Things Consumed in Great Pleasure

at the people's EXPO

I’m sorry for the delayed dispatch—currently trying to stay afloat at SXSW, moderated a panel this morning on the future of hospitality in the age of automation with the likes of Nicolas Jammet (Sweetgreen) Will Guidara (Thank You) and Garrett Scott (Pipedream Labs) we riffed on the weird friction between tech and humans going on right now, how more humans does not equal more hospitality and visions on how both will continue to intertwine, will we have robots with Michelin stars by 2050… it’s NOT that farfetched.

If you’ve been wondering what we’ve been up to, we were prepping for our annual pre-EXPO party, this year we had over 80 brands come together to help us raise $10K to donate towards retailers and founders who were affected by LA Fires, I’m so grateful for all of you who made it happen. We had exclusives from brands from Australia thanks to the incredible folk at Really Good People and Delli Market made their US debut at our party, we had exclusives from pre-launch brands like Joon and HYQ and it was the first place to try the new SKUs from brands like Bezi and Vuum, in the end, you would be crazy not to want to be part of this next year.

I have a lot thoughts on EXPO—particularly the empty booths that seemed to be a popular topic of conversation, the fact that Poppi did not do a booth (how very Olipop of them) and the fact that we’ve reached peak protein, who is really buying pasta sauce with 80g of protein? At times, I wonder if we really even bother to go out and talk to real consumers about all these products, at times it feels like on big circle jerk and talking about VC funding here makes me really think there’s some Venn diagram out there between them and narcos just burning through money, but I will marinate on this a bit more, there’s an upcoming deep dive that ties this all together.

I’ve been staying alive today thanks to Jacob’s and really thinking we might see the 12 tribes of protein start to pop off, Waterboy has been keeping me hydrated and feeling good as I’ve been on the go and haven’t even been able to unpack since EXPO, a lot more CPG happenings are popping up at SXSW and it’s fascinating to see that shift.

A quick few things I’m obsessed with:

Sunny Fine Foods newest line of sauces

Central Market has launched their own Fishwife dupe.

Stopped by the new PUG that is in Austin for a month!

Crave New World makes it’s official debut—more on this company soon.

Talk soon!

Andrea