• 😈 Is LesserEvil Up For Sale?
• 📈 A Look At Ferrero's FY24
• 🏭 Cascade Enters Private Label
• 🔀 Monday Moves

What do you get when you roll up a slice of the plant-based pizza space and put it with a side of NUGGS, vegan salmon and lupin bean-based ice cream? Apparently, you get Ahimsa.

The private equity firm Ahimsa Companies – which has scooped up a number of plant-based companies including Wicked Kitchen, Simulate (maker of NUGGS), Current Foods and Good Catch – added pizza and wings to its menu this month after it acquired fellow vegan food slinger Blackbird Foods 

The New York-based pizza and seitan-wings company will tap into Ahimsa’s “extensive knowledge” to enhance its distribution and manufacturing capabilities, said Mike Pease, co-founder of Blackbird Foods, in a statement. 

And it's well positioned to do so considering Ahimsa added Wicked – which also makes pizzas as well as a variety of other meal types – to its capabilities in June, as it moved a step further in pursuit of an industry-wide consolidation effort that it believes will be necessary to remove animals from the global food system (a.k.a. achieve the rally cry of the early plant-based movement).

These efforts will support growth opportunities via vertical integration and scale, Ahimsa believes. But manufacturing scale isn’t the only attribute likely in focus. Blackbird’s products are already available in over 3,000 retailers nationwide, and those retailers, which include Target, Sprouts and Whole Foods, share similarities to Wicked’s main U.S. partners as well. 

What do you think? Could a consolidation strategy seed success? Who will be next to join the Ahimsa Company block? Let us know at adeluca@bevnet.com.

Catch Up: Simulate Sells To Ahimsa

The consolidation news keeps coming. LesserEvil is reportedly exploring a potential sale where it could seek up to a $1 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg. 

🍿 The Connecticut-based snack maker is still in the early stages of the process with unnamed sources emphasizing that a transaction may not even happen.

🤔 Where could the snack co go? Details about a potential acquirer were not specified, but the news comes at a moment when many large CPG conglomerates have healthy snacking directly in their viewfinders. 

📰 The news follows recent headlines about Edward Coristine, LesserEvil founder and CEO Charles Coristine’s teenage son, who has been identified as a member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Go Deeper: Learn all about LesserEvil's rise during Nosh Live 2023

Despite soaring cocoa prices and continued inflationary pressures, The Ferrero Group closed fiscal year 23/24 with a year-over-year increase consolidated revenue increase of 8.9%, reaching €18.4 billion, according to its recent financial statements. 

💰 In support of its manufacturing capabilities and continued product innovation, the company increased capital investment by 18% over the year term. 

🍨 Ferrero Group also launched Nutella Ice Cream and introduced Eat Natural and FULFIL brands to additional European markets in the past year in addition to opening its first stateside chocolate factory and modernizing its Stadtallendorf, Germany, plant. 

Organic flour milling is growing as Cascade opens a new building to enhance operations, including a streamlined packaging process that has enabled the company to now offer private label services. 

• Washington-based Cascade now offers private label organic flours, grains, and baking mixes such as whole grain pancake and waffle mix.
• The company has also revamped its own retail packaging following the expansion. 

Here’s a taste of the people and products moving around the industry to start off your week. 

🍫 CPG veteran David Jacobs joined confectionery giant Mars, Inc. as VP of marketing after roles at SC Johnson and Unilever where he spearheaded product portfolio and marketing strategies. 

🌱 Plant-based F&B company NotCo named Christina Trampota chief product officer to drive the next phase of growth for its Giuseppe AI platform. 

🥨 Better-for-you snack maker Quinn unveiled a slate of new leadership positions, appointing Heather Cooper as chief sales officer and Beth Hunsicker Parker as VP of marketing, in addition to promoting Ryan Anderson to chief supply chain and operations officer. 

🧊 Pitaya Foods has landed its Organic Dragon Fruit & Mango and Organic Acai Blueberry Smoothie Pop flavors in 1,345 Kroger stores nationwide. The frozen treats have an SRP of $6.99 per 4-count box. 

🍎 Crispy Green’s Crispy Fruit freeze-dried fruit snacks are now available at Whole Foods Market stores nationwide in Strawberry and Mango varieties.