the Joshua Schall Audio Experience

Have you seen the prices of whey protein isolate lately? Explaining the multitude of factors causing record high commodity inflation would take longer than the allowable video length, but maybe I have a better solution for our current broken food system. Plantible uses proprietary technology to grow duckweed on aqua farms in West Texas that’s efficiently extracted into a complete protein called “R...

If there was a Super Bowl for convenient nutrition brands…Premier Protein would be considered the Kansas City Chiefs of the functional CPG category. BellRing Brands (NYSE: BRBR) is a portfolio that owns a collection of convenient nutrition brands like Premier Protein and Dymatize Nutrition, which was previously wholly-owned by Post Holdings. A fast-paced and busy lifestyle is pushing consumers to...

Whether dumping Tapatio into its whey protein or getting the most famous British girl group to become advisors is the ultimate answer…THG Nutrition must do something to “spice up” its strategy! THG (aka the company formerly known as The Hut Group) recently updated the public markets by releasing its 2024 Q4 interim trading statement. I’ll be utilizing that financial information, along with notes I...

Data insights company Circana just released its year-end recap analysis (and outlook) for the global retail food and beverage industry. To save you time (and a few headaches) from all that reading, I’ve compiled my top takeaways from that dense presentation. The first is that consumers are adopting more selective buying habits in hopes of making more room for discretionary items. Moreover, that’s...

Ferrero Group recently announced it had signed an agreement to acquire Power Crunch. But why would the one of the world's largest sweet-packaged food companies acquire Power Crunch? Ferrero Group is no different than other multinational confectionary giants from Hershey’s to Mondelez and Mars, as involvement within the bar format of convenient nutrition is not abnormal (whether entering throug...

After getting ghosted, Anheuser-Busch puts together a deal that no one saw coming [well almost no one]. But maybe why this deal news announcement by Anheuser-Busch caught so many off guard was that (even being in market more than two years now) the trailing twelve months of tracked channel retail sales for the 1st Phorm Energy drink would rank them just inside the Top 50 energy drink brands in the...

Why did the U.S. subsidiary that owns Stoli vodka (and many other alcohol brands) recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection? The most obvious answer is that everyone in America has stopped drinking alcohol, right? But if only every complex question could be answered plain and simple! Unfortunately, this is a dark tale twisted in time that arguably started with a countertrade agreement th...

Private label CPG is growing…and fast! Many will point to continued inflation as the major support for consumers switching to private-label alternatives, but what if it stems from a grocery retail CAPEX investment theme that started a decade earlier? Consider the digitalization of supermarkets…facial recognition cameras, AI-powered smart carts, smartphone apps, and I could keep going, but harnessi...

Looking back is a source of inspiration…rather than a sign of stagnation. But if there is no progress…there must be decline, right? Yet, I’m sure we’re all astutely aware of trend cycles across various forms of cultural expression. And one of my personal favorites can be seen through the Hip Hop music I grew up listening to. And that’s because Hip Hop music isn’t just inspired by jazz and soul…it’...

When you read the headline “Jenny Craig owner acquires Ancient Nutrition,” it might leave you befuddled…but what if I told you everything actually makes perfect sense? Wellful was essentially created in 2021 when Kainos Capital, a middle-market consumer products focused private equity firm, merged the direct-to-consumer weight management meal solution brand Nutrisystem with the supplement brand po...

What I’d consider traditional AI has already been built into many backend aspects of the CPG industry, but what about generative AI? I like to describe the ideal CPG industry AI scenario by using an analogy involving NFL offensive lineman. While these players are absolutely essential for success, you typically only acknowledge them when there’s a holding penalty. In the same manner, generative AI...

Quest Nutrition might possess much more revenue diversification compared to when it was acquired more than five years ago, but that doesn’t mean the Quest Bar has become any less of an important piece of the brand’s multibillion-dollar growth puzzle today. In this latest episode, I'll utilize the Q1 2025 Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ: SMPL) earnings report, earnings call, and supplemental pres...

I’d like to thank the Austin Business Journal for carrying on this decade-long tradition of sporadically mentioning Nutrabolt IPO rumors after each new major business milestone has been reached. The first IPO rumors showed up in an August 2014 PricePlow blog post…after it noticed a spike in search traffic related to Nutrabolt receiving a significant minority investment from private equity firm, Mi...

Each year, we’re currently adding more than 70 million new humans to the planet…which should make your head spin if you attempt to grasp how the food supply will handle this immense population proliferation. Were you able to pull an idea out of thin air? Wait a minute…that’s it! In the 1970s, NASA invented a method that allowed astronauts to use oxygen supplies to grow food. While this food techno...

If you haven’t noticed by now, I enjoy deconstructing the core mechanics behind different business models to see what makes them successful or not. It means dissecting how various companies generate revenue, understand their value propositions, identify their target markets, and examine the various strategies they use to deliver products and/or services. But I arguably have the most fun when analy...

What does the mythical phoenix bird rising from its own ashes after bursting into flames have in common with a Canadian supplement brand going public through a reverse takeover transaction? On December 19, 2024, a reverse takeover transaction involving Cizzle Brands was completed…and it was granted conditional approval to list its common shares on CBOE Canada (on December 30, 2024) under the stock...

Can we all agree that Liquid Death is the king of the CPG industry when it comes to brand collaborations? It’s newest LTO merch offering solves a major golf etiquette problem…especially for those that “had one too many” Liquid Death and believe golf courses are essentially just massive public bathrooms. Now…instead of always running to the woods to pee, golfers can whizz right on the course in fro...

On the Monday before the Christmas holiday, USANA Health Sciences (which if you didn’t know is a U.S. public company trading on the NYSE under the stock ticker USNA) announced its acquisition of an almost 79% controlling ownership stake in Hiya Health for a $205 million cash transaction…with contract features providing acquisition of the remaining equity at a pre-negotiated valuation scale. For th...

Comparing Poppi and Olipop is like comparing a college sorority girl and a biochemistry lab nerd. So, why does it seem surprising to most beverage industry pundits that consumers aren’t worried about recent claims disputing Poppi’s good-for-your-gut reputation? In the two months since Poppi was hit by a widely publicized class action lawsuit, retail sales numbers continue to crush harder than I am...

Several years ago, I explored three strategic paths of extending into nutritional supplements that would be available to major lifestyle brands predominantly known for athletic apparel. And those were obviously entering the supplement category through acquisition, internal brand development, or creating a strategic partnership. But since that original content was released, several large athletic a...

It was once famously said that “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” And that is certainly true regarding how the “Great Shutdown” era impacted American society. But while much of that story is still being written several years later…we can be quite confident that the way people approach their personal health (and wellness) will never quite be the same again. As a...

Yogurt! Yogurt! I hate Yogurt! Even with strawberries. Maybe Rick Moranis doesn’t like yogurt because he also has the technology to blow up and then shrink people…but for the more than 37 million Americans with type 2 diabetes, yogurt consumption could be on the rise. That’s because the FDA just announced it will allow the first ever qualified health claim for yogurt…recognizing that three serving...

About a year ago, Campbell Soup Company CEO Mark Clouse made that statement during a keynote presentation to student leaders saying, "I like to seek out experiences that challenge me. I like to do things that make me a little uncomfortable and that put me in positions where I was learning…where I was trying something that I might not have been great at.” And he’s right…as putting yourself in posit...

Vital Proteins was hardly the first supplement brand to utilize collagen peptides, but it has become a category creator that disrupted the entire protein space. And while most will focus on the brand’s leading share in the collagen market across every U.S. sales channel, I want to talk sustainability at Vital Proteins. For those unaware, collagen peptides are an upcycled byproduct of the meat indu...

Is the future of convenient nutrition centered around human fuel? Bombarded with tons of complicated information about what they should and shouldn’t eat/drink, busy health-conscious consumers are searching for nutrition simplicity. In fact, U.S. and UK consumers are spending (on average) half as much time preparing food as the previous generation…which is increasing interest (and demand) for high...