As a Girl Scout Cookie order form was shared around the office this year, there was a noticeable absence of a “no hydrogenated oils” banner from fan favorite Samoas, Tagalongs, and the ever-popular Thin Mints, which, together, make up 57% of Girl Scout Cookie sales. We couldn’t help but ponder how, in light of recent… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
Food Safety Modernization Act Since the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law in 2011, the food industry has been faced with the prospect of greatly increased safety and transparency regulations. Today, those changes are still being rolled out—from much more frequent FDA inspections to stricter requirements for produce—and some regulations are still… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
Starbucks has been slinging (can you sling a latte?) its incredibly popular Pumpkin Spice Latte for around a decade. While they didn’t invent the spice combination, they’re at least partially responsible for the increased pumpkin-spicing of our drinks and desserts every fall for the past ten years. Drinks and desserts are one thing, but now… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
When it comes to food ingredient labels, consumers are savvier than ever, and those shelf-smarts have, over the last few years, begun extending to ingredient lists for our pets’ food, but all is not yet perfectly clear, even for the shrewdest of label readers. As with human nutrition, pet ingredient lists, due to terminology, don’t… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
The holiday season is staring us down. Seeing Thanksgiving tchotchkes in stores already is stressful, but what’s more stressful about this season is budget planning. If, like us, you’re responsible for marketing products and building brands, this tends to be a precarious time of year, as you’re simultaneously carrying out the remainder of your marketing… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
I’ve had the pleasure of working with the food ingredient media for over 20 years, 11 years of which has been on behalf of MarketPlace. The media regularly tells me a version of “we love working with you because you really understand media.” At MarketPlace, our job is to provide value to our partners through… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
For businesses whose clients are other businesses, branding – or rebranding – isn’t often a top priority. There are always other tasks to tackle, other fires to put out. Who has time for branding with sales to make, supply issues to resolve, new products to launch, and marketing initiatives to fulfill? The way we see… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
Developing a new website can be daunting, all-consuming, and intimidating. There are so many details to consider, and with the rate at which technology moves, keeping up can be taxing…and that’s not even considering the maintenance of the content! Because we go through the process regularly with our partners, we’re used to juggling all these… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
I’ve been thinking about insects. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about eating them (or, so far, not eating them). Meat isn’t usually considered a luxury item in western culture, but prices are predicted to rise substantially in the next decade. If meat consumption grows concurrently in developing parts of the world, the strain that meat puts… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
Did you know that sriracha is a style of hot sauce, not a brand of sauce? Just like ketchup, sriracha can be manufactured by anyone. However, in the U.S. at least, when someone says sriracha (or rooster sauce for that matter), they’re talking about Huy Fong Food’s spicy elixir with the iconic green cap and… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
One of the best lunches I had in recent months was with Carmen Popescu, Senior Project Coordinator of Pharmaceutical Applications at Roquette America. Our conversation ranged from linguistics to Ceaușescu to tabbouleh to the state of higher education in America to hair care products. Carmen is energetic, witty, and warm, the kind of person you… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
I klong weekly. You probably do, too. “Klong” means “a sudden rush of crud to the heart” caused by the realization that you’d said, done, or believed something wrong for a long time. For example, I realized one day years back that I’d been saying and writing the phrase “for all intensive purposes” for at… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
We’re very excited to be working with Roquette, a world leader in the ingredients industry offering a wide range of products and solutions in human nutrition, pharmacy-cosmetology, paper/board, chemistry-bioindustry, and animal nutrition. Experts in polyols and the leading European producer of maltodextrins, pyrogen-free raw materials, and cationic starches, Roquette has factories in Europe, America, and… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
Typically, I pay more notice to my VHS collection of MacGyver episodes than to political conventions, but in 2004, even I cared about politics, as a handful of bloggers was issued press credentials for the Democratic and Republican conventions. This small act of validation signaled a large-scale shift in the way that Americans consume media.… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>
Store brands, over the last two years, have protected or increased their market share in 75% of the top 100 consumer packaged goods categories* For over a decade, private label brands have outpaced national brand favorites in several categories. The economy, to a significant degree, has driven consumers to explore private labels. But the economy… Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span>