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Read time today: 2:33 min

Hi friend,

It’s Friday morning. You are reading VITAMIN C 🍋.

Welcome to the 71 new readers who signed up in the last two weeks. You are in good company.

As always I hunted down 5 insights about food trends and food business that deserve your attention.

Here they are:

Here is a great overview of the top 50 European startups with the strongest growth potential, exit prospects, or capacity to disrupt the agrifood value chain.

Check them out in detail here.

Every FMCG founder I talked to recently had the same story at some point: a retail buyer looked at their product and couldn't figure out where it belonged. I’ve also been there with my first brand NOURI (functional shots), retailers couldn’t decide if it was a drink or a supplement.

Some big players like Red Bull heard comments like that as well. For Red Bull it was too sweet, too expensive, no clear shelf. Oatly heard it too: not milk, not juice.

So both built demand outside the supermarket first. Clubs, independent cafés, D2C.

I'm watching it happen again with brands like

↳ Clever Chocolate (GER): Chocolate meets supplement

↳ Malunt (GER): Savory bars

↳ Lil’ Melts (US): Beef tallow cubes

↳ Nüchtern (GER): Alcohol-free cocktail concentrate

↳ Gamsa Food (US): Savory oatmealli

↳ Jesse Jams (US): Jam with electrolytes

None of them fit a category cleanly. So they're leveraging D2C to build the brand and demand before ever walking into a retail meeting.

In 1989, tequila sat at the back of the bar, the cheap bottle nobody looked at. Then Martin Crowley found a hand-blown, square bottle in a Mexican distillery. It was too wide for standard shelf space, so bartenders put it up top, in full view of every guest.

Patron was priced at $37, while competitors sold for $5 to $15. The bottle said premium before anyone tasted a drop.

I see the same logic today in new brands like ZeroLabs’ pink beer label or true fruits' iconic bottles with fun sayings. Neither is trying to please everyone, and that's the point.

My simple test: can people spot the difference on the shelf, or do they have to read the label first? The first is packaging innovation. The second is just an improvement.

In mature categories, the product usually isn't the problem. Getting noticed is.

Microplastics show up everywhere, in our water, soil, air, and food, from Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. They range from 5 millimeters down to 1 nanometer, and by some estimates we eat and inhale up to 250 grams of plastic a year.

Global release could double by 2040.

That's the scary part. Here are some startups that make me hopeful:

↳ PolyGone filters microplastics out of waterways and recycles what it collects

↳ Matter captures fibers from washing machines before they reach the ocean

↳ Naturbeads replaces cosmetic microplastics with wood-based cellulose particles

↳ Carbonwave's SeaBalance swaps synthetic emulsifiers for a seaweed-based one

↳ A group of Indian teenagers won the 2026 Earth Prize for a tamarind-seed system that clumps microplastics for magnetic removal

None of this fixes things overnight. But it is motivating to see how many companies and smart people are entering that space.

Yesterday I went down a Guinness World Records rabbit hole looking for food records.

A few weird and fun examples I found:

These records don't actually say anything about the future of food. But they show how far people will go when they're truly obsessed with an idea.

Stay awesome,
Lia

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