Andrea Hernandez is a fortune teller—a snack seer, if you will. As the creator of Snaxshot and a self-described product oracle, she peers into her crystal ball, aka the Internet, and foresees what will be the next hottest thing in the food and beverage industry. But how does she do it? With lots and lots of research.
“I’ve always been interested in wellness trends and food trends,” she says. Hernandez has a background in marketing and has worked closely with food brands in the past, which can help her see past the bells and whistles marketing money can provide for a product. It can also help her differentiate brands with legitimate missions and ones riding the next wave of trends for a quick buck.
“Nobody’s talking about how all these new wellness [trends] are just borrowing from stuff that is very inherent to different cultures. I call it the Goop-ification of things,” she explains, citing the rise of ayurvedic ingredients and interest in Eastern medicinal practices. “At one point I was like, ‘I’m going to start just calling the BS.’ And I started tweeting about it more and realized there was a lot of interest in it—that there was obviously some sort of unfulfilled niche.”
Hernandez says she’s been “catfished” by brands before and she wanted to start Snaxshot as a consumer-centric newsletter and resource so other consumers don’t share the same fate. Her aim is to help her community of snack lovers wade through the crowded consumer market and ask probing questions about food and drink businesses. What experience will you actually have with a CBD tincture? What are those addictive chips really made of? Why are we using the term vegan water? When, exactly, are you supposed to drink an espresso martini?
“Certain terms, like CBD, become devoid of meaning. It’s like ‘organic’. It’s been used everywhere,” she says. “I want brands to be a little bit more upfront and not over promising.”
Current trends Hernandez is forecasting revolve around the drink space: ranch water, chagaccinos, apéritifs, THC-infused drinks, and hibiscus. What she does from there is try to weed out the gimmicks from the legitimate products and recommend the latter to her readers.
One example is Ruby, a hibiscus water brand that has gained traction. “My joke is that hibiscus is the new matcha,” Hernandez laughs. “But brands like Ruby showed how you do it respectfully. They talk about where hibiscus comes from, the regions, the different types of hibiscus. And in a time where we’re all about making sure we’re not going to pull a Kendall Jenner with her tequila, Ruby does it really well.”
Brightland Olive Oil is another that Hernandez praises. Aside from being aesthetically beautiful, the olive oil brand provides transparency when it comes to compensation across their supply chain and traceability for their California-grown olives.
“And I love Sanzo,” the Asian fruit flavored-seltzers, Hernandez adds. “The founder literally posts his journey—what he’s doing on Twitter, how he’s building it, how he’s scaling up. And I think it’s beautiful to see people having this connection with their consumers.”
With so many snack options and trends to parse through, Hernandez wants to use her platform to keep consumers in the loop about latest snacks but also remind brands how to gain popularity ethically—something she believes stems from community, transparency, and accountability. “At a time when there’s so much money being put into these products, people are just riding on the coattails of trends,” she says. “That’s why I wanted to be the person who is really looking out for the consumer.”
Some of Snaxshot’s current favorite snacks and drinks
• The Good Crisp Company chips: “There is no way that little tube lasts me.”
• Olipop: “The ginger-lime one is quality.”
• Ugly Seltzer: “The truth can be ugly, but it will set you free, in their case, free of sugars and any other unfortunate additives that can be found in sodas and other beverages.”
• Three Spirit: “They actually teach you about adaptogens.”
