Walter Robb

The Foodservice Opportunity: Breaking Free from Retail's Margin Squeeze: For many CPG brands, retail margins are under relentless pressure. Slotting fees, private label competition, and constant promotional demands make profitability elusive. But there's an alternative: FOODSERVICE. According to foodservice expert Ed Zimmerman, founder of The Food Connector, the smart move is building foodservice channels while your retail business is still healthy, not as a last resort. A single foodservice deal—an airline contract, corporate cafeteria, or hotel group—can represent the volume of hundreds of retail stores combined. The real advantage? Those manufacturing efficiencies benefit your entire business, improving margins across all channels. Brands like Kellogg's, Perfect Bar, and Lesser Evil have cracked this code by repurposing existing products in new packaging formats to unlock million-dollar revenue streams while strengthening their retail competitiveness. Three Key Takeaways: 1. Start exploring foodservice before you're in crisis mode. Expanding while your retail business remains healthy gives you stronger negotiating power with foodservice partners. 2. Foodservice volume transforms your entire cost structure. Manufacturing efficiencies from large contracts flow back to improve retail margins, creating a compounding advantage. 3. Work with experienced foodservice guides. The channel operates differently from retail. Experts like Ed Zimmerman can help you avoid costly mistakes and accelerate success. Read the full post at: https://lnkd.in/e7g54caX Ed Zimmerman Hannah Feldman Matt Fry Brooks Nguyen Thaddeus Thorne Sadie Olsen Amy Zitelman Julie Garber (Ozlek) Phillip Oakley Ron Mills Ian Navarro Jeffrey Landsman Mike Schall Brittney Cook Katie Myers Lloyd Oshiro

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Coffee companies continue to trade at a premium — often well above the restaurant sector median. From Starbucks with a $90B+ market cap to the newly public Black Rock Coffee Bar, investors are rewarding the category’s combination of brand power, daypart diversification, and asset-light scalability. But the headline numbers obscure the nuance. Even within coffee, performance varies widely. Same category, different stories — some are growing fast but chasing margins; others command consistency but face saturation; and new entrants are yet to prove their brand. The spread reflects not hype, but differences in system sophistication, throughput, and capital discipline. Premium multiples in coffee aren’t just about caffeine (or beverage) culture — they’re a proxy for planning and execution. As valuations diverge, investors are leaning harder on diligence to separate durable growth from over-caffeinated projections. For emerging brands, understanding what drives those multiples — and engineering the systems behind them — will define who becomes the next Starbucks, and who stays local. #restaurants #valuation #coffee

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Health-Ade generated more than $173 million in dollar sales through January 20, 2026, according to Circana. In refrigerated beverage economics, that scale moves the brand beyond niche fermentation and into institutional perimeter relevance. Kombucha’s first chapter was narrative-driven live cultures, authenticity, alternative wellness. The current chapter is infrastructure-driven. Refrigerated resets have tightened. SKU counts have compressed. Velocity now determines survival. Brands that remain are those that justify cold-chain cost per linear foot. Following its reported $500 million acquisition by Generous Brands, Health-Ade expanded distribution into 8,000 Dollar General locations, 1,100+ Wawa, Inc. stores, and exclusive placement at Love's Travel Stops. That mix is meaningful. Value and travel are repeat-driven channels. They reward reliability and operational discipline. Expansion there suggests confidence in turns and margin structure, not experimentation. From a capital markets perspective, refrigerated scale changes the profile of a beverage business. Cold-chain infrastructure requires disciplined logistics, inventory accuracy, and retailer integration. But once that fixed network is absorbed, incremental doors improve operating leverage. Infrastructure does not guarantee dominance but it can compound advantage. From a retailer lens, sustained velocity strengthens negotiating posture during resets. Brands that consistently perform shape assortment instead of reacting to it. In a perimeter environment where space is finite, predictability becomes currency. From a competitive set lens, the framing shift may be the most important. Kombucha positioned solely as artisanal wellness competes narrowly. Positioned within a broader functional and metabolic conversation digestive support, routine system maintenance, low-sugar hydration it enters a larger performance-forward refrigerated ready-to-drink arena. The perimeter of the store carries implied credibility: freshness, daily utility, physiological intent. Categories built there skew habitual rather than occasional. Habit drives frequency. Frequency supports durability. Viewed this way, Health-Ade’s trajectory is less about flavor innovation and more about structural positioning leveraging refrigerated presence, scaled distribution, and retailer confidence to secure permanence within the cold box. Narrative may open the door. In refrigerated beverage, infrastructure keeps it. 🔌 BevNET CPG Media

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Important discussion shared by PeakBridge on ultra-processed foods and the clean-label movement that is growing louder. But one surprising reality is rarely discussed: Most “vanilla flavor” used in food products is not real vanilla. Not because companies don’t want to use it — but because natural vanilla supply has historically been too fragile, volatile, and limited to support global demand. For decades, the industry filled this gap with synthetic flavor systems. If the food industry is truly moving toward cleaner labels and real ingredients, then the ingredient supply chains behind them must evolve as well. At Vanilla Vida, our mission is to help enable that shift by building a scalable and reliable natural vanilla supply chain — combining controlled farming and industrial curing to bring stability to a historically unpredictable crop. #TheVanillaParadox

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This is an excellent summary from Troy Hooper on what’s happening in the restaurant industry with declining traffic and sales declines. As Troy mentions, everyone needs to be prepared to stop the bleeding as much as possible now so that we’re prepared to take advantage when the market turns positive in 2026.

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Searching for growth? General Mills has announced plans to boldly go after the over 55s in their quest to increase volumes. While much of CPG chases 18-45s or the latest wellness fad, General Mills is placing its bets on three under-the-radar, high-leverage consumer groups: - Adults aged 55 +, who account for nearly half of U.S. households and have enormous spending power. - Consumers using GLP-1 medications (up to 12%+ of U.S. adults), who’re eating less but seeking more protein, more functional nutrients, smaller portions. - Hispanic shoppers, where General Mills plans to ramp up innovation and engagement by ~40% in FY26. This move takes product renovation in new directions - redesigning products and formats to match how people now live, eat and feel. They’re innovating for smaller households (smaller pack sizes), higher-protein need states, functional nutrition and not just indulgence. And this isn’t an isolated move. It’s part of a broader CPG reboot as the absence of growth looms. Full article by Elizabeth Crawford here: https://lnkd.in/eC7uqJSk #CPG #Innovation #ConsumerTrends #GeneralMills #Wellness #GLP1 #MidlifeConsumers #BrandStrategy

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