Meet the Seven Brands at VEGPRENEUR's Summer Fancy Food Show Pavilion
Chocolate, cheese, cookie dough, stuffed dates, hot chocolate, spices. Me the seven brands, all plant-based, in the VEGPRENEUR pavilion at this year's Summer Fancy Food Show at the Javits Center in NYC, June 28–30. The pavilion spans a full area of the exhibit hall floor, with each brand in its own booth space and VEGPRENEUR's home base at booth #4406A. The show itself is New York’s largest specialty food trade event, now in its 70th year, drawing tens of thousands of buyers, distributors, and press across more than 40 product categories.
The pavilion is where VEGPRENEUR members get in front of buyers, and the lineup this year tells a specific story about where the plant-based food industry has moved. The headlines for the better part of a decade went to meat and milk, but none of these seven brands makes a burger or a carton of milk. They make chocolate, confections, cheese, stuffed dates, cookie dough, macarons, and pantry staples. These are the products that fill out the rest of the grocery store, and the fact that a single pavilion can field seven of them across that many categories says the plant-based shelf has gotten a lot wider than the meat case.
Here is who is exhibiting and what each brand brings to the floor:
A'Smore
A'Smore takes the Parisian macaron and routes it through plant-based recipes with a global passport. Founded by Anwaar Spence, the brand builds each flavor from a specific culinary tradition. The Ube Coconut is an ode to Filipino heritage. The Matcha Caramel uses azuki beans for the caramel and genmaicha tea for the crumble to honor Japanese technique. The signature A'Smore macaron features vegan milk chocolate, and the Truffle Noire folds in chèvre dark chocolate ganache, truffle paste, black truffle oil, and activated charcoal.
The approach draws from fine dining and Michelin-starred kitchens, which is a deliberate positioning choice. Based on its pricing, ingredient sourcing, and culinary positioning, A'Smore reads as a premium confections brand rather than a "better-for-you snacking" play. That distinction matters at a show like Fancy Food, where buyers are specifically looking for specialty products with margin and story.
Now, A’Smore has brought its Signature Drinking Chocolate market. This is a premium cocoa blend inspired by the refinement of French pastry. Made with just five organic ingredients, including organic European cocoa, organic vanilla bean, and organic marshmallow root, it delivers a rich, indulgent chocolate experience you can enjoy hot or iced.
The formula is 100% natural, plant-based, and gluten-free. Each box contains five home compostable sachets (150g / 5.3 oz total), making it as thoughtful about packaging as it is about what's inside.
Plant Ahead
Plant Ahead makes dairy-free cheese, and it is betting the category's future on the product the industry has struggled with most. In taste tests run by Nectar, the sensory insights arm of Food System Innovations, only 25% of consumers said they would buy a vegan mozzarella, the lowest score of any non-dairy cheese category. Plant Ahead's fresh mozzarella, packed in water like the real thing, launched last fall and is already drawing interest from the pizza industry. Jeffrey Strah, vice president of sales and marketing, put the pitch bluntly to Green Queen, saying the product does not stick to your mouth, melts evenly, stretches, and looks like dairy cheese.
Beyond the mozzarella, the company sells feta in Greek brine, blue cheese, Parmesan, Gouda slices, shredded Tex-Mex, and cream cheese across retail, foodservice, and industrial channels. The mozzarella is important, because it is the product that decides whether a pizzeria can go dairy-free without anyone at the table complaining.
Date Better Snacks
Date Better Snacks proves how little a brand needs when the core idea is right. The whole product is a Medjool date stuffed with nut butter and wrapped in organic, fair-trade 85% dark chocolate, with less than 1g of added sugar per serving. That simplicity has carried the brand, founded in 2021 by Michelle Valdez-Wilton, into more than 2,000 stores including Whole Foods.
The personality lives in the flavors. Almond Java Crunch hides bits of espresso bean, Cashew Lime Crisp adds toasted quinoa, and the rotation runs through Hazelnut Praline, Snickerdoodle Cookie, and Gingersnap Spice. The women- and Latino-owned, Los Angeles brand sits in the same premium-indulgence lane as A'Smore, evidence that the plant-based dessert shelf now has room for many kinds of sweet treats.
Cha's Organics
While most of the pavilion lineup leans sweet, Cha's Organics sells the everyday cooking staples that fill out a different part of the grocery store. Founded by Chanaka Kurera and Marise May, the company sources spices, coconut products, and heirloom rice from small-scale family farms, primarily in Sri Lanka, and reinvests a portion of sales into those farming communities. The line runs from premium coconut milk and whipping cream through true Ceylon cinnamon, ready-to-cook Thai curry kits, heirloom rice, and warming beverages like masala chai and turmeric latte mix.
The story here is the supply chain as much as the product. For specialty buyers who care about provenance, a brand that can document where its turmeric was grown and who grew it is the part of the pitch that survives the buyer meeting.
Whoa! Dough
Whoa! Dough makes exactly what the name promises, which is edible cookie dough you eat straight from the wrapper. Founded by Todd Goldstein in Cleveland, the brand launched in 2021 and has reached national distribution, with bars in Target, Whole Foods, and on Amazon, plus a spot on airline snack carts. A chickpea and oat flour blend stands in for wheat, which makes the bars gluten-free, soy-free, egg-free, and Non-GMO Project Verified without tasting like a compromise.
Nine flavors run from Chocolate Chip and Sugar Cookie to Brownie Batter and Peanut Butter, each landing between 140 and 170 calories with 4g of protein. The brand recently extended into a ready-to-bake line that is also safe to eat raw, which is the kind of small, specific innovation that gives a buyer a reason to make room on the shelf.
Bettani
Bettani is the brand in the pavilion betting on technology. Bettani is a combination of four former brands: NUMU, Stockeld, Hungry Planet, and Climax Foods, the AI-powered cheese startup whose blue cheese appeared on the menus of Eleven Madison Park and Atelier Crenn. The company rebranded in October 2025 with $6.5M in Series A funding led by S2G Investments and a new CEO, Sandeep Patel, formerly CFO at Califia Farms.
Climax’s award-winning artisan blue cheese was hard to scale profitably. So Bettani has shifted to mass-market applications and built Caseed, a proprietary plant-based protein derived from the seeds of regenerative crops that mimics the functionality of dairy casein. The result, according to Patel, is cheese that stretches over two feet when microwaved, contains 12–20g of protein per 100g (80–100% of dairy cheese protein), and carries none of the allergens from dairy, nuts, or soy.
Since the launch, Bettani has acquired three other plant-based brands (Hungry Planet, NUMU, and Stockeld Dreamery) and is rolling out mozzarella, feta, cream cheese, and a cheese sauce for foodservice. At Fancy Food, Bettani has positioned Caseed as a B2B ingredient for frozen food makers, foodservice operators, and dairy-free brands, according to CEO Sandeep Patel in interviews with AgFunderNews and Food Navigator-USA, but the company is also likely showcasing its acquired consumer brands at the show.
TCHO
TCHO is the legacy name on this list. Founded in 2005 in Berkeley, California, the chocolate company spent years building a reputation for premium chocolate before making a decision that reshaped the entire brand. In 2021, TCHO announced it was going fully plant-based, phasing out every dairy-based bar and replacing them with oat milk, cashew butter, and coconut sugar alternatives.
The transition required reworking TCHO's entire product line. The beloved Dark Milk became the oat-milk-based Choco Latté (a collaboration with Blue Bottle Coffee). Toffee + Sea Salt became Toffee Time, made with cashew butter and plant-based toffee. Holy Fudge, a single-origin 75% dark chocolate from Ghana, anchors the dark side of the lineup. Every bar is now vegan, organic, Fair Trade Certified, non-GMO, and certified kosher. TCHO is also a Certified B Corporation, and the company says the plant-based transition reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 75%.
With over 30 industry awards and a professional baking line used in kitchens nationally, TCHO brings a long track record to the pavilion, along with evidence that going fully plant-based can strengthen rather than limit a premium chocolate brand.
The VEGPRENEUR pavilion at Summer Fancy Food Show 2026
Seven brands, one pavilion, and a fair argument that the plant-based aisle now stretches well past the meat case. You can discover all of them at booth #4406A, Exhibit Hall, Level 1, Javits Center, June 28 to 30, 2026.
Our Meet and Greet runs Monday, June 29, from 3 to 5 PM. If you are a buyer, distributor, member of the press, founder, or food service professional and want to connect with VEGPRENEUR or any of the brands in the pavilion, reach out to the VEGPRENEUR team.
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