It was great catching up with Dan Frommer. Dan is the founder and editor in chief of The New Consumer, a sharp and essential publication covering the intersection of technology and consumer culture — and one of the smartest people thinking and writing about what Americans are actually buying, eating, and obsessing over. Every year, Dan publishes a major consumer trends report timed to Expo West, the natural and organic products trade show in Anaheim, and this year’s edition — a 68-slide deep dive produced with Coefficient Capital — is full of big findings. Matt catches up with Dan to talk about some of their new product discoveries while attending the show, as well as Dan’s recent writing about Sweetgreen and how Americans actually want to consume protein.
Brands discussed on the episode: Smith Tea Maker, Coyotas, Waterloo, Flow Hydration, Van Leeuwen, Moozy Milk, Little Latke, Brause, Wasted, Oatly, Rambler, Wholesome Bakery, Lasso, Zahav Foods, Lexington Bakes, Yuzu Co., Row 7, Sourmilk.
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Read the full transcript:
Matt Rodbard: Dan Frommer, welcome back to This Is Taste. We’re in LA, amazing. I love that we can do this in person. This is your fourth time on the show, actually. I look back — wow. Thank you for having me back.
Dan Frommer: I love talking to you. You’re such a leading light in the industry of consumer products, big focus on food. The New Consumer is your newsletter — linking to it in the show notes. Definitely subscribe. It’s terrific.
Matt Rodbard: Tell me. I think we’re gonna have a cool conversation, because we both walked Expo West yesterday, and we’re gonna put this out in a couple days, so we’re gonna get some snap impressions about what we saw on the floor. But you’ve been going to Expo West for a while. This was my second time — second in three years. I feel like I’m a little bit better now. I can handle it. Trade shows are really up and down for me. But Dan, when you walk Expo West or any of these trade shows, what are you looking for? This is like a trillion-dollar business. We need to keep saying that — it’s one of the biggest businesses in the world. So tell me, what are you looking for?
Dan Frommer: First of all, Expo West, for those who haven’t been, is just an absolute — it’s two things. One is complete chaos. The booths are not that big in most of the center, they’re packed very closely together, and there are literally thousands of people, especially at the beginning of the show, trying to see everything. The difference between Expo and most trade shows is that every booth, you can basically eat stuff or drink stuff and take big samples with you. People bring these giant bags and fill them full of samples. You could, if you wanted to, get 4,000 calories of alternate carbs and proteins in your body of all different types.
Matt Rodbard: I got 4,000 calories of just GoMacro.
Dan Frommer: I mean, I stocked up on GoMacro. Hit it hard. I’m looking for a few things. One is, I’m looking for what the new flavors are. A lot of the companies are there with their product for the year. And the VIPs at Expo West are the buyers for every big supermarket, grocery store, and online store in the world. If you’re a buyer for Whole Foods, you are the most important person that anyone will have a conversation with that day.
So, you know, I’m a journalist and analyst — I’m getting a little attention, but when the buyer walks up, they’re like, see you later, man. I was standing next to a Hungry Root buyer, and the person at the booth got physically nervous and kind of shut down a little bit. It’s a lot of stress, because these are first impressions that could make or break the growth of your brand. So I’m looking for how brands express themselves creatively. You get this box that is your booth — what are you going to say about your brand? How do you set it up? How do you decorate it? Do you go way over the top? Some bigger companies get two booths across from each other and kind of turn it into a little party zone. Some have gushing amounts of samples. Some are more conservative. And then obviously, tasting the products. Every year, one thing blows my mind. I’ll never forget the first time I had a warm Siete tortilla. Just so simple, but completely game-changing. I’m gluten free, so having access to it was like a waking view.
Matt Rodbard: We’re going to go over some of our highlights. What are the trends? Obviously, protein. We can talk about protein — that was a big thing this year and last year. And then the thing I didn’t see was I did not see a lot of brands either talking about or positioning around GLP-1s, which is now a massive thing. Estimated a quarter of US households have at least one person on a GLP-1, and it just seems like something brands just don’t want on the label — maybe there’s a taboo. I see some coded language. I see “nutrient rich” a lot. I think framing like “protein macros” is not just for people who want to protein-max, but also for people on GLP-1s who want small things with lots of density, who need protein because muscle mass is declining.
Dan Frommer: Yeah, that was interesting. Otherwise I’m just there to schmooze and try stuff. I got to do an off-the-record ten minutes with Jason, the CEO of Whole Foods, yesterday — I’d never met him. Can’t really say what we talked about, but when the Whole Foods CEO is on the floor, it was interesting. He had like a cone of protection around him. Really fascinating guy. I hope he can come on the podcast soon. We’re working on that.
Matt Rodbard: Hate the question, but got to ask — you mentioned protein, but other trends, movements, impulses that you spotted on the floor?
Dan Frommer: Everyone’s trying bars and noodles. Like, Fly By Jing has a new noodle. Bars are an interesting category — I just did a big piece on The New Consumer about David Protein, and the founder, Peter, who previously founded RXBar, has a lot to say about the bar category. What he said was interesting: it’s an extremely low barrier to entry. Anyone can start a bar brand. There’s really nothing that hard about getting one off the ground. The key is there’s a lot of fatigue, and it’s very trend-driven. Some bars really break through — KIND broke through, RXBar broke through, David has been very successful — but a lot of bars disappear very quickly. It is a great form factor. It’s very convenient, especially as this healthy snacking thing. I don’t think that’s going anywhere anytime soon. Everyone’s trying to shove protein and fiber into everything.
Matt Rodbard: Let’s talk specific products that we spotted. I have a pretty long list here — maybe you want to take a couple, and then I’ll take a couple, go back and forth.
Dan Frommer: The thing that was actually most moving to me was a ginger tea from Smith Teamaker — just a very random, quotidian product, but it was so good. Ginger Boost or something. I immediately went to try to buy some on Amazon. It really packs a punch. A lot of ginger tea is nasty — tastes like wood. And this is amazing. I love Smith Tea. Coyotas made a chip, which was interesting — and I thought it was pretty good. I tried a banana Waterloo flavor that was kind of nice. And then what’s the water that — my favorite water used to be called Flow, and now there’s a new one called Path, which every fancy gym boutique in LA has, because my wife keeps coming home with Path bottles.
Matt Rodbard: Flow is the yoga version of Path, I guess. A few highlights for me. Van Leeuwen launched a new novelty — frozen bon bons. They’re doing strawberry and orange creams. Seeing them in novelties is cool — these little snackable, definitely lower-calorie-per-ball than a whole.
Dan Frommer: I love those. There’s one in Japan called Pino that I just can’t stop eating.
Matt Rodbard: Let’s talk about Moozy. Small booth, kind of understated booth. It’s a guy from Connecticut. He’s literally a dairy farmer — he’s putting milk into a can. Like, a 12-ounce can. It’s 2% milk. Good stuff, but there’s something about cracking a can and drinking the milk that’s extremely positive. He was like, “I’m a dairy farmer” — but then he seemed like he went to Wharton because he was totally slick Little Latke — have you tried these? I think it’s a pop-up in New York, mostly direct to consumer. It’s a potato crisp. They literally figured out the aesthetic — it’s the shoestring potatoes I want, but in chip form. I liked the original. They had mustard, which was less successful for me, but really cool young founders. It says what it is: it’s a little latke in snack chip form. Brause— these are German NA sodas. An American company, but two German expats started it, and they’re doing high-end NA. They said they’re focusing mostly on like Ritz-Carlton and Erewhon and places like that. The flavors are really interesting — like apple and malt. They’re leaning into it. The story is that it’s a traditional German beverage that’s very common. It’s not quite kombucha, but it’s like basically sparkling apple juice with malt, so there’s a real savory element to it. I enjoyed it. And the packaging is really cool — super matte, black with like a pink. Really, really nice.
Matt Rodbard: A few more. Wasted — did you get to try that at Andreas’s party, at the Snack Shop party? No. That’s a cool company out of Copenhagen — they’re doing basically bread-wasted pasta, using surplus bread. I can’t eat it, but I liked it. I responded to the flavor profile. Oatly was doing innovation — and I’d say they were actually successful with a gochujang latte. Not something I’d typically try, but it was good. And I have to say the new Le Croix flavor — absolute trash. Pineapple and coconut. It was not good. Sorry, guys. Long time since there’s been a great new flavor. And they’re getting lapped by a number of the other brands.
I saw Rambler everywhere. It’s funny — I was with a friend who lives in LA and he’d never heard of Rambler. But mostly from the northeast, they’re quite saturated — I had them at my local Stop and Shop. Once you get into those distributors, it just moves. Pricing at like $4.99. Really great.
Matt Rodbard: A couple more. Wholesome Bakery, a San Francisco chocolate chip cookie company — they’re doing a butter cream with monk fruit, a proprietary cream. Really a beautiful product. And Lasso launched yesterday, brand new company — they’re doing grass-fed gelatin cups. Kind of in the Oddball vein. Were you familiar with Oddball? They were trying to replace Jello essentially. We had the founder on the podcast a few years ago — a young creator-type guy, wearing cowboy boots and a hat. My guy. Go for it.
One that a name that we all know: CookNSolo, the terrific restaurant group based in Philly — they have Laser Wolf, which is in a couple of markets. They are nationwide Whole Foods now, and they were doing their standard SKU — great, very smooth hummus. Definitely tops for grocery store hummus. I like Little Sesame a lot too, and they’re up there. They were also launching a schug flavor and a matbucha flavor — so roasted red peppers and green pepper sauce.
And the last one is my friend Lex from Lexington Bakes. He launched two years ago with these five-ounce brownies, super decadent — really nice stuff, $10. Really high price point. Great buzz in the industry, but that price point wasn’t working. He has shifted to something very functional, very macro-centric, bars for everyday snacking. He’s kind of doing the Midday Squares model — this is what you should have twice daily, in the morning and night. He has this idea about where the bar should be placed in your diet. Lex is a terrific baker.
Dan Frommer: The reason we didn’t overlap almost at all is because there’s just so much.
Matt Rodbard: You walk by these booths, and you need a break. You missed the thing. But I think there’s so much promise in the room and so much optimism. But as you report on at The New Consumer, this is an industry of failure. It’s truly so difficult to break out as a product. When you are looking at these baby brands, what do you look at first to measure their success?
Dan Frommer: In food, especially, it just has to taste good. That’s not the only thing that matters, and there are successful food companies that don’t taste that great, but that is the number one thing. Supply chain is huge. Is it novel? Is it unique? Is it proprietary? Is it under your control or not? A lot of small brands have almost no control over their supply chain, so they’re really struggling — and scaling that becomes hard.
To zoom out even further: how much torture can you handle as a founder, to juggle every single element of your business and reinvent yourself all the time? For food, especially, you’re constantly having to deal with new distributors, new retailers. The buyer changes every six months. They don’t want to merchandise two things that sell well next to each other, because they belong in different aisles. All these crazy things. So it’s really founder grit and inspiration. Bachan’s recently transacted, and that was a great story — founder story, delicious product, able to be priced at a premium level. They went from $80 million revenue, exited for 400-times multiple. And they figured out a product that could be used as both a sauce and a marinade.
And I met Becca from Fishwife when she was just getting started. The amount of business they’re going to do this year, you wouldn’t even believe it. That has just been figuring out new sourcing, new places, new distributors, new merchants, how to make this thing cool, who to collaborate with — all these things. It’s so many different elements of being a creative person, too, and also someone who has their stuff together.
Matt Rodbard: A lot of the topics when I was chatting with founders throughout the week was consumer versus food service. The founders that really understand what their market is and where they’re going to grow right away — that leads to success.
Dan Frommer: Investors are not going to be interested in a food service brand anyway. They’d be interested in an omnichannel, direct-to-consumer brand that can also work at 10,000 retail doors.
Matt Rodbard: Yuzuco — did you talk to those guys?
Dan Frommer: Oh yeah, cool.
Matt Rodbard: They’re really doing great things. Thinking about innovation with different SKUs, but also just how to source — yuzu is a product that grows not year-round in the parts of the world that we can easily get it, with shipping costs and tariffs, perhaps.
Dan Frommer: They’ve already tried like 15 different things to see what’s going to stick — from juice, to canned ready-to-drink juice, to yuzu koso sauce, to now being a flavor vendor to Starbucks. They have a core, and then they have their other stuff, and I’m following that journey closely. It’s very cool.
Matt Rodbard: Any last words on Expo West?
Dan Frommer: I love it. It’s really fun. Every brand in the grocery store has a booth and you can try it. Next year I’m gonna do two days. And if you hear the hoarseness in my voice, that is also because of Expo West.
Matt Rodbard: Well, let’s switch topics. Last weekend, you published a great newsletter with the subject “Has Sweetgreen Hit Bottom.” Tell me a little about the last quarter, which we talked about when you were on in the fall — they were struggling then, but as you report, things have gotten certainly worse.
Dan Frommer: At one point they made a decision to be more than just really good, healthy lunch for hot people in New York. That worked for a long time. I remember lining up in NoMad, lining up for your kale Caesar, yeah. But they chose to try to become a giant company that has 1,000 stores, and that requires a just different level of operations. As I write in the piece, it’s a company that’s never had brand, product, and operations in sync and in symphony all at once. The product was incredible at the beginning — you could get a dressing at Sweetgreen that you just could never get in a fast food setting, ever. Period. It was acidic and tasted like something completely different than what you’d get at a New York deli or at Chop’d or wherever. That’s why I went there four days a week for like four years.
As you scale to now 200-some restaurants, you’re building a team. And obviously COVID sucked for every restaurant — it really sucked for Sweetgreen, because the creative class that were their core customers in New York and LA, their lives got turned upside down. People stopped going to the office every day, and that was a huge momentum killer. That said, you’ve got to figure it out. And they launched the fries, which ended up being a nightmare.
The key point is, unfortunately for all the things that we love to think about in terms of food brands — product and brand — for a restaurant chain that’s going to scale, as I’ve learned, numbers one through five things that matter are operations. Can you get however many tens of thousands of employees you have to make the same thing over and over again, all day, the exact same way, without screwing it up? And the answer for Sweetgreen was that they couldn’t. Their COO spot, if you look through the years of press releases, is like the Spinal Tap drummer spot. There’s a guy now who joined last year, who used to run like 40 Pizza Huts, and he seems to have it. If you listen to the earnings call, they have four different transformation projects with code names, and each one is just a document that’s like, these are the 20 work streams that we have to perfect every single day or else we are screwed.
A year ago, Jonathan Neman, the CEO, said two thirds of their restaurants were operating below standard. That’s just not okay if you’ve been in business for 18 years. Now he says two thirds are operating at a great level. Their standards are getting higher and higher. I ordered a salad during the call, and it came and it was much better than the previous. They completely changed the way they marinate the miso salmon, how they cook it, how they present it. Velocities have increased 20%. So hopefully when I say “hit bottom,” I don’t mean it’s at its worst now — hopefully it’s on the upswing. I think those are well-meaning people. Nick Jammet, friend of mine, a great founder in the food industry, very supportive of other entrepreneurs. They’re all nice guys, and I’d like to see the company succeed.
For Wall Street, same-store sales declined 11.5% year over year. Traffic and mix — the number of people eating at Sweetgreen and how much they ordered — declined 13%. Really grim numbers. But to be fair, there has been an overall decline in same-store sales for pretty much every fast casual. CAVA was crushing a year ago, and they’re also basically flat. Chipotle is kind of having some problems again.
Matt Rodbard: A great point you made in the letter last week — the kale Caesar, it was a $9 salad. It made sense. We loved that $9 salad. Fast forward to 2026, it’s a $14 or $15 salad, and just the same salad.
Dan Frommer: No innovation, just a straight-up price increase. And the ingredient quality is arguably worse — the several salads I’ve ordered in the last year have not been at a level of quality I remember that $9 salad being. But then you go to somewhere like Honey Hi here in LA, where you can have a salad for $18 to $26 depending on protein, but it feels worth it because the greens are actually interesting and the protein is perfectly cooked and warm and hasn’t been sitting there for a long time.
Dan Frommer: I think Sweetgreen is in a position where, as their founder says, they’re trying to democratize real food and also improve on fast food. So it’s tricky, because that strategy requires a different type of product and execution than trying to sell you a $36 steak at Via Carota. So you just have to do things differently. I think part of it is reinventing themselves. I did a piece a few months ago about how consumers just want new stuff all the time. Sweetgreen is trying that now — they’re doing wraps. They realize they’re a product company. If you’re going to be a successful product company, your product has to be as good as you can make it, and you’ve got to come up with new products all the time.
Matt Rodbard: Just Salad seemed to really have a little bit of a pop about a year ago with their wraps.
Dan Frommer: There’s a gluten-free chicken Caesar wrap at Goop Kitchen. I’ve heard of it. But the chicken Caesar wrap phenomenon in LA right now is hilarious. Like, the Mini Kebab guys sell hundreds of them a day. It was like a luxury good — you could not get a Mini Kebab chicken Caesar wrap for a long time. And Sqirl has one too now, with croissant croutons or something. Kind of fun. They seem to be very, very popular. Well, I’m personally pulling for Sweetgreen.
Dan Frommer: Me too. Because there should be great, simple food that’s easily accessible. It’s still very hard to get a simple, healthy meal at a reasonable price. It’s just very hard.
Matt Rodbard: I wanted to talk to you about another company — Row 7‘s entry into CPG. I went to an event last week that launched these products. I’ve tasted them. You’ve tasted them as well.
Dan Frommer: Yeah, I’ve tasted a few different versions.
Matt Rodbard: To remind everyone, Row 7 is a company founded by Dan Barber and others — really a produce company to start. They had a seed company to start. Then it became a produce company. And a lot of people like Whole Foods really leaned in and showcased them well. People love their products to cook with — the Badger Flame beet, and all that. And now they’re kind of saying, we don’t even need to cook — we have these tins. They’re very similar to the Spanish conservas, like the tinned fish, in shape and form. And I thought it was interesting that at the launch event, they said they’re going to be merchandising and selling it in the fresh section.
Dan Frommer: First of all, it’s important because I think not enough people know what Row 7 is, and it’s not just a regular vegetable company. They’re actually breeding. And there’s this cottage industry of vegetable breeders that’s so fascinating. Most vegetables you buy at the grocery store taste like nothing because they’re bred for shelf life, disease resistance, frost resistance — everything but flavor. Row 7 is actually bred only for flavor. They get there by coming at it sometimes from a quirky point of view. So they have something called Sweet Garlic, which is a hybrid of garlic and leek — delicious. I throw them on the grill. Yeah, they’re so good.
Matt Rodbard: So that’s one of the tinned varieties. It’s sort of — I like the leeks.
Dan Frommer: That was a nice addition, in sort of a mustard vinaigrette. You open it up and instead of having sardines neatly arranged, it’s like these leeks — there’s the white part and the green part. Very interesting. Aesthetically pleasing. My biggest question is just the size of these tin vegetables. It’s not a lot, particularly with the cherry tomatoes — which I thought was the strongest of the three I tasted. I didn’t really connect with the beets. I didn’t like the knife cuts particularly. So I’m like, beets cubed? Diced?
Matt Rodbard: Last year they did a winter squash with a rosemary oil — see, I would like that. So I’m thinking, Dan, you get this small amount — you’re not really going to cook with these. And there’s really not enough for like an appetizer plate. It’s truly for snacking. It’s maybe one component of an aperitivo spread. You might have some pieces of cheese out, some tinned fish, one of these things. I’ll throw some on top of cottage cheese, yeah, on a crisp bread. A Wasa cracker. And it’s a delight, because it’s vegetables, it is ostensibly healthy. I think the same thing with tinned sardines — you can get a meal out of them, and the macros are really positive. With this, I agree — it’s definitely for a cracker, definitely not for cooking.
Dan Frommer: Love to see a larger format. I think they’re trying to figure it out. Branded produce is still a very small part of that market — there’s not a lot of successful branded produce examples other than — you’re gonna say it —
Matt Rodbard: Sumo Mandarin.
Dan Frommer: They were literally on the floor with plates filled with one slice. If you look at the This Is Taste logo, it’s a Sumo Mandarin. Not by coincidence. And orange sales actually increased 13% last year in America, in large part due to Sumo and Cuties doing actual marketing for oranges — which kind of never really happened before. Super interesting.
Matt Rodbard: Let’s talk about your Consumer Insights Report, which you just released. I’m going to link to the report in the show notes — it’s free, right?
Dan Frommer: Yes, all the research reports I do with Coefficient Capital are free. NewConsumer.com/trends is the series. This is our Expo West food and beverage report that we just launched.
Matt Rodbard: Protein was obviously all over this report, but you thought about it in a unique way — you weren’t just saying “is protein a thing?” You looked a little deeper.
Dan Frommer: Protein is absolutely a thing. The question is how much of a thing, and where is it going to be a thing? We do a survey of 3,000 US consumers. About a quarter of Americans think they’re not getting enough protein. And about two thirds are actively trying to get more protein in their diet, especially younger people. In the CPG industry, protein is now an ingredient being added to all kinds of things — I got a pitch the other day for an RTD canned vodka cocktail with protein added to it. There’s protein energy drink, protein beer, protein water, protein coffee, protein gummies, protein everything.
We were curious: where do people actually want to get this protein? We asked 3,000 people across 18 different food and beverage items how natural or unnatural it feels to have protein added, and how interested they’d be in sampling a high-protein version. We scored them, and there’s a matrix with four quadrants. The obvious winners — things where protein makes a lot of sense and people are really interested — are things like breakfast cereal, snack bars, milk, and pasta. Pasta is one where it’s like, okay, I love pasta, it’s a huge carb hit, your protein can be added to it, that’d be awesome. Then there’s the stuff people think is weird: beer and cocktails scored lowest. Condiments. Ketchup. Then there’s a group in the middle where people just aren’t sure — chips, ice cream, water, pretzels.
Two interesting things: if you look at younger consumers versus older, younger people think it’s more natural to add protein to more products. And GLP-1 users too, over all these products, thought that adding protein is more natural and are more interested in trying different stuff. So protein cereal, protein pasta — absolutely happening, and it’s not going away. We also asked people to type in how many grams of protein they thought they were supposed to be getting daily. Two thirds of people wrote in a number of 50 or below. Whereas based on your weight, the average in the US is now somewhere between 90 and 150 grams you’re supposed to be getting. That’s a lot. It’s actually very hard to get 150 grams of protein a day.
Matt Rodbard: Let’s close with what you learned about the modern soda drinker in America.
Dan Frommer: Younger people are definitely more interested in functional drinks than older people — they’re looking for hydration, energy, but also relaxation. That category is super interesting. The investors I work with just invested in a company called Recess. There’s a bunch of brands using magnesium and other adaptogens as a relaxation play. And Breeze, the cannabis soda company, has been very successful — but they might have to stop doing that, so they’re rushing out these non-cannabis mood drinks. They were pretty good. The quality of that kind of drink is getting better — a lot of these adaptogen drinks are tasting better.
We asked 3,000 people to write in their three favorite beverages. This gets me out of my bubble very quickly. Younger people wrote in Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, Sprite. Older people wrote in coffee, water, Coke, and Diet Coke. That is America. And Coke was 2x Pepsi in terms of the index. The probiotic sodas — for these 3,000 everyday Americans — barely indexed. Poppi, some people wrote in, but very few. And when we asked people what functional ingredients they were interested in, prebiotics and probiotics were very low on the list. I think that was a huge kind of false flag for those brands. The main thing most people want is lower sugar. Younger people are much more accepting of alternative sweeteners.
Matt Rodbard: I did not see as many probiotics walking the floor this year either. Gut health will always be important. Though I learned about Sour Milk through you, and I’m obsessed with it.
Dan Frommer: Glad you like those. I am all sour milk, man. That’s a company where I cannot wait to see where they are in two years — two founders who are hustling, posting on social, hand-delivering yogurt. The yogurt 40s. Very good. And it aligns perfectly with protein. Yeah, and it’s delicious too.
Matt Rodbard: Dan, I love catching up with you. Wish you well regularly. And you’re moving to Paris for five months!
Dan Frommer: Yeah, it’s gonna be great. I’ll phone in. We can figure out — sending you photos of cool European yogurt. The yogurt aisle in Paris is next-level. Maybe we’ll do it on location. We’ll go to Bordier and do it on location.
Matt Rodbard: Butter would be — listen, you’re always invited back. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste.
Dan Frommer: My pleasure. Thank you.