• 🚚 Distribution: Daily Harvest Hits The Bullseye
• 🍗 Amylu Foods Acquires Klement’s Sausage
• 📶 DTC Downturn? Why Venture Funding Dried Up
• 🚫 Amazon Shutters San Fran Grocery Fulfillment
• 🍽️ UberEats Partners With Instacart

The Emerging Brands Food Lab, a new women-founder focused food and beverage accelerator program, kicked off today. 

The month-long, hybrid program will engage founders on topics ranging from scaling production and distribution to fundraising tactics and financing growth; it has been put together by law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP’s food and beverage practice in partnership with its in-house initiative, Project W.

This first cohort includes 12 food, beverage and pet brand founders such as Tiffani Neal (Barlow’s Foods), Hema Reddy (WunderEggs by Crafty Counter), Diana Rios (Jarabe Gourmet Pops), Yasameen Sajady (Maazah), Elizabeth Raymond (NoBull Burger), Sabah Ashraf (House of Kajaana) and more. 

Panelists and program mentors hail from DWT’s team as well as its network of investors and clients who have built successful businesses. The cohort will be advised by Lisa Feria (managing partner and CEO at Stray Dog Capital), Megan Huber (director of procurement at Olipop), Andrew Ive (partner at Big Idea Ventures), Sallie Jian (Diageo Ventures), Angela Lukic (VP of marketing at Honey Mama’s), Junea Rocha (co-founder and CMO of Brazi Bites) and many more. 

According to program director Emily Baum, who has founded two companies herself and spent time working as a VC investor, despite being run by a law firm, the Food Lab has been designed to tackle all areas of the business and provide founders with direct feedback, open forums for conversation and tactical workshops to sharpen their skills. 

“Many of the companies that we've worked with over time are just starting out, they don't have in-house legal counsel, [and] we really act as trusted advisors,” added Laura Gordon, co-director of the Emerging Food Brands Lab and DWT’s Food and Bev practice manager. 

Even after it ends, the cohort will remain connected via an online Slack community, emphasized Shelly Malik, counsel at DWT and co-lead of Project W; she explained that the accelerator was developed from a one-time, pandemic-era virtual event (noting that it already has an active and growing alumni network) and will now be a regular, bi-annual program. 

Spring retail resets mean that the distribution news continues to flow. This week we highlighted a range of recent gains as brands enter and expand within Walmart, Whole Foods and more. Here are the highlights:

🍍 Daily Harvest has grown its footprint to 25,800 points of distribution across the country less than a year after it entered physical retail following this week’s announcement that select products will roll out to Target shelves across California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Washington State

🐟 Tinned fish titan Fishwife announced it has secured national placement at select Whole Foods stores and introduced two new items – Albacore Tuna in Olive Oil and Albacore Tuna in Spicy Olive Oil – as exclusives to the retailer through June.

🍓 Kid-focused nutrition products maker Yumi announced it has expanded its bars and puff products to Walmart stores nationwide, bringing its total door count to 5,000 since its launch in late 2022. 

Nosh Insiders can access the full roundup here.

Poultry products purveyor Amylu Foods is beefing up its portfolio with the acquisition of Klement’s Sausage Company, a division of Tall Tree Foods, for an undisclosed sum. 

🌭 Founded in 1956, Klement’s Sausage Company produces small-batch sausages based on old family recipes. Its nationally distributed portfolio includes snack sticks, summer sausages and smoked sausage varieties. 

🛒 A maker of chicken sausages, meatballs and burgers, Amylu Foods has seen 70% y/y growth in 2024 and expects to enhance production capacity while opening new expansion opportunities into additional formats and areas of the store.

💬 Jeff Baker, president of Klement's Sausage Company, said, "This strategic combination promises exciting prospects for both brands, empowering us to extend the reach of our cherished Wisconsin flavors to an even wider audience.”

The era of DTC-reliant CPG brands might be coming to a close. This year, U.S. investors have put only about $130 million into ecommerce-focused companies – a 97% decline from its peak in 2021 when over $5 billion flowed into the segment, according to Crunchbase. Where’s all the money gone?

💻 Well, a lot of the ecomm love seen in and around 2021 when cash was still cheap, was generated from ecommerce aggregators like Thrasio, Perch or Branded, who found success raising capital to acquire smaller brands and elevate their respective presence on platforms like Amazon. 

🏪 Additionally, many have come to learn that growing online-only is not a long-term growth play. Many digitally-native platforms have found they had to move into traditional retail where operating as an omnichannel company often generates higher returns.

📈 High inflation, a running narrative for the last two years, also plays a role. Venture funds have tightened their purse strings, and consumers have moved off subscription-based ecommerce models and now shop more private label options.

Amazon will shutter its 38,500 sq. ft. grocery fulfillment facility in San Francisco on June 27, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle this week. Looking ahead, the ecommerce giant plans to construct a new logistics center elsewhere in the city’s Showplace Square Neighborhood.

🏭 According to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice issued by the California Employment Development Department, the closure will impact 85 employees. An Amazon representative said all workers will be offered other job opportunities within the company.

📝 In a 2023 letter to shareholders, Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy said the company is working to scale its grocery sales by building a mass physical store offering (Amazon Fresh), growing sales with Whole Foods and utilizing same-day facility capabilities. 

💭 “What if we used our same-day facilities to enable customers to easily add milk, eggs or other perishable items to any Amazon order and get same day? It might change how people think of splitting up their weekly grocery shopping, and make perishable shopping as convenient as non-perishable shopping already is,” wrote Jassy.

Instacart customers will soon be able to access UberEats restaurant delivery directly from the grocery delivery app, according to an announcement today. 

• The feature is expected to roll out within the next few weeks. 
• Housed under a new “Restaurants” tab in the Instacart app, consumers will be able to choose from a variety of nearby restaurants, browse menus, place orders and track deliveries. 
• Instacart+ members will receive free delivery on grocery and restaurant orders over $35. 

The move marks another potentially significant avenue for growth as Instacart continues to expand its advertising and technology solutions platform alongside its delivery capabilities and services since taking the company public in September.