Food & Beverage Research and Trends Hub

Trend Watch: Innovation with Almonds at Natural Products Expo West

From March 12-16, 2024, the Almond Board of California attended Natural Products Expo West, the industry’s largest trade show for natural and organic products in food and beverages, beauty and home products, and supplements and ingredients. This year’s event hosted an estimated 67,000 attendees and 3,300 exhibitors in Anaheim, California, to showcase the latest trends and innovations in consumer-packaged goods. 

ABC uses multiple tools and resources to track food industry trends and identify future opportunities for almonds, working with Innova Market Insights to keep a pulse on new product launches, and Tastewise to track real-time social media, menu and recipe trends online. At Expo West, ABC’s insights about up-and-coming flavor and ingredient pairings as well as functional health and nutrition trends were proven true. Exhibiting brands used ingredients like mushrooms, legumes and pulses, fermented foods and citrus to market functional benefits like brain and mental health, gut health, blood sugar, sleep and improved protein quality. Throughout the show, permissible indulgence persisted as emerging brands put healthier twists on familiar product formats like frozen waffles, cookie dough bites, boxed macaroni and cheese and more. Meat alternatives, canned boba and tea, gelato and frozen desserts, dips and sauces appeared in full force this year.

For ABC, Expo West is a prime place to identify up and coming industry trends and opportunities for California almonds and share new resources with innovative CPG brands and startups. ABC spotted multiple companies who are using almond ingredients—from whole almonds to almond butter, almond milk, almond flour and more— to meet their product development needs in creative ways.

Almond butter is being used to satisfy consumer needs for convenient nutrition and indulgent pick-me-ups. In particular, many companies like Skinny Dipped and B.T.R. Nation expanded their existing snack lines by introducing delicious flavored almond butters in jars, or as a filling in indulgent treats. As demand for protein and health fats reaches new heights, almond butter was also paired with other ingredients like legumes and pulses to strengthen health claims. BROMA created a dark chocolate almond and lentil butter whose ingredient combination offers a complete protein with nine essential amino acids.

Almond milk innovation reached a new level at Expo West, as Burroughs Family Farms showcased a revolutionary regenerative organic almond milk concentrate “designed to elevate both sustainability and nutritional standards in the world of plant-based beverages.” The concentrated format cuts down on bulky shipping, with an extended shelf-life that helps reduce food waste. Almond milk products increasingly highlighted simple ingredients and clean labels that don’t compromise on texture. Flavor innovation took inspiration from seasonal trends, desserts and botanicals. Califia Farms, MALK, Nutpods and others sampled almond milk and creamers in flavors like lavender, brown sugar, snickerdoodle, coffee cake, cinnamon churro and more.

Almond flour had a strong showing in everything from baking mixes to bars, supporting on-pack health claims like gluten-free, gut health, blood sugar management, keto, paleo and more. From savory to sweet, brands used almond flour to put a better-for-you twist on hearty and indulgent items. Almond flour starred in Cappello’s gluten-free buttermilk biscuits, Simple Mills soft baked bars, Evergreen zucchini carrot cake mini waffles, Nature’s Eats cake mix, TruEats pancake & waffle mix, and Hippie Snacks almond crisps. Maria & Ricardo’s used almond flour to create gluten-free and keto-friendly tortillas.

Almond pieces, slices and slivers were used to provide a more exciting mouthfeel. Chili crisp, which was made popular on social media like TikTok last year, had a boom of innovation with brands experimenting with flavors and nuts for added crunch. Sauce Up NYC’s almond crunch sauce used almond pieces to contribute to its “roasted, crunchy, nutty, sweet, flavorful, garlicky, savory” experience.

Despite plenty of innovation across processed almond ingredients, whole almond snacking isn’t going anywhere. Brands are driving new preparation methods and diversifying flavors to generate excitement. According to AI-informed social media insights from Tastewise, conversations about sprouted nut snacks grew +11% over the past year, and 30% of those conversations feature almonds. Daily Crunch, Gut Nuts, and Sprout Living offered sprouted and fermented almonds that amp up attributes like almonds’ craveable crunch and gut health benefits. Samples from Select Harvest and Pocket’s Chocolates fused flavors from global cuisines, with mango chipotle, churro, matcha, yuzu, sesame and Vietnamese coffee-flavored almonds.

Finally, almond oil and extract appeared in both food and beauty products, which leveraged almonds’ healthy halo and nutrients like monounsaturated fats and vitamin E. Fresh Vintage Farms, La Tourangelle, and Sunnygem raised almond oil’s profile as an ideal cooking, baking and dipping oil with a fresh and nutty flavor. According to Tastewise, conversations about beauty in food and beverages has grown in the past year. Sky Organics, a beauty products brand, showcased its topical sweet almond oil that is “rich in skin-nourishing vitamins.” 

Brands like KIND invited booth visitors to participate in a VR experience that showed farming practices in a regenerative almond orchard. Simple Mills, Daily Harvest and Cappello’s highlighted their collaboration on The Almond Project, a farmer-led program to implement and evaluate the outcome of regenerative soil practices on California almond farms.

Expo West demonstrated that almonds continue to be a sought-after ingredient that many brands are proud to showcase on-pack. Almonds’ nutrient profile and unparalleled versatility is helping numerous product developers meet emerging trends and consumer demand.

Three AI- and Almond-Powered Snacking Insights to Leverage in 2024

The world of AI is growing into all industries and sparking innovation in the world of food creativity. Here at the Almond Board of California (ABC), we allow AI—Almond Intelligence—to inform our understanding of food trends.

Using Tastewise, the end-to-end Generative AI platform for modern food & beverage brands, ABC is allowing this new technology to analyze and understand real-time consumption data. Tastewise analyzes billions of social media posts and photos, restaurant menus, recipes and more to help understand what foods are trending and why— going beyond present food fads and looking into the lasting evolution of consumers’ tastes with more time to prepare for future demands.

How do you apply AI-driven insights to inspire product development?

To give a little taste into how AI can spark more creativity in innovation, ABC worked with Tastewise and Chef Henry Hill (Hill’s Research Kitchen) to identify key snacking opportunities for almonds and develop inspirational recipe concepts that bring those ideas to life.

Here are some almond-centered trends we have found through the Tastewise platform:

• Harnessing fitness-related benefits can answer the consumer call for more specific and personalized health claims. There’s an appetite for foods, like almonds, that offer functional nutrition packages.
• Keeping a pulse on global cuisines and new flavors, captures the eye of today’s adventurous consumer. Almonds’ neutral taste and versatility makes them a perfect canvas for creativity in flavor and use in convenient snack formats.
• Reducing food waste is a key opportunity area where almonds can contribute to a guilt-free experience. Consumers on social are interested in finding ways to upcycle ingredients like almond pulp at home, posing opportunities for the food industry to communicate zero waste approaches to food and agricultural byproducts.

These almond trends we’ve detected through Tastewise have allowed food professionals like Chef Henry Hill to create new and innovative recipes! Check out below to see these trends come to life in recipes he created.

Mangonada-Flavored Almond Biscuit Stick

Younger consumers are increasingly interested in international snacks and new flavors, and Chef Henry found opportunities to use current manufacturing technology in a new way.

“I wanted to repurpose rolled wafer tube/straw manufacturing technology and look at how you could enrobe them similar to Japanese biscuit sticks — and create savory versions, cut them into smaller bites, use fillings and different types of crackers that can be labeled as baked and not fried,” he said.

Chef Henry married the world of Japanese and Mexican flavors by creating a Mangonada-flavored Almond Biscuit Stick, inspired by a popular thin biscuit stick snack from Japan that is often sweet and covered in chocolate for a grab-and-go delight. Mangonada poses opportunity as it’s in the early stage of its lifecycle in the U.S., according to Tastewise, and has seen +19% YOY social change (2023.) By filling the centers with chamoy, a sweet-spicy-tangy condiment that originated in Mexico, Chef Henry created a tasty snack that packs a punch. The recipe also reduces almond food waste by utilizing leftover almond pulp.

Almond Butter Chili Crisp

Finally, Chef Henry explored a new take on chili crisp, which Tastewise shows is a trending ingredient that has seen a +60% YOY social change (2023.)

“I chose chili crisp as an inspiration because it has really been blowing up as a platform, but there is much more room for differentiation among the products being launched,” said Chef Henry. “Miso is in this concept because it seemed to complement the umami of the almond butter and tie through to the chili crisp idea.”

In this spicy condiment, Chef Henry highlights the various textures of almonds in this Almond Butter Chili Crisp. Originally from China, chili crisp is growing in popularity for its versatility in flavor and texture to heighten the experience of any meal. Chef Henry captures the chili crunch taste by utilizing toasted almonds and dehydrated almond skins but adds an element of smoothness by mixing in almond butter. The use of dehydrated almond skins is another way to implement zero waste in a recipe, as almond skins can be leftover after the blanching process.

Almond Milk & Orange Blossom Honey Energy Gummy

As consumers look for more specific health benefits, “energy” is a top consumer functional health need for gummies.