Nutpods founder and CEO Madeline Haydon says the plant-based coffee creamer brand is only getting started following its acquisition today by Kroger-backed investment group MPearlRock.
Speaking to BevNET this afternoon, Haydon confirmed she will stay with the business as CEO and a board director for the “foreseeable future.”
Haydon founded Nutpods in 2013 after realizing a gap in the market for a full-bodied, plant-based creamer that provided a comparable texture and flavor profile to dairy coffee creamers. At the time, Haydon had been working as a recruitment director for a blood donation nonprofit group and had no experience in CPG and was able to launch the first iteration of the brand after a $32,000 crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter.
Today, Nutpods is sold in around 15,000 stores nationwide and, Haydon said, the brand has become competitive with leading non-dairy creamer brands like So Delicious and International Delight.
“We’ve already proven that we can go head-to-head with publicly held companies and brands, whether or not it’s Starbucks or Danone or Nestlé,” Haydon said. “I’m just so excited about the growth and also being able to [access] the resources and the expertise that [MPearlRock has] and to see Nutpods continuing to thrive and continue to grow in new channels.”
The brand’s acquisition by a Kroger-backed investment fund is somewhat apt as Haydon noted that in 2018 Kroger became the first nationwide retail chain to carry the brand. She said the retailer had “been watching” the brand for some time and had been able to see strong metrics on the shelf prior to the acquisition.
In 2019, Nutpods raised capital from VMG Partners. According to Crunchbase, the brand raised at least $35.1 million across three funding rounds.
“I didn’t pop out of nowhere, we’re just a bigger player now,” she said.
MPearlRock is a partnership between Kroger’s PearlRock Partners and asset management group MidOcean Partners. Launched last week, the firm aims to “introduce emerging consumer packaged goods … brands to new customers” and aims to leverage Kroger’s retail data and insights to support its portfolio.
While Nutpods has built out a sizable footprint in conventional and natural channel retailers, as well as online sales via Amazon, Haydon said the acquisition will now provide the brand with the resources to go deeper in brick-and-mortar. In particular, Haydon hopes to breach the foodservice channel, which had initially been a target for the company prior to the pandemic but, after 2020’s lockdowns shuttered the channel, plans to get Nutpods into cafes and restaurants never materialized.
Further out, Haydon would also like to make the club channel a target as well. But in the more immediate future, the focus will be on going deeper within Nutpods’ current channels and stores.
“I know that foodservice is now just starting to come back, but that is a tremendous channel for us,” she said. “It’s also very complicated. It’s a lot of resources, it’s contract-driven, and so for us that’s a particular place that we’re looking to focus on in a year’s time. But there’s a lot of opportunity just in the existing channels that we have and in the existing retailers that we have too.”
With the new year underway, Haydon said the company will explore new innovations, including potential R&D around pack sizes with options ranging from travel size and single-serve cartons to larger multi-serves being explored as possible future launches.
To date, Nutpods has been run on a relatively lean team, counting just 36 full time employees, Haydon said. With expansion in mind, she said the company is already looking to grow its headcount and currently has open job postings seeking a regulatory specialist and an accounting specialist.
Reflecting on the sale and the journey that led to it, Haydon also noted that she was proud of being a female founder and called for more support for woman-owned brands and businesses which often struggle to raise capital and reach an exit.
“It is just statistically correct that females have a harder time accessing capital on the private equity and on the venture side,” she said. “So being able to get to this point just makes me extremely proud of not only the company and the products we’ve built, but also the team and the journey along the way. I’d love to celebrate that as well.”