Last week ended the annual exhibition of natural food and beverage brands at the Natural Products Expo East by New Hope Media in Baltimore, MD.
Over 1,000 natural brands in the food, beverage, nutraceutical and health & beauty industry presented their products and offered samples to over 24,000 attendees. New Hope also hosts an impressive array of classes, lectures, featuring industry leaders across subjects from health and nutrition trends, FDA changes in nutritional labeling to retailer data that is all useful for those in the growing natural products industry. Expo East is the east coast version of the massively larger trade-show on in California, Natural Products Expo West, which takes place in Anaheim, CA. This year Expo West 2017 will be held from March 8 -13th and encompasses the Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim Stadium, Anaheim Hilton & Anaheim Marriott. A new building will be added to the Convention Center for Expo West 2018.
SOLUTIONTOPIA was pleased to present two of it’s clients/partners at the Natural Products Expo East & Harvest Festival shows this year.
YUMAMI Go-Dip a line of vegan bean dip grab-n-go snacks with sophisticated Asian flavors and bean protein with a unique nori popped chip in the pack for dipping. Yumami was well received at the kick off of Expo East on Wednesday at Expo East’s Harvest Festival and was even selected as a Staff Pick by Project NOSH. The Harvest Festival is still not fully known to the masses, but as a product and business development services company, it has proven an excellent vehicle for assisting our clients to enter the industry when most booths are sold out a year in advance. This event also allows more one on one time for owners to talk with buyers, distributors and this year, with many investors. The Harvest Festival usually has a few open tables about 6 months out and is also a more cost effective option for start-ups just launching to market in order to gain exposure. Yumami has landed local New York City distribution and will be out in stores this fall.
AVOKE, which we first launched last year at Harvest Festival as a beta-test with proto-type packaging was a big hit as a newly launched to market brand. Last year Avoke received a NEXTY Award nomination and brought attention to this first packaged smoothie bowl brand which is “powered by avocado”. Each cup of of Avoke contains a half of avocado + 2 servings of fruits and vegetables along with 1 Billion CFU’s of probiotics. Avoke has been recognized as a trending item in HPP, the high pressure process of cold chain production that extends shelf life while keeping a clean label. The unique half-avocado shaped cup contains an eco-friendly spoon and a toasted quinoa topping that can be added to provide an extra punch of protein and extra crunch. Avoke will also be launching in the metro New York City region in this fall.
Solutiontopia also mentors start-up brands, a few which were lucky enough to make it to Harvest Festival this year. Congratulations to Better Beast and METABREW!
Daniel Karsevar, Founder & Chief Problem Solver at SOLUTIONTOPIA & is also a Mentor at TheBrooklyn FoodWorks and Advisor to many CPG brands. SOLUTIONTOPIA provides turn-key solutions, product development, and operational scaling solutions for food start-ups and national brands in the natural foods CPG space.