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The residents of Cuyama Valley have been fighting a water use battle for three years, since agricultural giants Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms filed an adjudication lawsuit in 2021. KCSB's Rosie Bultman and Joyce Chi traveled to Cuyama Valley to get the latest on the situation. In Part 2, we learn more about the lawsuit, its impact on the community, and how residents are fighting back -- in courtrooms and with boycotts. (Music used: Blue Dot Sessions - Delmendra, Powder Room, Locker 08, Rate Sheet; Chad Crouch - Life and Times, Hot Pink
The residents of Cuyama Valley have been fighting a water use battle with agricultural giants Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms since 2021. KCSB's Rosie Bultman and Joyce Chi traveled to Cuyama Valley to get the latest on the situation. In Part 1, we learn more about the land and community of the Valley, and explore how its groundwater crisis led to an ongoing legal battle. --- Photo credit: Joyce Chi Music used: Pacing by Chad Crouch; Delmendra, Delle's Fog, Filing Away, and Astrisx by Blue Dot Sessions
Melinda Burns reports on the water wars in Cuyama, where small farmers are boycotting carrot behemoths Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms. At the farmers market, Karen Beverlin explains why carrots taste sweeter in cooler temps. Brothers Mario and Sal Marino look back on 40 years of Marino Ristorante, where John and Yoko brushed elbows with the likes of John Wayne. Ella Quittner settles the debate over the best way to cook pasta. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison heads to Artesia for Rajasthani food.
In the Cuyama Valley, Grimmway and Bolthouse Farms have sued landowners for their right to groundwater. As a result, a “Save the Cuyama Basin” movement sprouted up in the valley, and locals are being encouraged to boycott carrots produced by the two farms. KCSB's Siddharth Chattoraj spoke with Supervisor Das Williams and three Cuyama Valley residents about the lawsuit and the impact the fight for water rights has had on the local community.
Hi and welcome to the OWN IT podcast, where we celebrate the growing number of (women and non-binary) ad agency owners and talk about buying out of the boys' club of advertising, one agency at a time. Today, we're talking to Shannon LaBare of Purveyor Branding Co. She came up through the business as a graphic designer on the brand side of things. She spent time at Bolthouse Farms, then lead a creative team at Campbell's Soup. She launched Purveyor Branding Co., to help brands create a gravitational pull to customers in 2017. Since then, she and her agency have worked with brands across agriculture, food and beverage, consumer goods and more. Company culture is a big part of what she focuses on. Purveyor actually has a 30-hour work week. I love talking to creative people and I loved Shannon's perspective on the gender gap in our industry. Enjoy my conversation with Shannon LaBare. Thanks for listening to this episode of OWN IT. You can find links to Shannon's LinkedIn profile and Purveyor Branding Co.'s website in our show notes at untilyouownit.com. If you're enjoying Own It, please find it on your favorite podcast app and drop us a rating and review. Those help more people discover the show and join our community. Also, if you're a female or non-binary agency owner, or you want to own an agency someday, join our growing community at that same address … untilyouownit.com.
Get an insider's peak at the hottest products for Winter recommended by the Giant Healthy Living Team. All of the products are perfect for keeping it simple and nutritious. They're all Guiding Stars Rated and perfect for when you are looking to try something new. #GiantHasIt! Show Notes: Red & Green Anjou pears California Walnuts Alternative Oats Oatmeal - Acai Bowl (Acai + banana + guava), Banana Bread (banana + walnuts + cacao), and Island Spice (dragonfruit + coconut + vanilla bean) Bolthouse Farms smoothies (Handpicked) - Strawberry Banana, Amazing Mango, Green Goodness Chobani Zero Sugar - Key Lime Pie, Toasted Coconut Vanilla, Strawberry Cheesecake, Milk and Cookies Chobani Less Sugar (Handpicked)-: Madagascar Vanilla & Cinnamon Barvecue Plant Based BVQ Bear Creek Country Kitchens Darn Good Chili Mix Sea Cuisine Frozen salmon filets - Asian, sweet bourbon. Citrus herb, teriyaki and apple smoked Triscuit/Wheat Thin/Good Thin (Handpicked) crackers Blue Diamond Bold Almonds - Elote Mexican Style Street Corn (smokey, sweet, and tangy) and Korean BBQ (smokey, sweet, and spicy) Starbucks Nitro Cold Brew (3 GS) Biggs and Featherbelle Gift Sets - Cheers Set: with Bar-garita soap, Piano Bar soap, and Kareoke Bar soap or Date Night Set: Barlesque soap, Soul Kiss Lip Balm, and Lavendar Whipped Shea Butter Healthier Together Program: Join us for a live interactive class or watch a recorded session when it works best for you. The series starts January 16 - but you can join anytime! www.giantfood.com/healthiertogether
“Who'd of thought that the guy that said my idea of produce as a kid was green beans and corn in a can would be feeding the world today at Bolthouse Farms? -Kevin Fix Todd loves this quote.
Class is in Session with Ashleigh Rossi! Ashleigh is a Fresno State Alumni graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture Education and Communication. She worked for Bolthouse Farms for seven years in inside sales then completed her Career Technical Education Certification to start the Agriculture Education Program at Garces Memorial High School in 2018. She is the FFA Advisor at Garces. Future Farmers of America was the original name of this program until they changed it to The National FFA Organization in 1988. The program focusses on premier leadership, personal growth, and career success through agriculture education. At Garces, Ashleigh teaches agriculture food and natural resources, floral design and horticulture, ag sales, and marketing, and ag leadership and communications. During our conversation we were blown away with how impactful this program is for young adults. Since Kern County is largely know for generations of farming and agriculture, we are grateful to shine a light on this program. Let's keep the farming traditions alive!
Bolthouse Farms finalized the purchase of a popular juice brand from Starbucks, adding even more to the Bakersfield, Calif.-based carrot grower's stockpile of premium juice products. By August 1, the company closed the deal to acquire Evolution Fresh from Starbucks, including the brand, business and employees supporting Evolution Fresh, Uniting the two brands is another way for Bolthouse Farms to meet the growing consumer demand for functional nutrition in the fresh produce department and gain more leadership in the premium juice and refrigerated beverage categories in retail. “Evolution Fresh is a business and a brand that we have long admired,” said Chief Customer Officer Phil Kooy,” in this Tip of the Iceberg podcast episode. Our websites are www.producemarketguide.com, www.thepacker.com and www.ProduceEDU.com. Email: news@thepacker.com and artists@producemarketguide.com LinkedIn: PMG: Produce Market Guide and The Packer Instagram: @packernews and @producemktguide Facebook: @ProduceMktGuide and @PackerNews Twitter: @produceretailer and @thepacker To find our guest: Website: https://www.bolthouse.com/ Facebook: @bolthousefarms Instagram: @bolthousefarms Twitter: @bolthousefarms Pinterest: @bolthousefarms See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Taste Radio's hosts discussed Coca-Cola's decision to discontinue Honest Tea, the brand's legacy and impact on better-for-you beverage and food companies, and what the move might mean for new and emerging upstarts. They also highlighted recently announced speakers, including Bang Energy founder/CEO Jack Owoc and top executives from Whole Foods and Kroger, that will be joining the stages at BevNET Live and NOSH Live this summer and chatted about several innovative products that crossed their desks over the past month. Show notes: 0:40: Jacqui Wins Again, Mike Is ‘Country Curious' And Drinks Broccoli, Ray's Essential Travel Food – The episode opens with a chat about a country music star's bourbon brand, another trophy for Jacqui and why March 1, 2011 was a special day. John explained why some small brands will likely benefit from Honest Tea's discontinuation, Ray noted the sale of a pioneering cold-pressed juice brand and the hosts collectively spoke about some of their favorite new products, including a mouthwatering coated nut snack, outstanding RTD cocktails and cannabis drinks, plus some beverages made with unusual ingredients. Brands in this episode: American Highway Reserve, Honest Tea, Smithwick's, Shaka Tea, Odwalla, Zico, Nantucket Nectars, Snapple, Evolution Fresh, Bolthouse Farms, Bang Energy, Monster, Red Bull, Rockstar Energy, SkinnyDipped, Tipsy Lady Cocktails, Madre Mezcal, Artet, Levia, Reveal Avocado Seed Brew, Frescos Naturales, Broc Shot, Doozy Pots, Honey Mama's, Unique Belgique, Blissfully Better, Momofuku
Often we don't see it until it's been packaged and placed on the shelves, but the fruits and vegetables we consume on a daily basis are grown from an ever-changing set of practices concerning environmental, social and governance factors. But how is that system sorted, refined and defined? That's where Shelby comes in. In this episode of Fresh Takes on Tech, I'm joined by Shelby Layne, Director, ESG Hub at Bolthouse Farms, to talk about how she's taking on the complicated ecosystem of regenerative agriculture. Join us as we discuss: The ESG Hub and it's connection to regenerative agriculture What it means to help create harmony with regenerative agriculture Working towards creating a transparent and unified system of agriculture
Often we don't see it until it's been packaged and placed on the shelves, but the fruits and vegetables we consume on a daily basis are grown from an ever-changing set of practices concerning environmental, social and governance factors. But how is that system sorted, refined and defined? That's where Shelby comes in. In this episode of Fresh Takes on Tech, I'm joined by Shelby Layne, Director, ESG Hub at Bolthouse Farms, to talk about how she's taking on the complicated ecosystem of regenerative agriculture. Join us as we discuss: The ESG Hub and it's connection to regenerative agriculture What it means to help create harmony with regenerative agriculture Working towards creating a transparent and unified system of agriculture
Hello and welcome to the ZimmCast. Before getting to our featured guest I did a little look into the way back machine of AgWired. I found a ZimmCast I did with an interview with PrecisonEarth, owned by Cogent3D, Inc, and that's where I met Aaron Hutchison. We were at the InfoAg Conference in 2011 where the company was showcasing a new iPad soil collect and display app called PrecisionEarth. At the time that was still early use of iOS devices for precision ag. The company then moved on to a product called CropTrak. Now look forward to today and I just interviewed Aaron, President and Co-Founder, about CropTrak, a cloud technology solutions company that helps multinational food, beverage, agriculture, and protein customers increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of their supply chain management processes and systems. CropTrak just released a platform update that expands its capabilities to provide multi-stakeholders complete visibility of the financial transactions across their ingredient supply chain. For the first time, food and beverage companies managing grower contracts and settlements can do so in one seamless platform optimized for collaboration and insights. Aaron says “Our goal is to continue to lead the food industry with ongoing innovation and process improvements to help assure food is safe, affordable, and sustainable, while making paper contracts a thing of the past.” Sounds like a lofty goal and it is as CropTrak is working with companies like Del Monte, Bolthouse Farms, Corteva, Pivot Bio, Benson Hill and more. That's the ZimmCast. I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for listening.
We talk with Zak Karlen, general manager of farms for Bolthouse Farms, known for carrots. The 2,400 employees grow, process, package and market fresh carrots, value-added versions and CPG. Consumer Packaged Goods include buzzworthy carrots dogs, Bolthouse Farms juices, smoothies and jolt shots that act as immunity boosters, and carrot noodle kits for quick carrot-centic meals. We talk about how the company has adapted to pandemic health and supply chain issues, including labor availability, freight, prices, weather and more. Also, hear from our sponsor Potatoes USA, providing some merchandising data and insight into the fresh potato industry. Enjoy! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, we speak to two executives from Bolthouse Farms about innovation. The Bolthouse Farms story is a great business case on what innovation and collaboration can bring to a company. Innovation is woven through everything they do and think about. There is also an open invitation to reach out to the company with innovative ideas/products/technology at innovation@bolthouse.com
In this episode, we speak to two executives from Bolthouse Farms about innovation. The Bolthouse Farms story is a great business case on what innovation and collaboration can bring to a company. Innovation is woven through everything they do and think about. There is also an open invitation to reach out to the company with innovative ideas/products/technology at innovation@bolthouse.com
Jeff Dunn is the Chairman and CEO of Bolthouse Farms, a farm and consumer brand focused on carrot production and healthy beverages. Jeff was the CEO of Bolthouse for 6 years before helping sell the business to Campbell's Soup Company in 2012. In a twist of events, Campbell's sold the company back to Jeff last year. Jeff joins us to dive deep into that journey and to share more about what makes Bolthouse special and innovative. Tune in! Show Notes: https://themodernacre.com/173
Jeff Dunn cut his teeth at Campbell Soup Company, but he found his passion as CEO of Bolthouse Farms, a packaged foods company that grew out of a small Michigan farm in 1915. In fact, that passion led him to buy the company back from Campbell’s after selling it to them in 2012. In this episode of Lead With We, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jeff about how differences in company culture led to the buy-back and taking an agile approach to consumer packaged goods. Plus, we discuss how the enormous demand for plant-based foods is reshaping our food system and how COVID opened up a conversation between Jeff and his leadership team about empathy. Jeff Dunn Jeff Dunn is an Operating Partner at Butterfly and focuses primarily on the agriculture & aquaculture and food & beverage product sectors. Mr. Dunn is currently the Chairman and CEO of Bolthouse Farms and also serves on the board of directors of Orgain and Pacifico Aquaculture. He has over 30 years of experience in agriculture and packaged food, including senior leadership positions with Bolthouse Farms, Campbell Soup Company and The Coca-Cola Company, among others. Prior to joining Butterfly, Mr. Dunn was the President of the Campbell Fresh division of Campbell Soup Company from 2015 to 2016, where he was in charge of building Campbell’s scale and accelerating its growth in the rapidly expanding packaged fresh segments and categories across the retail perimeter. Between 2008 and 2015, Mr. Dunn was President and CEO of Bolthouse Farms, which is a leading processor and marketer of fresh carrots in North America, as well as a leading provider of super-premium juice, smoothies and salad dressings. Mr. Dunn also led Madison Dearborn Partners’ $1.6 billion sale of the company to Campbell in 2012. Prior to joining Bolthouse, Mr. Dunn was President and CEO of Ubiquity Brands, a rollup of several regional snack food businesses. Previously, he spent 22 years in leadership positions with increasing responsibility at The Coca-Cola Company, culminating with his role as President of Coca-Cola North America and Latin America, the largest of the company’s strategic business units. Mr. Dunn is also a co-founder of Acre Venture Partners, a Los Angeles-based venture capital fund that invests in the future of food. He currently serves as an advisor to Farmers’ Business Network, Spoiler Alert and Plenty and previously served on the board of directors of Herbalife and Juicero. This episode of Lead With We was produced and edited by Goal 17 Media and is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify, or watch this episode on YouTube at We First TV. Resources: Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn Learn more about Bolthouse Farms For case studies and other free resources about purposeful business, go to WeFirstBranding.com
Rob and Drew finish off the action-packed first book in Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy. The Final Draft features juice from Bolthouse Farms and a beer from Adroit Theory. Inking Out Loud is Drew McCaffrey and Rob Santos. Sound engineering by Patrick McCaffrey. Artwork by Danielle "FelCandy" Prosperie. Intro/outro music: "Moonlight" by Jivemind. Visit our website at www.iolpodcast.com/ and join the conversation on Twitter @IOLPodcast Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/inkingoutloud
My guest today is Rachel Porges, former CMO of Levain Bakery, the maker of the most famous 6-ounce chocolate chip walnut cookie. This is Part 2 of the interview where we explore how she grew the Levain business.This is the free edition of Marketing BS. Premium subscribers got access to part 1 of Rachel's interview yesterday and twice the content every week.You can also listen to these interviews in your podcast player of choice: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed (for premium episodes).This Essay is Sponsored by PulsarStop doing generic social listening: tap into Audience IntelligenceDifferent communities talk about the same topic differently. Carry out instant conversation analysis + audience segmentation in just one tool with audience intelligence platform Pulsar: understand the public conversation, identify the top communities in your audience, and glean actionable creative & media insights to power your marketing. TranscriptEdward: This is part two of my interview with Rachel Porges. Today, we're going to dive into her experience as Chief Marketing Officer for Levain Bakery. Rachel, can you start by explaining what Levain Bakery is, and how I'm mispronouncing it? Rachel: You're actually getting it exactly right, which is a first for me because nobody pronounces it right. Levain Bakery was founded about 25 years ago by two amazing women, Pam Leekes and Connie McDonald, as a little bakery shop in the Upper West Side in New York. They were actually training for marathons and were making cookies at home for themselves to keep up their energy. They're training for triathlons and were keeping up their energy with these giant cookies. They started selling them. The New York Times picked it up and the world changed. To this day, 25 years later, even in COVID, there are lines down the block at the bakeries for these cookies. They're an icon. If you've ever seen one of those pictures of a giant cookie being broken on Instagram, the genesis is Levain Bakery. Levain brought them private equity money a couple of years ago and hired a new executive chief, of which I was one, to take the brand forward and figure out how to scale it out of four bakeries in New York—three in the city, one in the Hamptons—and do three things. One was to increase the footprint of the bakeries and add stores, two was to grow ecommerce, and three was to launch into CVJ. I was involved in all three of those things over the course of my couple of years there. The store, it fits incredibly. Even in the middle of this pandemic, the performance of the stores and of all the other pieces of the business has been truly remarkable. I was super honored to be a huge part of it, and I continue to advise them today.Edward: How are they different than all the other bakeries out there? Is it just a better product? What makes them different?Rachel: It's a really interesting question. One is that this cookie, it's the first of its kind in this giant cookie. The cookies are six ounces. Picture a softball squished down and break it up with a ton of chocolate chips in it, it's a little insane, so just the size and scale. I think what Levain does better than anyone is in experience. When you walk in, you're greeted by people that love what they're doing. When you walk up to one of the bakeries—whether it's on the Upper West Side, or in the Hamptons, or the store we opened a couple of weeks ago in Washington, DC—outside, you see people snapping pictures of that cookie break. You see people with these joyous faces. That's what it does better than anyone.Sure, we have really great bread, some sticky buns, and all of those things, but what Levain does best is it creates a moment of joy for people. At any time, it's a big piece of it. Pam and Connie often talk about the fact that 9/11 people came up to the bakery as a place just to get a moment of normal [...] to hell that was that day. The same thing has happened. We got customers coming in during the pandemic handing our employees notes (with gloved hands) saying thank you for being here at this time. It's not just the cookie, that's the moment. What we see is that translates across ecommerce, certainly where people want to send their friend a moment of joy. They send our cookies via our DTC website. As I helped to create the CPG product, it was incumbent upon us to make sure that we did that there as well. It's really easy to throw something in a bag and put it on a shelf and have to be a different experience, but what makes those special is that breaking open that moment of joy, the dewy chocolate chips. We had to find a way to bring that to life at a grocery store when you don't control the environment around you.Edward: That cookie is obviously very important, especially for the brand. Is it important sales? What percentage of your sales would come from that cookie versus everything else?Rachel: I can't disclose numbers, but a whole hell of a lot. Edward: It's more than just a brand, though. It's like people come in and buy the cookie, and everything else is there almost just like an add-on. It's like, I'll have fries with that.Rachel: Yeah, which is ironic because the name is actually a type of bread. Levain is a leaven sourdough bread out of France. It's an actual name for a sourdough starter or a fermented starter. The brand is the cookie to some extent. Even our logo that we launched last year is a cookie. It has nothing to do with the original name of it. No one lines up down the street. I'd love to say they do. Certainly, our products are amazing across the board, but they line up down the street for the cookie. As we extended that brand, it became really important that the cookie stays at the center of it. That's where a lot of marketers sometimes get confused is they forget that the consumer has a voice in what you're trying to do. For us, it became really obvious as we were watching social media, as we were talking to people online, as we watched sales. They're telling us what to maximize growing this business. That became a big common arc of what we did as we extended the channels.Edward: Why expand the product at all? Do you get incremental sales by having bread? How do you decide what else to add in?Rachel: We've actually had much the same menu for the better part of 25 years. We haven't done a ton of add-in. Pam and Connie—prior to the growth equity coming in—made some changes along the way. In my time there, we actually didn't add anything. As we had to narrow the menu during the pandemic just to make it easier to operate, we didn't take out any of the cookies. We took out other things that were either complicated, took up space, or caused a little bit of operational hurdle. Bread actually—interestingly enough during the pandemic—became a bigger piece of it because people needed the staples at home in a way that they didn't before, or they had other venues to get it before. But the cookies remained true. In the time that I was there, there are three big innovations that I helped with. One was the ice cream sandwich on the Upper East Side last summer using our cookies, which is kind of a media darling at the time. It drove a lot of excitement because suddenly, we are using our cookies for a different purpose. By the way, ridiculously decadent and very much in keeping with the brand, we launched the first-ever chocolate chip cookie without nuts, which was unheard of before at Levain. Levain had only had a chocolate chip cookie with walnuts. We launched a chocolate chip cookie, it's called Two Chip Chocolate Chip. It has two different types of chocolate chips in it. We launched that when we opened our no-host store in February of 2020. We'll do that to the other bakeries as well. Just a couple of weeks ago, we co-created a cookie in Washington, DC with a local James Beard recognized chef. Again, made sure we savored the cookie and brought something to life, but did it in a way that localized the brand as we are going to new markets. Edward: I want to talk a little bit about moving Levain into CPG from retail. You've already mentioned a little bit of the challenges doing it. What are the other challenges of moving a retail brand into CPG?Rachel: Product experience is number one on that list, so maintaining the experience. It doesn't have to be the same experience as what we found, but it had to be something that was relevant. We actually didn't launch our six-ounce cookies into CPG. We did an everyday indulgent size two-ounce cookie. The reason we did that is because who needs the six-ounce cookie every day? You're not going to get the eating occasions you need for the velocity at the shelf at retail. We did that. We also did it in a way that wasn't very main to a lot of brands. You see it even recently with Milk Bar. They go and they launch into the same set that has Tate's, Oreo, and all of these other brands in it. For us, we decided to go to frozen desserts because it is a dead category in a place that we could really stand out and deliver real value to the retailer and to the customer. That was a lot of fun. The other thing is cannibalization. You have to be really clear of what you're trying to achieve, and make sure you do nothing to either bastardize or cannibalize the cash cow, the thing that's giving you life. Moving forward, assuming that the CPG product continues to be as successful as the early launch numbers would show, the vast majority of the consumers in the world are going to experience us first as a CPG brand. We had to create a really nice usage circle that encouraged them to also consider coming to New York and coming to the bakery or purchasing the crazy giant cookies as a gift for friends. It all has to be really harmonious. If you try to segment it out and make it one versus the other, you're losing the value that the future buyers at one bakery might actually want.Edward: Where is the future value of CPG? Is it almost as a loss leader driving to the bakeries, or is it a profit center in itself? In fact, to your point, a much more scalable product than your bakeries. Are your bakeries the marquee that helps you sell CPG or the CPG like a marketing channel that gets you to the bakeries?Rachel: Both. It's certainly the latter. It's certainly not a loss leader. It's certainly a valid profit center into itself as it grows. I couldn't say that you would put one over the other. Obviously, the scale you can get at a CPG, you can take [...] and go to 40,000 stores, as opposed to the cost of building out 40,000 bakeries. It would be alarmingly high, not to mention highly cannibalistic at some point. I'm not speaking to Levain strategy, but I don't think it would ever make sense for Levain to be on every street corner everywhere. We said that time and time again. There's still a beauty in the scarcity of that bakery experience and in making it a moment of joy. It's the same thing as my time at Kriser's and other brands. You have to maintain an experience to bother having a brick and mortar facility. It has to be something that you walk in. It's not just about the transaction. Nothing in brick and mortar is strictly transactional anymore. We've seen the failure of so many bricks and mortars that were strictly transactional. CPG creates a moment that appeals to a consumer who has a craving at home and needs something in their pantry or in their freezer to heat up at night. Retail creates an experience when you want to have that, when you an Epicurious traveler who walks into New York, DC, or wherever we had next, and wants a real moment of experience. There are different [...] but they are fed together if the brand stays harmonious. Edward: Let's say 40 years from now, the pandemic is over, people go to the restaurants again and both businesses are super successful. You've expanded to CPG, you've expanded the footprint for the retail. At that point, looking that far into the future, are they both comparably sized businesses? Maybe the retail business is smaller but more profitable, but the received CPG business is larger but smaller margins?Rachel: I don't want to speculate too far into the future. There's only so much I can share, but they both have a place. I think DTC does this well for what it's worth. Whether it's me or whoever comes in next as CMO and obviously our CEO—Andy—they have to make sure that they're always building around the consumer insight. That's the key for it. The consumers will dictate ultimately the size of the prize. They'll tell you how big it is. You could see a world in which the bakery product set is mimicked in retail at some point. Here's the core bet. Cookies are a red herring to some extent. What you're creating is a decadent moment of joy. It's ooey, gooey, delicious, warm, fresh-baked, and it has all this connotation around it. You could take your product line into different places. You could take your bakery experience to different places as long as you maintain that experience across the channels. I don't know whether it's size, product varieties, or how that comes to life, but the consumers will dictate the size of the prize for sure.Edward: What are the prerequisites for a retailer moving in the CPG? You've had obviously a lot of success, Starbucks has a lot of success, but I don't go into my Safeway and see Subway sandwiches prepackaged. Maybe those exist, but they surely aren't successful. What do retailers need to have done in order to be successful when they move into the CPG?Rachel: Building a brand that has something unique about it is the core. Not to crap on Subway, but I'm not sure that Subway has a unique factor in the way that if you look at Jersey Mike's, they do Mike's way and they have a sauce that goes on. There are unique things that make that special. You could take some of that [...] in it. They launched their sauces at Whole Foods and have a CPG business. Milk Bar has done it recently with their product. There's a real distinct point of view for some of these brands that have gone from bakery, restaurant, or a retail brick and mortar experience into CPG. Hale and Hearty did with soups here in the city for a while. That's what really matters. Years ago, when I was at Unilever, I launched P.F. Chang's frozen. It was the biggest launch in North America that year. It was because, at that time, P.F. Chang's was incredibly loved by consumers. It had a really distinct point of view. It was this very bold flavor profile to most of America at the time—this is 2010—which doesn't sound like it was that long ago, but P.F. Chang's is bold. When we were creating the products, we did our damndest to make sure that we kept that flavor profile, that mouth deal, to the extent that we were worrying one morning at 8:30 AM. We were talking about the cut of carrots. Bolthouse Farms had run out of the carrot cut that we usually use for orange chicken. We were tasting different cuts of carrots in the orange chicken to make sure we didn't do anything to lose that mouthfeel and taste profile for P.F. Chang's. That's what it is. You have to have a point of view that can be carried into a new format, irrespective of the chairman. I actually helped advise a small brand called tenoverten which is a nail salon company here in the city. They're [...] different times. They launched their nail products into Target. When they opened their nail salons in the city, it was with the idea of creating an environment that was better for the employees and better for the customers in terms of the chemicals used in the products, the odors, and the space, the nail polish remover, they were using non-acetone. They were creating a whole new environment. When they launched their products into Target, it was with that same mindset. It was with that mindset of being very conscious of everything that went into that product experience. It's been really great. They've had some great success in CPG. That's what it comes down to. Same thing if you look at a brand like Drybar. They were able to create products that live outside of their retail environment. It was taking that point of view and that experience into something that you could bring and port with you. Edward: That was super insightful. I want to dive back a little bit and go into the retail space and growing the retail space. It feels like a big, important part of growing retail is having a really good product and having a really good location. Given that you have those things, as a marketer, how do you help accelerate the business beyond that?Rachel: There are two things in my past that come to life. One is making sure that you're never resting on your laurels. Kriser's was one of my past experiences. I remember my second week on the job at Kriser's. The brand was called Kriser's For Your Pet's All Natural Life when I started. If you look across the parking lot in Irvine, California, or in Englewood, Colorado, you see Kriser's For Your Pet's All Natural Life. I walked back in my second week of the job and I said to the CEO, we have to change the name of the store. He said, would you like to wait until week three to have that opinion? I said, no. I know you've been doing this for nine years, when you're standing across the parking lot, you can't read it. People don't know what it is. You can't see that icon that you created. You can't see that it is a pet retail environment. We did and sales popped up. It was a matter of continuously questioning everything you are doing and making sure that it really rang true to what the customer needed. Along with that is the idea of using customer experience to help drive your communication. As marketers, we strive for advocacy. It's the top of the pyramid or the bottom of the funnel or the top of the funnel depending on which area your funnel's headed this week. You want those handfuls of customers to be really crazy advocates for your brand. Social media and digital platforms have given us a method to repurpose that at scale. At Levain, we took our social following from 100,000 to 250,000 people in less than 18 months. The way we did that was by using what consumers were telling us time and time. We didn't pay a single one of those followers. It was because we were using what consumers were showing their friends in our communication. There was this great virtuous cycle of user-generated content, sharing experiences, bringing people back, and wanting that same experience. We started creating our entire photoshoots around the idea of capturing that same piece of experiences. We did our influencer work, it became the same thing. As we built our new website last year in 2019, we did the same thing. We used images that were representative of what the consumer was telling us mattered to them. With retail as a marketer, it goes back to always being the voice of the consumer and championing that to executives who are more focused on operational efficiency, product assortment, or labor cost because nothing matters if the consumer doesn't carry it forward. Edward: Yeah. It's almost not even appealing to the consumer. It's using your consumers for market research, like figuring out this is what they value because this is what they're sharing and this is what's getting traction among consumers. Let's use that and just scale it.Rachel: For sure. It's the cheapest form of market research. Who needs to run a study when people are telling you every single day? You have social listening. There are a million platforms for social listening. Just search the hashtags on Instagram or on Tiktok, and you will see what consumers are telling you. You joked at the beginning of the last podcast or the beginning of this one, about not saying Levain correctly. There's a whole world in which we needed to understand that people don't understand how to say our name.On the back of our CPG process, our product, and on our website, there's a comment that says ləˈvan in phonetics. It's the idea of, oh, we can actually work and have this dialogue in this interaction with consumers. One of the tech platforms I love is a company called Pixlee. They're from the Andreessen Horowitz Portfolio. They do a beautiful job with helping friends commercialize their user-generated content, either by just embedding it on the website or by enabling you to make that shoppable by scaling the idea of a permissioning UGC. I use it on almost every website I put together, because isn't it better to show not tell? Marc Mathieu—who was the former CEO of Unilever and Samsung at one point—he had a quote. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was, but it's something along the lines of, marketing used to be about creating a story and telling it. Now, it's about finding the truth and sharing it. Insofar as we as marketers listen to our truth—not just our truth but what consumers are telling us is true about us—we're just going to be so much more successful. That gives us the content by which the van Gogh do your AB testing, site optimization, social media buying, and all of these things that are the technical side of marketing. They're BS—to use your term—if you don't have the right assets and the right communication embedded within it.Edward: This has been awesome, Rachel. Before you go, tell me about your quake book. Rachel: I probably have two, actually. One, I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice when I was a teenager. Edward: How did that change your world view?Rachel: I became a romantic. My parents weren't lovey-dovey. I wasn't into all the romance stuff when I was a kid, but that changed my view of where romance novels started. To me, it's the basis for almost every great romance novel that ever existed. Poor guys in my life have probably set up a really bad bar to be measured against. Most recently, I just finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing. I don't want to give away the book if people haven't read it, but it tells you about, again, prejudice about seeing the truth, and how much you can fall prey to people's ideas of what things are. To me, it was a truly beautiful book, but also that meant that I'm going to be thinking about it for quite a while.Edward: Thank you, Rachel. This has been great. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com
Get caught up on key news in the industry with Packer Insight, this week featuring discussion of leafy greens traceability, private equity in produce and the New York Produce Show. For more on these topics, check out the following articles: Leafy green pilots reveal value of sharing extended product information — Investigations into foodborne illness outbreaks could be streamlined and conducted more effectively when supply chain partners provide extended product information during tracebacks. Company viewpoints on New York Produce Show — We asked several company leaders and representatives to weigh in on their experience with the New York Produce Show in years past and the virtual version planned for Dec. 8-11. Here's what they had to say. Analyst: Fresh produce continues to draw interest from investors — The planned sale of Bakersfield, Calif.-based Grimmway Farms to Teays River Investments comes less than two years after another carrot giant, Bakersfield-based Bolthouse Farms, sold to Butterfly Equity. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg,” Dani talks with Jeff Dunn, Bolthouse Farms Chairman and CEO. Bolthouse Farms, a leading carrot grower and distributor in the U.S., has branched out to functional beverages, dressings, and plant-powered meal “swaps,” which Dunn believes can help Americans eat more plant-based diets and live healthier lifestyles. He describes Bolthouse’s latest innovations and how they are addressing discrepancies in the food system and industry. While you’re listening, subscribe, rate, and review the show; it would mean the world to us to have your feedback. You can listen to “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” wherever you consume your podcasts.
Watch the 9malls review of Pizza Carrots from Bolthouse Farms. Is this unique pizza flavored snack food worth getting? Watch the hands on taste test to find out. #pizza #carrots #review #tastetest #food Find As Seen On TV Products & Gadgets at the 9malls Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/9malls Please support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/9malls
On today's show, footwear company Steve Madden increases their investments in digital advertising to drive continued e-commerce activity. https://edge.winmo.com/hubnews/articles/30756 Also, Bolthouse Farms taps a new PR agency of record after restructuring their media team. https://edge.winmo.com/hubnews/articles/30759
Show Notes: https://themodernacre.com/119
Rob and Drew journey back into Robert Jackson Bennett's Founders Trilogy with the just-released volume 2: Shorefall. The Final Draft features a juice from Bolthouse Farms and a very special beer from Casey Brewing and Blenders. Inking Out Loud is Drew McCaffrey and Rob Santos. Sound engineering by Patrick McCaffrey. Artwork by Danielle "FelCandy" Prosperie. Intro/outro music: "Moonlight" by Jivemind. Visit our website at www.iolpodcast.com/ Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/inkingoutloud
Drew and Rob sit down to cover the last half of The Gathering Storm, book 12 of The Wheel of Time. The Final Draft features Stable 12 and Bolthouse Farms. Inking Out Loud is Drew McCaffrey and Rob Santos. Sound engineering by Patrick McCaffrey. Artwork by Danielle "FelCandy" Prosperie. Intro/outro music: "Moonlight" by Jivemind. Visit our website at www.iolpodcast.com/ Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/inkingoutloud
This story is a collaboration between The World and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Listen to the latest episode of Reveal for more on this story.On a recent morning in Salinas, California, in the state's rural heartland, David Rivera and Alfonso Hernández worked shoulder to shoulder, installing irrigation pipes across freshly plowed fields that stretched to the horizon. Wearing jeans and sweatshirts with their hoods up to block the sun and dust, they prepared the fields for a spring planting of spinach, lettuce and broccoli. Nearby, a large billboard featured a man wearing leather gloves and a white cowboy hat, an irrigation pipe hoisted over his shoulder. It read: “Salinas Valley. Feeding Our Nation.”A version of this story originally aired on The World. Listen here. It was mid-March, the same week that US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency because of the novel coronavirus. By then, over 250 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom's statewide shelter-in-place order was imminent. Just an hour or so drive north in Silicon Valley, businesses and schools were shuttering, and hundreds of thousands of people began working from home.But for people like Hernández and Rivera, working from home was not an option. An estimated 2.5 million farmworkers across the United States are now deemed essential workers — exempt from shelter-in-place restrictions to keep the country's food supply flowing. California farms are vital to that system, producing a third of the country's vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts. At a time when social distancing and careful sanitizing are necessary safeguards, little has been done to protect farmworkers.Yet at a time when social distancing and careful sanitizing are necessary safeguards against exposure to the coronavirus, little has been done to protect farmworkers, many of whom are undocumented and work in remote, rural parts of the country with little access to health and social services."No, not yet,” Hernández said in mid-March, when asked whether he and his co-workers had met with their employer — Elkhorn Packing, a Salinas-based farm labor contractor — about workplace safety in the face of the coronavirus. “There should be a plan in place by now,” he said. But Rivera and Hernández, both from Mexico and unauthorized to work in the US, were hesitant to push the issue, grateful to have jobs. Many of their neighbors were already losing their jobs at restaurants, day care centers and hotels.COVID-19: The latest from The WorldAs they spoke, at the far side of the field, a crew of 20 men and women arrived to work in carpools, crammed into trucks and minivans. Armando Elenes, secretary-treasurer of the United Farm Workers of America, said he and his team have been surveying farmworkers informally for weeks, asking what messages they're getting from their employers. A March 24 poll of about 300 mostly nonunion farmworkers found that more than three-quarters had received no guidance from their employer on safer ways to work, Elenes said. He said many farmworkers, like Rivera and Hernández, are scared that without changes, they remain vulnerable to infection.“Rightfully so, because they're not being provided information,” Elenes said. “They're scared of losing the money. They're scared of getting infected.”He said it angers some farmworkers to be heralded now as essential, after those who are undocumented have lived with virulent anti-immigrant sentiment and threats of deportation from the Trump administration. “So when the government says they're essential workers,” he said, “the workers are responding, saying, ‘Now we're essential?'” A sign in Salinas, California's rural heartland, which is home to tens of thousands of immigrant farmworkers. Credit: Monica Campbell/The World Elenes said many immigrant farmworkers feel compelled to keep working, even while sick, aware that other jobs are drying up as the economic crisis deepens. A skipped paycheck means not only less money for their families in the US, but less support for family members in their home countries. “They're going to continue working because they don't feel that they have a choice. You know, bear with it, work through it,” Elenes said. “It's really distressing because these workers are the backbone of this country in terms of the food supply chain.”Hernández said that last week, long after the US had become the epicenter of the global pandemic, there had been a meeting with his boss at last. “We were told to wash our hands more,” he said.Related: Food supply logistics need a coronavirus 'reset,' says UN economistThat was it. No gloves or disinfectant supplies, he said. No conversation about avoiding crowded carpools to work, no changes to ensure more physical distance in the fields. Elkhorn Packing did not respond to an interview request. As of this week, there is no mention of the coronavirus on the company's website.Excluded from reliefThe $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed into law March 27, provides $9.5 billion for growers, ranchers and agricultural companies. Yet the legislation blocks many farmworkers themselves from seeking federal help. Nearly half of all farmworkers are unauthorized to work in the US, and the bill limits assistance to those with Social Security numbers.More than a million people deemed essential workers are ineligible for federal assistance from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.That means more than a million people deemed essential workers are ineligible for the one-time cash payment of up to $1,200 that the federal government will issue in coming weeks. Many farmworker families will also be blocked from receiving the bill's $500 rebate per child if their parents lack a Social Security number. And unauthorized farmworkers are also unable to apply for unemployment insurance, which the aid package expanded by $600 a week for up to four months. Some members of Congress are seeking to make future coronavirus economic relief measures more inclusive. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-CA, whose district includes the Salinas Valley, co-sponsored a new bill in early April that, among other measures, loosens eligibility requirements so “workers, regardless of their immigration status, have access to health, nutrition, and financial aid during this crisis,” he said in announcing its introduction. “We're going to continue to fight for these protections,” Panetta said in a recent interview. The pandemic, he said, is “highlighting not just how valuable farmworkers are, but how vulnerable they are.” Panetta wants to see bolder moves as well, such as temporary legalization for essential workers who are undocumented.For now, the exclusion of many immigrants from federal relief will force hard choices. “If it's your only income and you don't really have access to unemployment, then you've got to keep working,” said Daniel Sumner, an economist at the University of California, Davis. “You're willing to do things you wouldn't do normally.”Related: How Japanese and Mexican American farm workers formed an alliance that made historyMore than two-thirds of farmworkers also lack health insurance.An earlier bill, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, provided financial incentives for companies to provide paid sick leave, “ensuring that workers are not forced to choose between their paychecks and the public health measures needed to combat the virus,” according to the Department of Labor. Yet the new rules exclude companies with more than 500 employees, including such large agricultural employers as Elkhorn Packing. That means Hernández and Rivera won't be eligible. The new law also allows businesses with fewer than 50 employees to seek an exemption from providing paid sick days. “That means a lot of farmworkers will be left out of this paid-leave provision,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. Costa's research shows that most farmworkers are employed by small farms, and he expects that “the vast majority” of those farms will apply for the exemption. Vineyards in California's Salinas Valley. Vineyard workers are, like all agricultural workers, considered essential during the coronavirus pandemic. Credit: Monica Campbell/The World The Agricultural Council of California, as well as California's largest growers — including Taylor Farms, Driscoll's, Bowles Farming, Bolthouse Farms, Swanton Berry Farm, Sábor Farms, The Wonderful Company and Grimmway Farms — did not respond to or declined interview requests for this story, as did officials with the state and federal departments of agriculture. However, some large farms have posted statements outlining their commitment to employee health and safety. Driscoll's, a berry giant based in Watsonville, California, states that it is following all “precautionary measures from social distancing to the basics of hand washing that have always been fundamental to our food safety standards. Rigorous reinforcement of food safety and worker standards are already in place within our network of independent growers and throughout our supply chain.”Related: The people who pick your berries in Washington will now be represented by a unionDave Puglia, president and CEO of Western Growers, a trade group that represents some 2,500 fruit and vegetable growers, said farmers are taking worker safety seriously.“We're all making as many changes we can as quickly as we can,” he said. “I am actually confident that farmers have been diligent in increasing all that they already do to protect workers in the fields in light of the coronavirus pandemic.”Some smaller farmers said they are offering their workers paid sick leave, even if they may not be required to do so under the new federal rules. Phil Foster, who runs organic farms in San Juan Bautista and Hollister, California, said he has expanded paid sick leave to over 60 hours for his 38 full-time employees. “My hope is that the folks on the farm are going to stay as healthy as they can, with maybe a few blips here and there,” he said. “We will continue to try and get fresh produce out to people in our community and our region.”Foster anticipates that his workers may soon need to wear face masks, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended this month. He has a few coveted N95 masks on the farm, but not enough for everybody — and he can't find any online or anywhere else. So he's improvising. “My wife is a schoolteacher, and when she is not doing online classes, I'm seeing if she can sew up some masks,” he said. He is also asking one of the field workers, who also works as a seamstress, if she can sew some. “We're doing the best we can ...We realize none of these measures provide 100% security, but are best efforts with the information that we have available."Paul Muller, an owner of Full Belly Farm“We're doing the best we can,” said Paul Muller, an owner of Full Belly Farm, an organic farm near Sacramento, California. He recently changed policies so that crews no longer travel with more than one driver and one passenger in the trucks. He also expanded paid sick time to two weeks. “We realize none of these measures provide 100% security, but are best efforts with the information that we have available to date from our public health experts,” he said.Yet overall, farmers' responses appear uneven. Esmeralda Zendejas, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance, which serves many agricultural workers, said some growers were staggering work and break schedules so fewer employees were gathered together at the same time. But she is also receiving reports of troubling violations. “Just last week, we got a call from a worker who said there was no hand soap on the farm,” Zendejas said. “It's alarming because these violations have been occurring and now, with the crisis, we're seeing that continue with even higher risk for the worker. And these are just the workers who take the step to call us. We're sure that this is happening on a larger scale and workers are just not reporting for any number of reasons, including job insecurity.”Related: California hospital translates coronavirus information for immigrantsBrenda Eskenazi, a public health professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has helped lead extensive studies on the health of Latino farmworker families in California. She noted that even when hand-washing stations are provided, they are often set up too far away for frequent access. The time it takes to reach them can mean money lost. “It might be really difficult to wash your hands for 20 seconds and to do this multiple times a day, especially if you're getting paid by the basket of strawberries that you pick,” she said. “You might want to rush the process.” “Clearly, oversight is needed,” said California state Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat whose district includes the Salinas Valley. “There's no question about it. We don't have a system that says, ‘Here are the new rules that everybody has to work under, and here is the oversight in place to make sure that the rules are followed.'” Improvising to mitigate riskWith few protections in place, field workers are doing what they can to protect themselves. Claudia Isarraz, 43, lives with her husband and two US-born teenage sons in Greenfield, a small town near Salinas. Isarraz belongs to Líderes Campesinas, an advocacy group of female farmworkers in California, and works for $13 an hour pruning grapes at nearby vineyards, which have remained open, as the agricultural industry as a whole has been labeled essential. Weeks before the state imposed the shelter-in-place order, she said she began washing her hands more at work and encouraging her co-workers to do the same. Claudia Isarraz, of Greenfield, California, says she tries to keep distance from her co-workers as they work in the fields. She no longer carpools and shoulders the cost of driving alone to the fields. Credit: Monica Campbell/The World She is also trying to put distance between herself and co-workers who appear sick. Recently, she said, a 65-year-old co-worker was coughing and sneezing while hunched over the crops. “I asked her, ‘Shouldn't you be home?' ” Isarraz said. The woman waved her off. “She told me it was her allergies.” Isarraz moved to another row in the field, doing what she could to protect herself from any potential exposure.Although it was an expensive decision, Isarraz canceled her carpool, which used to involve packing in five or six people to share the cost of gas. As of late March, she said, “I'm going to work on my own, driving on my own.”But not everyone can do that. On the outskirts of Greenfield, where paved streets give way to dirt roads, a long row of modest single rooms are lined up, one after another, across from vast fields. Their beige walls and doors match the earth. Nicolás Merino González lives in room 13. Still in his late 20s, he looks older than his years after a life of outdoor work. In mid-March, Merino was still heading to the fields by cramming himself into the cab of a pickup with other workers. On a recent morning commute, Merino said, a fellow passenger could not stop coughing. “It was like that for four days,” he said. “I thought, ‘It's not good that he's going to work sick now.' But staying behind means a lost day for him.” Nicolás Merino González, a farmworker in Greenfield, California, wires money back to his wife and three children in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Social distancing is tough for Merino, who carpools to work in a cramped pickup. Credit: Monica Campbell/The World Merino understands the pressure to work. He works in the spinach and lettuce fields of Greenfield in order to wire money back to his family in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, more than 2,000 miles away. The $13.50 an hour he earns is an economic lifeline for his three young children, paying for food and utilities. He is the family's sole breadwinner. On a recent day off, Merino rested outside of his room, which he rents for $260 a month. The room is small, with just enough space for a single bed. A half-full bottle of rubbing alcohol sat on a nightstand. “I use it to clean my hands,” he said. “If I get a cold, I'll rub it on my face.” For soap, Merino uses a single bright pink bar, shared by all the other lodgers, in their communal bathroom. The kitchen and showers, too, are shared. Social distancing is difficult.Roger Tenanuque, the caretaker of the lodging house, grew up in Greenfield and now lives three doors down from Merino. Although he earns little more than cash-strapped renters like Merino, Tenanuque does his best to keep things stocked. He buys soap and paper towels with his own money, he said. When asked whether he thought the renters here would stay home from work if they felt ill, he said, “I don't think so.” Roger Tenanuque is the caretaker for a cluster of single rooms rented by men who work in the fields near Greenfield, California. He rents a room in the complex himself, where residents eat and bathe in communal areas. Credit: Monica Campbell/The World Merino hopes to avoid making a tough choice. He said he has never called in sick in the United States and has never visited a hospital here. “I have been in Mexico, where I have insurance,” he said. “But I don't have that here.”The next challenge for Merino and other farmworkers may be less work. Several field workers said they were already seeing a cutback in hours in the past weeks. Areceli, 41, who asked to use only her first name because she is undocumented, cleans lettuce and spinach leaves near Greenfield. Last week, she was asked to work eight hours a day instead of her typical nine. Other farmworkers also said their hours were reduced. Related: These migrant workers are telling their stories through comic books“We're seeing losses of hundreds of millions of dollars per week easily in the fresh produce industry,” said Puglia, of Western Growers. “Restaurants, but also schools and universities, hotels and resorts — think of Las Vegas, for example — have all shut down for the most part. And that means that farmers, whose customers are in the food service supply chain, are in a really tough spot.”Caballero, the state senator, mentioned other signs that the industry is under stress. This week, she said, strawberry producers told her of canceled contracts with grocery stores and deliveries being turned away. Growers told her that they ended up donating the perishable berries to food banks. Related: How immigrant workers are preparing for automation in agricultureCaballero said there is “great consternation” among growers about consumer demand for their summer harvests.“I'm hearing about more cuts in hours, and I'm bracing myself for more,” Areceli said. She is not sure what she will do. She knows she's not allowed to apply for unemployment and won't qualify for any cash assistance from the federal government — even the $500-per-child benefit. “If they want to leave me out of that, fine, but it's unfair to leave out my two kids just because I don't have the right papers,” she said. “They are US citizens.” At the same time, Areceli observed something new this week: “I'm seeing moms and dads coming to the fields, asking if there is work. It's noticeable.” She wondered whether they had lost other jobs amid the mass layoffs roiling the state and were now heading out to the fields to find work.Reporter and producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortes contributed to this story. It was edited by Esther Kaplan and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
In the first episode, Alex talks to two essential workers about what it takes to bring you your groceries in the middle of a global pandemic. Jeff Dunn is the CEO of Bolthouse Farms. He's had to come up with big, bold solutions to keep his hundreds of employees safe all while still getting us our carrots without delay. Tony is a Trader Joe's crew member trying to balance customer and company needs with his own safety. As Americans everywhere deal with the challenge of putting food on the table—literally—Alex explores the unprecedented sacrifices and unheard-of arrangements required to keep us fed in a time of crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
On this week’s Roundabout Roundup, Catherine is cautiously optimistic about air frying (in this Breville Smart Oven [https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/ovens/bov900.html]), and Terri is enjoying lemon cookie mini bars [https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/shop/lemon-cookie-mini-bar] and iced cinnamon puffs [https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/shop/iced-cinnamon-puffs] from WW (formerly WeightWatchers). Continuing our food-and-drink theme, Nicole recommends Bolthouse Farms smoothies for sneaky vegetable consumption [https://www.bolthouse.com/products/beverages/].
This week, members of the BevNET and NOSH editorial teams joined us for a discussion of some of the major news stories, trends and topics affecting the food and beverage industry in 2019. Show notes: 0:57: Sustainable Shots, Inter-senal, Send News Now! -- The episode’s hosts open the show with a chat about meeting Taste Radio fans at BevNET Live Winter 2019 and a brand revamp for ginger and turmeric juice brand Monfefo. They also munched on a cornucopia of gourmet cookies from Milk Bar, riffed on Marty’s love for Italian soccer giant Inter Milan and explained why sooner is better when announcing news about new products that will be launched at Expo West 2020. 14:04: 2019 In Review -- BevNET managing editor Martin Caballero sat down with BevNET editor-in-chief Jeff Klineman to recap developments in the burgeoning cannabis CPG segment, and to analyze how investments and transactions from the past year will help shape the market in 2020. Later, they were joined by BevNET staff reporter Brad Avery to contextualize the explosive growth of the oat milk and sparkling water categories this year, and by NOSH editor Carol Ortenberg, who discussed the evolution of frozen food and plant-based meats. In closing, Martin chatted with BevNET founder and CEO John Craven about his major takeaways from 2019, including the emergence of premium canned cocktails and the impact of corporate responsibility in modern America. Brands in this episode: Monfefo, Milk Bar, O2, Mooala, La Colombe, Oatly, Califia Farms, Coca-Cola, AHA, Diet Coke, Bubly, CytoSport, LaCroix, Phocus, Vital Proteins, Primal Kitchen, Caulipower, Quaker Oats, Chobani, Health-Ade, Recess, VYBES, Daytrip, Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Siggi’s, Daiya Foods, Monster Energy, Nestle, Sweet Earth, Stouffer’s, Burger King, Dunkin’, Perfect Bar, Bolthouse Farms, Campbell’s, Ballast Point, Dean Foods, Suja, Hormel Foods, Stumptown, Essentia Water, The Bitter Housewife, Hella Cocktail Co.
Bloomberg News Congressional ReporterAnna Edgerton and Isaac Boltansky, Director of Policy Research at Compass Point, talk about how the Democrats impeachment inquiry impacts trade and other business related issues. Jeff Dunn, CEO at Bolthouse Farms, talks about disrupting the food business and removing all the big company restraints to do that. Antoine Drean, CEO at Triago, discusses opportunities in private equities. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber and Bloomberg News Environmental Regulations Reporter Jennifer Dlouhy discuss why it’s hard to build offshore wind power in the U.S. And we Drive to the Close with Doug Sandler, Global Strategist at RiverFront Investment Group. Hosts: Carol Massar and Jason Kelly. Producer: Paul Brennan.
Bloomberg News Congressional ReporterAnna Edgerton and Isaac Boltansky, Director of Policy Research at Compass Point, talk about how the Democrats impeachment inquiry impacts trade and other business related issues. Jeff Dunn, CEO at Bolthouse Farms, talks about disrupting the food business and removing all the big company restraints to do that. Antoine Drean, CEO at Triago, discusses opportunities in private equities. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor Joel Weber and Bloomberg News Environmental Regulations Reporter Jennifer Dlouhy discuss why it's hard to build offshore wind power in the U.S. And we Drive to the Close with Doug Sandler, Global Strategist at RiverFront Investment Group. Hosts: Carol Massar and Jason Kelly. Producer: Paul Brennan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
As a brand with roots in farming, Bolthouse Farms understands that not everything from the ground comes out looking flawless. Ugly produce may not be perfect, but it still tastes delicious, and Bosworth is all about eating anything delicious! Plus, she hates to waste food. With the summer coming up, Bosworth is creating quick and healthy recipes at-home for when she’s entertaining, and Bolthouse Farms offers a wide variety of dressings that are the perfect complement for any style of dish. Bosworth joined BUILD to discuss her partnership with Bolthouse Farms.
Harriet Jachec rounds up the day's biggest news in the world of food and beverages, including: Campbell Soup offloads Bolthouse Farms for $510m, JBS opens new $20m innovation centre in Colorado, and Diageo brands including Guinness ditch beer pack plastics.
We're back with another culture-focused episode. This time we bring you a conversation with Honest Company co-founder and CPO (that's Chief Purpose Officer) Christopher Gavigan. Believe it or not, Christopher doesn’t run a CPG brand. That’s because the energetic co-founder considers Honest – the makers of beautifully designed, environmentally friendly, and unquestionably safe household products for parents and kids – to be a “portfolio of trust” rather than a typical consumer goods label. Nomenclature aside, there’s no denying that the company has experienced an astounding trajectory. Christopher and partners Jessica Alba and Brian Lee launched the company in in 2011 with just 17 products that were all geared toward the young mother. Today, the company sells more than 100 products covering all aspects of the home – all of which are free from toxic ingredients and harsh chemicals. Meanwhile, the company grew from three employees to more than 500 in less than four years. Christopher talked to us about what this rocket ship ride has been like, and how they’ve managed to scale so quickly without compromising their culture or core values. Note - this interview was conducted by SnackNation CEO Sean Kelly and originally aired in 2015. Key Takeaways Christopher tells us how his Master’s in psychology helped him build the Honest brand. Christopher explains why he believes it’s better to change behavior through knowledge and good news rather than through fear. Christopher reveals why he considers The Honest Company to be a “portfolio of trust” rather than a CPG brand. Christopher shares the two things that keep him up at night. Christopher describes what was like to scale Honest from three to 500 employees in under 4 years, and sheds light on the biggest challenges in that process. Christopher explains why he still chooses to take 30-50 customer service calls per week. Finally, Christopher tells us why he gets all his work done between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Links Christopher on Instagram @christopher_gav Christopher on Twitter @christopher_gav Christopher’s email christopher@honest.com (note: Christopher enjoys hearing from people and answers all emails personally) Healthy Child Healthy World Foundation Jeff Dunn, Bolthouse Farms Recommended Reading Healthy Child Healthy World by Christopher Gavigan Christopher’s articles on The Huffington Post Have an idea for the show? Drop us a line! Brandbuilder@snacknation.com. Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
A few weeks ago, I traveled to Chicago for the Food & Nutrition Conference and Expo, fondly known as FNCE. In addition to attending scientific sessions and hearing from thought leaders like CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Kimbal Musk, co-founder of The Kitchen, and Dayle Hayes, MS, RDN from School Meals that Rock, I wandered through the Expo hall tracking innovative new food products and exciting nutrition trends. On this week's show, trends tracker and fellow dietitian, Janet Helm, MS, RDN joins me to dish about her favorite food finds, my top picks, and mouthwatering innovations making their way to a supermarket near you. Janet's blog is called Nutrition Unplugged, and she's my go-to resource for food trend news. I always love hearing about her insights at FNCE, which is why I invited her to chat with me on today's show. Overall, these were the biggest themes we noticed at the show: > What's Old is New Again: New food trends are fun to track, but sometimes those tried-and-true favorites make a comeback. Cottage cheese anyone? > The Power of Probiotics: With so much buzz about the health benefits of good bacteria, it was no surprise probiotic foods were everywhere. > Plant-based Milks: From almond and peanut milks to milks made with pea protein, non-dairy milks were a big hit at the Expo. > Plant-based Diets: Beans and lentils are having a moment! > Allergy-free Foods: Gluten-free was all the rage for the past few years, and now we're seeing lots of products free from the top 8 allergens. Show Highlights: Janet shares her personal history and what she finds so interesting about food trends. Plant-based foods are the trend! Learn ways to eat less meat without giving up your favorite flavors. Everyone is nuts about nuts, even with the rise of allergies. Why natural food producers are now coming to FNCE. Our favorite healthy convenience foods and snacks. The pros and cons of home food delivery services. Probiotics are everywhere. Healthy guts rejoice! Bigger companies and mainstream food producers are responding to consumer demand for clean labels. Smaller brands are turning to Amazon to get their products to the world. Old-school foods are getting a new look and feel. Sorghum is on the rise, and quinoa is here to stay. Focus on the farmers, the inspired Ocean Spray cranberry bog, and technology that allows food to tell its story. Ways to Connect with Janet Online https://www.nutritionunplugged.com/ Janet Helm on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JanetHelm Janet Helm on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nutritionunplugged/ Resources discussed: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: http://www.eatright.org/ FNCE: http://eatrightfnce.org/ Kimbal Musk: http://www.thekitchen.com/ The Kitchen Community: https://thekitchencommunity.org/ Muuna Cottage Cheese: http://muuna.com/ Campbell's Well Yes! Soups: https://www.campbells.com/well-yes/soups/ Farmhouse Culture: https://www.farmhouseculture.com/ Lifeway Kefir Cups: http://lifewaykefir.com/family/kefir-cups-cheese/ Nancy's Kefir: https://nancysyogurt.com/products/organic-kefir/ GoodBelly Probiotics: http://goodbelly.com/ Bolthouse Farms plant-based milks: https://www.bolthouse.com/ Veggemo: https://veggemo.com/whats-veggemo/ Cybele's: http://cybelesfreetoeat.com/ Cali'flour FOODS: https://www.califlourfoods.com/ Wondergrain: http://www.wondergrain.com/products/ NOW Foods Q Cups: https://www.nowfoods.com/q-cups Biena Chickpea Snacks: https://bienafoods.com/ P-nuff Crunch: http://pnuff.com/ Yumbutter: http://yumbutter.com/ Elmhurst: http://www.elmhurst1925.com/ Bizzy Bee: https://onafoods.com/collections/all Daily Harvest: https://www.daily-harvest.com/ Rachel Paul’s Healthy Bars: https://www.rachelpaulsfood.com/ V8 Green Juice: https://www.campbells.com/v8/v8-veggie-blends/blends-healthy-greens/ Wasa Crackers: http://www.wasa-usa.com/ Quaker Oats: http://www.quakeroats.com/product/hot-cereals/Instant-Oatmeal-Cups.aspx
A few weeks ago, I traveled to Chicago for the Food & Nutrition Conference and Expo, fondly known as FNCE. In addition to attending scientific sessions and hearing from thought leaders like CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Kimbal Musk, co-founder of The Kitchen, and Dayle Hayes, MS, RDN from School Meals that Rock, I wandered through the Expo hall tracking innovative new food products and exciting nutrition trends. On this week's show, trends tracker and fellow dietitian, Janet Helm, MS, RDN joins me to dish about her favorite food finds, my top picks, and mouthwatering innovations making their way to a supermarket near you. Janet's blog is called Nutrition Unplugged, and she's my go-to resource for food trend news. I always love hearing about her insights at FNCE, which is why I invited her to chat with me on today's show. Overall, these were the biggest themes we noticed at the show: > What's Old is New Again: New food trends are fun to track, but sometimes those tried-and-true favorites make a comeback. Cottage cheese anyone? > The Power of Probiotics: With so much buzz about the health benefits of good bacteria, it was no surprise probiotic foods were everywhere. > Plant-based Milks: From almond and peanut milks to milks made with pea protein, non-dairy milks were a big hit at the Expo. > Plant-based Diets: Beans and lentils are having a moment! > Allergy-free Foods: Gluten-free was all the rage for the past few years, and now we're seeing lots of products free from the top 8 allergens. Show Highlights: Janet shares her personal history and what she finds so interesting about food trends. Plant-based foods are the trend! Learn ways to eat less meat without giving up your favorite flavors. Everyone is nuts about nuts, even with the rise of allergies. Why natural food producers are now coming to FNCE. Our favorite healthy convenience foods and snacks. The pros and cons of home food delivery services. Probiotics are everywhere. Healthy guts rejoice! Bigger companies and mainstream food producers are responding to consumer demand for clean labels. Smaller brands are turning to Amazon to get their products to the world. Old-school foods are getting a new look and feel. Sorghum is on the rise, and quinoa is here to stay. Focus on the farmers, the inspired Ocean Spray cranberry bog, and technology that allows food to tell its story. Ways to Connect with Janet Online https://www.nutritionunplugged.com/ Janet Helm on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JanetHelm Janet Helm on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nutritionunplugged/ Resources discussed: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: http://www.eatright.org/ FNCE: http://eatrightfnce.org/ Kimbal Musk: http://www.thekitchen.com/ The Kitchen Community: https://thekitchencommunity.org/ Muuna Cottage Cheese: http://muuna.com/ Campbell's Well Yes! Soups: https://www.campbells.com/well-yes/soups/ Farmhouse Culture: https://www.farmhouseculture.com/ Lifeway Kefir Cups: http://lifewaykefir.com/family/kefir-cups-cheese/ Nancy's Kefir: https://nancysyogurt.com/products/organic-kefir/ GoodBelly Probiotics: http://goodbelly.com/ Bolthouse Farms plant-based milks: https://www.bolthouse.com/ Veggemo: https://veggemo.com/whats-veggemo/ Cybele's: http://cybelesfreetoeat.com/ Cali'flour FOODS: https://www.califlourfoods.com/ Wondergrain: http://www.wondergrain.com/products/ NOW Foods Q Cups: https://www.nowfoods.com/q-cups Biena Chickpea Snacks: https://bienafoods.com/ P-nuff Crunch: http://pnuff.com/ Yumbutter: http://yumbutter.com/ Elmhurst: http://www.elmhurst1925.com/ Bizzy Bee: https://onafoods.com/collections/all Daily Harvest: https://www.daily-harvest.com/ Rachel Paul’s Healthy Bars: https://www.rachelpaulsfood.com/ V8 Green Juice: https://www.campbells.com/v8/v8-veggie-blends/blends-healthy-greens/ Wasa Crackers: http://www.wasa-usa.com/ Quaker Oats: http://www.quakeroats.com/product/hot-cereals/Instant-Oatmeal-Cups.aspx
Recent research from the Statistic Brain Institute revealed that almost a third of people drop their resolutions after two weeks. By mid-January the plans for self-improvement, working out or even eating healthier are history! DON’T BECOME A STATISTIC. It doesn’t have to be that way, especially when it comes to healthier food choices. There are great “crave buster” ideas to satisfy your taste buds AND keep you on track through the entire year. So, you love Alfredo? No problem, you can still enjoy the creaminess and delicious flavor by subbing traditional sauces and using zoodles instead of pasta for a dish that’s flavor-forward but with lower calories and fat. Certified Personal Trainer and Weight Loss Expert, Liz Josefsberg is available LIVE via satellite to discuss: Healthier food that’s more accessible and affordableHow to keep healthier meals and snacks interestingTips on how to bust those sweet and salty cravingsLast-minute “crave buster” options for your Super Sunday festivities
Recent research from the Statistic Brain Institute revealed that almost a third of people drop their resolutions after two weeks. By mid-January the plans for self-improvement, working out or even eating healthier are history! DON’T BECOME A STATISTIC. It doesn’t have to be that way, especially when it comes to healthier food choices. There are great “crave buster” ideas to satisfy your taste buds AND keep you on track through the entire year. So, you love Alfredo? No problem, you can still enjoy the creaminess and delicious flavor by subbing traditional sauces and using zoodles instead of pasta for a dish that’s flavor-forward but with lower calories and fat. Certified Personal Trainer and Weight Loss Expert, Liz Josefsberg is available LIVE via satellite to discuss: Healthier food that’s more accessible and affordableHow to keep healthier meals and snacks interestingTips on how to bust those sweet and salty cravingsLast-minute “crave buster” options for your Super Sunday festivities
Host: Alicia A. Sutton Guest: Bill Levisay, MBA Past success is not always a predictor of future success, and nowhere is this clearer than in the medical field. But what can medicine draw from the unprecedented successes and colossal failures of the corporate world? Joining host Alicia Sutton to discuss the gravity of success, and ways to avoid failure in the wake of that success, is Bill Levisay, Chief Customer Officer at Bolthouse Farms in Atlanta, GA.
At the recent OMMA Mobile event at SXSW, Pamela Naumes, Director Brand Engagement at Bolthouse Farms, detailed the thing that marketers want from mobile. We like her thinking and adoption of mobile payments may depend on more people like Pamela leading the charge.
Guest Jeff Dunn, President and CEO, Bolthouse Farms (baby carrots marketing); formerly President of Coca-Cola North AmericaFast Company