Choppy!

That’s a wrap! Wow what an amazing expo by Newtopia Now, these past couple of days were some of the most fun, educational and inspiring of my career journey. Had the opportunity to meet and talk to some of the most talented and amazing people in #CPGindustry and learned allot about their journeys and experiences/ companies/ products. Shoutout to Liquid I.V. ,Melting Forest, KOS, Lakanto, Harmless Harvest, MALK Organics, TRUFF, Choppy!, Heavenly Waffles, SmartSweets, Purest Electrolyte, The Good Crisp Company, Holy! Water, and Emotional Utility Beverage. These companies had the most, (in my opinion), interesting, unique, (and most important), CLEAN products in the market. #cpgindustry #productdiscovery #naturalproducts #emergingbrands #newnew #denvercolorado #newtopianow

NYC FRIENDS, have you been thinking to yourself that you need MORE chopped cheese in your life?! Well good golly gosh do I have solution for you. Choppy! is in the latest Pop Up Grocer rotation today! Go get our meat! Cook it! Eat it! Enjoy! Make your own Chopped Cheese even faster than you can get at a bodega! And with much less coronary distress! (You can make other things too!) GO GO GO

From nascent and niche to mainstream with momentum: the innovation on display at Natural Products Expo points to the consumer desires driving our industry—and our world—forward. 🌎 In the past 5 years, Natural growth doubled to $300B. And despite current market challenges, it's showing resilience in 2024, continuing to innovate into prevailing consumer desires. 3 themes that are popping as I explore the halls with LPK: ↗️ Better for you = better for the planet. Consumers want clean + conscious en masse, gravitating to products that nurture their own health and wellness, as well as the planet's. Whether it's snacks or cosmetics, products need to pack health benefits while protecting flora, fauna, farm workers and their families. (Standouts: KIND, KraftHeinz NotCo, Patagonia Provisions) ↗️ Consumer-centric, not category-centric. The lines keep crossing, blurring and dissolving in Natural as categories merge, morph and deliver novel value. As my colleague Emily Flannery puts it: natural IS the category, innovating into consumer problems vs. category silos. (Standouts: OEM®, BRUTAL, Green Girl Bakeshop, Choppy! (fka Paul's Table)) ↗️ Winding, multi-stop shopper journeys. From TikTok to brick-and-mortar and back again, the data shows shoppers—especially Gen Z and Gen X—are using social as brand search and taking more circuitous, immersive, multi-phase paths to purchase. (Simply put: they broke the funnel.) DTC brands are moving into retail, and vice versa, using brick-and-mortar for immersion and digital platforms for education and storytelling. What are you seeing at #ExpoWest? What’s exciting you? Drop a note below. #natural #organic #whatsupexpo #expowest2024

Meet the 29-year-old best friend entrepreneurs trying to reinvent plant-based meat with real animal fat. Saba Fazeli left a job at Beyond Meat to solve what he saw as the problem in the alt-meat space: Plant-based proteins just don’t taste like the animal kind. Meanwhile, his business partner, Brice Klein, was working as an early employee at a vertical-farm company aiming to revolutionize produce, but found himself eating less-than-innovative food night after night. “For a long time I’d eat a block of tofu or beyond burger or half bag of Quorn or Protein+ Pasta at night, but every one of those still felt like a concession on some combination of flavor, cost, and health,” he recalled. Now, the duo is behind Choppy! (fka Paul's Table) is one of a handful of startups aiming to boost plant-based meats with the addition of something until recently unthinkable—real fat. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dyUpVyhP