NOSHscape: The Latest Food Brand News

One Trick Pony Secures Seed Round From Collaborative Fund

Washington, D.C.-based peanut butter brand One Trick Pony (OTP) has secured seed funding from Collaborative Fund, an early investor in companies such as Sweetgreen, Blue Bottle Coffee and Olipop. The new funds will be used to support retail growth, new innovations and an upcoming packaging overhaul in early 2025.

The round was complemented by investment from a cohort of food and beverage founders including Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz, founders of Magic Spoon; Kevin Lee and Kevin Chan, founders of immi; and Nic Jammet, co-founder of Sweetgreen. That group will also serve as strategic advisors as the single-origin peanut butter company works to scale up, according to OTP founder Lucy Dana.

“We’re thrilled to team up with Collaborative Fund and a stable of successful entrepreneurs and angel investors who aren’t horsing around when it comes to bringing our peanut butter to market,” said Dana. “Their track record in the CPG space is a real thoroughbred pedigree.”

Founded in 2022 by Dana, former chief of staff at Blue Bottle Coffee, alongside her brother Andrew Dana and sister-in-law Daniela Moreira, also a James Beard-nominated chef, One Trick Pony sells a 3-SKU line of Argentinian-sourced peanut butters in Smooth, Crunchy and Unsalted varieties. In late November, OTP will introduce its first seasonal SKU, a Maple Crunch Peanut Butter with White Chocolate Crunchies.

Andrew Dana and Moreira are also the co-founding duo behind cafe chain Call Your Mother, which operates 10 locations in D.C. and three restaurants in the Denver area, as well as local D.C. joint Timber Pizza. OTP products are sold at all Call Your Mother locations and used in a permanent menu item – a cinnamon raisin bagel coated in the brand’s crunchy peanut butter, a seasonal jam and peanut butter granola.

“[Call Your Mother] was our first wholesale customer, so it’s been [a benefit to have] that steady revenue that we can expect every month,” Dana said.

The 13 oz. jars retail for about $8 and are sold in approximately 600 stores nationwide including The Fresh Market, Streets Market and a network of independent and specialty retailers. Dana said growth in independent stores has primarily been driven by online vendors, such as Faire, and Airgoods, a newly launched specialty food wholesale platform.

In addition to growing within its home region on the East Coast, One Trick Pony is also tapping new consumers by engaging with other local D.C.-area businesses. In September, the brand introduced a crispy peanut butter cookie at retail and online with D.C.-based bakery Whisked in addition to a menu item collaboration with Seylou Bakery.

“Everyone gives you the advice [of] grow super deep in one area before you expand, which is great advice. But in D.C., there’s not that many stores that you could go super deep with,” said Dana. “The way that I’m trying to approach it is… how can you occupy people’s minds and Instagrams? Doing local collabs and being in their [daily] realm that way is important.”

As for retail growth, Dana said “we’re trying to go the slow and steady approach.” The company is eying key natural channel accounts during upcoming category reviews and aims to grow primarily between D.C. and New York City, where Dana said its primary customer base is located.

The brand has primarily turned to its packaging for incremental innovations during its first two years on the market. It has introduced its 9 lb. tub, originally intended solely for foodservice, as well as a single-serve version for customers, while keeping its simple formulation the same.

“As a joke one day, we put [the 9 lb. tubs] out on our website for consumers, and then people have been buying them, so we’ve just let them go for it,” Dana said.

The brand is homing in on future packaging changes as it works to stand out in the over $7 billion peanut butter category. OTP is rolling out a new pack design early next year that is aimed at solving a common consumer complaint across the natural nut butter category.

“[The rest of the category] is focusing on what’s in the jar, and we’re focusing on the jar itself,” said Dana. “We are hoping that will blow the doors open in these future retail conversations… If you think of the CPG darlings: It’s Graza olive oil using the squeeze bottle, it’s Liquid Death using the can. [Think:] People who are putting good products into new shapes, that’s where we are trying to lean in.”

PepsiCo Takes Full Ownership of Sabra For $240.8M

PepsiCo will acquire the remaining 50% share of Sabra Dipping Company and its Geneva-based international arm Obela from Israel-based Strauss Group for $243.8 million. In split terms, PepsiCo will pay $240.8 million for Sabra and $3 million for the Obela business, according to Strauss. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2024.

PepsiCo has split custody of the hummus and dip manufacturer since 2008 when it first formed the joint venture, right on the cusp of the hummus category’s salad days in the U.S. Today the refrigerated set of the hummus category is valued at $966 million.

Strauss originally purchased a 51% stake of Sabra in 2005 for a mere $9 million. According to PepsiCo, Sabra has generated nearly $400 million in retail sales in the U.S. in 2024; the transaction will accelerate PepsiCo’s aim to focus its portfolio on healthier snacking options and comes on the heels of its recently announced $1.2 billion acquisition of better-for-you Hispanic food company Siete Foods.

“Our aim is to meet the growing demand for positive choices and on-the-go options,” said Steven Williams, CEO of PepsiCo Foods North America, in a press release. “Nutritious, simple foods like refrigerated dips and spreads represent a space we have long desired to expand in the U.S. and Canada. We are grateful to the Strauss Group for our long and successful partnership and look forward to this next chapter for the Sabra and Obela brands, as well as the PepsiCo food portfolio.”

The deal will also leave Strauss with an option to buy a 2.5% stake in PepsiCo’s salty snacks business in Israel, where Strauss already operates the Doritos and Cheetos brands. PepsiCo will also now assume full control of Sabra’s main production facility in Virginia along with the approximately 700 employees that work between both brands.

For Strauss, the sale also comes as it works to focus on its core offerings – a similar sentiment U.S.-based food and beverage conglomerates have also been vying toward. See Campbell’s acquisition of Sovos (and subsequent sale of noosa), General Mills selling off its yogurt segment or Kellogg’s separation of its snack and cereal businesses as evidence.

Under PepsiCo’s wing, Sabra has also tapped salty snack synergies, launching co-branded dipper products with PepsiCo-owned snack brands like Tostitos and continued to unlock additional grab-and-go opportunities with its Snackers line.

In 2016, the company made its first foray beyond chickpea-based dips with an expansion into an equally hot category – guacamole – but has since remained focused on these two dips while innovating its core product line via dip-adjacent varieties such as Spinach and Artichoke Olive Tapaneade and Buffalo hummus flavors.

The deal comes as the refrigerated dips and salsa categories continue to outperform their shelf-stable counterparts, according to SPINS data tracking dollar sales growth over the past three years. While the refrigerated hummus set slipped 0.1% in 2024 (compared to 4.3% growth in 2023), the decline is slight compared to a 22% drop in dollar sales and 9% decrease in unit sales of shelf-stable hummus products.

According to Strauss’ half-year earnings reported in August, Sabra and Obela are operating in line with category trends at a “break-even” rate with Sabra sales down 0.6% and Obela down 2.2%.

“The move constitutes another pillar in the implementation of the group’s strategy, which aims to focus on the core business, leverage our resources in the best possible way, and lead significant business moves for Strauss,” said Strauss CEO Shai Babad. “We thank all Sabra employees of all generations and PepsiCo for the extraordinary journey from a small salad company to the leader in the hummus market in the U.S.”

UpSnack Brands Brings Pipcorn, Spudsy Together Under One Roof

Pipcorn Heirloom Snacks and Spudsy are aligning under a new banner: UpSnack Brands.

The newly formed umbrella company has acquired all the assets of Pipcorn and Spudsy with additional capital provided by the brands’ respective controlling investors, Factory and KarpReilly. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Factory is the majority stakeholder in UpSnack Brands with KarpReilly being a “meaningful shareholder” with representation on the board, said Pipcorn CEO Joe DePetrillo, who will assume the executive leadership role of the new company. Spudsy founder and CEO Ashley Rogers will be leaving day-to-day responsibilities as she focuses on the baked treat brand Sprinkles.

The deal began to take form about a year ago when Pipcorn was in discussions with KarpReilly regarding an investment. At the time, representatives from the Greenwich, Conn.-based private equity firm asked if there was an appetite to put Spudsy and Pipcorn together under one company.

By scaling together, Pipcorn and Spudsy can optimize their route to market and play off each other’s strengths which is part of the “reality with brands of this scale,” DePetrillo said. “They’re too big to give up on and too small to be profitable while continuing to invest in growth and innovation.”

The two snack platforms are “complementary and like-minded in nature,” he added, and speak to a similar consumer who shops for products that represent a value proposition based on environmental sustainability or dietary needs.

Considering that consolidation seems to be a growing trend in the snack category UpSnack could provide the needed scale to compete as Mars’ impending Kellanova acquisition aims to create a new snacking superpower. Additionally, better-for-you platform Our Home has been building its own fiefdom in salty snacks with Parm Crisps, Pop Secret, Sonoma Creamery and two brands from Utz in 2024 alone.

Founded in 2012, Pipcorn initially championed the use of heirloom grain in its mini popcorn. The brand has expanded into other formats like twists, cheese balls, chips, and, most recently, puffed Fries.

Southern California-based Spudsy has been in the puffed snack category since 2018. Its approach to the better-for-you snack category centered on a Top Nine allergen-free, vegan product that used upcycled sweet potatoes. Over the years, the company has expanded its selections to include Fries and Scoops. The brand even took a step away from its previous dairy-free positioning with cheese varieties. Currently, Spudsy has eight varieties of sweet potato snacks.

For the last year, the Rogers’ team has split its time between Spudsy and the Sprinkles cupcake brand. Although the acquisition of Spudsy is not a formal exit for Rogers, she will be bringing most of her team to focus full-time on Sprinkles, which will remain in the KarpReilly portfolio.

“I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished, and I’m confident that Spudsy will continue to thrive as part of UpSnack Brands,” Rogers said in a press release statement.

Rogers will continue to work with UpSnack “supporting the business” in a contract role, DePetrillo said, and, as a result of Rogers bringing many of her team along to Sprinkles, there will be minimal redundancies between Pipcorn and Spudsy’s union.

For DePetrillo, the job at hand is integrating Pipcorn and Spudsy under one roof in the next 45 to 60 days.

“The positive is the supply chain will work really simply, and that’s the work that we’re doing now; to integrate our suppliers, our warehouse and ship out of one location,” he said.

Once coalesced together, the business is expecting to see savings, particularly in distribution costs.

“Instead of picking up from three different warehouses, we get it all under one vendor number with all the SKUs. They can put it on one PO, they can pick up bigger loads and be more efficient,” he said. “Taking costs out of the system for everybody will hopefully translate to better retail pricing and more efficient trade events.”

There will also be some savings from manufacturing because the “processes are very similar” for many of the product lines, DePetrillo said.

Both brands use co-manufacturing partners so there will likely be some attrition along the production supply chain but DePetrillo is hoping it will be minimal.

DePetrillo has been working with the Pipcorn team to evaluate and improve efficiency along the brand’s supply chain since he joined the company in August 2021.

On a macro level, synergizing the two brands can extend to incrementally building within each brand’s strongest retail partners bringing more SKUs of both brands into stores to increase UpSnack’s presence in the aisles.

That can also be related to channel strategy. Pipcorn has been focused on building out its products in the away-from-home channel and DePetrillo said Spudsy could be used to cross-sell foodservice accounts with more variety.

Finally, DePetrillo said there was an opportunity to become more strategic with its trade spend by bringing both items off-shelf in key retailers like Whole Foods or activations to sell salty snacks to a broader consumer base.

Simply put: “The opportunity going forward is to drive innovation and expand into other areas of the salty snack set,” DePetrillo said. “Our base initiative is to accelerate our pathway to profitability through scale.”

Oishii Adds $16M, Closes Series B At $150M

Oishii, a New Jersey-based vertical farming operation, has closed its Series B funding round at $150 million. The first tranche was announced in February at $134 million with an additional $16 million coming in over the past nine months from climate tech fund Resilience Reserve, co-founded by the head of TED Chris Anderson and entrepreneur Rob Reid and Japanese venture firm Miyako Capital.

The round also saw participation from existing investors NTT, Bloom8, McWin Capital Partners, Mizuho Bank, the Japan Green Investment Corporation for Carbon Neutrality (JICN), Yaskawa Electric Corporation, and others.

“We’re excited to support the Oishii team, both for the deliciousness of their existing produce and even more importantly for the extraordinary model they’re pioneering, which enables agricultural innovation at breakneck pace,” said Chris Anderson, co-founder of Resilience Reserve.

Oishii began by selling ultra-premium strawberries, including Omakase and Koyo varieties; it has since expanded its portfolio to include Rubi tomatoes. Alongside the new funding Oishii will open its first international facility in the Tokyo metro area, which will focus on additional R&D to advance vertical farming technology.

The news also comes on the heels of a distribution expansion that will bring its Koyo berries to Whole Foods stores across the Chicago area; Harris Teeter stores in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia; and Wakefern banners in the New York tri-state area later this year.

“We believe vertical farming is the ticket to a sweeter future, and this latest round of funding signals that others embrace our vision for a world where food is more accessible, better quality, and above all else, delicious,” said Hiroki Koga, CEO and co-founder of Oishii, in a press release. “We’re honored to bring our berries to Chicagoans and Harris Teeter customers, not to mention welcome a roster of respected investors to the Oishii family.”

In preparation for its expansion, Oishii opened a new 237,000 sq. ft. facility, located in Phillipsburg, N.J., in June. The solar powered facility features 50 state-of-the-art robots and has the capacity to increase Oishii’s strawberry output by 20 times, according to the company.

But while Oishii is staking out its expansion plans, the rest of the vertical farming industry remains in flux. Over the past year, numerous well-funded, widely-distributed companies have shuttered including Aerofarms, Upward Farms, App Harvest, Smallhold, Kalera and, most recently, Bowery Farms earlier this month

While these operations garnered significant early-stage investment, a slowdown in VC funding as they began to scale up may have played a role in their eventual demise.

For example, Bowery, the latest to close its doors, had raised over $700 million in the nine years since it was founded. The company’s last institutional round, totalling $300 million, came in 2021; Pitchbook reported a 91% drop in VC investments in the controlled-environment agricultural sector between 2022 and 2023.

Due to the large, tech-heavy investments required for these companies to operate, improving unit economics as they scale up and returning value to investors becomes an even more elusive goal. A similar trend has been realized across the plant-based meat sector which also saw a VC tech-style boom in investment from 2018 until early 2022, but subsequently dried up. Many of those companies have either shut down, been rolled up, or, in the case of Beyond Meat, taken the business public – which has led to additional challenges and scrutiny.

Oishii, which launched in 2018 with strawberries priced at $10 per 8-count tray, has taken a uniquely premium approach to bringing products to market compared to its now-defunct peers, which primarily sold leafy greens and worked to achieve price parity with conventionally-grown alternatives. However, it remains to be seen whether the brand can break out of niche markets and retail trial phases to find a sustainable bottom line within its existing business model.

Hershey Acquires Sour Strips to ‘Relentlessly Accelerate’ Growth in Sweets

The Hershey Company announced it has acquired sour candy brand Sour Strips, expanding the snacking and confectionery giant’s growing sweets portfolio. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2019 by YouTuber and powerlifter Maxx Chewning – who is known for his fitness tips – Sour Strips produces a portfolio of strips and bites in a wide array of flavors like Cotton Candy, Pink Lemonade, Blue Raspberry, Strawberry, and Green Apple. The candy is sold online for $17.99 per 4-pack of 6.35 oz. Bites bags and $19.99 per 6-pack of 3.4 oz. Strips bags. Additionally, according to Sour Strips’ website, the products are available at over 16,000 stores nationwide, including Target, 7-Eleven and Hobby Lobby.

Leveraging Chewning’s reach, Sour Strips has amassed an audience of over 400,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook. For the brand, which also has a presence in Canada, the acquisition by Hershey provides a prime opportunity for global expansion.

“Our partnership with The Hershey Company represents a significant step in our mission to innovate and set new standards within the confection category,” said Chewning in a press release. “Hershey’s exceptional track record making iconic brands worldwide aligns perfectly with our vision for Sour Strips.”

The Jolly Rancher and Kit Kat producer views the transaction as an opportunity to expand its offerings outside of chocolate amidst record high cocoa prices and weakened consumer demand that have cut into earnings.

There is ample opportunity for growth in the non-chocolate candy category. According to a report from the National Confectioners Association, the segment – which spans gummies, chewy candy, hard licorice, lollipops and marshmallows – remains a consumer favorite through prosperous, inflationary and pandemic times.

What’s more, the sour candy category has seen a boom in activity as of late. Final Boss Sour – the gaming-themed sour snack brand developed by Science Inc. – raised $3 million in a seed round that included participation from DJ Steve Aikoi’s venture fund Aioki Labs and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH Fund. Additionally, Better Sour has partnered with Walt Disney Animation Studios to launch a new Passion Fruit flavor of its sour gummies featuring “Moana 2”-inspired packaging.

“The acquisition of Sour Strips expands Hershey’s offerings within our growing sweets portfolio with a product that is beloved by consumers,” said Mike Del Pozzo, president of U.S. confection at The Hershey Company, in a statement. “We’re energized to welcome Maxx and the Sour Strips team to Hershey as we relentlessly accelerate our growth in sweets.”