After walking the show floor at the Viva Fresh Expo the other weekend, our team was wow-ed and inspired by new products and cool things we saw, tasted and discussed with the exhibitors. Check out our short list of items we think you should also know about as well.
Mushrooms and Ground Beef Meatballs by Kitchen Pride Mushroom Farms
As food trends continue to move towards more protein and less carb consumption, consumers are looking for more alternatives and different ways to make traditional favorites. Enter these delicious meatballs featuring the “blendability” concept introduced by the National Mushroom Council a few years ago. We think these were a homerun. Mixed with half ground beef, half chopped mushrooms and seasoned, they tasted just like a regular meatball, just slightly lighter, and with almost no mushroom taste. We see a perfect way to include healthy ingredients in a favorite food, and one that kids will even enjoy!
Bella Verdi Fresh Microgreens Display
Fresh, lush and delicate. The perfect description for microgreens, and also Bella Verdi’s fresh display of their living strips of basil, amaranth, onion, red cabbage, cilantro, kale and red sorrel greens. It’s one thing to see these in a package or an enlarged picture, but there’s nothing like being able to not only see, but smell and feel the quality of a fresh product. Similar to Bella Verdi, we were also loving Church Brother’s display of fresh lettuce as well. If every consumer could see the striking beauty of fresh foods we would all eat more fruits and vegetables.
Love Beets
While having been around now for a few years, Love Beets keeps coming up with new and innovative product offerings and we’re continually amazed at every show we see them at while our taste buds revel in the new flavors. And Viva Fresh was no exception with their new Smoky BBQ Shredded Beets product. We’re already imagining all the ways we could use these delicious new shreds.
Zas Seasoning
It’s hard to miss these bottles of seasoning with their bright colors of neon green, orange, red and yellow. The use of bright, attention grabbing colors and iconography reflect the attention grabbing flavors they offer such as Chili Lime, Hatch Chili, Mango Chili and Tamarind. I see these seasonings Zas’ing up some of our favorite dishes.
U Gottabee Nutz Seasoned Cashews, Almonds and Peanuts
With a name like U Gottabe Nutz, you better have some great branding that portrays your message perfectly. And U Gottabe Nutz nailed it. Their use of bright colors and unique, almost Hawaiian influence shows a product that’s fresh, different, light and most important, fun. And entering the seasoned nuts category, you just might have to be nuts to be willing to go up against goliaths like Planters and Blue Diamond, with their lines of flavored nuts expanding what seems like weekly. But we were blown away with how great these tasted—not overwhelming like the Planter’s products can sometimes taste (we’re thinking of the salted caramel peanuts) but just enough.
Gourmet Garden’s Lightly Dried Herbs
These small pods of lightly dried herbs that you can find in the produce section of your local store open a world of cooking and baking opportunities. Different, but equally powerful to their fresh squeeze herbs, these dried herbs offer various new cooking adaptations. For example, the lightly seasoned cashews they were sampling shows just how easy their product is and how it can transform ordinary items into simple to make flavorful snacks. And let’s be honest, these herbs just looked so much brighter and fresher than your traditional dried herbs in a shaker.
Suja Probiotic Organic Pressed Waters
While we were already fans of Suja’s cold pressed juice line, I had anxiously been awaiting their line of probiotic waters when announced a few months ago. With such a big emphasis on the importance of gut health, offering a product that’s light, natural, refreshing and addresses gut health with its 2 billion probiotic CFUs per bottle, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. On top of their delicious products, their brand packaging and design is also spot on. With bold colors and a simple design esthetic, the differences between each product offerings are enough to portray to consumer’s different categories of products, yet still a cohesive line. A win-win all around.
This short list is not to say this is all that inspired us, just our short list. We saw great new concepts in packaging, design and value added inspiration that show our industry is not short on creativity or inspiration. Here’s to keepin’ it fresh.
Written by Alison Eiler
Marketing Coordinator
Alison@FullTiltMarketing.net
