Member News & Headlines Blog

It’s a breezy evening and three young professionals are catching up for a quick cuppa at a popular outdoor café after work. The conversation ranges from the weather (excellent) and new places in town (the new, large microbrewery in the city’s northern parts) to music (Bob Dylan’s new album) and, of course, family and work (largely boring). When it’s time to order food, there is instant consensus – everyone is hunting for the healthiest options on the café’s menu. Multigrain bruschetta, perhaps? Salad? Yogurt parfait? Anything that doesn’t have sugar or carbohydrates will do.

Over the past five years, a whole host of health food start-ups have taken root in the country. And in just a short span of time, this ecosystem has already evolved to cater to—seemingly—every single conceivable health food need and fad.

Read more here

Emerging technologies are transforming how we produce, distribute, and consume what we eat by bringing food to people instead of bringing people to food. A new report by the Refresh Working Group featuring Food Tank, Google, the US Chamber of Commerce, and more than twenty other partners, called Refresh: Food and Tech, from Soil to Supper, highlights more than 20 digital platforms and artificial intelligence algorithms being adopted across the U.S. food supply chain by farmers, distributors, grocers, retailers, and consumers.

Today, AI and machine learning offer the opportunity to bring a greater level of certainty to the notoriously uncertain business of farming. By using the processing power of AI to collect and analyze multiple sources of data out in the field, farmers are working with analytical tools to make decisions and generate predictions about their yields. Craig Ganssle drew upon his military experience in radio and infrastructure systems with the United States Marine Corps to create FARMWAVE, an app that helps farmers identify plant pathogens, bugs, and weeds. It works by integrating with smartphone cameras, drones, machinery, and field sensors: all of the necessary components in creating the connected farm of the future.

Read more from FoodTechConnect here

Recent inquiries into the deaths of two British teenagers after eating sesame and peanut highlighted the sometimes tragic consequences. In August, a six-year-old girl in Western Australia died as the result of a dairy allergy.

The rise in allergies in recent decades has been particularly noticeable in the West. Food allergy now affects about 7% of children in the UK and 9% of those in Australia, for example. Across Europe, 2% of adults have food allergies.

Read more here.

At last, it’s here. After months of negotiations, Agriculture Committee leaders from the House of Representatives and Senate announced that they’ve reached an agreement, in principle, on the 2018 Farm Bill—a nearly trillion-dollar legislative package that sets out policies on a range of food and agricultural priorities, from crop subsidies to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), for the next five years.

“We’re pleased to announce that we’ve reached an agreement in principle on the 2018 Farm Bill,” the lawmakers announced in a statement today. “We are working to finalize legal and report language as well as CBO [Congressional Budget Office] scores, but we still have more work to do. We are committed to delivering a new farm bill to America as quickly as possible.”

Read more here.

Lab-grown meat producers have already turned to big meat companies for funding. Now they could use the industry’s help in displacing regular meat on dinner plates.

According to Andrew Noyes, the head of communications for Just Inc., meat companies are discussing the possibility of helping cell-based meat producers with distribution and providing production facilities. Noyes’s San Francisco-based company already produces plant-based versions of foods such as mayonnaise, eggs and dressings, but is readying to sell its cultured meat -- an area that’s only now preparing to open up to commercial sales.

Read the full article from Bloomberg here

Today’s food system is rife with paradox. We have enough food in the world to feed every mouth, yet 821 million people go hungry every day. We lose or waste 1.3 billion metric tons of produce each year, yet half the global population does not eat a properly nutritious diet. Our food system depends on mitigating climate change, yet agriculture and land-use activities contribute about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. Why?

These are the unintended consequences of our industrialized food system. Amidst structures optimized to maximize the production, movement and consumption of cheap, empty calories, we have created entrenched patterns that threaten our health and that of our planet.

Read more from Forbes here

If you’re looking to try trend du jour CBD (cannabidiol), the non-hallucinogenic chemical in marijuana, you’ve got a lot of options these days: the trendy ingredient is making its way into sparkling water, beer, candies, and even dog biscuits (okay, you probably won’t try the last one).

Companies big and small are hustling to take advantage of burgeoning consumer demand for CBD. Major beverage corporations like Molson Coors, Lagunitas, and Constellation Brands have all been developing drinks infused with the trendy ingredient. Even Coca-Cola is exploring ways to make use of CBD (though they won’t pull the trigger until the substance is legal throughout the U.S.).

Read more from The Spoon here

Kraft Heinz has struck a deal to acquire Primal Kitchen, maker of better-for-you (with an emphasis on healthy fats and high-quality proteins) sauces, condiments, and dressings including mayonnaise and avocado oil, for $200m.

The brand will join the Kraft Heinz Springboard, a platform introduced earlier this year aimed at partnering with disruptive food and beverage brands.

Read more here 

The Kraft/Heinz Springboard Incubator is headed into its second year after a successful first round launch in 2018.  Graduates of the first cohort -  including Melanie Kahn, founder of Poppilu; Drew and Mac Anderson, co-founders of Cleveland Kraut;  and Nick Hamburger, founder of Quevos - were on site at Tuesday night’s CFBN Start-Ups networking event to share testimonials and insight into the resources and access that the Kraft Springboard program affords.  Kelly Reinke, Springboard’s Incubator Lead, shared a deep dive into this year’s plans - including the exciting announcement that the Springboard team intends to offer greater opportunity by running two separate cohort cycles in 2019. 

The room was full of Midwest start-up founders - from the greater Chicagoland community - and conversations dove heavy into the innovation spaces around beverage, nutrition, and the powdered supplement categories.   All category sectors had interest and representation amongst the night’s gathering of entrepreneurs and founders.

Kraft/Heinz’s Springboard program provides access to their R&D facility and team, led by Tim Downey, during their incubation and he was on hand during Tuesday’s event and was heavily sought out by guests during the night’s networking.  The program’s ability to offer early stage companies access to prototyping, product formulation feedback, and nutritional and component analysis is a major advantage of the incubator’s partnership with Kraft/Heinz and their state-of-the-art facilities in the Chicago area.  

CFBN will be launching a monthly networking program for early stage and start-up ventures as part of its’ 2019 programming in partnership with local incubators and accelerators, and organizations in the entrepreneurial space. Reach out for more information and stayed tuned for programming announcements in the new year.  

Bader-Rutter’s gorgeous conference center overlooking the Wrigley building and the Chicago river, hosted our final content program of 2018 with a panel that tackled, The New Rules of Food Marketing. 

The panel’s conversation, moderated by CFBN Executive Director Alan Reed, ranged across topics from brand identity and loyalty in this new digital age, to relationship building with the consumer, and the changing role of innovation and adaptability in the new marketplace.  The “New Rules” offered by the panelists and guests own experience, ranging from B2B to start-up ventures, offered an engaging conversation into how standard marketing tactics will have to and are changing for companies globally. 

The panel’s New Rules of Food Marketing…

Ned Brown, CCO, Bader Rutter

1.   Authenticity is the new price of entry.

2.   Brands create IP through ideas not ingredients.

Michelle Lorge, VP Marketing, Simple Mills

1.   It’s a relationship, not a one-night stand.

2.   Innovation doesn’t require perfection.

Janet Garetto, Partner/Intellectual Property Law, Nixon Peabody

1.   Your brand is intellectual property – it’s more important than ever.

2.   Your brand isn’t just your logo or trademark – it’s the experience.

Kristin Kroepfl, VP of Marketing & Sales Strategy, Kellogg

1.   It’s about the experience, not a media plan.

2.   Don’t fight the brand.

Thank you again to all of our panelists for their insight, and all of our attendees for making this a great and well attended event.  We are looking forward to the conversations of 2019, with a new range of topics to explore.  Stay tuned for updates on our 2019 calendar, coming in January!