Every year, thousands of new food products launch in the United States with one goal: to become the thing you can't stop eating. Some of them solve a real problem. Some of them are cotton candy that tastes like salted butter.

George Duran spent two days at the Summer Fancy Food Show at the Javits Center — 2,300 exhibitors, 32,000 people, and a tote bag that ended up heavier than a Costco run. He ate jam with electrolytes in it. He ate oatmeal flavored with garlic and miso. He ate goat cheese that had turned purple. He was handed an entire burrata, for himself, by an Italian man who would not take no for an answer.

This is a walk through the show floor with the people actually making this stuff: a candy maker chasing adult nostalgia, a jam guy who'll happily tell you electrolytes are just salt, a founder who made tofu shelf-stable so you can carry it on the subway, and a company using fungi to build a better ham.

Not every one of these products needs to exist. But every one of them says something about what we want food to do for us now — be fun, be healthy, be fast, and surprise us. Sometimes all four at once.

Takeaways

• Cotton candy is being reformulated for adults — Morganne Wheeler's Cirrus 9 Candy sells salted butter, lychee, Madagascar vanilla, and New York maple syrup, betting that nostalgia plus a grown-up flavor profile beats plain pink sugar.
• "Electrolytes" is marketing for salt. Jesse Linevsky of Jesse Jams says it out loud: potassium chloride and sodium chloride, that's the whole secret.
• The Fancy Food Show is trade-only — no public tickets. 2,300 exhibitors, roughly 32,000 people, and buyers from Whole Foods and H-E-B deciding what lands on your shelf next year.
• Every health buzzword is now stacked on one label. Good Journey Donuts is gluten-free, low sugar, non-GMO, keto, and high fiber — at some point a cookie starts sounding like it's applying for a grant.
• Savory oatmeal is a real category play. Gamsa Foods is selling sesame-garlic oats built on Korean juk and Chinese congee, and Ruby Saens says the toughest test market — 50-plus shoppers in rural Arkansas — took to it immediately.
• Olive oil is now a wellness shot. Katerina Mountanos of Kosterina says her customers started doing it before the company made a product for it, and TikTok did the rest.
• Sampling is the one thing a trade show can't move online. Leanna Salamah of the Specialty Food Association is blunt about it: with food, you have to put it in someone's mouth.
• Mushrooms are coming for the deli counter. Prime Roots is making turkey, ham, salami, and bacon out of fungi, aimed at flexitarians rather than vegans.

Companies and people mentioned

• Morganne Wheeler — Founder & CEO, Cirrus 9 Candy — https://cirrus9candy.com/
• Leanna Salamah — SVP, Marketing & Communications, Specialty Food Association — https://www.linkedin.com/in/leanasalamah/ | https://www.specialtyfood.com/fancy-food-shows/summer/
• Jesse Linevsky — Founder, Jesse Jams — https://jessejams.us/
• Michelle Adams — show attendee since ~2000
• Caroline Dai — Founder, TofuGo Snacks — https://www.tofugosnacks.com
• Kristoffer Quiaoit — Co-founder, Good Journey Donuts — https://goodjourneydonuts.com/pages/about
• Katerina Mountanos — Founder, Kosterina — https://www.kosterina.com/
• Ruby Saens — Gamsa Foods — https://gamsafoods.com/
• Lucas Prado — Founder & CEO, Beest Snacks — https://www.beestsnacks.com/
• Ryan — first-time attendee
• Alex Coenen — President, LaClare Family Creamery — https://www.laclarefamilycreamery.com/
• Sashi Kumar & Brittney Lim — Co-founders, Tamarind Heads — https://tamarindheads.com/
• Stefano — SCP Global Import — https://www.instagram.com/scpglobalimport/
• Krista Arland — CEO & Founder, Your Grandpa's Old Fashioned — https://www.yourgrandpasoldfashioned.com/
• Kimberlie Le — Founder, Prime Roots — https://www.primeroots.com/en-us
• Eric — Chief Marketing Officer, WISEcode — https://wisecode.ai/

Also referenced:

• Whole Foods
• H-E-B
• Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
• Entenmann's
• Bon Appétit
• Food & Wine
• CNN

You have a cotton candy that tastes like salted butter. Tell me, where did that come from?

General weirdness, I would say, and a love of all things food.

Welcome to The Always Hangry Podcast where. We explore the way we eat the good, the bad, and the completely ridiculous. I'm your host, George Duran. Today we're at the Fancy Food show.

Right here in New York City. Every year, thousands of new food products are introduced in the United States with one goal, to become the next thing you can't stop eating.

Some of them solve real problems, some of them are completely unexpected. And sometimes you're left asking whether the world really needed electrolyte jam or portable tofu.

But every one of them tells us something about where our food culture is headed.

Today we're walking around the show where we taste the newest products, meet the people behind it, and find out what they say about the future of food. If you haven't heard of the Fancy.

Food show, this is where thousands of food makers from around the world gather together to unveil everything from the next big grocery obsession to products you won't actually believe exist.

So we wanted to make something that was also appealing to adults. And we find that adults are really drawn to both the nostalgia of cotton candy, but also modern trends of putting a twist on it.

So that's how we ended up with salted butter.

That was Morgan wheeler, founder and CEO of Cirrus 9 Candy, explaining why she makes salted butter cotton candy. By the way, cirrus is spelled C I R R U S like the cirrus clouds, hence the cloud shaped cotton candy. Are we seeing a big trend on candy kind of being skewed to older adults, not just for nostalgia, but also kind of more of a refined flavor profile?

Yeah, absolutely. We have seen that people, yes.

Not only with the nostalgia, but also looking for different flavor profiles and ways to reinvent some sort of old classics, that kind of tale, as old as time kind of stuff.

Some of the other flavors that Siris9.

Sells are things like lychee and tulare cherry, Madagascar vanilla, New York maple syrup, even forest berry and pina colada. By the way, if you didn't know, the Fancy Food show takes place at New York City's largest convention center, the Jacob Javits Center.

This convention is huge. There are buyers, there are distributors, importers, retailers, press, people wearing lanyards with the confidence I can only dream of.

Honestly, the world shows up here and everybody's handing you a sample to taste. This show is a foodies Disneyland. So what I'M really trying to figure. Out is how weird does food have to get before it becomes the next big thing?

And of course, that means sacrificing myself. To eat for two entire days. A bunch of jerky chips, portable tofu, birch SAP, UBE goat cheese and cocktail cubes. You know, just for research.

Okay, so this is a group of makers and manufacturers of specialty food.

That's Liana Salama, senior vice president of marketing and communications for the Specialty Food Association.

If you think about specialty food, it's a high quality, lots of craftsmanship, value based, kind of all the better version of the food that's out there right now. It's a showcase of creativity and innovation.

I mean, these are small makers who are coming up with ideas in their kitchen and then bringing them to market. So these are not ideas that are kind of focus grouped or mass produced. These are little eclectic ideas that are being brought to life.

So that line stuck with me. Little eclectic ideas being brought to life. And that's because the entire show is.

Not just a trade show. It's thousands of tiny food bets. Somebody's betting that America wants savory oatmeal.

Somebody's betting that cotton candy should taste like salted butter. Somebody's betting that the next thing we all need is jam with electrolytes.

So my name is Jesse Lenovski and I'm the founder of Jesse Jams.

And what we do is we make real small batch jam with electrolytes in packable ready to go pouches that, that you can bring camping, hiking, backpacking, great for picnics on the beach. And then you can also use it as a real energy gel alternative that's fully natural, tastes a whole lot better and fuels you just the same.

So clearly the next question is how do you get electrolytes in jam?

So I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Electrolytes is just a fancy word for different types of salt.

So what we do is we use potassium chloride, which is a type of salt, and then sodium chloride, and that is all that it is. So all this fancy marketing about electrolytes, it's just salt.

It actually tasted like somebody put some flake salt on some jam sandwich and served it to you and it actually tasted pretty good. But what's the point of all this?

We want this to be the jam that you bring on the go and on adventures. And jam historically is in a glass jar. It breaks, it's heavy.

And when you think about when people are eating jam, it's for PB and JS on the trail, it's charcuterie on the beach. So why not make it in a form factor that's meant for that?

Now when you're on the floor, you start seeing the logic everywhere, including this squeezable jam that has electrolytes. So it's not like a grocery store. This is where grocery stores go to dream or hallucinate, depending which aisle you're on, of course.

Overwhelming, but in a good way. Just every kind of food and food. Trend that you could ever imagine and then some.

And to be clear, the show is not open to the public like a county fair where you bring your kids and leave with a funnel cake and a sunburn. This is a trade show. The buyers are here. The people who decide what ends up on store shelves are walking around with badges and tote bags.

This show is simply enormous. And it's not just enormous for the sake of being enormous. It's where buyers come to hunt for what we will all be eating next.

So we've probably got somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,300 exhibitors. We've got about 32,000 people, that is exhibitors and attendees. On the attendee side, it's probably in the 14,000 range.

If a regular consumer wants to come by and take a look and walk around. How does that work?

Unfortunately, we are a trade only event. So they kind of have to live vicariously through the different media outlets and the different buyers there.

The buyers here, I mean, you're talking about Whole Foods, you're talking about H E B. You're talking about the folks who are going to bring these products to market.

So they're over here shopping on behalf of the consumer to bring stuff into the stores that the consumers are going to love.

And apparently what consumers are going to love is tofu that you can put in your pocket and walk around with Caroline Dime, the founder and CEO of Tofugo Snacks.

So usually tofu requires refrigeration. What we do is make it shelf stable for nine months. So we removed the water to make it shelf stable so it's easier than ever.

You can take it anywhere, to the gym, to the beach, to the Subway Portable.

And you're probably wondering, how on earth. Does someone come up with a concept like this?

I used to work in merchant acquisition and finance. I would snack on protein bars all the time at my Desk. And one day I realized, wow, I'm eating 50 grams of sugar just from the protein bars alone.

What if I built something with whole foods and savory flavors with no sugar? We launched just three months ago, went completely viral, got picked up organically by Bon Appetit Food and Wine, cnn.

Many of the friends were also here yesterday to stop by and say hi. We're so overwhelmed and grateful by all the support of everyone.

The one thing you'll notice at the.

Fancy food show is this buzzword pile up. You see gluten free, no sugar added keto, vegan, high protein, non gmo, high fiber, you name it. And that's when I met Christopher Keon.

He's the co founder of Good Journey and he makes donuts and cookies. But not your ordinary donuts and cookies.

We make decadent donuts and cookies that are low sugar, gluten free and high fiber.

Okay, so one of the things I'm noticing, I literally walk back and your sign is enormous. It looks like a donut, but it says non GMO keto, zero added sugar. That's quite a list of things it does not have. What does it have?

It has fiber, it has a little bit of protein. And the main thing is that it doesn't have zero added sugar. So you won't get that sugar crash or high. And so that's our whole focus.

How do you have an amazing experience with donuts, the stuff that we grew up loving but without the bad experience afterwards.

And if you look at the trends,. This is not coming out of nowhere. A lot of people are watching their sugar, their carbs, their protein, their ingredients.

But there is a point where a. Cookie starts sounding like it's applying for a health grant. And I genuinely had to know, what do people think of a donut that's this healthy?

So the donuts, like our chocolate donut, like we just had someone come up to us and say, this reminds me of that one that's in the white box.

It's the classic chocolate covered Entenmann's donuts he's talking about. And the moment I took a bite of his donut. Yeah, I could see how it tastes so similar and incredibly enough, much healthier.

Because it brings up these memories that they had as a kid and that they didn't eat. You know, they stopped eating because of all the sugar.

Then there was the olive oil shot. Now, I grew up with Mediterranean people.

And olive oil is not new to me. In fact, olive oil is practically a relative. But at this show, olive oil was not just something you drizzle. It was something you take a shot of.

So the Kosterina brand is fully founded around consumer health.

That's Katerina Montano's, and she explained to. Me how people are taking shots of. Olive oil straight for wellness reasons.

So the olive oil shot that Costarena created is ultra high in polyphenol content, Ultra early harvest olive oil. Over 1,000 milligrams per kilogram of those polyphenols I was talking about. And our consumers actually started taking these shots on their own.

So they were taking shots of our white bottle olive oil every morning. This is an ancient ritual. Like, my grandparents have done this their entire life back in Greece.

This is an ancient ritual, but we were seeing on TikTok people like Hailey Bieber and Courtney Kardashian saying that they're taking olive oil shots, and that's really kind of brought it to the mainstream. And of course, we were already centered around high polyphenol olive oil, and we're perfectly positioned to create this product.

She gave me a few sample shots to take home with me, and I haven't taken it yet. I don't know. Something about taking a shot of oil that sounds like a dare and not a wellness trend.

So if they don't want to take a shot of olive oil, you can put this on food. I absolutely love it on food. I have it on my gluten free toast with a little sea salt every morning.

But it's a more robust flavor than what they're probably used to. It's a little bit more bitter. But if people are used to taking wellness shots like turmeric and gingerbread, those are quite harsh.

This is not harsh like that.

All right, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we're still. At the Fancy food show, and we're talking savory oatmeal. Seriously.

Welcome back to Always Hangry. We're still at the Fancy food Show, and you know, we've spent generations teaching. Oatmeal to behave like dessert. With brown sugar, maple, blueberry, cinnamon, enough sweetness to make your spoon vibrate.

And now the folks at Gamza Food. Are saying, what if your oatmeal had garlic and miso?

We're trying to redefine what breakfast means in America by bringing savory ethnic flavors to the breakfast style.

That's Ruby Saenz, who explained to me what savory oatmeal is.

Savory oatmeal is flavored with, like, garlic, miso, tamari It's a base of, like, oats, and people often cook it already. Like, if you go onto Pinterest, they'll add soy sauce, they'll add miso. We took that concept and honestly made it very convenient.

And ours is inspired by Korean rice porridge called juk or also Chinese congee.

How are you gonna convince Americans who love everything sweet as hell to start eating a savory version of their beloved oatmeal?

It's funny you ask that. We at some point worked with a manufacturer in Arkansas and had to demo with a lot of people in the middle of nowhere.

There.

Wheat, like, took our savory oatmeal. They have oatmeal for breakfast.

Even people that are, like, 50 plus, and they were honestly tired of having blueberry sugar maple, and we gave them another option. They know what garlic is. They know what oatmeal is. So now it's like, another way to start their day.

They're not having any, like, blood sugar spikes, so honestly, they really like that. Ours is low sodium. I get no added sugar, just 200 calories, 8 grams of protein. So it's a really great way to start their day. Not a lot of convincing.

So what exactly does savory oatmeal taste like?

Yeah, so right now we have a sesame garlic flavor, and that's our only one. We've really tried to hone in on the base, which is oats, puffed rice, and quinoa flakes. So it's a little bit different.

It does have that rice from the puffed rice. So, like, the texture is closer to, like, a rice porridge versus, like, a really more like, let's say slimy oatmeal.

And, yes, I was forced to taste a sample, but that's what this whole show is about. You. You see, every single booth at the show is handing out samples you can taste.

They spend a lot of time and a lot of money to bring that product here and to sample it in a way that's attractive to the folks on the show floor. And you have to do that. I mean, you know, there's a lot of trade shows out there.

I've been in the trade show industry for a while, and there are some folks out there who think that they can do what you do at a trade show online or through digital means. That will never be true of food. You just can't. It's just you cannot experience it any way except in person through a sample.

And if there's a sample I had. To taste during this show, well, it was a charcuterie style trail mix.

We are revolutionizing high protein snacks using only real food. So we do tried and true foods into a snack you've never had before.

That's Lucas Prado from Beast Snacks. That's a beast spelled B E E S T. And he's trying to make jerky behave more like a chip.

That kind of came about because my wife and I walked in on my grandma who has diabetes, and like one day we would just walk in the door and I'm like, hey, grandma. And she's like, ah. And she spilled a bag of chips she had hidden in her drawer because, like, the whole family has diabetes. So they.

So it took a little bit of. Time, but Lucas was finally able to tell me what's inside of their charcuterie trail mix.

We have pork jerky chips because, you know, prosciutto or serrano ham. We have parmesan cheese, crisps and roasted almonds.

So we have three ingredients and the weirdest ingredient or sub ingredient or like hidden kind of thing within a thing is paprika. And that's just because it sounds funny.

As you could tell, Lucas is a character and he's honestly doing really well.

And I go to fitness events because we do high protein stuff and I'm like the chubbiest guy there and I'm like selling like zero sugar high protein things. And they're like, yeah, but like, do you even. Do you even eat this? I'm like, no, because I'm saving it for you.

After the break, Goat cheese that's gone purple. Trust me, it's not what you think. We'll be right back. Back again at the fancy food show. And I was able to meet two. People who had never been there before. This was first year.

It's huge. There's so much going on. There's so many different vendors. It's amazing.

That's Ryan and his colleague Juliet owns an Italian deli market. And of course, I asked them what's the most interesting thing he saw at the show.

Okay. Pizza with yellow tomato sauce. I've never had that before. It was kind of like. Like almost tasted like vegetable soup. But it was good.

It was really good.

How would you describe the show in general?

Just so many people walking around, so much to see, so many different things to try. Like, you can't have a bad time here.

If they gave you a free pass to the show or Disneyland, where would you go?

I'd be here. I'd be here. No doubt.

Indeed. This may be the most magical Place on earth. Because only here can purple ube goat cheese seem perfectly normal. It's almost off putting, but then when you see it's ube, you're suddenly saying, okay, this could be good.

It's certainly eye catching. There's, like, hints of blue for me, so absolutely violet. A little bit of blue. And I'll tell you what, people are eating with their eyes.

They come to the booth, you know, kind of looking at it like something might be wrong. But as soon as they try it, they go back for a second bite.

Alex Koonin, president of Leclair Creamery, explained to me how a customer requested ube inside their goat cheese. Now, ube, if you don't know, is a purple yam native to the Philippines.

It's known for its vibrant violet color and mildly sweet, nutty flav flavor and pairs remarkably well with goat cheese.

Goat cheese has this really unique citrus note that comes through. It should be fresh, it should be clean. And that citrus really helps complement the coconut, the earthiness. It sort of cuts through.

When I'm eating it, I kind of feel like I have four or five different flavors going on, and it's very interesting.

Another flavor that kept popping up at the fancy food show was tamarind. If you don't know tamarind, it's sour, tart, tangy, kind of sweet. And it shows up in cuisines all over the world.

At Tamarind heads, Sashi, Kumar and Brittany built an entire brand saying this ingredient belongs in the American cuisine.

And what we've done is our first product is a barbecue sauce. It's exactly how my wife Brittany and I eat every day. We dip our chicken nuggets in it. We use a crock pot and make our food for the weeknights.

We actually put it into our eggs and give it to our 2 year old.

So we're taking a fruit that's used every single day around the world, and we're putting it into products that we hear heat as Americans every single day.

And that made me think how adventurous American pallets have become. Tamarind has made the leap from Indian, Thai, Mexican, Middle Eastern into the American mainstream, thanks to these guys.

I would say it is the true representation, at least for me, of what I think of America. It is the melting pot of so many wonderful places around the world, and you can only bring that together here. It's the innovation, it's the people.

It's the desire to see new things and bring new things in. And that's, to me, what America represents. And I Feel like we're really following that, that tradition and that ideal.

It's crazy to see that some of these products aren't just food. They're a source of pride to some of these people. Around the world.

Artisans spend years, sometimes generations, perfecting a single craft, and they can't wait to share it with you at the show. Take for example, Stefano from SCP Global Imports, who was literally serving entire burrata cheeses for each person at the show. Are people capable of eating an entire burrata at the show?

Yeah, of course. It's not work, like, to just, like, have a little task. You gotta have the full experience.

I felt like this guy was like. Every Italian I've ever known, opening their doors and their kitchens and their refrigerators just to make sure I'm eating something.

We grew up in Italy and that's like, normal for us. Like, walk in during the afternoon and see the guys making fresh burrata or fresh mozzarella and grab right from there.

And we're seeing a lot of burrata in every supermarket today.

Oh, yes, yes.

Is that helping your business? Even if you see a larger manufacturer of burrata, does it help you also sell more?

Yes, because people, they know more of the test and they know what it is. So it's when they test the difference from the regular supermarket to the, like, small shop, like us, they know the difference, like, right away.

Who makes the best burrata?

Us.

Then I found the cocktail cube at your grandpa's Old Fashioned. Krista Arlund, the owner, had a product that basically made Old Fashioned at home without requiring a bartender.

So the cocktail cube is all inclusive. It has two kinds of Angostura bitters in it, a Michigan sugar and orange. So it is just the recipe for an Old Fashioned put into a cube.

You throw it in your glass, muddle it up, and add 3 ounces of bourbon, whiskey or rye. We only make doubles. We think singles are silly.

And so you'll have to add that 3 to 4 ounces and it makes a perfect Old Fashioned restaurant quality every single time.

Honestly, it's almost like we're all trying to hack food faster, easier, tastier, healthier. Everyone's looking for the next shortcut. Which brings me to Prime Roots. I've been seeing these guys at the Fancy food Show year after year.

So at Prime Roots, we're making all of our favorite deli classics made from fungi. So think your humble mushrooms turned into your favorite deli meats.

So the benefits are that there's none of the bad stuff you find typically in deli so no nitrates, preservatives, hormones, and it really is good for you with all the protein and the experience that you expect, just really upgrading the sandwich.

Kim says that Prime Roots is geared towards flexitarians, not necessarily vegetarians.

So people are looking to reduce their meat consumption, eat a little bit healthier, but not vegan, vegetarian. You're not trying to prescribe a singular, really restrictive diet.

It's just a mindful eater who's looking to eat more protein but less from an animal source.

Some of those vegan deli meats they have are smoked turkey, black forest ham, Italian salami, pepperoni, even applewood smoked bacon. By the way, you can't see it, but I'm doing air quotes every time I say any one of these meats because after all, they're all made fungi.

By the end of the show, I had eaten, sipped, smelled, questioned, and politely nodded my way through enough food innovation to make my tote bag feel like I'd just gotten back from a Costco run. But then I found something that was not exactly a food product. It was an information product about food.

Essentially, we have broken down the food system at an ingredient level like no one else.

That's Eric Katzenberg, chief marketing officer of Wisecode.

So we went through those 5,100 ingredients and analyzed each of them and created the greatest database of ingredients in the world.

Eric is saying that wisecode, this app, is bringing the world food truth through.

The power of AI and with our database, we're able to actually look into the packaged ingredients, the packaged food system, and break it down and give you exactly what the nutritional quality is, the ingredient quality, health outcomes, and give you a full, complete picture of what you're actually eating.

So you download the Wise Code app, It scans a QR code of the. Food you're about to purchase, and then. AI gets to work.

So the number one thing with our app, when you scan a product, you see if it's ultra processed or not. And that that to us is the biggest, biggest issue for consumers we want to address.

And from there, you can go a step further and you can look at health outcomes, nutrition quality, density, and give you your and actually make your own preferences within the app and what you're looking for with each product.

By the way, if you're interested, you can download Wise Code right now from the App Store or Google Play. So what did I learn after two hours of interviews, one massive convention center, and enough samples to ruin the concept of lunch?

Well, for one thing, we haven't stopped Innovating in the world of food. But is every invention necessary? I mean, does toast need electrolyte jam? Does America really need a savory oatmeal?

And does cotton candy need to taste like salted butter? That's not for me to say. But what I do know is that every one of those products tells you something about us.

We want fun, health, convenience, and things that surprise our palates. We want to believe that the next bite might be a little better, smarter, stranger and more delicious than the last one.

I walked out of the Jacob Javits center feeling like I had toured the future of American pantry with sore feet, a full tote bag, and a deep respect for anyone brave enough to say I invented this. Please taste it. By the way, show notes and all.

These links can be found in the description or [email protected] I'm George Duran. Thanks for tuning in to Always Hangry. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And for bonus content, episode notes, behind the scenes extras and much, much more, visit alwayshangrypodcast.com until next time, stay hungry.