64th Summer Fancy Foods Show shines a spotlight on specialty foods and emerging CPG brands.
The 2018 Summer Fancy Foods Show in NYC does not disappoint.
Overwhelm? With over 2,600 exhibitors covering 320,000+ square feet of exhibit space? Maybe a little. But there is a lot to be excited about walking the show. The depth and breadth of food product lines are impressive.
From the ordinary cupcake to macadamia nut milk to fermented food products, this show provides a local-to-international showcase that weaves a blended tapestry of tastes, innovation, and trends that no other show has rivaled.
The Summer Fancy Foods Show made it easy to see macro- and micro-trends in action. I came away with several takeaways I thought pertinent to share with our emerging food brand audiences.
2017 Top Trends in Fresh Foods SEPT 2017
The Perimeter is Still Winning vs. the Center of the Store
An emerging food brand should use every weapon available to create a compelling “selling story” for their food-buyer pitch meetings. So it pays to keep tabs on articles and research reporting trends. This IRI report on the FMI (Food Marketing Institute) website details the disruption occurring along the parameter vs. the store center, as well as what is driving it.
Health and wellness are playing a huge role in the growth of the store perimeter. The advent of organics and rise the locally-sourced food started years ago but has exponentially grown as consumers are looking for solutions to stay heart healthy and battle diabetes and cancer.
Ingredients (Literally and Figuratively) Make The Product
Graceland Fruit’s Premium Dried berries and fruits are gluten-free, and most are non-GMO.
Many food brands in the show were highlighting their product ingredients. From no sugar to non-GMO to organic and gluten-free, sourcing has played a significant role in how food brands are leveraging consumer buying trends to gain an edge in the selling conversation.
The sheer number of Summer Fancy Foods Show brands touting clean-label and ethically sourced ingredients is a pretty reliable indicator that clean = dollars. So while this trend has been growing steadily for some years, it has moved to the forefront of retail food buyers’ priorities.
The Rise of Keto (and Cauliflower)
nother related factor to the growing power of the parameter is the rise of the Keto diet. There are many reports and studies indicating that a diet that reduces carbohydrates while increasing fat, protein, and dark green produce in one’s diet can lower and control insulin levels. Processed carbohydrates found in “center of store” or dry-goods products containing rice, grains, and sugars are reported to raise and elevate insulin levels.
Path Of Life’s cauliflower rice products shows that cauliflower is one hot, diverse produce item when it comes to substituting carbs. Eggs – as in very thin omelet-style – have been repurposed into crepes to provide a protein-based wheat/grain product substitute with Crepini’s new products.
It seems like there is plenty of space on the shelf for emerging brands looking to break into the carb-substitute space.
FMIEmerge moves to support emerging food brands.
FMIEmerge had a commanding presence on the show floor. The NewPoint team met with Julie Pryor and Margaret Core, and they shared their mission as an FMI division to support emerging brands selling into retail. Stephanie and I were invited to be FMIEmerge Mentors which means we are coaching and mentoring emerging brands with webinars, posts, outreach and one-on-one calls.
I could not be more proud to be a part of the FMIEmerge mentor community! It helps that the NewPoint team lives and breathes food industry marketing and sales for our clients every day!
To identify and isolate areas for improvement in shopper marketing program strategies and tactics to further your CPG brand growth against set KPIs:
Maximize the economic performance of your CPG brand shopper marketing investment
Increase velocity at retail and consumer brand affinity
This shopper marketing audit will detail and contrast your CPG brand shopper marketing and messaging versus that of industry standard competitive practices and will include, but not limited to:
Target market reach, integrated retail marketing support, promotional continuity & awareness, offers and incentives, and tactical execution timing
Go-to-market launch strategies, timing, and tactical execution
Deliverables
Marketing Communication Audit Report
The deliverable will be a white paper with NewPoint Marketing findings and recommendations related to marketing activities in one retail partnership or DMA/market as defined by the client.
Brant brings 20+ years of experience to NewPoint as chief brand communicator and marketing-plan contributor.
Brant’s specialty is bringing an outside, investigative perspective that can feel alternately “rigorous” or “exasperating” depending on your point of view. Yet, he never fails to uncover a business’s unique selling proposition—one which can serve as a brand foundation for marketing that is compelling, creative and “sticky.”
Throughout his career, Brant’s applied his skill set to a broad range of business applications along the food supply-and-service chain. His services have provided vital clarity for all types of operations, from the more conventional food and food equipment manufacturers to the adjacent enterprises that partner with them, such as the Purdue University College of Agriculture.
Stephanie Bossung
Food industry marketing expertise—from retail to food-service and food-service equipment— is a natural outcome of having deep knowledge in every facet of a business’ operation. With 10 years in branding and business development, preceded by 15 years in mass media and promotions, Stephanie is an FMI Emerge mentor, holds an executive-level expertise in sales, marketing, media, and production management.
This exceptionally diverse skill set adds value for NewPoint clients by providing a full complement of perspectives on food-industry brand management endeavors.
Wired for a hawkish attention to detail while also maintaining a high-resolution view of the big picture, Stephanie is uniquely able to provide astute branding direction and simultaneously apply the business principles necessary to squeeze more bang out of every marketing buck.
Patrick Nycz
A member of the Forbes Agency Council and quoted in the New York Times, USA Today and Adweek, Patrick Nycz is the author of Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain: Marketing Strategies to Grow Local and Regional Food Brands. He is an FMI Emerge mentor, an American Advertising Federation’s Silver Medal Award winner, and the Founding President of NewPoint Marketing, a full-service food industry marketing firm focused on food industry brands On a mission to grow.
Patrick’s vision for NewPoint emerged from his team’s success using this proven model for food industry clients and is fueled by NewPoint-funded food buyers and food manufacturers research around tracking consumer, industry, and ongoing food trends.
Kristy Blair
Since starting her 20-year career in commercial graphic design at one of the foremost catalog retailers in the world, Kristy’s visual branding skills have organically narrowed into the food-industry niche.
In that time, she’s directed graphic identities for snack food and restaurant startups, print materials for multiple agricultural seed companies, display graphics and merchandiser signage for major food-equipment manufacturers and everything in between.
Today, as one of the key brand architects for NewPoint clients, she continues to lead our visual research & development team, always working to find the innovative median between the best practices worth honoring and the accepted rules worth breaking.