is taking forever, but you have to keep things in perspective,” she says, pointing to the slow transformation from the days when baby food was found only in jars to today, when squeezable paks are the norm. “These things take time.”
Centrum VitaMints, launched in 2015, have been a big hit, suggesting that mints may be a delivery format consumers are ready for. And those squeeze paks, able to hold larger doses, are beginning to show up with supplements in them. Powder-filled sticks are increasingly gaining traction, too, with companies like Twinlab rolling out numerous new products in this format.
“The trend in growth is in powder,” says Twinlab CEO Naomi Whittel. “I can sprinkle them on my food or put them in my juice and get science-based benefits. That really helps with compliance.”
Whittel notes that for certain applications, like sleep aids, dissolvable lozenges are also gaining steam (no need to wake up in the night because you took your pill with water before bed).
And there are still those entrepreneurs who are thinking way outside the box.
In April of 2016, Detroit-based Tespo launched what some are calling the “Keurig of vitamins”—a high-tech dispenser that turns multi-ingredient pods of powdered nutrients into liquid vitamins.
Tespo also had a rough start. Just eight months after it launched, at the peak of the holiday season, it ran out of dispensers due to high demand. But the company has since made some adjustments, moving to a membership model in which customers pay $5 per month and get a dispenser plus discounts on pods.
Will consumers be willing to reach this far outside the box?
That remains to be seen. But Mills knows one thing for sure. The supplement industry is in for a change.
“Consumers are going to keep putting the pressure on,” he says, “Because they want something different.”
The Amazon impact: Whole Foods acquisition changes the rules for entire natural products industry
With the announcement that Amazon is buying Whole Foods, the natural products industry woke up Friday to a new world with a swirling cloud of new challenges and opportunities. There is no shortage of questions in the initial shock and wow, but the biggest of them is probably whether that cloud is dark or has a silver lining.
Investment Banker Rodney Clark at Aspect Consumer Partners called the announcement the biggest news he’s seen in 25 years of coordinating mergers and acquisitions in the natural products space. “There’s just so many levels at which you can analyze this deal. It’s tough to just wrap your mind around it,” Clark said, describing the possible ramifications as a Rubik’s cube that shows a new set of effects and implications with every twist.
Indeed, Amazon’s announcement that it intends to buy the 465-store chain for $13.7 billion could impact brands, brokers, distributors, independent retailers, entrepreneurs and, probably most importantly, price across every platform.
Ryan Caldbeck, founder of the CircleUp investment platform, said the entire industry has to look at how it does business. The deal, he said, "puts pressure on the rest of the industry to think about their strategic positioning in a truly omni-channel world."
“The lines between offline and online are blurring, but if anything this is validation that the offline is still highly important,” Caldbeck added.
Mike Lee, founder and CEO at Studio Industries, a food-oriented design firm, believes those blurring lines will be a boon to consumers. "For ages we've had to adapt our shopping habits around the way grocery stores are engineered. What Amazon did was make the retail experience adapt to people's needs and wants," Lee wrote. "So when you combine Amazon, the leader in personalized commerce and swift product distribution, with Whole Foods, the store that led the charge toward better for you food, it's a landmark moment in the evolution of how society will eventually access their food."
Trade association heads called the effects wide ranging. "For investors, this will likely trigger that the marketplace is still undervalued, and opportunities for growth of other green/natural/organic in-house brands are significant," Natural Products Association Executive Director Dan Fabricant said in an email.
United Natural Products Alliance President Loren Israelsen called the Whole Foods acquisition "a potential game changer." Israelsen said it will be interesting to watch whether "they understand the brand value of Whole Foods."
Diluting the Whole Foods' brand could have major effects on the future direction of the industry as natural melds with mainstream. The chain’s reach and reputation has set it up as a standard maker for the industry, as evidenced by reaction to the 2013 announcement that by 2018, all products in its stores containing GMO ingredients will have to be labeled.
“I am wondering how they will associate Amazon with Whole Foods in some fashion, or leave Whole Foods as a standalone brand and use their behind-the-scenes capabilities to expand the access to natural foods," Israelsen said.
Not everybody worries that Amazon will alter the Whole Foods mission.
“As somebody who’s benefitted from their Local Producer Loan Program, I’ve seen those values firsthand,” said Iowa farmer Andrew Pittz, who got help from the grocery chain launching his organic aronia berry ingredient. He doesn’t see the loan program disappearing, ever. “I can’t imagine that happening because the interest level Amazon is displaying in Whole Foods Market with a $13.7 billion offer is because Whole Foods Market has always been a visionary company in conscious eating and conscious business.”
And as big as the deal is, it’s still possible to overstate the impact, said Alan Lewis, director of food and agricultural policy for Natural Grocers.
Lewis believes people who think the retail landscape and consumer habits will change radically may not be looking at the historical arc. He observed that iconic A&P grocery chain had 16,000 stores and offered one hour delivery in 1930. "It kind of looks like things are changing, but it’s kind of going back to the way things were," Lewis said.
That the new paradigm talk is premature is evidenced in the numbers and deep cultural habits that may not change so quickly, Lewis maintained. He estimates the combined Amazon and Whole Foods footprint in the $700 billion grocery universe at a comparatively small $20 billion and said that Amazon’s big data analytic expertise may not match up with natural channel shoppers. "There’s nothing general or average about our consumers," Lewis said, observing that Amazon is effectively trying to overlay their model on "a system and a culture that’s not really going to want to cooperate with them."
Megafood CEO Robert Craven, perhaps the natural channel's biggest champion in supplements, takes a similar view that the acquisition may not do much to change the big picture. "This transaction proves that the reported demise of natural brick-and-mortar retail is vastly overstated,” he said.
Below that big picture, however, the effects are undoubtedly profound. Many brands will have to build new strategies or alter their entire business model.
SmartyPants Vitamins co-founder Courtney Nichols Gould has built a business model that’s pinned closely to Amazon, and following the online giant’s ever-shifting price and policy picture has been a primary focus since the brand launched. Still, Nichols Gould said she is having a hard time gauging how much all that experience and expertise will help her brand. "At least we’ve been paranoid about it," Nichols Gould said, describing how the team has pondered whether a deal was in the works. "I feel for the companies that have to pivot without as intimate an understanding of how things work."
It’s too early to call out the biggest effects of the deal, but Nichols-Gould points to pricing as a major concern. "You’ve got a player in our market that’s 15 percent of the revenue determining the price for 100 percent of the people." The play between online and in-store for the Amazon-Whole Foods empire will be interesting enough—“They may let [the price] be 10 percent more in the store, but they’re not going to let it be 30 percent more expensive"—but independents and other channels will have to look at how they build out their price structures too.
Nichols Gould used Amazon to build her brand, but brands at the entrepreneur stage may suffer the most without the Whole Foods boost, Clark said.
"Who is the incubator now?" Clark asked. "What happens to the small brand that gets into Whole Foods and is using Whole Foods' reputation to get notice and build their natural and organic cred?"
That new set of challenges creates what could be the biggest challenge of all for new brands, Clark said. The investment community is still absorbing the news, but he said he would not be surprised if capital becomes at least temporarily harder to come by. "'What’s your Whole Foods exposure' is going to be the question that floats to the top of the diligence list," Clark said.
But that’s just one square on the Rubik’s Cube. Throw a rock, or maybe that cube, into a pond, Clark said, and "the concentric rings that flow out from that reach every shore in the industry."
This week: Door to Door Organics brings on new CEO | Organic Valley expands grass-fed yogurt line
Organic Valley is adding two new flavors to its 100 percent grass-fed yogurt line. Beginning in July, Black Cherry and Peach Grassmilk Yogurt will be available in single-serve cups. These will complement the current lineup of Strawberry, Wild Blueberry, Plain and Vanilla flavors. The two new flavors feature organic black cherries from Oregon and organic peaches from California, and they boast 6 grams of protein per serving, naturally occurring calcium, higher levels of beneficial omega-3 and CLA fatty acids, and live probiotic cultures.
E-commerce veteran Mike Demko is the new CEO of natural and organic delivery service Door to Door Organics, replacing interim CEO Stefan Pepe, who was recently named chairman of the board. Demko has extensive experience leading successful marketing and operations teams at companies such as FreshDirect and Priceline. He will direct the company to its next level of sustainable growth as it delivers an online grocery experience to consumers in 17 states and Washington D.C.
Enzymotec, developer of innovative bio-active lipid-based nutritional ingredients and medical foods, announced the launch of K•Real Gold, its next generation krill oil product. K•Real Gold is immediately available for purchase and represents the first launch in a line of new krill oil products that are under development. It is rich in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and astaxanthin.
To address the challenge of protein bars experiencing textural deterioration as they sit on the shelf, Arla Foods Ingredients has developed Nutrilac PB-8420, a whey protein that it says enables protein bars to retain a chewy texture for 12 months in ambient storage conditions. It will be unveiled at IFT17 Food Expo in Las Vegas.
Natrol targets the brain health market with its new Cognium supplement. It's formulated using a unique protein found in silk as its active ingredient. This protein has been used safely in Eastern medicine for hundreds of years and is backed by nine clinical studies.
New, non-aerosol herb, vinegar and spice spray from Red Oak Foods' Simply Beyond brand infuse meals with intensely aromatic organic extracts, all without chemicals, wastage or tedious preparation. The family of certified organic spray-on products include: Spray-on Herbs, Organic Fruit Vinegars and Spray-on Spice. The herb and spice sprays maintain their pure, natural flavors by containing only concentrated essential oils and organic non-GMO canola oil. The fruit vinegars are also made naturally, with Italian-crafted vinegar and organic pomegranate or cranberry juice. All the sprays are delivered via an innovative, two-year shelf-stable, non-aerosol system that protects the liquids from any air contact and flavor deterioration.
Algatech is opening Algatech Inc., a New York City-based subsidiary created to serve its customers in the North American market. The company is appointing Ken Seguine to lead the new operation. Algatech’s expansion into the U.S. will accelerate development of the growing market in North America for its leading microalgae ingredient brand, AstaPure, as well as new microalgae sources in the pipeline.
Firmenich announced that it is acquiring Agilex Fragrances, a leading fragrance company in North America serving mid-sized customers. Headquartered in Piscataway, New Jersey, Agilex Fragrances is recognized for its impressive track record in designing creative fragrances, as well as its industry-leading supply chain with best-in-class speed-to-market. Furthering its operational excellence, the group recently launched a new, state-of-the-art manufacturing center in Somerset County, New Jersey, with highly automated and flexible processes.
Arjuna Natural Extracts Ltd. announces the opening of its new sales office in Dallas to better serve its North American customers and bring its new natural preservatives line to the U.S.
Cascadia Managing Brands, a brand management and consulting firm in the beverage industry, is launching Genuine Coconut Water—organic and raw coconut water with easy opening system that allows for it to be consumed anywhere, straight from its natural container, the coconut.The system is made with a unique ring made by recycled coconut husk fiber and natural resin.
Aker BioMarine, a biotech innovator and Antarctic krill harvesting company dedicated to improving human and planetary health, has been named Norway's most innovative company by Innovasjonsmagasinet, Norway’s leading innovation magazine.
Friday, June 16, 2017
What you need to know about the Dairy Pride Act
The triangular cheesehead hats give it away: With 12 billion pounds made in 2016, Wisconsin is the most prolific producer of cheese in the United States. That’s 26.2 percent of all the cheese made in America, according to the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. Combined with butter, milk and yogurt, Wisconsin’s dairy industry brought in $43.4 billion in 2016, making dairy more fiscally important to the state than potatoes are to Idaho or citrus is to Florida. It’s clear the dairy industry is vital to Wisconsin’s economy, and many people rely on strong dairy sales for their livelihood.
Perhaps this is why earlier this year Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin penned the Dairy Pride Act (technically called “Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, Milk, and Cheese To Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday Act”), a piece of legislation that would disallow plant-based milk, cheese and yogurt alternatives to use any of these terms on their product packaging. “Imitation products have gotten away with using dairy’s good name for their own benefit, which is against the law and must be enforced. Mislabeling of plant-based products as ‘milk’ hurts our dairy farmers," said Baldwin in a statement.
Supporters of the Dairy Pride Act argue that using the terms “milk” or “cheese” or “yogurt” on a product such as almond milk or flax milk deceives consumers into thinking the nutrition of plant-based milk is equivalent to cow’s milk, and in some cases, misleads shoppers about what they are buying.
A slew of representatives from top dairy producing states support the bill, including Vermont Congressman Peter Welch. The argument rests upon the FDA's failure to uphold its definition of milk. “The FDA regulation defines milk very specifically as a product that comes from a mammary gland. So we’re asking the FDA basically to enforce it’s own regulation,” Welch told NPR in 2016. The FDA says “milk is the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.”
Obviously, plant-based milks do not fall within this governmental definition.
A long dilemma
For almost as long as plant-based milks have been available for purchase, the dairy industry and plant-based manufacturers have disagreed about labeling conventions. Soymilk has been available for centuries (some sources say it was invented in the year A.D. 82). In 2000, the Soyfoods Association of North America was involved in a scuffle with the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) about this very same issue—NMPF asked the FDA to enforce the definition of “milk” as outlined by their own standards. Nancy Chapman, executive director of the Soyfoods Association sent a response to the FDA arguing that, yes, products that come from the lacteal secretions of cows should be labeled “milk.” But, Chapman wrote, “The NMPF incorrectly extends this initial point by asserting, wrongly, that the definition and standard of identity for 'milk' prevents the word 'milk' from also being used together with additional qualifying language as part of the name for other products that may not be derived from cow’s milk.” Because soymilk had the word “soy” in front of it, in other words, the product does not purport to be ordinary cow’s milk.
FDA refused to provide a clear answer 17 years ago. So why are lawmakers from dairy-producing states trying to remove the word “milk” from plant-based packaging now? Because U.S. plant-based sales rose 9 percent and cow’s milk sales dropped 7 percent in 2015, according to a Mintel report released in 2016. Cow’s milk sales are projected to drop another 11 percent through 2020.
Plant-based milk is clearly cannibalizing dairy sales—and it’s particularly concerning to organizations like NMPF that plant-based milk is consumed by people who also consume dairy products. It’s not just vegans and those allergic to dairy that buy products like almond milk, soy milk, hemp milk, etc. In fact, a whopping 49 percent of Americans consume plant-based options. “In addition to half of Americans consuming non-dairy milk, our research reveals that nearly all non-dairy milk drinkers also drink dairy milk, revealing that consumers are turning to non-dairy out of preference as opposed to necessity,” said Elizabeth Sisel, Beverage Analyst at Mintel in a report.
Quality choices
Certainly, part of this phenomenon is due to the plethora of delicious, high-quality plant-based milk options available in the natural marketplace that mimic cow’s milk and, in many cases, deliver superior flavor. Companies such as Califia Farms, Blue Diamond and Silk are closely tuned to consumer desires, too, and can nimbly offer cleaner, more sustainable choices. For example, when Califia Farms first launched, some of their products contained carrageenan, a GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) ingredient derived from seaweed. But when consumers voiced concerns about carrageenan as a contributor to gastrointestinal distress, Califia listened, and removed the ingredient from all of its products. More recently, the company launched a line of additive-free, USDA Organic plant-based milks that contain just nuts, oats, sea salt and coconut.
Players in the dairy industry laud Baldwin’s Dairy Pride Act because they believe it would uphold the integrity of cow’s milk and boost sales by building a larger market. But NMPF doesn’t quite seem to understand that consumers are glomming onto plant-based milks not because they actually wanted cow’s milk, got confused, and erroneously bought almond milk. It’s because these products are delicious, don’t require animals to be produced, maybe makes them feel healthier and are better for the environment. (And don’t even start with the almonds-use-too-much-water argument—compared with raising dairy cows and all of the grain to feed them, almond milk is absolutely a more sustainable choice.)
Dairy farmers are hardworking folks who are passionate about helming humane, sustainable and profitable enterprises. Many dairy farmers run small farms with herds of under 200. Going back to Wisconsin producers, 96 percent of dairy farms in the state are family owned. Plus, the benefits of dairy products shouldn't be underestimated. Yogurt and milk are packed with probiotics, calcium and protein; cheese is a godly alchemy of milk, bacteria, time and art.
But, as Michele Simon, executive director of the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA), recently said, “The dairy industry doesn’t own the words ‘milk,’ ‘yogurt’ and ‘cheese.'” Simon, a food policy lawyer, is actively working with a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist to protect the 89 members of PBFA from the Dairy Foods Act, which would require plant-based milks to define their products along the lines of “almond beverage” or “hemp juice”—monikers that would undoubtedly cause consumer confusion. Simon also formed a committee of nine member companies to discern how best to label plant-based products such as milk and cheese voluntarily. For example, Miyoko’s Kitchen, makers of nut-based cheeses, labels SKUs as “Cultured Nut Product” and distinguishes flavors by using words that evoke ideas of cheese, such as “Rustic Alpine.” It’s a smart solution, but not exactly applicable to other plant-based brands.
There’s a finite number of milk consumers in the U.S. It’s unlikely that sales of both plant-based milk and cow’s milk will continue a tangential rise. It’s worth pointing out, however, that 2015 dairy milk sales in the U.S. were $17.8 billion. Plant-based milk sales were $1.9 billion. The table is still tipped in dairy milk’s favor. Government's MyPlate still features a serving of dairy on the side to round out a meal. But at this growth rate, it’s feasible that one day plant-based milk sales could surpass cow’s milk.
Recognizing this potential, at least one longtime dairy, Elmhurst, has shifted business tactics. After over 90 years of being in the dairy business, CEO Henry Schwartz shuttered the dairy and now produces nut milks. Made with just water, nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts or cashews), cane sugar, salt and natural flavors, Elmurst represents how a legacy brand in a dwindling market can remain relevant and profitable to modern consumers. “As someone who was a part of the dairy industry for so many years, my views on the [Dairy Pride] Act are complicated,” says Schwartz, now in his 80s. “I am proud of how we’ve transitioned to plant-based and pioneered a more wholesome and nutritional nutmilk. Transparency is very important to us, and we are very clear about labeling our products as nut-based. We even call our varieties ‘Milked Almonds,’ ‘Milked Hazelnuts,’ ‘Milked Cashews,’ etc. From conception, our priority with this line has always been to provide a higher quality, more nutritional milk alternative."
Transparency in labeling will always win. Should it pass, the Dairy Pride Act would only confuse those shopping in the rapidly expanding plant-based milk aisle.
Surprising Amazon-Whole Foods deal raises many questions about the future of both
By now, I am sure that you have seen the news about Amazon buying Whole Foods Market. Talk about a game changer! Like many others who observe and analyze natural products retail, I keep tabs on what is happening at Whole Foods, but did not see this one coming. This is certainly confirmation that natural and organic products are mainstream and will continue to have a highly visible platform in front of consumers.
While it is far too early to definitively state how this will change the retailing of natural and organic products, it is certain to have wide-ranging implications for many parts of the industry. Here are a few questions and observations that come to mind:
- Many natural and organic brands have their products on Amazon already. How will the Amazon ownership of Whole Foods affect that, if at all?
- Whole Foods has a limited internal distribution network and a long-standing, strong partnership with UNFI. Given the nationwide presence of Amazon warehouses, does that affect the Whole Foods distribution network?
- Similarly, due to Amazon’s volume and ability to drive costs down, does this purchase change the role that the brokerage community plays in Whole Foods? Many national brokerages have strong partnerships with Whole Foods, and they may be affected.
- The most obvious potential changes are in the retail space. Whole Foods competes with independent natural foods stores, regional natural changes and grocery stores of all types. Amazon competes with just about everybody. The changes that this acquisition could bring about are far-reaching.
- Now Amazon has a far-reaching, well-packaged and formulated private label brand of natural and organic products. Seeing how well the Kroger natural and organic private label brand has done, will the Whole Foods private label products be focused on to produce sales in that same way?
- Will Amazon help Whole Foods finally shed the "whole paycheck" image?
- How will Amazon marry its shipping of merchandise with having several hundred retail locations around the country? (Free delivery and a bottle, box or can of something great if you pick it up at a store.)
- If the Whole Foods' volume is pulled out of its current brokerage and distribution channels, will that increase or decrease retail opportunities to work out programs and deals within the supply channel?
- Does this finally convince the holdouts in the independent retail community that they need to have an online presence and that it has to be kept up to date?
Of course, there has to be the question: Will it work? Amazon and Whole Foods have two very different cultures, histories and leaders. Will there be compatibility enough to leverage the strengths of both brands, or will there be compatibility at all? This deal was made to enhance both brands, but if the execution of it does not go well, it may harm both of them.
Two things are certain. First, this deal will generate a lot of noise—for now and in the months to come. Second, retailers of natural and organic products need to start now on upping their game. Competition in the retail space has been tough. While their tactics are now yet known, it is safe to assume that Amazon wants to grow Whole Foods, and that will mean taking market share from other retailers. The time to build even greater customer loyalty, vendor programs, strong staffs and well-run stores is now.
5@5: Task force forms to fight fraud in organic | Beauty supplements go mainstream
Organic Trade Association establishes task force to combat organic label fraud
You may have read recent reports that millions of pounds of imported, non-organic corn and soybeans was fraudulently being sold as organic. In response to the controversy, the Organic Trade Association has organized a task force to establish a list of best practices for imported organic products, to lobby for the USDA to have broader enforcement powers in the next farm bill, and to push Congress for better technology to trace organic products. Read more at Organic Authority...
Why the beauty industry is betting big on supplements
A new wave of supplements for hair, skin and nails is moving mainstream, thanks in part to the growing awareness of the belly-beauty connection and, yes, millennials concerned with treating their bodies right. “Ingestible beauty” products account for nearly one-third of Free People’s in-store and online sales. Unilever Ventures recently invested in hair supplement Nutrafol. And Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop introduced curated vitamin packets earlier this spring. Read more at Business of Fashion…
Vertical farming gets real: Bowery Farming raises $20M for its ‘post-organic’ warehouse farm
GV (formerly Google Ventures) joined General Catalyst and GGV Capital in a new financing round for a “tech company that is thinking about the future of food.” Those are the words of the cofounder and CEO of Bowery Farming, which relies on software, robotics and LED lighting to grow leafy greens with less water than traditional agriculture and no pesticides. Read more at Forbes…
How Burlap & Barrel is disrupting the spice supply chain
Burlap & Barrel operates a single-origin spice e-commerce platform aimed at connecting artisan farmers with restaurants and artisanal food and beverage manufacturers. Its model focuses on environmental sustainability and improving the welfare of smallholder spice farms. Read more at Food Tech Connect...
Women are flocking to wellness because modern medicine still doesn’t take them seriously
The wellness industry is booming, and for good reason. Yoga, acupuncture, meditation and smoothies meet a need for many women seeking personalized and compassionate care for their unique health challenges. Read more at Quartz…
The nutrition industry is missing the point on nutrition
The headline in the May 8th Washington Post was typical: “When it comes to vitamin supplements, more isn’t always better.” The writer went on to explain that megadoses of various vitamins were worthless, and possibly dangerous, and brought in the questionable practice of intravenous vitamin injections, generally damning the “immensely profitable vitamin industry” with a wide and careless brush.
The headlines the Post could have written?
“Nearly a third, 31 percent, of African Americans don’t get enough vitamin D.”
“American women, 20 to 49, border on insufficiency for iodine.”
“More than one-in-ten Latino children are low on iron.”
And they could have attributed all of those headlines to the Centers for Disease Control report on global nutrition and not employed a freelance writer who had her own book and a nutrition communications company to promote. Still, while questioning whether the Washington Post and mainstream media is telling the wrong story remains a frequent but futile exercise for the supplement industry, the better question might be why the industry isn’t telling its own story better.
Healthy profits?
Profit obviously breeds complacency. The “if it ain’t broke …” adage holds true across any number of business models and it certainly applies to the supplement industry, where high margins are common and growth eclipses other industries even in the “bad” years. Automobile sales hit a record high last year, but were only up .4 percent, while growth in supplement sales is considered unspectacular at 6 percent. In this case, however, profit almost breeds complicity. Nutrition in the United States is surely “broke,” and it’s not easy to point to a notable effort in the nutrition industry to fix American nutrition at the most basic levels.
To be clear, market penetration is high. According to a Council for Responsible Nutrition survey, 175 million Americans take supplements. The industry sold$12.7 billion worth of vitamins and $2.9 billion in minerals. Vitamin sales grew 4.5 percent to probiotic’s 17.1 percent, but again, 4.5 percent is a lot better than the automobile industry’s .4 percent. Minerals grew 4.
Still, is the industry meeting its mission? Huge numbers of Americans remain poorly nourished.
Nobody expects the industry to go altogether altruistic, but the question remains whether a focus on innovation and a “what’s new?” mentality moves the industry toward the oft-stated goal of “transforming healthcare.” Is disease-based medicine going to be turned around with a new delivery format? Higher bioavailability doesn’t matter much when the nutrient isn’t available to the populations that most need it. Condition-specific products offer legitimate solutions, but too many products look like they are creating a need rather than meeting one.
In the end, all the differentiation and innovation may have companies overlooking the gateway supplements of vitamins and minerals, teaching whole generations to think about conditions and solutions rather than the basic foundation of good nutrition.
Defensive crouch
The industry could also be accused of playing a game of continuous defense. A spiked sports supplement scandal will hit the front page, and industry spokespeople will explain that DSHEA defines dietary supplements and Product X is clearly not in that definition. A pundit will call the industry unregulated, and the industry response will detail the many checks and measures imposed by the FDA.
Such defenses are worthy and warranted, but it can seem like the only time the industry’s voice gets heard is when it’s defending itself. “If the sky is falling, people will show up,” says Dan Fabricant, executive director at the Natural Products Association.
Author and integrative practitioner Dr. Teiraona Low Dog sees the same thing. Instead of pushing a message of basic nutrition and pointing out the startling deficiencies, “they are too busy defending DMAA and all the other things they get involved in.”
The same plot arc holds true when the headlines come from scientific journals. A study finding that an ingredient offers no benefit, or instead causes harm, will always be more likely to land on the front page than a positive study. The industry has to respond to those headlines too.
But constantly responding to crises builds a very different relationship with the press than the industry needs.
Why aren’t the startling nutrient deficiencies from the CDC reports provided to reporters the next time a wave of headlines reports on childhood obesity or any number of conditions with an obvious nutritional link? The media talks endlessly about the excess fat grams and calories in fast food, but the nutrients missing from those foods are rarely discussed.
And nobody talks about what happens when those nutrients go missing
A Google search for “Campaign for Essential Nutrients,” a project funded by DSM and other ingredient suppliers to boost awareness of micronutrient needs, garners a whopping nine news mentions over two years, and none of them in mainstream publications.
Taking the test
What’s missing from the messaging, says Low Dog and others, is a combination of information and urgency. Most Americans believe the days of rickets and scurvy are ancient artifacts, and indeed fortification programs have eliminated the most obvious and striking effects of nutrient deficiencies. But you can still find headlines like “Scurvy is a serious health problem” and “Rickets soar as children stay indoors” in the first-world, and even less dramatic effects go unnoticed or unstudied. “I think there’s a complacency that sets in when you kind of live in a bubble,” Low Dog says. “Because we’re not seeing these frank deficiencies, we’ve sort of suspected that we’re getting what we need from food.”
The everything-from-food mantra gained volume in late 2013, when the Annals of Internal Medicine published an editorial declaring “Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements,” despite the fact that the editorial drew from three studies published in the issue that came nowhere close to finding vitamin and mineral supplements worthless. In the following months, frequent critic Dr. Paul Offit made the rounds of morning news programs and daytime talk shows promoting his book, Do You Believe in Magic, which include a diatribe echoing the Annals of Internal Medicine editorial.
The assumption that food supplies all essential nutrients at sufficient levels got a different boost in recent years by increasing awareness, and increasing sales, of natural and organic food. In 2015 NBJ consumer research, the idea that food met all nutritional needs was the number one reason people gave up buying supplements.
But, as in many nutrition-related instances, what you don’t know can hurt you.
Organic or not, food can’t necessarily supply enough nutrients if it’s not getting enough nutrients from the soil. That connection between poor soil conditions and supplements has yet to hit the mainstream media and few are talking about how selective breeding and hybridization (even before anybody brings in genetic modified) have created fruits and vegetables that are bigger, but not necessarily better.
More than anything, the get-everything-from-food idea is based on the fallacy that people would even know if their nutritional needs were being met, by food or supplements. Karen Howard, executive director at the Organic and Natural Health Association (O&N), calls knowable nutrient levels “the missing link” in the case for nutrition.
O&N, partnering with Grassroots Health, is sponsoring a Power of Nutrients project that launched with test kits for vitamin D and is adding in Omega 3. More nutrients, including magnesium and choline, will be added to the targeted selection, all with the aim of proving the health benefits of basic nutrients based on large population studies. Grassroots Health started distributing vitamin D test kits seven years ago and has data on more than 12,000 participants. With that data, the industry will be able to tell the story it needs to tell, Howard says. “Nobody has put the pieces together to create a rational and documented story associated with solid supplementation,” she explains.
An exceedingly small number of people know their nutrient levels, Low Dog observes, and when many consumers read a headline about low vitamin D, they could easily see that as something that happens to other people. Doctors aren’t ordering the tests, and in many states ,consumers are not allowed to order their own. “Why do you have to guess what your vitamin D level is?” asks Low Dog. “You wouldn’t guess what your cholesterol is. You wouldn’t guess what your blood pressure is. You would just check it.”
The political play
With the better data that Howard’s organization seeks to gather, the industry might be in a stronger position to lobby for policy changes that would make supplementation a more expected and accepted piece of nutrition, and make nutrition a more important component in healthcare.
One of the main goals in that quest has always been modifying the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to let recipients spend their food stamp dollars on multivitamins. WIC, the Women Infants and Children version of SNAP for pregnant women and mothers of small children has been another target. SNAP funds can be spent on a wider range of grocery items that can include snacks and soda. WIC is more restrictive.
But neither can be used to pay for multivitamins.
That may be ready to change.
Mike Greene, CRN’s vice president for government relations, says the landscape has never been more favorable for moving supplements into the acceptable purchase column for SNAP and WIC. The Farm Bill is up for renewal in 2018, and the current political atmosphere is widely accepted as friendly to the supplement industry. More importantly, Greene says, trade associations can come armed with better arguments that supplements can reduce healthcare costs and improve student performance. Supplements can be portrayed as part of a plan to get people off food stamps—healthier people may perform better in school and find better opportunities. “I know congress is aware of this,” Greene says. “We have seen this information coming out of various government agencies.”
“There is an enormous amount of momentum that wasn’t around ten years ago,” Greene adds.
Fabricant notes that some of that momentum has already brought results. A recent appropriations bill included funds to study the benefits of including multivitamins in WIC. Fabricant believes there is already “very good data,” but government reports have gravitas that provides a level of acceptance the industry has never been able to claim. “What happens with WIC is they measure outcomes, they measure micronutrient status,” Fabricant says. “Are we going to see higher test scores and things like that? I think we will.”
Even with that data, Fabricant believes getting multivitamins into WIC and SNAP will still take a different kind of lobbying than the industry has been able to muster in recent years. Conventional food lobbyists could see it as a “zero-sum game.” “If you’re coming in, that means somebody is going out,” Fabricant says. “It’s literally a huge food fight. People are going to dig in.”
Fabricant believes the industry could better organize at a grassroots level. NPA is doing grassroots outreach, but the industry as a whole has not gotten behind it the way it could. “We’re in the thousands,” he says. “But we should be in the hundreds of thousands.” He points to efforts to allow consumers to spend their Health Savings Accounts dollars on supplements. “That bill has been introduced in three separate congresses, but again, where is the groundswell?”
By the ledger
In the end, the case for nutrition, if it is going to have that “transforming healthcare” effect, is going to have to be made on a balance sheet. Health Business Strategies founder Michael Levin says politicians are not going to matter nearly as much as insurance companies. “Who’s the customer for this?” Levin asks. “It’s the policy people, the payers.”
Supplements are a cost until the savings are proven. The O&N testing program is aimed at quantifying that return on investment argument, but Howard cautions that it will take time. The vitamin D test project has been underway through Grassroots Health for seven years. The omega-3 component is brand new.
Levin believes waiting for data may not be the answer. He can think of one study that “connected the dots” between nutrients and economic outcomes, and it got “no traction,” he says.
What Levin says he would like to see is a health plan that offered a “try this first” option. As Levin describes it, an insurance company would have a formulary of natural alternatives or a selection of conditions that a patient could take without a co-pay. If the alternative didn’t work, the patient could move to a pharmaceutical drug and pay the out-of-pocket costs. If a patient tried an alternative for just three months, or even one prescription cycle, the insurance company could save hundreds of dollars. “You can build a mathematical model to show it very compellingly,” Levin says.
Others have recommended approaching major corporations. Wellness programs are already common at big companies. Levin has worked with one at a 3,000-person firm. He hopes to be able to show companies that supplement use can reduce absenteeism. That approach offers results an executive can see right in the office. “It’s not easy,” Levin says. “But it’s doable.”
On message, on shelf
A trip to the nearest mall might suggest that Americans have never heard that eating healthy is important. Wallowing between the Big and Tall outlet and the Orange Julius, the masses seem to grow more massive, and less healthy, with every headline. At the same time, in the bookstore just down from the food court, half the magazines on the rack at Barnes & Noble will have some variation of a “killer abs” headline on the cover.
So a message is getting out, but it might not be one that’s coming from the supplement industry.
Americans have an obsession with macronutrients, and the micronutrients are easily forgotten. Grams of protein, carbohydrates and fat are in bold type. Micronutrients get a passing mention if they’re mentioned at all. Diets become centered on the number of calories and the kind of calories, but rarely the “right calories.”
For Twinlab CEO Naomi Whittel, making the case for nutrition comes down to meeting customers where they are. That can mean an age demographic, a lifestyle segment, anything that helps consumers make a connection between their health and their goals. “It’s finding the groups that need to hear that information,” Whittel says.
Athletes need to hear about how their workouts deplete their nutrients. Older adults need to hear which nutrients help their bodies guard against infirmities. Video game enthusiasts might respond to information about lutein and the ravage of blue light. Once you connect an individual to a group, you have a better chance of explaining the likely nutrient deficiencies, Whittel contends. That army of video gamers informed of the impact all those hours have on their eyes might listen to Whittel’s observation that, “we, on average, need to consume two bowls of spinach every day just to get the minimum amount of lutein.”
Twinlab is taking that idea to the front lines in the effort to get attention, testing nutrient levels for Vitamin Shoppe employees so they can communicate the urgency. A live person, standing in the aisle, explaining the realities can be powerful, Whittel says. “When you get tested, then you really know the answer.”
Nutrition accomplished
Society has much to gain from optimum nutrition. A nation of sick and tired people costs the economy far more than the $3 trillion in healthcare. With better nutrition, people could feel better, get sick less often, work more effectively and pursue more opportunities.
Howard can see O&N’s testing campaign paying off with benefits far beyond selling more supplements. “I think the real change, in ten years, is that the way healthcare is delivered will move from a disease-based system to actually looking at ways to prevent disease,” she says.
It sounds ambitious, lofty, unachievable in the Supersize Me era, but that may not be the case. Low Dog points to seatbelt use as an example of how quickly attitudes can change. Until the early 1980s, seatbelts were used by a small percentage of drivers. People either didn’t care or clung to oft-repeated, but rarely documented, stories about people being trapped in their car while it was engulfed in flames. It took a change in the law to change the behavior, but the safety aspect was accepted almost instantly. Nobody talks about the fiery death myth anymore. Instead, they put on their seat belts, and they know those seatbelts save lives. The law may not even be the main factor that drove seat belt use from 14 percent in 1983 to 87 percent 20 years later. People don’t expect to get in an accident every time they get in a car, but they wear their seatbelts because they know it’s safer over time. Basic nutrition isn’t so different.
“Taking a basic multivitamin,” Low Dog says, “is like wearing a seatbelt.”
Grassroots Health making the case for nutrition
Carole Baggerly remembers the moment very clearly.
She had breast cancer and found herself desperate for alternatives to what she describes as the “barbaric” treatment offered to cancer patients. She’d learned about the preventative and positive effects of vitamin D and attended a conference where she heard presentations on what she considered astounding results. She stood up, she recalls, and asked the scientists and attendees “Where’s the urgency?” She couldn’t understand why the message wasn’t being shared more widely.
She’s still asking that question 10 years later, but she’s also building a case for the message and the urgency. Seven years ago, Grassroots Health, the organization she founded, started an unprecedented field trial to study what it could mean to maintain healthy vitamin D levels in the body. Participants pay for blood spot tests which they repeat every six months while also updating a questionnaire on their health status. It’s probably the biggest study you’ve never heard of.
“We have built an international cohort of more than 15,000 people, who are paying to participate in a research project,” Baggerly says.
Randomized clinical trials are difficult, if not impossible, with basic nutrients (you can’t deprive a subject of vitamin D), but Baggerly is not a scientist. She is an entrepreneur. She looked at what needed to be done, and she found a way to do it, selling kits to consumers who get to see their data and share it to create an exceptionally large sample.
The result is a depth of data that allows researchers to produce papers based on large populations and prove the benefits of vitamin D.
She took that entrepreneur attitude to another problem when she learned how vitamin D could help reduce the number of pre-term births. Grassroots Health found sponsors and an institution to work with: the Medical University of South Carolina. Grassroots Health showed up with a turnkey testing, awareness, and supplementation program. Every mother who walks into the hospital gets tested for vitamin D. Supplements are supplied. Already, Baggerly says, “it has shown something close to an 80-percent drop in pre-term births among African American mothers.”
A paper on the project is in the publication process now.
Grassroots saw the urgency in the low birthweight numbers and provided an answer. She remembers a conversation about the project with a head doctor at the University. She asked the doctor, “Why are you doing this?”
His reply: “Because you are doing it for me.”
It was no small project—“We walked in the door with an implementation package, and we provided all the resources to make it happen”—but the result is proven savings and a proven model.
Baggerly and Grassroots Health made the case for nutrition.
“We have a whole conventional hospital group saying ‘We are ready to pay attention to nutrients.’”
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Burnout could be putting your health at risk: A complete retailer's guide to restoring balance
"We're an industry about healing, and part of that is the way we take care of people."
—Bill Crawford, Crawford Solutions
Highlights:
- How to identify personal and organizational burnout.
- The differences between distress and eustress, hindrances and challenges.
- How to work with employees to eliminate unnecessary job demands.
This session—Retail Lunch and Learn, Avoid Getting Burned by Burnout—was recorded at Expo East 2016. Click "download" to access the presentation slides.
Guam’s affordable grocery chain expands into natural and organics
The largest grocer in Guam is now operating a grocery store focused on natural and organic foods—and affordability. Owned by Dededo Pay-Less Supermarkets, Pay-Less O.N.E. (Organic + Natural + Education) is the latest development in the company’s foray into consumer health and education. The company hired a registered dietitian, Rosae Calvo, in 2015, to help grow its Health Smart program, providing guidance in healthy product selections, conducting educational programs and promoting fitness through gym partners.
“With these in place, it helped pave the way for the opening of Pay-Less O.N.E., which falls in line with one important point in our renewed mission statement to ‘care for our community’,” Calvo and marketing manager Carina Pegarido wrote in a joint email statement.
True to its name, Pay-Less makes affordability a priority. "Our buying team seeks out good deals, so in turn, we can offer those deals to our customers," Calvo and Pegarido continued, adding they offer a 10 percent discount on natural and organic products to Calvo’s Lifestyle Club card holders.
Calvo recognizes that in seeking such deals, the chain has limited bargaining power when dealing with its primary supplier, which is based on the U.S. mainland, because of its small size and remote location. "However, we do source some natural/organic products from local vendors," she said. "In this context, we are in a position to negotiate deals unique to our company. As Guam's largest grocer, our stores provide expansive opportunity for debuting new products and increasing accessibility."
Just over a month old, the store has already experienced significant growth in natural and organics, and has seen strong interest in its education program, with cooking demonstrations and classes filling up very quickly.
Pay-Less’ Health Smart Education effort includes programs, free of cost, such as:
- Nutritionist-led shopping tours
- Dietitian’s Corner
- Signage
- eduKitchen, featuring cooking demos and sustainability workshops
5@5: Is there an appetite for humanely harvested fish? | Mackey's mission
Will fish get a humanely harvested label? These brothers bet $40 million on it
Store-bought seafood is awash in labels, but there's one designation that many consumers look for in their meat choices that's missing from the seafood discussion: humane treatment. Two brothers and long-time fishermen are trying to change that. The Burns brothers owned a grass-fed cattle ranch on the site and developed a deep admiration for Temple Grandin, a scientist and advocate of better treatment of livestock. Now they've launched a new $40 million fishing vessel, Blue North, designed to catch Pacific cod using bottom longlines—a "best choice" method as determined by Seafood Watch—and a stunning method to prevent fish from thrashing. Humane harvesting of fish isn't just on their minds—the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the Marine Stewardship Council and Humane Farm Animal Care say it's on their radar, too. Read more at NPR...
The shelf life of John Mackey
"I'm just an Austin, Texas, guy who built a business. It's a lot bigger than I ever thought it would be," John Mackey tells Texas Monthly. This long-read chronicles Whole Foods Market's journey from a small health food store to a giant chain that's just a much gourmet specialty as it is natural, and has now become a victim of its own success. As tensions continue to rise between the Whole Foods co-founder and the hedge fund Jana Partners, which in April snatched up almost 9 percent of its shares and urged it to to overhaul its business or sell, Mackey is fighting to stay true to Whole Foods' mission and make it more than a grocery store. Read more at Texas Monthly...
Clean label isn't losing momentum, so where is it headed?
As the clean label movement continues to grow, a couple ingredient categories remain at the forefront of the discussion—like sweeteners, for example—and certain categories like beverages emerge as areas of innovation. Read more at Food Insider Journal...
Natural products center, USDA team to create natural insect repellents
With the goal of finding safer alternatives to synthetic chemicals, a partnership between the USDA and the University of Mississippi is working on a dozen projects to identify natural sources that act as insect repellents. Read more at Ole Miss...
Olivia Munn invests in jerky startup Chef's Cut
The actress joins the ranks of celebrity food investors with an investment in the jerky brand, which says it's on track to reach $100 million in retail sales this year. Munn has also invested in Uber and Bulletproof Coffee. Read more at Fortune...
Biodynamic wheat could change the way we break bread
"We have to shift from maximum efficiency for short-term economic return to resilient, regenerative production based in relationships."
—Fred Kirschenmann, Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture
Part 1: The need for biodynamic
Highlights:
- A brief history of industrial agriculture and the development of biodynamic methods.
- Fred Kirschenmann discusses the growing market demand and need for biodynamic agriculture.
Part 2: 'The loaf of bread starts in the soil'
Highlights:
- Bellegrade Bakery's Graison Gill explains the value of biodynamic wheat in creating his artisanal breads.
- Why wheat itself may not be the culprit in the case of gluten sensitivity.
This session—Tracking the Impact of Biodynamic and Breaking Bread with Graison Gill—was recorded at Esca Bona 2016.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Make any story shareable using these 3 simple steps
"We need to take that love of stories that we have and make our stories resonant, powerful and really really useful."
—Rafael Mael, Maelstrom Marketing
Part 1: Why we tell stories
Highlights:
- Why we love to hear stories and why stories matter for retailers.
- 3 reasons why most of the stories we are telling don't work.
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Part 2: How to make a confusing story clear
Highlights:
- The first reason why most stories don't work and how to overcome this problem.
- The power of keeping the message simple.
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Part 3: How to make a boring story captivating
Highlights:
- The second reason why most stories don't work and how to overcome this problem.
- How to sequence a story to make people care and want to know more.
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Part 4: How to make an irrelevant story click
Highlights:
- How do we overcome the challenge of a message that is irrelevant?
- How to put together the three simple steps and transform your story.
This session—Crafting a Shareable Story—was recored at Natural Products Expo East 2016.
5@5: FDA delays nutrition facts panel updates | Organic baby food delivery is now a thing
FDA delays revamped nutrition facts panel
Companies will no longer have to comply with the new nutrition facts label requirements by July 26 2018, as the FDA said it plans to give companies more time—although it didn't specify exactly how much time. The Obama administration proposed changes to nutrition facts label last year that would make calorie counts on packaged products more prominent and serving sizes more realistic, and require food and drink makers to disclose how much added sugar is in their products. The food industry has been pushing the new administration to delay implementation; many companies, however, have already outlined plans to roll out the new label on their products. Read more at Chicago Tribune...
A startup for millennial parents is banking on a $55 billion food opportunity no one talks about
The baby food category has been disrupted over the last decade, with organic and refrigerated options emerging as well as a new class of food delivery startups. Yumi is a subscription service that delivers upscale baby food developed alongside a nutritionist to members on a weekly basis. All of its products are USDA Organic, and meals generally fall between $6 and $8, depending on the plan. It's currently available only in California, but has plans to expand in the future. Yumi's raised more than $4 million in funding from some big-name venture capitalists. But it's not the only one competing in this market—Little Spoon started in New York last year, while Raised Real operates more as a baby meal kit company. Read more at Business Insider...
Grocery CEOs take pay cut as industry continues to struggle
Bonuses for the chief executives at the 10 largest U.S. grocers dropped 40 percent in 2016, an analysis by ISS Analytics found. Another firm noted that average base pay for food retail executives has dropped, too. Could this make it hard for the struggling industry to retain the talent it needs? Read more at Food Dive...
To create a carbon-neutral restaurant, first you have to measure the footprint
The Sustainable Restaurant Group commissioned Blue Star Integrative Studio to create a way to deeply track restaurant operation and supply chain emissions, and compare them to competitors in the same field. The hope is that customers will begin to factor emissions into their decisions on where to eat. Read more at Fast Company...
Levi's Stadium rooftop garden: Urban farming hits new heights
The San Francisco 49ers are the first NFL team to boast a rooftop garden. It's 6,500 square feet and grows kale, arugula, lettuces and herbs. Read more at Monterey Herald...
Digital Disruption: The Gorilla in the Room
The U.S. internet marketplace is dominated by the 400-lb gorilla that is Amazon. And if you want to sell your product online, there’s no better platform. But how many sales are really going through their e-commerce platform? Who’s buying? Are there even any other options?!?
And if you’re trying to protect a brand, it can be …dicey…trying to figure out which e-commerce operators are helping you and which are hurting. Between steep discounts and less than forthright communication, playing on Amazon comes with its risks.
Learn more from our infographic, and join our digital summit Wednesday, June 14, 2pm ET/11am PT to learn from a panel of experts how to optimize your Amazon presence and tame the gorilla.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
This 'recovering perfectionist' learned how to convert stress into creativity
"I existed for a solid 20 years of my life as an entrepreneur, overworking and over-doing... it really started to affect my health... I had to learn how to slow down and I had to learn how to create space.
—Valerie D'Ambrosio, VDA Coaching
Part 1: The story of a "recovering perfectionist"
Highlights:
- Why trying to make every area of your life perfect is not sustainable.
- Recognizing "above the line" and "below the line" energy.
Part 2: Create space
Highlights:
- Why people spend 98 percent of the time in a state of judgement, blame, stress and overwhelm.
- Key methods to shifting from stress and overwhelm to creativity and joy.
Part 3: Appreciating the skeptic
Highlights:
- How to appreciate the pessimist, and why this could completely transform your team.
- How to approach toxic negativity and discern when to say "no."
Part 4: Make the shift
Highlights:
- One simple and effective practice of every great conscious leader.
- The most effective method for shifting yourself out of being a "victim of life."
Part 5: Overcome limiting beliefs
Highlights:
- The three blocks that are useful to recognize when we are getting in our own way.
This session—Conscious Leadership: Tips & Tools for Designing a Thriving Life—was recorded at Natural Products Expo East 2016.
Grocery trends report: Shoppers seek transparency
In a food supply chain that is rapidly undergoing upheaval, retailers that can meet a comprehensive shopper demand for transparency can win, Food Marketing Institute revealed in its 2017 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report, published Monday.
According to FMI, "U.S. grocery shoppers want more than just information; they desire transparency that engages them, offering assurances of food safety, the pursuit of health and wellness, the appetite for discovery and a closer connection to food."
The report was prepared by FMI and the Hartman Group and based on qualitative research fielded in the last quarter of 2016 and quantitative research conducted in the first quarter of 2017. FMI President and CEO Leslie G. Sarasin presented the findings in front of more than 400 of the industry’s future leaders in Chicago at FMI’s professional development conference, declaring that clarity "is the currency of the digital age."
Its findings in transparency indicate shoppers don’t speak of "transparency" in those terms but instead talk about "openness," "honesty," things being "public," "clear," "visible" and "not hidden." These associations suggest amplified expectations of businesses to be open and honest about their products and practices, the report said. They reflect shoppers’ ideals about how companies and the food industry should operate.
While fewer traditional food retailers enjoy more grocery traffic and shopper loyalty, FMI Trends data note that 8 percent of shoppers still claim to have "no primary store."
Limited assortment (25 percent), natural (17 percent), convenience (11 percent), ethnic (11 percent) and online only (11 percent) food stores are increasingly frequented by shoppers. This is particularly significant, FMI said, because research this year suggests how comfortable millennials have become with using online shopping for their grocery needs, although they still order only a limited breadth of food products online.
Sarasin insisted that the unpredictable state of the marketplace demands a strategy to help transform a retailer from "just a store" to an ally. According to the findings, overall shopper ratings of how well stores are meeting their needs favor those retail channels that lead in transparency, including natural and organic, online-only, club, fresh-focused and midmarket traditional grocery stores.
Conversely, retail channels trailing in transparency include discount, convenience, supercenter, limited, dollar, drug and value-focused. Consumers continue to view their primary store also as a primary ally in their wellness pursuits.
The analysis cites dimensions of transparency that can help retailers better connect consumers with the broader context of their food, notably a retailer that demonstrates easy access to relevant information, clear quality standards, proactivity and accountability, fair treatment of employees and openness about business practices. The findings describe the way consumers rank fresh-focused traditional grocery stores and natural and organic stores, above value-focused traditional supermarkets across all dimensions of transparency.
"In the competitive food retail landscape and in an age in which information moves faster and faster, the consumer demand for clear and honest answers offers a zip-line to confidence in the complex food system," Sarasin said.
The report also detailed the continued "fragmentation" of the food industry with non-traditional channels continuing to erode the primacy of the supermarket. And though e-commerce is less frequented than other forms of grocery shopping, findings indicated millennial shoppers have become more comfortable shopping for food online, although for a limited amount of products vs. other channels of trade.
The makeup of U.S. households who shop for food is also evolving, the report added, with "co-shopping" or trips handled by more than one household shopper, continuing to grow led by more men assuming shopping duties, the report said.
