Bill Oakley, comedic writer and showrunner for the acclaimed animated series “The Simpsons,” served as the host with the most while wearing a shiny gold blazer before a panel of four judges, as four competitors took center stage for the ninth annual Fancy Face-Off and a chance to win $10,000.
Courtesy of Specialty Foods Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show, the Fancy Face-Off on June 30 originated in 2018, but it’s the competition’s first New York appearance since launching, with previous years taking place in Las Vegas and San Francisco.
After sifting through countless applications from entrepreneurs in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector, four are selected, and each have three minutes to pitch their product in front of an audience of foodies and the judges; Julia Hallman, owner of Formaggio Kitchen; Travis Reams, a buyer for Meijer; Rachel Krupa, founder of The Goods Mart and Caroline Lipman, vice president at Coeffficient Capital.
In turn, the judges have three minutes to deliberate and provide feedback based on taste, packaging, marketing, innovation and pitch, having already taste-tested the products ahead of the competition.
First up, Yao Zhao, founder of 50 Hertz Tingly Food, who went from working in the World Bank’s clean energy department to selling pepper. His product features peanuts and cashews covered in a coarse Sichuan peppercorn dust. The brand was born six years ago when Zhao, who calls Chongqing, China, home, had a lightbulb moment while eating his mother’s cucumber salad.
“She drizzled the salad with Sichuan pepper oil, and that inspired this entire business,” Zhao said. “[Sichuan peppercorns] are visually stunning, incredibly aromatic, and have this tongue-tingling sensation that is just so unique.”
The company derived its name from a study conducted by Patrick Haggard, a leading cognitive neuroscientist and professor at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London, England, where he found that the numbing and tingling sensation from the peppercorns vibrates on the tongue at a frequency of 50 hertz.
An excited and bubbly Juliette “Juju” Clark walked up to the stage to present next, but it wasn’t her first rodeo.
In 2019, Clark and her family founded TANDM Surfboard, making the then-17-year-old the company’s CEO. In 2021, they presented their product on the business start-up TV show, “Shark Tank,” and received a joint investment from two sharks. At the Fancy Face-Off, Clark presented her newest product Daramel — a caramel made from dates that she said aims to remind consumers, “life is naturally sweet.”
In February, the young founder joined the Hudson Kitchen Food Business bootcamp, a tuition-based, eight-week session helping early-stage CPG companies, which also gained her entry into the Fancy Face-Off competition. A month later, Clark posted a video on TikTok asking viewers to come out to Washington Square Park in Manhattan and try her Daramel matcha latte.
The video received 50,000 views and brought a hundred people out to the park, according to Clark, who whisked each latte by hand.
“The city’s having a big moment around sweet treats, and lines, and like, the viral dessert, you know what you’re gonna wait in line for, and take a picture of, and post on social media, and talk about with your friends, and I think this kind of product lends itself to that really well,” Lippman said.
Next up, Lauren Mahurin, who left her job as a marketing executive to pour herself into her product, LOHSO, a soy sauce alternative made from coconut tree sap and sea salt, and with less than half the sodium in traditional soy sauces. Mahurin was struggling with her weight and healthy eating when she decided to make a change and lost 100 pounds. Her new health journey motivated her to create LOHSO.
“I found soy sauce was making me incredibly inflamed, puffy, swollen, all the things. And so like many of us, I turned to TikTok and Reels for the better-for-you swap,” said Mahurin. “That alternative was something called coconut aminos.”
The idea for LOHSO started percolating in Mahurin’s mind last January and was officially launched this February, selling out in 45 days. LOHSO now operates in more than 40 major stores, with Citarella as its biggest client in NYC.
“ It was very fun to taste and very easy to imagine how to incorporate it into everyday use. So, well done,” Hallman said to Mahurin, who hopes her product becomes the brown cap in a sea of red and green, a reference to the regular and low-sodium caps of the Kikkoman soy sauce brand.
Last, but certainly not least, Tully Mcloughlin who makes Moonbeans with his wife. The granola, made from chickpeas, started in 2022 when the couple turned their guest room into a makeshift industrial kitchen. By 2024, the husband-and-wife duo moved into their first commercial kitchen. In 2025, the whole-food granola brand joined Target’s Forward Founders accelerator program and started shipping nationwide.
“My wife told me to come home with $10,000 or not at all,” McLoughlin joked as the audience chuckled.
While chickpea granola may sound odd at first, the taste is practically indistinguishable from the oat variety. Not only does it pack flavor, with spices like ginger and cinnamon and no added sugar, Moonbeans posits itself as a healthier alternative. Chickpeas naturally have a low glycemic index, and soluble fiber and potassium known for lowering bad cholesterol.
“The nutritional power of chickpeas has already been harnessed for puffs, pasta, and cereal, but not yet granola, until now,” McLoughlin said.
After the presenters wrapped their pitches, the judges and the audience deliberated the winners of the cash prizes, courtesy of UNFI Endless Aisle, a platform that connects food retailers with emerging and established brands.
The audience locked in their votes first, choosing Daramel as the Fan Favorite. Clark ran to the stage and accepted an oversized check for $1000 and could barely stop herself from joyously jumping up and down.
Then, the moment everyone waited for, the grand prize winner. After a bit of suspenseful nail-biting, 50 Hertz Tingly Food was declared the victor.
“Just the intentionality about creating a family of products, you know, with the cashews being the base of it, is really smart. One of the things that we always train suppliers to think about is, like, ‘what’s today, but then what’s tomorrow?’ and it was really great to see he has already fleshed that out,” Reams told amNewYork.
Beyond his own product line, chefs across the country use Zhao’s proprietary condiment, calling it “magic dust” and using it to make signature items like “electric wings.”
Zhao plans to invest the money in systemic branding and packaging to visually capture that tingly sensation.
”I wanna create this Tingly universe,” Zhao exclaimed. “Call everything Tingly!”
