In this roundup of recent investment and M&A news, New York-based Grady's Cold Brew kicks off a crowdfunding investment campaign online, IFF and DuPont come together, and the merger of Peet's Coffee and Jacobs Douwe Egberts sets the stage for potentially the world's biggest publicly traded coffee company.
In this video recorded at BevNET Live Winter 2019 in Santa Monica, California, Wandering Bear co-founder and CEO Matt Bachmann dives into how his early stage coffee brand has interwoven its multi-channel strategy with its marketing strategy and minimized dependence on traditional retail outlets in order to meet consumers at the office, on the shelf and directly in their kitchens through ecommerce.
This week, members of the BevNET and NOSH editorial teams joined us for a discussion of some of the major news stories, trends and innovation from 2019. Among the topics of conversation were developments in the burgeoning cannabis CPG segment, explosive growth in the oat milk and sparkling water categories and the evolution of frozen food and plant-based meats.
In a complaint filed in Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County on September 11, three distributors — North Carolina-based Carolina Beverage Corp. and Dixie Riverside and Alligator Beverage, both headquartered in Georgia — claim Fiji Water broke their respective contracts by forcing retailers in their sales territories to stop accepting product deliveries and making no attempt to negotiate terms to service those accounts
Following a year plagued by out-of-stock issues and high shipping costs, plant-based food and beverage brand New Barn is scaling back retail distribution for its product portfolio to service only the West Coast as it focuses on integrating an omnichannel strategy in 2020.
While dairy will remain on top for the foreseeable future, the cold case is changing today. Dairy industry leaders, however, may be more prepared for that change than anticipated.
CEO Danny Stepper said L.A. Libations has hired five new team members in an effort to create departmental synergies and help the company “deliver on [its] commitments” to serve as the non-alcoholic brand building arm for Molson Coors.
In 2019, the beverage market saw a veritable flood of CBD-based beverage innovations. Although competition in the space may be tight, CBD beverage leaders are now looking to work together to take the category out of legal limbo and into the mainstream.
Hoplark HopTea was born out of co-founder Dean Eberhardt’s desire to have a healthy and complex beverage while on a break from drinking alcohol. The company developed a line of zero calorie, zero alcohol teas brewed with hops, delivering a flavor profile similar to beer.
Bryan Crowley, CEO of Soylent, spoke about how his career experience shaped his leadership style and helped frame his vision for the future of the fast-growing “complete food” brand. He also how the brand’s mission and growth strategy have each evolved, why it has embraced GMO ingredients and what the notion of “better for you” means for modern consumers. This episode is presented by Flavorman, the beverage architects.
In kombucha, the story of the 2010s has been about the category’s rise from a niche beverage to a mainstream product. Having achieved that milestone, the question facing the industry at the precipice of a new decade is how to ensure that growth continues.
In this conversation recorded at BevNET Live Winter 2019 in Santa Monica, California, La Colombe CEO Todd Carmichael and Chobani president Peter McGuinness discuss how fear of a changing marketplace is a necessary ingredient in forward-thinking innovations and how it led both companies roll out new oat milk product lines this year.
Two ingredient development and innovation companies are joining forces: International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) and DuPont Nutrition & BioSciences announced yesterday that the two will merge via a $26.2 billion deal. The new company is valued at $45.4 billion, with a projected combined revenue of over $11 billion for 2019, morphing the two into a single global ingredient powerhouse for food and beverage CPG brands.
Butterfly, the private equity group which acquired a majority stake in Orgain in November, is expected to inject new energy and resources into the brand, providing a boost in marketing and a path towards international expansion, along with "fuel to the fire on our innovation," according to founder Dr. Andrew Abraham.
