• 🤠 Lillie’s Q Sold To Sauce Strategic
• 🥳 ¡Ya Oaxaca! Wins PepsiCo Accelerator
• 🍼 FDA Guidance For Infant Formula Supply 
• 💰 TurtleTree Raising $15M Round
• 👊 Prime & Messi’s Mas+ Do Battle. Who Benefits? Plus, We Dip & Bake.

Unilever is looking to sell several European food brands with combined sales of €1 billion (USD$1.05 billion), according to a Reuters report, with sources previously telling the publication that the conglomerate was in talks to sell some of its Dutch food brands, including Unox soups and Conimex seasonings, as well as smaller food brands in Britain. 

The company already plans to spin off its ice cream business – which had revenue of €7.9 billion (USD$8.3 billion) last year and includes Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum, Breyers and others – into a standalone, publicly traded entity.

Unilever owns about 400 brands worldwide spanning personal care, beauty, household and food, including Hellmann’s and Knorr, which generate USD$2.1 billion and USD$5.2 billion in annual sales, respectively. Its top executive, Hein Schumacher, is leading a turnaround strategy that focuses on several dozen of the company’s biggest “power” labels that represent more than 70% of sales. 

Over a little more than a decade, Unilever has exited a large portion of its food business with the divestitures of Skippy peanut butter, Wish-Bone and Western salad dressings, Mrs. Dash seasonings, P.F. Chang’s Home Menu frozen meals, Ragu and Bertolli pasta sauces, Slim-Fast weight management products, and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and Country Crock spreads.

Its latest moves follow a trend of corporations streamlining portfolios to focus on core competencies. General Mills divested its Yoplait, Go-Gurt and Oui yogurt brands to home in on cereal, snacks and pet food, Hain Celestial Group sold Thinsters and ParmCrisps snack brands this year, and the Campbell’s Company recently offloaded noosa yogurt and Pop Secret popcorn. 

Meanwhile, J.M. Smucker Company just completed the sale of Voortman cookie brand to Second Nature Brands for $305 million, while Kraft Heinz is exploring the sale of Oscar Mayer, and B&G Foods has put Green Giant under strategic review. 

Go Deeper: Investment Analysis: As a Dry 2024 Ends, Brands Should Invest in Self-Love

Lillie’s Q Sauces & Rubs has been sold to OWS Foods, the maker of a range of sauces and spices, by investment bank Brown Gibbons Lang & Company. The move marks yet another investment firm-owned brand switching into the hands of a strategic operator. 

🥇 The BBQ sauce and rubs brand was founded by two-time World Barbecue Champion and chef Charlie McKenna and has been sold at specialty and premium retailers since 2014. 

🏭 OWS operates two production facilities and a research and innovation lab in Overland Park, Kan., with its products distributed to over 20,000 outlets nationwide. The deal is intended to help grow Lillie’s Q’s presence in OWS’s established channels including conventional grocery, foodservice and club stores.

🗣️ What they said: "With BGL's guidance and advice, we were able to identify and negotiate with the right partner to accelerate the Lillie's Q brand. When I launched Lillie's over 14 years ago, the goal was to get the product into every household. We believe we have the best-tasting product in the market, and with the resources offered through a bigger platform, we are excited about the opportunities ahead." - Charlie McKenna

¡Ya Oaxaca! has been crowned the winner of PepsiCo’s 2024 Greenhouse Accelerator Program: Juntos Crecemos (Together We Grow) Edition. As champion, the Mexican mole, sauces and adobos purveyor will receive a $100,000 grant and other resources to scale operations. 

🥇 The Oaxaca-based brand emerged victorious from a field of seven F&B companies inspired by Hispanic flavors and culture including JAS, JaziLupini, Mayawell, Nemi, PAKTLI, Pricklee, and TOAST-IT. 

👀 The award follows a five-month PepsiCo mentorship program and was determined by a panel of judges. As part of the accelerator, each finalist received a $20,000 grant and hands-on coaching from PepsiCo experts across R&D, supply chain, design, and other key areas.

🗣️ What they said: “All eight finalists leveraged the resources and PepsiCo mentorship to elevate their businesses to impressive heights - from growing revenue to innovating into new categories within food and beverages and more. ¡Ya Oaxaca! stood out for its commitment to transforming grocery store aisles with bold flavors and new product variations. The company's outstanding results show great potential to evolve the F&B industry.” - Antonio Escalona, SVP of emerging business for PepsiCo Foods North America

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week issued draft guidance outlining how infant formula manufacturers should notify the agency of a permanent product discontinuation or manufacturing disruption as it works to improve the resiliency of the infant formula supply chain.

👀 Under section 424 of the FD&C Act, infant formula manufacturers must notify the FDA “as soon as practicable, but no later than five business days.” The proposed guidance would require manufacturers to disclose their name, the name of each impacted product, whether it relates to a discontinuance or a supply disruption, and the reason for the action.

🤔 The FDA suggests that manufacturers discontinuing a product also (voluntarily) include when they stopped producing it, the production volume of the formula and the estimated amount remaining for sales. For supply chain disruptions, the agency asked manufacturers to include the projected duration of the interruption and the size/amount of product reduction. 

💭 The public can submit online or written comments on the draft guidance before February 3.

Food technology company TurtleTree is in the process of raising a pre-Series B round of funding, according to Axios. 

❌ The Singaporean company was founded in 2019 by Lin Fengru. TurtleTree uses precision fermentation to make an animal-free Lactoferrin+ for use in food and beverage applications.

🤝 The round is expected to provide fresh working capital for its recently announced partnership with Singapore-based canned coffee brand MAD Foods and the forthcoming collaborations in the U.S. with Cadence Performance Coffee and Strive Nutrition.

🤑 TurtleTree previously closed a $30 million Series A in November 2021 led by VERSO Capital bringing its total investment at the time to $40 million.

🥛 TurtleTree is one of a few food tech businesses – Helaina, BIOMILQ, All G and ByHeart, to name a few – developing more sustainable and cost-effective alternatives to bovine-derived lactoferrin or human breast milk.

Days away from BevNET’s winter events in Marina Del Rey, the hosts discuss the legal battle between lifestyle fitness brands Prime and Mas+ by Messi and why it may help one company more than the other, regardless of the outcome. They also sample a big brand’s take on an ethnic classic and explain their love/hate relationship with an emerging brand.

Listen to the episode now.