Expo East 2022: Editors Share Quick Takes From Day 1

Marty Caballero [00:07] Hello everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Marty Caballero. I'm the managing editor at Bevnet.com. I am joined here by Carol Ortenberg, the editor of Nosh.com. As you can see, we are here live in the flesh in Philadelphia for Natural Products Expo East 2022. We're just getting off the floor, or we're still on the floor I should say, just finishing up our first day of coverage here. Certainly a lot to see, a lot to take in. So we're just getting a couple quick takes from the show floor. Carol, I would love to hear about just your main takeaways. What did you see on the floor? Here today, sure,

Speaker 2 [00:36] well, transparency has always been important, as is short ingredient list for natural food products. I think one thing that's coming through now, especially as supply chain issues are coming up, is emphasizing who's growing the food that you're making, that you're using in your products. So calling out specific farmers and then finding ways to give back to those farmers. So Hawthorne Valley is a fermented foods brand. They just announced that 1% of all of their sales are going to go back. To the farmers who produce and grow the vegetables that they use in their products, you have folks like Quinn Snacks really talking about who's growing their food, and, you know, part of that may be out of necessity that some of these brands are having to work with smaller farms in order to, um, avoid supply chain struggles, but at the same time it's become an excellent talking point to say like we know exactly where your food is coming from. The other thing is just comfort food, you know, uh, there's certainly a lot of healthy eating, but. There's also a lot of, you know, slightly incremental, better for you products. I think there's 3 new plant-based wings launching at the show. Jack and Annie's, as well as Blackbird, uh, Foods both have their own wings launching, uh, and then you've got folks like I talked to today, um, Chubby Snacks doing a better for you take on the uncrustable. So, you know, there's still a place for indulgence even though we all like our adaptogens. Marty, what, what about you? What'd you see at the show floor?

Marty Caballero [01:58] So it's funny Carol I think we're right on the verge of sober October and then Dry January is around the corner from that but really what's been interesting is to see that alcohol moderation and kind of the movement away from alcohol has become a year-round trend that we're seeing adopted by a lot of retailers. And brands in the space. So I talked with, uh, Toast earlier today. Um, I talked with Ritual Zero Proof. Both of those brands are gonna be entering CVS in their new non-AC set that they're building out. So I think that's really a confirmation that this trend is growing as again a year-round thing. Um, there's, uh, it's not just appealing to people who are maybe in recovery, it's really for people who wanna moderate their alcohol no matter how much they're having, so there's a lot of legs and traction on that for sure. Uh, the other thing I saw which is interesting is reminds me of the last magazine story we did on Ice-Ta which is called Life After Honest. It's really interesting because of course we have just Ice-Ta here from Seth Goldman and. The change sort of his next venture after Honesty, but we're seeing a lot of brands sort of moving in to take some of the space that was left behind when Honest left with, uh, organic fair trade products, uh, brands like Saint James Tea, uh, Humanity, both of those actually in Tetra packs, um, as well as some more functional type products like Happy Being which uses a white tea base to deliver. Immunity benefits and really uh a full medical uh dosage of uh functional ingredients so fun to see some evolution in tea as well

Speaker 2 [03:21] for all of you guys following along at home or in your office, stay tuned to Nosh.com and Bevnet.com for all of our podcasts, videos, and stories all about Expo East 2022.