Food + Beverage
Taco Bell: Going Healthy, Staying Real
I’ve always had a guilty, secret thing for Taco Bell … and now it is following me to work. In the past week, I came across two completely unexpected news items about Taco Bell and, in the process, gained a newfound respect for a company that manages to be relentlessly innovative yet never gets pulled…
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What’s Your Unicorn?
When you were young, you most likely learned about a mythical creature called a unicorn. Back then, you probably loved the mystery around something that you could never see in real life. The spirit of the unicorn is what drove little girls around the world to ask for stuffed animals and toys to help fuel…
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Education a Key for Food Marketers
For many of today’s consumers, food has to be more than just calories to fill you up. It has to contribute to a healthy diet and overall lifestyle. Looking at the last meal you ate, do you know what it did for your body? How much protein it provided? How many carbs? Were there any…
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Transparency: The New Mantra For Food Marketing
Whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, everyone has different criteria of what they are looking for when they go to the grocery store. Traditionally, these factors have been price, taste and convenience. Recently, however, the consumer’s decision process has been evolving. According to a recent study, most consumers want their food to meet these four factors:…
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Expo West Report: 2016’s Hottest Health Food Trends
Every year, natural products brands, retailers, distributors and their devoted and influential consumers converge on Anaheim, California for the Natural Products Expo West & Engredea, presented by New Hope Network. A record-setting 77,000 attendees made this year’s Expo West the world’s largest natural product event in history. Attending on behalf of B+L and our client…
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The 5 Reasons Why I’m Having a Shamrock Shake
Every time March rolls around you can count on three things happening in our office: 1) Someone will come around with an NCAA bracket to fill out. 2) Someone (usually younger than me) will ask me about my St. Patrick’s Day plans, to which I will reply “I’m too old to get sick on nuclear-green…
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Re-Packaging America’s Healthy Snack Industry
We’ve always been a world that snacks; from the introduction of Oreos in the 1910s, Twinkies and Fritos in the ‘30s and M&Ms in 1941, which were a way to send heat-resistant chocolates to WWII soldiers. In the ‘60s and ‘70s snacks as a convenience item blew up – the less assembly required to make…
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Heineken’s “Moderate Drinkers Wanted” Spot: Freud Would Approve
Like all major brewers, Heineken regularly launches responsible drinking campaigns, and with good reason. It helps them to stave off undue regulation, keep advocacy groups in check and generally look responsible and civic-minded—while still raising brand awareness. Unfortunately, many of these campaigns are so creatively lackluster that they seem like an afterthought, leaving no lingering…
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How to Beat the 50 Percent
In the U.S., about half of new businesses survive their first five years, and even fewer (one-third) make it to ten. But thanks to business incubator programs, these odds are improving. Last week FaB Wisconsin, the state’s food and beverage industry consortium, launched its own incubator-like program called FaBcap – a food finance and business…
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Health Food Trend an Opportunity for Marketing Partnerships
Talk to any fitness fanatic, physician or health magazine editor and they’ll tell you a healthy lifestyle begins in the kitchen. In fact, 41% of Gen Z and 26% of Gen X’ers said they would be willing to pay more for healthy food, increasing the adoption of healthier eating habits as part of a holistic…
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