A key benefit of the program is the mentorship founders receive throughout the track. Each brand is paired with a carefully selected mentor team dedicated to helping them scale their business. SKU Elevate mentors are a who’s who of CPG leaders, successful founders and subject-matter experts who are all dedicated to helping to level the playing field for people of color in the consumer products industry.  

“I’d never had a cauliflower cracker growing up,” recalls King, the senior marketing manager at Mary’s Gone Crackers, Reno, NV. “And the idea of ‘gluten-free’ was unheard of. The ingredient lists on most of the crackers I ate were a lot longer, too.”

After more than two years apart, the Specialty Food Association (SFA) Trendspotter Panel gathered in person to search the aisles for the Show's hottest trends at the 46th Winter Fancy Food Show. Running February 6-8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Show featured thousands of products from around the world, with companies ranging from established to startup.

Sales of natural and organic products, including food and beverage, supplements, household, and personal care categories, are on track to surpass $300 billion by 2023 and $400 billion by 2030.

This is the first year that SKU will run two concurrent tracks, tapping into mentor talent in two regions and enabling a larger number of brands to participate in the accelerator’s acclaimed program. Both cohorts will be hybrid programs with both online and in person programming - a model SKU first adopted during the onset of the pandemic.

Starting this year, FoodBytes!, Rabobank's discovery platform that champions cross-industry collaboration between the most promising startups, corporates and investors, will move beyond its annual pitch competition and expand to a continuous scouting model, with 15 startups selected to participate in programming every quarter.

AAK, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of value-adding specialty vegetable fats and oils, announced Megan Brazil and John Lee have joined the innovation team at AAK’s Innovation Center in Richmond, Calif. Brazil has joined as a customer innovation scientist and Lee as an innovation technologist.

Prepared Foods opened its free submissions platform for the annual Spirit of Innovation Awards. Since 2003, these distinctive awards have honored food and beverage PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAMS for excellence in consumer insights, cross-functional execution and overall innovation.

Univar Solutions Inc. announced a collaboration with The Hatchery Chicago, a nonprofit food business incubator, to foster food and beverage innovation in one of North America's largest incubator facilities. 

Welcome to 2022! It’s a good bet this new year will fly by even more quickly than the past one just did. Recently a key retail executive forecasted that their industry will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 50. Another executive believes society will change more in the next 50 years than it has in the last 300.