Building on the success of our recent return of our Innovation Breakfasts, the Chicagoland Food & Beverage Network (CFBN) invites you to another engaging event designed to connect, inspire, and propel the industry forward. This breakfast will delve into the dynamic landscape of healthy food innovation, exploring the latest consumer insights, trends, technologies, and strategies shaping the future of consumer wellness.
What to Expect:
- Expert Insights: Hear from leading innovators and thought leaders who are revolutionizing the healthy food space. Discover cutting-edge approaches to product development, ingredient sourcing, and consumer engagement.
- Networking Opportunities: Connect with fellow industry professionals, including entrepreneurs, researchers, and manufacturers, fostering valuable collaborations and partnerships.
- Trend Spotting: Gain a first-hand look at the emerging trends driving consumer demand for healthier food options.
- Inspiration & Innovation: Leave with actionable insights and inspiration to fuel your own innovation efforts and contribute to a healthier food ecosystem.
Don't miss this opportunity to be part of the conversation shaping the future of healthy foods in Chicagoland and beyond.
Agenda
7:00AM Doors Open
7:30AM Panel Discussion
8:15AM Q&A
8:30AM Networking
9:30AM Event Ends
PANEL
JANET HELM, MS, RDN
Food and Nutrition Consultant
Founder of Food at the Helm
Janet Helm is a registered dietitian and culinary professional with 20+ years PR agency experience helping food and beverage brands and agricultural commodity boards intersect with food culture, tell their story, engage stakeholders and deploy influencers.
As the former Chief Food and Nutrition Strategist for Weber Shandwick, she has helped turn milk from a commodity to a brand with the iconic got milk? milk mustache campaign, helped tart cherries burst out of the pie shell and onto the superfruit stage, and repositioned pork as “the other white meat” and a lean, center-of-the plate star. As an experienced food and nutrition strategist and marketer, Janet recently started her own consultancy Food at the Helm. She is a sought-after speaker on food trends at national conferences and has discussed the latest nutrition topics in the media, including segments on Good Morning America, Today and CNN.
ANDREA SCHWENK
Chief Marketing Officer
Egglife Foods
Andrea Schwenk is a brand-builder currently serving as Chief Marketing Officer for Egglife Foods, an innovative start-up cracking the code on protein-packed, low-carb foods by harnessing the power of eggs.
Since joining Egglife in 2020, Andrea has helped scale the business from a 200-store pilot in the Chicagoland area, to national distribution in over 15,000 retail locations across North America. Under her leadership, Egglife Foods has been recognized as an industry disruptor and category leader, receiving accolades including placements on Instacart's Fastest Growing Emerging Brands list, The 2025 Bain Insurgent Brands List, Good Housekeeping Best Snack Awards, and securing a position on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing privately held businesses.
EMILY STUCKER
Vice President of Menu & Marketing
Farmer's Fridge
Emily is a food industry expert with nearly 15 years of experience across brand management, retail, product development, and operations. From the Fortune 500 to start-ups, she has worked across a wide variety of companies and roles focused on bringing new products to life in the food space.
In her current role, Emily leads the menu and marketing teams at Farmer's Fridge, a Chicago-based food-tech company on a mission to make it simple for everyone to eat well. She oversees the entire product development process from innovation to commercialization at scale, to ensure the menu is full of the healthy and delicious meals, in addition to leading the organization's marketing department.
KARA WEIBELER
Senior Director, Consumer Insights
Simple Mills
Kara is the Senior Director of Consumer Insights at Simple Mills, a market-leading natural brand offering premium better-for-you crackers, cookies, snack bars and baking mixes. She has 20+ years of CPG experience, which has been focused on leveraging deep consumer insights to reinvent established businesses, identify whitespace opportunities and create meaningful consumer propositions. With experience at Kraft Heinz, Nestle, Mizkan, Tyson Foods and Simple Mills, she has worked across numerous categories including bars, cookies, crackers, frozen breakfast, frozen pizza, refrigerated snacking, macaroni and cheese, mayonnaise, pasta sauce and poultry. Kara holds an MS from the University of Wisconsin AC Nielsen Center and a BS in Finance from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
JENNY YANG
Owner/President
Phoenix Bean, LLC
Jenny's Tofu
Jenny Yang has followed a well-traveled path with her Phoenix Bean Tofu business. The stories of immigrants achieving success by making the foods of their native lands are parts of the social landscape of the United States.
Over the 16 years Yang has own the company, she has grown Phoenix Bean from almost exclusively serving Asian restaurants and markets, to a fast-growing company on-trend with the broader consumer market and its desire for healthy, sustainably produced alternatives to meat, packaged for ease of preparation. Her product line not only include fresh tofu, but also smoked tofu, yellow tofu (baked with turmeric), fried tofu, and flavorful tofu salads that are a customer favorite.
This event is in collaboration with:
