In April's Marketing Bulletin, Laura Morin of the Almond Board of California shares the story behind the Board’s first major food service collaboration—a spring promotion with Smoothie King, the world’s largest smoothie chain. Currently running around the country from March through May, the partnership positions almonds as a go-to ingredient, promoting exercise recovery and offering customers the option to add almonds to any smoothie. Morin explains that food service trends play a big role in how consumers adopt new foods at home, and ABC saw this as a timely opportunity to highlight current almond messaging. “Smoothie King was an amazing partner to help tell our exercise recovery story,” Morin says. “They already have a health and wellness focus, and when we brought them our nutrition research, they saw real potential in the recovery space.” The collaboration is not only aimed at boosting visibility and volume, but also at gathering insights on consumer behavior to inform future promotions.