When it comes to the CPG industry, virtual expos are the future. COVID hit the world and changed everything so events like Expo West are now virtual. To talk more about this is Carlotta Mast, the SVP and Market Leader of New Hope Network. She is in charge of the growth and impact of Informa Market’s New Hope Network portfolio of in-person and virtual events. She makes sure that everything serves the natural & organic products industry. Join your host Elliot Begoun as he sits down with Carlotta Mast on what Expo West is all about and the shifts New Hope had to do because of the pandemic. Join in the conversation and make sure to attend these virtual events.

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The CPG Industry And What’s In Store At The Expo West With Carlotta Mast

Before I start and introduce Carlotta, who needs no introduction, a Founder shout-out to Alli Reed of Stratia, if you all remember back, Alli was on the show talking about the challenges of raising capital in this COVID world, the number of rejections that she had heard, her level of rising self-doubt, and all of the things that were coming with it. I’m proud to say that it was publicly announced the closing of a round for Stratia. She’s got all the funding that she was hoping for and a great investor partner. Now, it’s off to the growth that they are hoping for.

It’s a reminder that it’s a slog. It’s tough. It takes time, resilience, and perseverance to make it happen. I wanted to spend a moment to tell her that I was excited and proud. I can’t wait to see what’s next for her and Stratia. With that, I’m going to invite Carlotta to introduce herself to maybe the weird one of you who doesn’t know who she is. Give us a little bit about you, Carlotta, and where we are with New Hope, and then we’ll jump in.

Thank you so much, Elliot. It’s an honor to be part of this show because I listen to your episodes. You have such amazing conversations with amazing people like Alli that you talked about in her achievements to be part of the community that you want to talk to in this environment. I’m Carlotta Mast. I’m the Senior Vice President and Market Leader for New Hope Network. New Hope puts on the Natural Product Expos. We do a lot of content, data and insights research for the natural organic, what we’re increasingly calling high-integrity CPG ecosystem.

I have been at New Hope for many years. I love this industry. I found a lot of other ways to get involved outside of my work with New Hope. I began leading the New Hope business in January 2021, which was an interesting time to take that on. I wasn’t on the content side at New Hope for most of my time with the company. I have gotten involved with Naturally, JEDI Collaborative and Climate Collaborative. I’m doing a lot of work with the industry to help propel the industry forward.

You have gotten involved with about everything, which is crazy. One of the things that you said that I thought would be fun to explore first before we get to the questions is this moniker of high integrity. Let’s talk about that and the genesis of it. It is somewhat more an inclusive way to bring entrepreneurs in. Operationally, define that one for us.

We’re in the process of defining that. New Hope has its genesis in helping to curate, define and create the natural industry. When Doug Greene started New Hope, there wasn’t a natural industry. There were retailers and companies who were looking to do something that was different from the status quo in terms of the health of the products they were bringing to market, either as a retailer or a manufacturer, and the way they were thinking about the supply chain. They were working against conventional grocery and retail wanting to do things differently.

From all of that work, the natural industry was born. The organic industry was born through all of the work that created the organic standard. We have a thriving natural and organic ecosystem, which we are now very close to $300 billion in US sales for what New Hope would define as a natural and organic industry. There are all these other ways that the industry is growing. There are new companies coming on board that might not necessarily fit into a classic definition of natural and organic.

We will always serve natural and organic, but there are other ways that the industry is defining itself when you look at the rise of regenerative agriculture and focus on regenerative supply chains. When you think about everything that’s happening around upcycling to address waste and food technology, it’s complex. In some ways, it’s a controversial issue for our industry when you’re looking at these technologies, where they are coming from and the potential impact they can have.

If you also look at the values driving a lot of these companies, they are so aligned with the natural and organic industry in terms of helping to take care of and regenerate the planet and bring good nutrition to all people. We think that high integrity is the way that we’re starting to speak about our opportunities at New Hope and the way the ecosystem is evolving. Natural and organic will always be an important part of it, but it’s not the only way to talk about or define our industry.

The way we have always filtered or defined the brands that we work with is our three-legged stool, which is doing right for people, the planet and profits. We can’t forget the fact that they have to be economically viable. There are a lot of brands and entrepreneurs who are doing things to champion social justice or access. Maybe their products or ingredient lists don’t fall squarely in the crosshairs of natural and organic, but certainly, they do from the broader definition you gave. That’s a very interesting exploration. I also think it’s a good way to be more inclusive.

Let’s go right for the biggest question that we heard in our community, “What should our entrepreneurs expect from Expo West?” Let’s cut to the chase and talk about, “What is it looking like? What is going to be the same and different?” Having attended Expo East was almost joyous. First of all, I went with some honest trepidation. It was my first real foray back out into a larger event. I was worried about how I would feel in that setting but also worried about the message it was sending to other people.

Once we got there and the level of compliance, respectfulness, understanding, and abidance by the safety protocols was proof to me that in this hybridized world, which is something we’re all going to live in for the foreseeable future, you can still deliver a great event, foster the community feel, do all the things that are necessary and not have to sacrifice personal health or safety. I’m not just saying that because you’re here. You and I have talked about this. I think it was a good way to re-enter.

On a personal note, what I did find is that the first day they were walking the show, I realized I hadn’t exercised that social muscle being around that many people in a while. It was hard to re-engage. I felt exhausted. The one benefit was, walking around in masks, you could feign some anonymity for those that you weren’t ready to engage with and keep walking and have plausible deniability that you didn’t notice them. Tell everyone reading because I know a lot of people are wondering. What do you see has been the same and different in size and programming and all of that?

I’m glad we’re diving into the question because it is important and it gets to the heart of what New Hope does and how we serve the community. I also had trepidation. There was a lot of trepidation going into Expo East and the sheer joy of being back together as a community. Also, it has reinforced to me that is one of the things that we bring to the community by being able to convene.

For Expo West, this was reinforced by the positive experience we had at Expo East, in which the event was smaller. It felt different. People had masks. We enforced the mask mandate, but we had so much positive feedback that people felt safe and they were very glad to be back. We feel optimistic about being able to do the same but on a larger scale because Expo West is larger than Expo East. Based on our exhibition sales numbers and the number of companies that are signing up, we have already got 2,400 exhibitors signed up for Expo West. We’re assigning about 30 to 40 booths every week.

Give a frame of reference of what that may have looked like in 2019.

In 2019, at this point, we would probably be nearly sold out for Expo West. In terms of the number of exhibitors, we would have been over 3,000, 3,200, or 3,300, depending on if we were in the Hilton or the Marriott Space. In 2019, we did open the North Hall. That added a lot of additional exhibition space to the Anaheim Convention Center. That was something that was in progress for several years. We are trending well toward getting to what we think will be about 3,000 exhibitors for Expo West. It’s smaller than what we were in 2019. That’s to be expected.

The registration opens for Expo West on December 1st, 2021. We don’t yet have registration numbers. It’s hard to know where the registration numbers will be. What you would find in the events industry these days is that people are registering at different times than they would typically. It used to be you would get your early bird registration and get a good sense of where registration would be showing up, but people are now registering much closer to the event because they are having to make decisions that they didn’t have to make, “Are they feeling well? Are they able to attend?”

That makes it trickier for event producers, but we’re anticipating very strong attendance. We have stopped and I’m so grateful for this. We don’t define our success by the number of attendees. There was a point when it would be like, “We’re at 80,000 attendees and then we’ll be at 85,000. We’re close to 90,000. When are we going to ever hit? We’re on track to hit 100,000 attendees.” That’s not the right way to define the success of these events. I know a lot of people focus on those numbers, but it’s about quality.

It’s about getting the right people there and providing the tools and the ability so that the buyers, other members of the ecosystem and investors can find those exhibitors out of those 3,000 exhibitors. Those exhibitors can be found and stand out based on the things that make them special, the trends, criteria and kinds of products they have. We have our Natural Products Expo Virtual platform, which provides so much more functionality for checking out those exhibitors before the show on the site, being able to understand and map out your experience at the show so that you can have those deeper connections. It’s not about the numbers, but it’s about the quality. That’s what we’re focused on.

Based on what we’re seeing, COVID will still be in our environment and world. We don’t know exactly what health and safety will be, but we will lean into it as much as we did for Expo East. We will follow all local and state guidelines. We will be working very closely with local and state health authorities. We will be working with partners like Epistemic, which helped us look at the data for a specific location, which was Philadelphia for Expo East. Understand that if you have a mask mandate, a requirement of proof of vaccine or a negative COVID test and how that materially impacts the potential for COVID spread in an environment.

We will be using all of these tools to design the right health and safety protocols for Expo West. Health and safety are of paramount importance to us, so we will continue to make that a priority while also wanting to ensure that we provide the right experience in a valuable and productive experience for our community. We don’t know exactly what that looks like because it’s pretty fluid. Compared to where we were in 2020 at this time, vaccines were starting to roll out. Sadly, COVID is still very much a factor in the US and we see some COVID spread. We’re not where I certainly would have wanted to be in terms of being able to move beyond COVID. We know that whatever that environment looks like, we can have a very safe and productive event.

There are a couple of things to add to that. First of all, you’re right in the numbers. In my opinion, those are another form of vanity metrics. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that one interaction that can be game-changing or life-changing for the entrepreneur and retailer. I penned that article that one of the worrisome business outcroppings of this time is the fact that we have disconnected from those collaborative conversations. So much of what’s happening in the business now is the one-pager and the new item form submission and the hope that happens, but it’s that coming together and having the collaborative conversation. That’s what matters.

I had direct feedback from multiple people at East who said, “We knew it was going to be a smaller show. We knew that the aisles weren’t going to be as busy. It was better for us because we had time and more meaningful meetings.” That’s the reminder of what this really is. It’s bringing together of the community and it’s an access point. It’s a place to build it. For those reading, it’s up to you to get the most out of this. The reality is every one of you should be starting your outreach to those you want to have meetings with at Expo West and working that.

It’s a great and fantastic point of aggregation, but if you treat it like the Field of Dreams, “If we have a booth, they will come,” you’re likely going to be disappointed. If you’re proactive around it and take ownership of, “This is a place where people are going to be. They are going to be congregating and I’m going to leverage and lean in to have as many of these meetings as possible,” I’m confident you’ll have a good outcome and a good feel walking away from the show. I’m excited. I know our whole team is dying to be together too as a team there.

One thing I want to add on, I appreciate that. One of the teams that we are expanding, building upon and then using our new technology platform is ensuring that we are engaging the right retailers, more retailers and more buyers in the show. We don’t have registration open, but we do host a buyer program now for Expo West, just as we do for Expo East. We’re getting great engagement for that. We’re finding other ways to provide more curated experiences for our retail buyers as we talk to everyone from Kroger to Target to more of the independent.

It’s important because certainly, the discussion around Expo East is where the buyer is going to come, “Will they come in this environment?” We know our buyers have been under unbelievable stress, strain and change during COVID. We’re leaning into how do we make it easier for them to have the best, most productive experience at Expo because then that benefits them. They are important to our ecosystem and exhibitors. That’s an area that we’re focused on. It’s a very top, if not the top, priority for us.

I’m going to take a moment and risk slightly embarrassing you. It’s not the intent, but I also want everyone to understand because I have been a witness to this alongside you through these many cases. The emotional rollercoaster that you and your team have gone through from the time West was canceled, I know, has been taxing.

While it’s easy when you’re 1 or 2 steps removed to find fault or question, I want to call out to everyone and make sure everyone understands that. This is my opinion, but I believe fully that every step of the way, you, as the leader, and New Hope, as the organization, have tried to do the right thing, which has not been easy. I wanted to go on record and say thank you.

Thank you, Elliot. I do appreciate that empathetic lens that you’re bringing to New Hope. We work with amazing people like Ryan at Smoketown to help us deepen our empathy for our ecosystem and our customers and all of the different components of our ecosystem. That’s important to have that empathy reflected back. We get a lot of that. I appreciate it.

Nothing is perfect in this. We’re all flying blind. No one has been here before. None of us were leading organizations in 1918, the last time we had a significant pandemic, and the world looked a whole lot different. At Expo East, the educational component was relatively scaled back. Is that going to be back in full force in West?

We did have fewer sessions at East. We will have a very robust education component. One of the things I’m excited about that we’re doing is exploring how we work with you and other partners within the ecosystem like MaryAnne Howland, who is part of the JEDI Collaborative. She is creating this JEDI Leadership Institute. There’s Startup CPG, Naturally and so many others.

Through our Natural Products Expo Virtual, we are approaching it in 2022, where we would have a full year of content and programming activations. It’s multiple things that we’re doing every month to provide that level of engagement and connection and facilitate buyer-seller matchmaking that happens at the expos. Education is an important part of that. It’s something like business school, for example, which has been on-site at Expo for years.

We’re making that virtual so that we can have more of those companies that would like to participate but they are too busy getting ready to be an exhibitor and have that experience at their booth so that we can have that year-round of important, valuable quality education for mission-driven and high-integrity companies throughout the year and delivering the components of an in-person but also virtual throughout the year.

We’re only dialing up what we do on the education front. We have always put a lot of emphasis on content and education, but that will only be expanded. I’m excited about the opportunity through this Natural Products Expo Virtual platform to be able to deliver more of that at times when our entrepreneurs and others can engage with it.

That’s one of the cool things that has come out of this horrible time. It’s this recognition about how we can deliver content differently and the hybridization of the way we can do events and things along those lines. That adds access and flexibility. We all consume information differently in different ways. The hardest thing is separating themselves from their business, especially getting close to something as important as Expo. Decoupling is cool.

The reason I asked and I wanted to give you that opportunity is because it’s such an important component of what Expo and New Hope offer. It’s important to the founders and their teams to listen to take advantage of that stuff, not only the education as it is given but the community of those absorbing that education around you because those are potential collaborators and champions, which are two types of community that you need to be building.

I’m going to change subjects a little bit away from Expo. I want to talk a little bit about the impact this industry has. One of the cool things you and I had a chance to be involved with in 2021 was the Grow the Vote Campaign. It’s a recognition that as an industry, there are about 50 million consumers who would fall into our constituency and buy that $300 billion worth of product. As members of this broader community and especially those brands and the founders, we’re all in a form, influencers, and we can have an impact. What can you encourage, suggest or offer to those reading around how to show up that way? It falls in line with that high integrity placement of the brand.

First of all, it is what defines our industry. When I first started writing and talking about this, a lot of it was about cause marketing. Cause marketing was coming in as this big deal. It was thought of this way that you would reach consumers and differentiate your brand, but it was always something that was bolted onto your company. What I have loved seeing is that there does seem to be a shift in that. There are plenty of companies that maybe think of it more as a nice to do, but it’s not inherent in what they do as a brand.

More and more companies, that’s their reason for being. Their purpose is to have that bigger impact. I’m very encouraged by that. It’s going to be increasingly table stakes when you look at what’s happening, even with what investors are now increasingly valuing as you think about ESG components. Even for my company, Informa, we’re a publicly-traded company. A greater percentage of our investors are looking at ESG as much as they are looking at other components of the business. That is heartening for me because I do believe business can be used as a force for good and real impact.

When companies think about doing that, it’s about, “How can you have a meaningful and measurable impact?” One of the things I also worry about is there’s a lot of greenwashing. There’s a lot of talking and intention maybe around having a real impact, but then when it comes to having to make decisions, these are hard decisions because they impact your bottom line and profitability. You’re making maybe decisions that don’t allow you to have as much of that impact.

Consumers are going to become increasingly savvy about what is real impact and what’s not. Even with the conversations coming out of COP26 and some of the concerns, it feels like greenwashing and a lot of talks but not enough action. That same lens will be put on the corporate world and what companies and brands are doing more and more. I will encourage companies. You can start small with your impact, but measure it and make it real. Talk about that and don’t overstate your impact.

Through our next year’s process, we evaluated hundreds of products and we got some that substantiate their impact. Those rise to the top, but a lot submit and they can’t substantiate their impact. In a way, it’s almost worse that they are making those claims and they can’t substantiate it. There’s going to be a real shift there and I hope there is.

As a commitment to this show, I always stop and make sure acronyms are explained. ESG is Environmental, Social and Governance, in case anyone doesn’t know. To anyone reading, I encourage you, if any of us prattle on with one of the industry acronyms that you stop and ask us. An important call that you mentioned is that you can’t make it marketing only. It needs to be interwoven within the fabric of the business. It has to be a real calling because there’s a tremendous potential backlash if you are caught greenwashing, obfuscating any of this, being disingenuous around it or trying to be surfaced around it.

Plus, it’s all of our responsibility to be stakeholders on our planet. That’s human health, social health, planetary health and all of those things. As brand owners and brand starters, we all have a way to do that. This business is filled with trade-offs. You are going to be confronted with trade-offs all the time. If I’m absolutely steadfast in everything I do and it has to be perfectly aligned, then you may not have an economically viable business now.

The way to show up is to vocalize those trade-offs, “We would love to be an all-compostable packaging, but if we were an all-compostable packaging now, the cost of our product would be prohibitive and/or the shelf life would be degraded. We can’t do it, but we’re committed as soon as that becomes viable to move that way.”

There’s no problem in my mind. It also puts pressure back in the industry to solve the problem to be aspirational, admit where you have made trade-offs, and be able to be viable again. The business has to stand on all three legs. It has to be doing what’s right for people and the planet, but it also has to be doing what’s right for profit in order to be a sustainable business.

That’s why I increasingly think that our purpose at New Hope is about accelerating and strengthening high integrity, prosperous CPG industry that it’s both high integrity and prosperous.

That’s a good segue into this other set of questions that came to me by text for those entrepreneurs who like to cut in line. It’s a good question and that’s around funding. I’ll start with a little bit of an editorial first. We’re in this strange space in the industry now where there is quite a bit of venture money and private equity money, but a lot of that money can’t be one until your business is of a certain size.

The money for the smaller, more early-stage businesses has gotten harder to find. One of the questions is, what is New Hope doing or thinking about doing or have they thought about doing to recruit more Angels or early investors into this space to help support the earlier-stage brands so that they can make it to where all the venture money sits?

We had our Nutrition Capital Network Meeting in San Francisco. That was something that I talked a lot about with Arno Hesse from Slow Money Northern California. Arno is very involved in Slow Money. There’s a lot of work to be done to help convene that and bring in those Angels and family offices that are more focused on the emerging brands, different kinds of money and maybe more patient capital. There are some models that are starting to emerge. I certainly am not an expert about them, but when I hear folks talk about some of the more patient capital that’s coming in, that can help support those companies that are trying to create generational change.

They are looking at impact long-term. Their returns are going to look different compared to a typical CPG company. I’m heartened by that. We have been putting the focus on how do we bring in more of those kinds of entities and options to our Nutrition Capital Network Community but also the broader Expo ecosystem that we would serve. Arno and I were talking about some ideas, “How do we support and even accelerate the crowdfunding that we’re starting to see more and more small companies have success with?”

It’s something that I know Arno is very excited about and bullish on is the rise in the ability for crowdfunding to be a truly viable option for those early-stage companies. How do we then help bring it to more of the people in our industry? We have so many people in our industry and many of them are accredited investors. They want to support these brands, and crowdfunding could be a model. It is an area that we’re definitely focused on not only through our Nutrition Capital Network business but our broader work in the community.

I’ll share the answer to the question too. We’re trying to do the same. One of the things that we’re doing is we have started an outreach campaign to Angel groups all across the United States. We have got the help of somebody who is working phones and emails, reaching out to them. We’re inviting them to a workshop where we’ll talk to them about why they should be investing in a natural product CPG and even bringing some brands to show a pitch and trying to do that.

We’re also talking to some of the crowdfunding platforms like Wefunder and Republic about aggregated support. In other words, if 4 or 5 brands in our community are on simultaneously, aggregating that ad spends and doing those kinds of things to bring more awareness. I love what’s happening in the crowdfunding space. There are some folks who are still a little bit leery of it, but it’s changing rapidly.

The regulation you see now allows for brands to raise up to $5 million. There are a lot of things that have been done to streamline the complexity that was early on in terms of the cap table. It’s democratized. The marvelous thing, too, is that it’s a way for unaccredited investors, people who love the brand or love to put a little bit of money in and feel like stakeholders and be stakeholders and benefit from that.

The other is that there are a lot of folks in this industry who have been the beneficiaries. There are even new ways that they can get involved through self-directed IRAs and 401(k)s that allow for private placement investment and things along those lines, where you can put a small portion of that money to work back in the industry.

It’s a challenge to answer the question that all of us who are in a position of leadership or impact in this industry need to take the mantle and try to help the earlier-stage brands at least have access to the opportunity to win that money. We can’t win it for you, but we can certainly try to create more access points.

How do we work together? Knowing that you’re working on these things, we want to elevate those things. How can we amplify and elevate what you’re doing so that it benefits the ecosystem? That has always been a role that New Hope has in terms of bringing different players together for collaboration. We need more and more of that.

That’s why I love the kinds of groups that you form. You bring the right people together to be thinking about, “How can we do more together than we would have ever been able to do separately?” That’s my philosophy. I’m always looking for those kinds of partnerships in ways that we support and amplify one another and our impact so we can get more done.

I’m more of the same way. Everything that we try to do in these kinds of things, we want it to be totally open source. We don’t want to cloister anything. It’s part of the responsibility. It’s part of being champions of all of you reading, who are the coolest people out there, the entrepreneurs that get up every day and fight for this change. Carlotta, you know I have talked about this. I, too, agree that when harnessed for good, there is no greater power than business.

It’s also a fabulous and fantastic corrupter when harnessed the wrong way but when harnessed for good, it is a powerful change agent and we have seen it time and time again. We see it with a lot of the senior people in this industry who have blazed the trails, the Gary Herzbergs and the Walter Robbs. There are so many. Another question that came in here is the recognition that New Hope has been doing a lot around JEDI and trying to create a more inclusive space. Can you talk a little bit about that work?

We’re reworking our purpose statement. We’re working that into our strategic objectives. We have gone through the work that JEDI Collaborative does to help companies make their JEDI commitments and then create action plans against those commitments. We’re in the midst of all of that work. We’re leaning into that. We have the ability to have a lot of impacts and we also have a lot of work to do internally. We don’t have a lot of diversity within our own organization. We were in a constriction mode as COVID has significantly impacted our business.

We lost amazing colleagues both through attrition and also we did have one round of layoffs. We’re starting to hire again. We’re expanding and doing that with a JEDI lens. I’m so grateful that our parent company, Informa, is also focused on how do we do more with the right recruiting and hiring so that we can bring in more diversity and then have the right environment, where we have folks believe that they truly do belong, they can have a seat at the table and have an impact. We’re doing that work internally and I want to acknowledge that because we have a lot of work to do there.

In terms of the impact that we can have with the industry, it has been so much through partnership, partnering with the group, Included. Ryan Pintado-Vertner was also a Cofounder of Project Potluck, which is a group of BIPOC entrepreneurs and professionals on JEDI Collaborative and the JEDI Leadership Institute, looking at how we can partner. KeHE has some impressive initiatives with their DIVERSEtrade Program so that we can do more to bring the right opportunities and the right spotlight and showcase the right access to more diverse entrepreneurs.

We can play a role in that and hopefully see at our Expo shows where that starts to shift. In 2019, you would have walked through our shows and felt like, “This is a White industry.” If you were not part of that dominant culture, you were hearing like, “It doesn’t feel inclusive. It feels very exclusive.” It feels like all of that serendipity that people talk about as being such a benefit that if you’re not part of that, you feel excluded and it stings to have that exclusion.

We have a kickoff call with these different groups, Included and JEDI Collaborative. There’s a new group that Shayna Harris is running called the New American Table project. We’re looking at the ways that we can all work together to make it so that hopefully, Expo West 22, Expo East 22, and through our virtual platforms, you’re starting to see a shift in terms of the makeup of who is participating, the experience they are having, the accessibility as well as work we can do to help those companies have greater access and more of the spotlight to be successful. There’s a lot that we’ll be leaning into that we have been doing in 2021 on the education front but expanding that into more action in 2022.

There are two things to follow up with what you said there. One is that it does take the whole village. We’re active in JEDI. This is an important initiative for us as well. Access is going to be the biggest challenge. If we want this industry to be more reflective of the broader population and the consumers that we currently serve and aspire to serve, then we have to look like them and be like them.

It’s not just within our own organizations or by seeing more founders of color but also through making sure that we’re providing opportunities for those folks to become advisors and board members and have seats at the table to have influence and say because that diversity of thought is critical for companies now to understand that. We have to create ways to recruit them and provide them with the training and the knowledge in order to do that, especially if they are going to be on fiduciary boards and have to know about governance and all of that.

At the same time, if we’re going to create or embolden founders of color who are going to want to serve their communities, we have to make sure their communities have access to those products and they are in the stores that they go to or those kinds of stores are in the communities that they live in. It’s a complex and holistic challenge. To me, I’m old. I have been doing this for a long time but these are the challenges that get me up and excited every day because I feel like we’re best suited as an industry to lead these things.

There are so many things that all of us can be doing. I joined a board outside of our industry. It’s called Step Up. It’s all about mentoring predominantly girls and young women of color to have access to the kinds of mentorship, education training, and job opportunities for inspiring and impactful careers. They do a lot of work in technology and entertainment. They haven’t done much work in food and they are noticing that their young women and girls want to have jobs in food. I have joined their board to help with fundraising and help bring more of our food and ecosystem.

It’s one way that we could be working on the pipeline of young people, getting them interested and excited about our industry, bringing them in, whether it’s as an entrepreneur or a professional in our industry, and creating real avenues to meaningful career opportunities. That’s one way that you can help with this JEDI work and there are so many others. There is a growing community of us who cares. Doing that work will make a difference. It will also broaden our networks and bring so much more diversity of thought into our communities, which I have appreciated in this work.

It has created the opportunity to have some remarkably uncomfortable conversations that are growth-building that maybe I hadn’t ever had before. I think that’s great. I sat on that panel when we were talking about how the killing of George Floyd has impacted the industry. Being once sitting there on that panel as the lone middle-aged White dude was both unnerving and fantastic. It’s showing up and being willing to have these conversations and talks.

To me, it excites me of what’s going to come. If you think about what we put in and on our bodies, those are the brands and products that should be the most culturally relevant and inclusive. They should be the ones that are the most tied to heritage, nostalgia, tradition, and all of those kinds of things. It’s the tech, entertainment and all of that, but there’s nothing more intimate than what we put in or on our bodies.

Let’s pivot one more time to keep you on your toes. Let’s talk about the future industry trends. It’s things that if you put on your swami’s hat, that you foresee or that you would want to call out to those reading that they should be thinking of, aware of, and asking questions about as it relates to them and their businesses.

The first one that comes to mind is tied to our last subject. The 2020 census showed the dramatic change and the demographic makeup of the United States. I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but I believe it is that Caucasian and White people now make up 58% of the US population. If you look at younger demographics, there are more people of color in those age groups than you would have White or Caucasian people. That’s a major shift.

Nick McCoy at Whipstitch did this great analysis looking at all of the top brands and when they were founded and what the demographic makeup of the United States was when those brands were founded. Most of them were in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s a totally different story. It’s very much predominantly White. The leadership of those companies is predominantly White. There has been some progress there, but there’s a major gap that’s happening.

If we’re not creating products that are truly relevant and serve those non-White communities, you’re not going to be successful. If you don’t have the leadership in your organization to be able to do that work to be relevant, then you’re not going to be successful. That’s the biggest shift. The 2020 census showed that it accelerated faster than was anticipated. If you’re not paying attention to that, that’s a challenge.

In macro-trends, what else are you seeing? What else is changing? We talked a little bit about the region and climate. Go back and think about it.

It’s exciting how companies are looking at up cycling as a way of addressing waste within their production and supply chains and how they are also using waste to create whole new products and opportunities. All of that is being able to look at using more circular economy principles to look at all of your systems to find new opportunities but also to reduce waste for the impact it has. Also, the potential savings all of that can have is exciting. There are a lot of cool innovations there. That feels impactful and very long-term.

Everything that’s happening around sugar reduction is exciting. There was a company at NCN. I’m so sad I don’t have it in front of me and I don’t want to not get the name right. It was a three-ingredient, non-dairy gelato that was so spectacular. The fact there were only three ingredients, but one of the ingredients that there’s no added sugar. They use allulose. Allulose is a sweetener. There are companies like GoodSam and this gelato company that is innovating with allulose and truly creating the next generation of no-sugar or low-sugar products.

Dr. Tieraona Low Dog calls sugar a weapon of mass destruction and people are waking up to that. You have seen real innovation that allows you to have these products that are clean but very delicious. Lily’s looked at their exit to Hershey’s and you’re seeing even advancements beyond that. That’s big. I would be remiss. Everybody is talking about mushrooms. I watched Fantastic Fungi. Paul Stamets is my hero.

Beyond everything else, the cinematography in that movie was spectacular. Everyone needs to watch that.

Mushrooms and mycelium have the potential to save humans. I would say save the planet, but planets can be fine. It will be us, humans, that maybe we won’t be here. The innovation that the companies are finding through mycelium and mushrooms blows my mind that I wish I was 25 years old and I could dedicate my career to that. That’s exactly what I would do.

There are so many opportunities. The thing that readers and entrepreneurs need to ask themselves is, “What am I doing to have an impact beyond just putting the product up there?” That’s a new reality. We have more and more consumers having a stakeholder mindset and they are with their purchases. They are going to expect and want the products, either doing something for them physically or doing something for us environmentally or socially. You need to be able to answer that. It’s awesome. Carlotta, I’m glad we finally pulled this off. I appreciate you and the leadership.

Right after Expo West was first canceled, many of you were reaching out and asking me for advice or feedback and what do the future means and all of this stuff. I put on my brave face and sounded confident and then hung up the phone like, “I have no idea what’s going on. I hope this is the right advice.” I reached out to about 25 or 26 of my industry friends, the brains that I felt were way bigger than mine.

I said, “Would any of you be willing to get on a Zoom with me every couple of weeks? Can we talk about what’s going on, what we’re seeing, what we’re hearing, share thoughts and ideas, and check in on each other’s too because all of our businesses are going to change in this?” I reached out, figuring that maybe out of that 25 or 26, I would get 1 or 2, but I got 25 or 26.

As a group, not everybody makes it every two weeks, but we come together every two weeks. We have been able to share, talk and learn from each other in a way that has been hugely impactful to me. It has allowed us to all have more of an impact on you. I’m grateful for that whole group, but I’m also grateful that Carlotta is a part of it.

That group is a gift. You are a gift to this industry, Elliot. Thank you so much for having me. I admire what you do for our entrepreneur community. I love this industry and I’m excited to keep it all working together to make it stronger and have more impact. I will see you all at Expo.

Thanks, everyone.

Important Links

• Alli Reed – Previous episode

• Stratia

• New Hope Network

• Naturally

• JEDI Collaborative

• Climate Collaborative

• Expo West

• Expo East

• Natural Products Expo Virtual

• Epistemic

• Smoketown, LLC

• Startup CPG

• Informa

• COP26

• Nutrition Capital Network Meeting

• Slow Money Northern California

• Wefunder

• Republic

• Included

• Project Potluck

• DIVERSEtrade Program

• New American Table

• Step Up

• Whipstitch Capital

• GoodSam Foods

• Dr. Tieraona Low Dog

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