Kitu Life Super Coffee announced today that it has hired former Whole Foods finance VP Rosanna Godden as CFO and board secretary. It’s a move that signals that the company is considering a variety of financial options including a potential acquisition or IPO.
The addition comes ahead of a planned Series C round of financing this summer, which is expected to be the company’s last private fundraise. According to CEO Jim DeCicco, Super Coffee revenue grew 106% in 2020 with a new valuation of $400 million. DeCicco noted that the brand’s future plans are not yet determined, but Godden will play a key role in charting the company’s long term business strategy.
“We’re getting ready to grow pretty significantly, both in the U.S. and then internationally, in the next couple years,” DeCicco told BevNET. “With everything that’s going on with SPACs in the IPO world, we wanted to put ourselves in a position to have every option available to us. And we needed a seasoned finance veteran to help us prepare the company to have those options available.”
Godden previously served as director of corporate development and acquisition integration at Amazon where she oversaw the acquisition of Whole Foods in a $13.4 billion deal in 2017. Since 2018, she has worked full time for Whole Foods, where she oversaw internal audits, indirect procurement, corporate development and strategy planning.
Godden also served as senior manager, accounting at Starbucks from 2010 to 2012, experience that DeCicco said will help the company from an operational perspective and to optimize its pricing and trade spend. As well, the Amazon experience will help Super Coffee to optimize its ecommerce — which currently accounts for about 20% of sales.
“Having spent the last decade at two large enterprise organizations — Amazon and Whole Foods — I miss building things,” Godden said in a press release. “Super Coffee is at a critical point in their evolution, I’m excited to apply my lessons from Amazon to help create efficiencies as we scale Super Coffee to a global household brand.”
Last year, Super Coffee signed a master distribution agreement with Anheuser Busch InBev, placing it in the company’s DSD network nationwide. Today, DeCicco said the brand has 40% ACV for its top SKUs and the company is on pace to double its sales in 2021. Currently, the company’s territory in the East Coast is “more developed” than the West Coast, he added, but it is quickly catching up.
Super Coffee also expanded in Walmart with two new SKUs and DeCicco believes the biggest opportunities for this year are continued growth in c-stores and the club channel. The brand is not yet in Costco or Sam’s Club and its ACV for the convenience channel is still single digits. Later this year, the brand will announce a partnership with 7-Eleven and go deeper in chains such as Wawa, QuikTrip and Circle K.
DeCicco said the company does not plan to launch new product lines this year but will plan to continue innovating on flavor. This month, Super Coffee launched a limited edition Blueberry Latte SKU, which sold out online within days. He said the brand is interested in exploring unusual flavors which catch the eyes of consumers, particularly Gen Z shoppers.
“We’re getting to a point where this is about building a business, not just a brand,” DeCicco said. “These last five years, my brothers and I and our team have done a great job getting people excited, the sales execution has been awesome and Super Coffee is taking share from the big guys. But now Rosanna is really going to help us. Her background is uniquely qualified to turn this brand into a sustainable business moving forward.”