• 🫒 Behind Big Picture Foods’ Big Moves
• 🏁 F1 Driver Charles Leclerc Launches Ice Cream
• 🍎 WSJ: Produce Aisle Goes After Cool Factor
• 🍐 Gopuff Partners With Misfits Market 
• 💲 VC Firm SOSV Closes New $306M Fund

Forward Consumer Partners has made its first purchase. 

Having closed its $425 million fund in December, the newly launched CPG private equity firm has used some of that capital to acquire a majority stake in Virginia-based Firehook Bakery. 

The top-selling artisanal cracker company was founded as a neighborhood bread bakery in 1992 by Lebanese immigrant Pierre Abushacra. It now sells a 6-SKU line of crackers, with flavors like Za’atar, Rosemary Sea Salt, and Cinnamon, and continues to operate bakeries in Alexandria and in Washington, D.C.’s DuPont Circle neighborhood. 

With the close of the deal, Maura Mottolese, an experienced CPG leader who has been the CEO of brands like Cholula Hot Sauce and Tate’s Bake Shop, will become CEO of Firehook. Abushacra will remain a board member, but Forward Consumer Partners Managing Partner Matt Leeds will become Chairman.

And it isn’t the first time this duo, Mottolese and Leeds, has taken charge of a growing food business. In the same positions (CEO and lead investor), Mottolese and Leeds, respectively, were able to acquire and sell the Cholula business to McCormick for $800 million in 2020; at that time they were both affiliated with investment group L Catterton.

Now with Forward behind it, Firehook is looking to usher in its next stage of growth. Mottolese said she was attracted to the structure of Firehook’s business and drew comparisons to her previous gig as chief executive of Tate’s Bake Shop. (Reminder: the cookie company also operates a brick-and-mortar bakery and store in addition to its CPG business). 

“These [bakeries] are beautiful equity builders for the brand,” Mottolese said. “They’re a fabulous way to connect with our most loyal consumers – and to test and learn.”

Currently, the brand is sold in about 10,000 doors and has an ACV of 12 – largely concentrated in the grocery channel. Often merchandised near premium deli, cheeses, and dips like hummus, its new team believes the brand can go much wider.

“As we innovate, we see an opportunity for the brand to penetrate the far corners of the store,” Mottolese hinted.

Read the full story on Nosh to learn more about what made Firehook an attractive target and where Forward plans to take the brand.

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As its name suggests, Big Picture Foods has always had a vision that goes beyond its flagship line of fermented, organic and regeneratively-grown olives, peppers and capers, sold in about 1,000 doors. Now, with a new iteration packed in glass jars, that vision is coming into view.

🚚 The jarred products launched into Sprouts’ Innovation set last year and later rolled out to 131 West Coast Whole Foods stores. The move quickly paid off as now they’ve secured placement nationwide in Sprouts’ mainline set and are expected to enter Whole Foods stores nationwide in June.

🌶️ Priced in-line with the brand’s fresh, plastic-tray-packed version (both carry an SRP of $5.49), the jars have given Big Picture a set that jibes with the category conventions while providing an alternative, premium product in conventional retail. 

📬 “There’s a great example that I heard called the Toledo test. It basically says: do your products have mass appeal to the postman in Toledo? We can [now] confidently say yes,” said co-founder Daniela Jensen.

Read the full story on Nosh to learn more about Big Picture’s business model and what opportunities the new format unlocked.

Scuderia Ferrari F1 driver Charles Leclerc is racing into the frozen aisle with his new low-calorie ice cream brand, LEC. Operating under the slogan, “Why resist?” LEC encourages consumers to satisfy their sweet tooth without worrying about calorie counts or compromise. 

🍨 Offered in five flavors – Vanillove, Salty Fudge, Swirly Pistachi-oh, Peanut Caramel Tango, and Chocolate Crunch – the dessert combines ice cream and gelato into one offering with 335 to 399 calories per tub, depending on the variety. 

🇮🇹 Right now, the brand is exclusively available in Italy at retailers such as Bennett, Borello Supermercati and Esselunga.

Rapid retail delivery company Gopuff and food waste-focused online grocer Misfits Market have partnered to bring more fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat and bread to food deserts.

👍🏼 In a pilot program tested in select markets, one-quarter of all orders received by Gopuff included Fresh Grocery items, leading to 20% larger baskets and a more than 50% increase in sales for produce, dairy, prepared foods and meat. 

🚚 Misfits Market will deliver its fresh products to Gopuff’s micro-fulfillment centers where the Gopuff will deliver the products in as fast as 15 minutes to its customers.

🛍️ Yesterday, Gopuff unveiled its new “Powered By Gopuff” logistics and technology platform that enables CPG brands to rapidly fulfill ecommerce orders via their own websites.

Multinational investor SOSV – a big time sustainable-ag backer – has closed its largest fund to date at $306 million. Fund V, the “Deep Tech Fund,” is focused on scaling “human and planetary health” and will focus on companies that are bringing decarbonization and re-industrialization innovation to “reinvent the means of production.”

🍽️ The global VC firm was founded by Sean O’Sullivan in 1995 and has previously invested in food tech companies like Perfect Day, The EVERY Company, UPSIDE Foods, NotCo, California Cultured, Finless Foods and Abbots Butcher, among others.

💰 Previously, SOSV raised a $100 million Select Fund in 2021 to support follow-on investments in the VC’s portfolio.

🧑‍🔬 The firm also operates the accelerator program IndieBio that provides smaller dollar investments to early stage startups in biotechnology and life science.

The produce aisle has had a facelift, with an influx of branded fruits and vegetables featuring trendy fonts and vibrant colors after a growing number of investors and marketers set their sights on the ag space, according to WSJ’s recent article, “Cool Comes to the Humble Produce Aisle.”

🍓 Unlike “designer” produce with hefty price tags – such as Oishii’s $21.99 Omakase Berries – this new wave of marketing applies to everyday products that have historically competed almost completely on price and quality.

🍏 Four years ago, 105-year-old New York Apple Sales introduced its marketing arm, Yes! Apples, to lift retail sales. Though it hasn’t seen an “overwhelming lift” in physical stores, ecommerce sales in February 2024 were more than double those in the prior year period. 

💻 With many shoppers purchasing produce online – and unable to examine the products in-person – brand names have become a useful sign of consistency.  

⏩ According to WSJ, the branded produce market will be a slow-growth set as growers “seek to deliver uniform products and absorb unaccustomed new costs for marketing and packaging.”