Natural Products Expo West 2021: Longing for a Live New Product Event
In March of 2020, Natural Products Expo West was one of the first trade shows canceled due to the emerging pandemic. It's also one of the country's biggest trade shows (86,000 attended in 2019) and arguably the most interesting in the food & beverage industry, since it's still dominated by smaller and entrepreneurial companies with groundbreaking products. Usually scheduled for mid-March in Anaheim, Calif., it was just a hair too early for this year's reopenings and trade shows. So it went virtual again May 24-27. Leslie Herzog, a former Unilever product developer now with The Understanding & Insight Group, reports on this year's virtual show.
Entrepreneurship seemed alive and well despite the pandemic and Natural Products Expo West (NPEW) being conducted on a virtual platform in late May.
Having attended numerous Natural Product Expos (both West & East) over the years, I found it difficult to determine on the virtual platform how much really new product development and innovation is going on. There were a lot fewer vendors then there are at the live show. Many companies that have exhibited at real trade show were missing from the virtual platform.
In addition, the online platform sometimes made it difficult to determine if the new products being introduced were true innovations or line extensions. Likewise, from the data presented by New Hope Network (the show's sponsor), SPINS and others, while sales of natural and organic were up year over year, it was difficult to determine how much of that was due to innovation or just repeat purchases.
But given the range of companies presenting during the Virtual Pitch Slam competition, innovation is not over in the natural and organic category; like a lot of things that happened in the world in 2020, it may have just slowed down.
There were 11 finalists for the Virtual Pitch Slam. The winner was Tia Lupita Foods, a better-for-you, healthy and authentic Mexican-inspired food brand that uses clean, simple ingredients in all of its products.
Tia Lupita, a new brand of healthy and authentic Mexican-inspired foods, won the Virtual Pitch Slam.
NPEW featured a wide array of programing (with the power point presentations often being available to download as PDFs) including:
- Keynote speakers on topics ranging from The State of Natural & Organic (an excellent overview of the performance of natural and organic sales during 2020 -- still hot as ever) as well as on justice, diversity, equity and inclusion.
- Eight in-depth product category analysis sessions (on categories including, but not limited to frozen foods, pantry staples, beverages).
- Speed networking sessions.
- Exhibitor seminars from companies like Givaudan (on "Co-creating Functional Beverages for a changing consumer," which revealed some proprietary research conducted by
Givaudan before and during the outbreak of COVID 19 identifying what consumers are looking for and guiding companies on developing new beverage formulations to meet those needs. Tetra Pak presented "From Idea to Shelf: New Approach for Fast-Tracking Innovation." And there were others throughout the week.
Always a highlight of NPEW (whether in person or virtual) is the naming of the Nexty Award winners. The Nexty Awards recognize the most progressive, innovative, inspiring and trustworthy products in the natural products industry – at least in the eyes of show sponsor New Hope Network. More than 800 products participated in 23 categories. Some of the more intriguing winners:
- Rishi Tea Sparkling Botanicals: A sparkling beverage with intriguing flavors like dandelion ginger and turmeric saffron.
- Yolélé Foods Fonio Pilafs: A pilaf made of … fonio? Yes, fonio, a climate-friendly and climate-resilient grain from West Africa.
- The Jackfruit Company's Jack and Annie's Savory Breakfast Jack Sausage Patties: These sausage patties utilize jackfruit as a plant-forward, minimally processed option for making savory breakfast sandwiches.
- Global Village Foods Allergy-friendly African-inspired Frozen Meals: Allergy friendly, frozen, African-inspired dishes, such as Ethiopian Vegan Lentil Combo. Is this the beginning of African-inspired foods becoming mainstream?
- 12 Tides Organic Puffed Kelp Chips: Simple ingredients plus great flavor plus crunch made these a winner. These puffed chips start with regeneratively farmed, organic kelp and follow it with just eight other recognizable ingredients, and it's from a B-Corp.
Being able to go back and listen or watch any of the sessions one missed (or were occurring concurrently) was certainly a benefit of the platform NPEW used. It was relatively intuitive to navigate and for the most part the audio quality of the presenters was excellent. But there were some disappointments.
One interesting mechanism, which didn't work for me, was the ability to send a message directly to an exhibitor. Three business days later I still hadn’t heard back.
Many of the sessions were not truly live, so there was no opportunity for questions and answers.
Although we have lived for more than a year without in-person trade shows, there are some encouraging lights on the horizon. The twin to NPEW, Natural Products Expo East, is scheduled to be a combination of in-person and virtual programming Sept. 22-25 in Philadelphia (followed by the Fancy Food Show at the Javits Center in New York City Sept. 27-29).
I am certainly looking forward to real shows again, to tasting fabulous creations from this groundbreaking industry. "Virtually" nothing can compare to seeing everyone in person.
