Expo East 2022
This year Expo East was held in Philadelphia and we had the chance to walk the floor, talk to clients, and connect brands to trends we’re tracking. With over 1000 exhibitors, Expo East is an enormous natural products show featuring everything imaginable, including candy, plant based protein, organic meats, kids meals, supplements, and bath and skincare products.
The Power of Pink
A proliferation of pink booths and packaging appeared at Expo East 2022, most of them being baked-goods companies that are women owned. For many years pink in the baking space felt anti-feminist but the reclamation of everything pink, along with a need for joy, and the broadening of gender neutral palettes has put a new spin on a stand-out-at-shelf color. Long-time NYC cookie bakery, Eleni’s, incorporates deep pink into their unique hexagonal packaging, signature Pink Sugar cookie, and booth. Sticky Fingers, a DC based vegan bakery, offered up cake and cookie mixes in mod-looking packages. They utilize pink in a fresh fashion via patterns on their boxes, pouches, and packs. Cookie Deux, an enhanced, snackable cookie dough with functional ingredients, employed neon-pink signage to catch attention.
Butter Better
Alternatives to peanut butter are still toasty! Oat Haus brings Granola Butter in nine flavors including Coffee, Birthday Cake, and Strawberry Shortcake. Made from oats, it is organic, gluten-free, vegan, and school safe. Broma Organic offers almond & lentil butter – a higher fiber, high protein combination butter that is vegan, soy, dairy, and wheat free. Kolada, a coconut-based butter with flavors ranging from VERY coconutty to no-coconut-taste-at-all offers up a gluten free, peanut-free, refined sugar-free, school-safe option.
Celebration Time
Nothing says joy like sprinkles, and natural food companies have come to party hard this year. SKUs like the vegan, plant-based treat, “Birthday Cake Crunch” from Dream Pops Crunch, and “Birthday Cake Shortbread”, a six ingredient cookie from Spritzal, make cleaner eating more fun. Protein balls and enhanced cookie dough bring functional benefits beyond a clean ingredient deck. Even salt got into the rave with Saltery’s “Ice Cream Sundae,” a dessert salt mix of flake salt, cane sugar and sprinkles.
Show, Don’t Tell
Plant-based packaging typically uses food and ingredient photography to gain appetite appeal and demonstrate the product attributes. That’s changing with windows and visible product appearing like its near-meat cousins (i.e Impossible Burger). Actual Veggies uses the color of their burgers as flavor indicators and shows the burger via a semi-circular window paired with ingredient illustration in a highly-shoppable package. Revolu Green Vegan Protein uses a vibrant orange belly band, with a clear plastic overwrap around a microwavable orange tray. The overwrap allows just enough view of the product and helps frozen or refrigerated food feel fresher and more palatable than a traditional frozen package might.
That Plan(tain) is Bananas
Bananas and plantains serve as a new, grain-free base for crackers and snacks. Hippie Snack’s Banana Bread Crisps are thin crunchy-cookie biscuits that utilize bananas as the main ingredient and maple-syrup as the sweetener. Minimally processed, they are grain and gluten free. Turbana’s Plantain Chips come in sweet and savory flavors like lime and garlic. Barnana’s plantain nuggets take savory all the way with pink salt, barbeque, chili lime, and ranch flavors.
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We always love attending expos and trade shows. They’re a great way to get a clearer in-person picture of what’s up and coming, what’s succeeding, and what we’ve seen grow into full-fledged categories and brands.