The ReGen Brands Weekly - Volume 21

This Week’s Episode:

Highlights:

• 👌 100+ studies on the medical benefits of ginger

• 🤯 Siwat’s health journey that inspired Recoup

• 🤝 Susan leaving big CPG to partner with Siwat

• 🧘 Targeting the wellness-focused female consumer

• 💧 Using regenerative organic maple tree water

• 🤳 Leveraging TikTok for organic reach

• 🤸 Fitness studios as a key sales channel

• ✍️ What ReGen can learn from Organic & Non-GMO

• 👀 Future products coming soon

• 🎯 The unifying messaging needed to scale regenerative

Recap:

• Don’t have time for the full episode? 😵‍💫 

• Check out the recap! 🙃 

• Everything you need to know (+ funny GIFs) in less than 5 minutes. 🥳

ReGen Brand News:

🧐 California begins groundbreaking effort to define regenerative agriculture

“The undertaking promises challenges and potential controversies, as diverse stakeholders in the nation's most agriculturally rich state—its farms generated $54.5 billion in sales in 2021—do not uniformly agree upon what the definition should include or avoid. And given California's outsized influence in shaping nationwide movements and trends, whatever the state drafts could affect how farmers around the country pursue regenerative agriculture and inform consumer perceptions of the term.”

📉 UNFI faces a rocky road as it pursues a turnaround 

+ UNFI to restructure operating regions, cut 150 jobs

In Case You Didn’t Know: UNFI is the largest publicly traded wholesale distributor of health and specialty food in North America. They are Whole Foods’ main supplier, so working with UNFI is essentially a necessity for any regenerative brand looking to grow.

TL;DR: UNFI is struggling for a multitude of reasons. They need to drive profitability and enhance their ability to accurately forecast financial performance in the future.

So what does that mean for regen brands? More price and margin pressure and probably less room at the table for the little guys. So basically exactly what we don’t need. (just my 2 cents)

🚧 KeHE Distributors preps Innovation HQ to open in 2024

“The new, 10,000-square-foot facility in Boulder, Colorado will feature an elaborate kitchen complete with technology to film cooking demos and hold classes; collaboration spaces; spaces dedicated to video and audio production, and a planogram lab.

The point of this ambitious project is to help KeHE's many brands—last year alone, the company brought on 5,000 new brands—succeed in what is a highly competitive marketplace.”

We’ll see if this ends up being lip service or real value, but I like the idea!

😳 Want to understand just how competitive it is to get shelf space as an emerging brand?

Sprouts launched 8,400 new CPG products across nearly 400 stores in 2022.

Roughly 50,000 new items were submitted to Sprouts last year, resulting in a 16% success rate.

“Purpose” (which includes if the product is regenerative) is only weighted as 5% of the scorecard the retailer used to evaluate products.

See the full post here & below ⬇️

😎 Innovation is next frontier for private brands: FMI

82% of surveyed food retail executives plan to increase private brand investments moderately or significantly in the next two years.

Translated to regular people language: Retailers are going to continue to launch new products under their proprietary labels (think Kirkland Signature @ Costco, Good & Gather @ Target, etc.)

This could be a nice growth opportunity for regenerative brands and their suppliers because what retailers are looking for aligns with what regenerative systems are producing: “Among areas of importance for private brand innovation is appealing to younger consumers (73%), improving transparency on product information (60%) and elevating health and well-being benefits (58%).”

🕺 But wait, there’s more!

➡️ More on New Barn Organics’ new ROC products from Forbes

Money Talks:

🤓 Supply Change Capital put together some awesome data on the current M&A environment in CPG with a positive outlook predicted in the near term.

Why?

The IPO market is volatile but M&A for food and beverage companies continues to be reliable. (see below)

And more than half of CPG leaders surveyed by Bain say that corporate M&A will either increase or stay the same over the next three years. (see below)

Supply Change wraps the article by sharing insights they gleaned from interviewing 20 food and beverage executives at Fortune 500 companies. Mainly, what these companies are looking for in their future acquisitions.

➡️ Check out the full article here.

ReGen Brand Jobs:

• 🦴 Kettle & Fire is looking for a Director of Sales - West

• 🥛 Danone is hiring a Project Manager for regen ag implementation

• 🥥 Purely Elizabeth is looking for a Director of Supply Chain

• 🔬 Soil Carbon Initiative is hiring a Company Program Manager & Farm Finance Specialist

• 🍚 Lundberg Family Farms is looking for an Account Manager, Project & Process Engineer, Systems Engineer, & Staff Accountant

• 🦬 Force of Nature is hiring a Creative Director, VP of Marketing, Senior Accountant, Staff Accountant, & AR / AP Specialist

• 🌊 Atlantic Sea Farms is looking for a Quality Assurance Technician and Brand Ambassadors

Fun Stuff:

We 🫶 fan love. (Seriously, we really appreciate it!!)