At this years Natural Product’s Expo West, New Hope’s team of editors and analysts identified five nationwide trends that are influencing the natural and organic food marketplace.

These trends are having a strong influence on the emerging foods and brands, and were seen all over the aisles of Expo West.

Here's their top 5 (plus 2 more I thought deserved to be on the list).

In a recent interview with Rachel Zemser, Justin Hall gets to the root of the basics you need to know if you’re growing a young food brand. 

Rachel brings years of experience as a food scientist to the table working for big brands, and she knows how a new product is brought to market.

Even more importantly, she knows how the retail food industry works; how a food is accepted into a grocery store and how their terms can affect the ingredients that you choose and the market that you go after.

“Social procurement is a way of being a good business and doing good business”.

Ever heard of “social procurement”? Maybe not. I hadn’t.

But if you’re in the natural or organic foods sector, chances are that you’re already doing it.

Social procurement is all about making procurement choices that do social good. Choosing supply options that make the world better — not just make your company money. It’s often considered to be a cross-over with marketing and PR, because of the positive brand perceptions that often accompany it.

So how can you make smart social procurement decisions to help grow your business, all while making the world better?

Just picture it: you’re walking the aisles of Whole Foods Market… How many natural and organic foods are touting green packaging? A lot, right?

That’s the new trend (and thank goodness for it!): biodegradable, recyclable, and green packaging.

But retail products are not the only category looking for green packaging options.

Procurement managers in the industrial manufacturing realm are also looking for ways to increase their positive impact -- both on their community and the world. If you don’t care about doing good, chances are that your customers do.

Whether green buying is a part of your business strategy or if it's simply a PR exercise, we have the tips you need to make the switch to greener, more environmentally-friendly packaging options for industrial healthy oil ingredients.

If you’re looking at bulk oils for the first time from a bulk supplier (vs. a distributor like Costco), you’ll need to know how much oil you’d get in a bulk shipment, determine the weights of the different packaging types and understand how much oil comes on one pallet.

This article will address these three basic questions, as well as why you need know these calculations:

What is net weight? You need to know this to figure out and compare pricing.

What is gross weight? Gross weights help you choose the right packaging and do shipping calculations.

How much oil fits on one pallet? We’ll give you the calculations.

Are you having your food product Non-GMO Project Verified?

The process is a lengthy one — we know. But totally worth it! We’ve gone through the process ourselves, so we understand. But the good news is that with this experience, we are able to help our own customers understand their oil ingredients and get the right documentation for their verification process.

If you are starting this process (or going through R&D for your ingredients with plans to get verified later), it’s important to understand how your different ingredients are classified, and how the categorization can affect your verification process.

“Manufacturing faces a serious skills gap. Part of this gap is the underrepresentation of women in the industry.”  — The Manufacturing Institute

Did you know that while women make up approximately 50% of the labor force, they make up only about 24% of the manufacturing labor force?

Manufacturers are scrambling to fill their need for skilled professionals, and the women of the future will fill a big part of that. In 2013, approximately 600,000 manufacturing jobs were unfilled because companies couldn’t find qualified workers to fill them.

In the coming years, many manufacturers will turn to women to fill that need.

Non-GMO. Organic. The Non-GMO Project Verification. We’ve talked about this already, haven’t we??

If you are a natural food manufacturer, the discussion about the non-GMO trend is probably getting redundant now… You’ve switched to non-GMO ingredients, or you’re at least working on it. You’ve compared non-gmo vs. organic prices. You’re done with your Non-GMO Project Verification.

But if you are in the food service industry, your answer is probably different. Half of you reading this right now are saying, “What?? Non-GMO? All my customers care about is getting the lowest price!” The other half of you, however, are nodding along saying, “Yes!! I've started to get questions about non-GMO products, especially oils!”

While the non-GMO trend has completely saturated the manufacturing sector at this point, the food service sector is always slower to keep up. Right now, we are right at the brink of non-GMO and organic products beginning to permeate more and more of the food service sector. Is your company prepared?

It’s all about making your customers happy, isn’t it? Creating a product that they’re excited to eat and share with their friends — that’s how to your make your business successful.

This is why it’s so important for food manufacturers to stay on top of the consumer trends in the natural and organic industry. It’s the best way to give your customers what they want, and it all starts at the sourcing level.

If you’re trying to track down the right organic oil for your organic or natural food product, look no further!

Here are the top for organic oils in healthy products today. These are going to be the ingredients that are used in your competitors products and that are all over the shelves of Whole Foods Market.

Your natural food brand needs more eyes on it.  It needs more shares.  More likes.

We can all agree on that, because that's part of marketing now.

But it's in your hands to begin marketing your products and get the chain reaction started.  It won't happen without you, young business owner.  If you're not a marketer in the food industry, it can be hard to do (much less make time to do it!).

You're not alone in this struggle.  Most people that start food brands are not marketers-- they're entreprenuers!  

For those of you that need a boost expanding the reach of your brand, here's a list of my favorite marketing tools for growing food brands that are selling directly to consumers.  

Ever try to submit your taxes without using an accountant?

It’s an awful task. And you always run a lot of risk of getting it wrong and paying the consequences (literally).

The process of importing and exporting foods can be very similar — paperwork filled, confusing, and if you’re shipping a lot of product, it’s a full time job.

I was a newbie at Expo West this year. Luckily, I got some expert advice from some fast-made friends who are quite familiar in the industry.

I talked to Rachel Zemser, an R&D consultant, who weighed in before the show. Customers gave me insight. And I rode from the airport with an experienced employee of KeHe. All in all, I got some great prep advice that helped my show go smoothly.

If you’re attending any trade shows over the next year, this advice from the pros will come in very helpful!

First dates.  

They're often awkward, sometimes exhilirating, and always the start of something new.

They're also are always filled with questions.  What do you do?  Where did you go to school?  What are you passionate about?

Of course, we do the same thing in business, right?  If you're searching for a new supplier, you want to find out as much about them as you can to see if they're a good fit for your company.  

Finding the right supplier is all about finding the right fit in terms of business structure, capabilities, size, facilities, capitol funding, etc. That’s why most people now call them supplier partners — it's not just about finding someone to buy from, it's about finding the right fit for a supplier “mate”.

If you buy organic sunflower oil, do you remember what happened last summer?

Supplies were tight in the summer, companies scrambled for inventory all over the US — a lot of manufacturers came up short. Production was affected, ingredients were switched, and you probably paid a lot more for last minute organic inventory than you should have.

If you don’t remember (or you weren’t privy the drama at the time) let me give you a brief overview of what happened last year, so that you can plan ahead to put your company in the best possible position for summer and fall of 2015.

The popularity of sunflower oil has increased exponentially over the last couple of years.

If you walk down the aisles of Whole Foods and check the ingredient labels, you'll see that sunflower oil is a highly popular oil right now. Walking the Natural Products Expo West this year, I found the exact same results.

The question that this raises for natural food manufacturers is: Why is this particular oil so popular? And if it’s right for other brands (and my competition), is there a good chance it would be right for my product?