Weekly Digest #18

01.12.2025

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For those of you building food brands, launching products, or just hungry for what’s next – this one’s for you.

Robots, Budget & Bagels

📨 Weekly #18: Robots, Budget & Bagels

🍴 What’s Up?

A big week across food, retail, and hospitality: autonomous delivery takes a major step forward, the UK Budget reshapes operating costs and venture-capital flows, new sugar-tax rules shift the beverage landscape, the meat-free segment sees contraction, and celebrity spirits land on UK shelves, plus New York crowns its bagel champs.

🔥 Weekly UK & Global Spotlight

• Soft Drinks Industry Levy (Sugar Tax) in UK expands
  The UK government announced it will extend the levy to pre-packaged milkshakes, sweetened milks, flavoured milks, dairy-alternative drinks with added sugar, and RTD coffees. The sugar threshold triggering the levy will be lowered from 5 g per 100 ml to 4.5 g per 100 ml, putting many more drinks into scope from January 2028. The Guardian

• VCT investment cap doubles under 2025 UK Budget
  As part of the new budget’s support for scaling businesses, rules will allow Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) to invest up to £24 million per company (up from the previous £12 million), with effect from April 2026. This aims to help startups and scale-ups raise bigger rounds, despite upfront tax reliefs for investors will be reduced. The Grocer

• Heck discontinues its Meat-Free Chipolatas
  The UK-based meat-brand announced it will stop producing its meat-free chipolata sausages, citing disappointing sales and insufficient consumer demand. The product will be removed from shelves at the end of December 2025. The Grocer

• Matthew McConaughey’s Pantalones Tequila makes its UK grocery debut
  Pantalones Organic Blanco Tequila has secured listing in UK supermarkets (e.g. Waitrose), marking its first major off-trade retail presence in the UK. The Spirits Business

🏛️ What the UK Government Budget 2025 Means for Retail & Hospitality

• The new budget introduces measures that will influence business rates and the broader cost-of-living landscape, both of which are expected to affect consumer spending habits and the overall viability of high street businesses.

• Changes to commercial property taxation mean that over 750,000 retail, hospitality, and leisure properties with a rateable value below £500,000 will benefit from reduced business-rates multipliers.

• The government has allocated £4.3 billion in support to help properties facing significant increases in their rates bills.

• From 2029, all parcels imported into the UK will be subject to customs procedures.

• The National Living Wage will rise by 4.1%, increasing to £12.71.

• Small and medium-sized businesses will receive additional funding to help them offer free apprenticeship training.

• Greater tax relief on employee shares, a stamp duty holiday for newly-listed companies and a £5 billion tranche of late-stage funding from the British Business Bank.

🥯 Bagel Buzz: New York BagelFest 2025

• The 2025 BagelFest, hosted at Citi Field with over 2,000 attendees, crowned Starship Bagel (Dallas) as “Best Bagel,” beating out celebrated bakers from New York, Montreal, and Madrid.

• Despite being branded a New York festival, the top prize went out-of-state, a testament to the rising national (and global) bagel craze. Starship also won “Best New York-Style Bagel” and “Best Showmanship,” while standout mentions included Fantzye Bagels (Kingston, NY), Ess‑a‑Bagel, and other beloved regional bakers.

• The festival underscores both a reverence for traditional bagel craft and a growing wave of innovation and competition in bakery/fresh-food culture. (Travel+Leisure)

• UK bagel lovers take note too: Independent bakeries like Papo’s Bagels (London), The Bagel Guys (Brighton), It’s Bagels! (London) and Bross Bagels (Edinburgh) are quietly building their own bagel-faithful followings by blending New-York-style techniques with local grain, sourdough fermentation, and bold spreads.

💭 The Fork & The Flame

“Good food innovation is less about invention, more about reinvention.”

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We believe bold food brands deserve bold support. That’s why we’ve built a collective of seasoned foodies, retail rebels, creative storytellers, and numbers nerds – people who’ve been in the kitchen, the boardroom, and the shop floor. We jump in where you need us most, helping you turn big ideas into bites people can’t stop talking about. Because building a food brand isn’t just business – it’s passion, flavour, and a little bit of chaos. We’re here to make sure it’s the good kind.