What we learned at the Spark Change™ Mission-Driven Business Community Event
Recently the NewHope Network hosted a Mission-Driven Business Community Event, as part of their new Spark Change™ series. We checked out the session, “What’s Next in Mission-Driven Business? Data & Insights, ”to learn about trends that are shaping the growth of the natural products industry. 
The session speakers, Eric Pierce (New Hope Network) and Kathryn Peters (SPINS), talked about how retailers need to be thoughtful about what products fill the limited space in store shelves. Using the latest sales, innovation, and consumer engagement data, their session was geared to help retailers identify and prioritize mission-driven products that should be on the shelf.
The discussion touched on areas in the industry that offer the greatest opportunity for sales, differentiation points for successful product development, and how to prioritize your brand among other mission-based brands. Some identified mission-based trends covered in the session were responsible sourcing, multi-stakeholder business models, sustainable packaging, waste reduction and plant-based ethics.
Of particular interest was the section covering plant-based ethics, where the speakers talked about the massive growth in this category and why consumers are eating more plant-based foods—for reasons like health and environmental concerns, as well as due to animal welfare issues and food safety.
Due to this market growth and these identified plant-based trends, this has been a topic of interest here at InsightsNow as well. We have explored the area of plant-based proteins extensively in our recent white paper, “Beyond Impossible—Behavioral KPIs for Plant-Based Burgers,” and the trends in the session resonated with our own findings. You can check out the white paper here.
Next up for New Hope’s Spark Change™ series is their Modern Health Community Event on October 7th where we will be joining along with other brands and products representing the future of wellness to take in the panels and presentations on this timely topic.
