Yesterday’s announcement that Red Bull are launching a range of organic mixers made me sit up and take notice. This is the most high-profile organic brand launch in the UK for many years. In market terms it makes sense. Organic sales have been in sustained growth for the last six years and have now passed […]
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Re-imagining Free From : Everything You Know Is Wrong
For the last few weeks I have been working hard with Tom Treverton at F2F to design a seminar which will take a radical look at the Free From sector. Full details below. The event is on July 6th at London Olympia. I am very much looking forward to the seminar, which will feature […]
Plant Power! Seizing Opportunities from the Vegan and Plant-based Sector
This was the first Food & Drink Innovation Network seminar I have chaired since Fresh Montgomery took over, following the death of the much-missed Jeffrey Hyman last year. Soraya and her team delivered a well-organised, smoothly run day that very much took the best of what Jeffrey had achieved and built on this, not least […]
Is Wowsome Awesome?
This week saw the new Nestle Milkybar Wowsomes bars land in Tesco. By Tuesday I had visited five shops without success when I found them in the Tesco Express opposite Gloucester Road tube station. Wowsomes is (are?) the first chocolate bar in the world to use Nestle’s innovative sugar reduction technique. According to the press […]
Beyond the boy scout’s sleeve: a personal review of ethical certification
Executive summary This paper reviews the history of third-party ethical certification of food and drink, concentrating mainly on organic and Fairtrade. The strengths and weakness of the approaches taken to date are reviewed. The author includes his personal experience of such schemes gained over the last thirty years. From this he concludes that third-party certification […]