Gryphon Acquires Spindrift, EMN Raises $5M ❤️‍🩹

Author

CPG WIRE
January 16, 2025

GM and Happy Thursday, folks. Here’s what we’re covering this morning:

  • Unilever sells another brand 🍝

  • Mighty Slice secures funding 🍰

  • Anheuser makes energy play ⚡️

  • MALK refreshes packaging 🥛

  • Fruit Riot expands at Costco 🍇

Gryphon Acquires Spindrift 🫧

Spindrift, a sparkling water brand that launched in 2010, officially sold a majority stake to Gryphon Investors, a private equity firm based in San Francisco. Although terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed, the Wall Street Journal indicated that Spindrift's valuation could exceed $650M.

Bill Creelman, Spindrift’s Founder & CEO, will retain a significant equity stake in the company and transition to the role of Chairman. Replacing Creelman as CEO is Dave Burwick, a beverage industry veteran who previously served as the CEO of Peet’s Coffee and The Boston Beer Company.

"I'm incredibly proud of what we've built at Spindrift over the past 15 years," said Creelman. "For this next stage of growth, we looked for two things: a leader who could understand our business and the brand as natively as the people who work here today, and an investment partner with the right financial and operational resources to galvanize our market leadership.” 

Ryan Fagan, Managing Director at Gryphon Investors, as well as Gryphon Partners Matt Farron and Mike Ferry, will join Spindrift’s board as soon as the deal closes.

Gryphon has ample experience with consumer businesses — they previously owned Dessert Holdings (exited to Bain Capital), Eight O’Clock Coffee (exited to Tata Coffee), and Flagstone Foods (exited to TreeHouse Foods) — but this appears to be their first pure-play beverage investment.

Deals 💰

Mergers & Acquisitions 

  • Plant-based cheese company Misha’s acquired Vertage, an innovative producer of dairy-free cheese products. The union will enable Misha’s to produce a wider variety of products and access greater distribution capabilities via Vertage’s partnership with Fresh Del Monte. PR Newswire

  • Unilever continues to carve out and divest non-core food brands. In addition to selling Unox and Zwan late last year, Unilever just sold its retail pasta sauce range in Germany. The buyer is Italian food producer Casalasco Group which does over €630M in annual revenue. These divestment sprees usually coincide with buying sprees, so look out for Unilever to buy a few more food brands this year. Just Drinks

Fundraising

  • Enhanced Medical Nutrition (EMN), the company behind medical nutrition brand ENROUTE, secured $5M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by DSM-Firmenich Venturing and the corporate venture arm of Ajinomoto Co. Other investors include PeakBridge and Elder Ventures. ENROUTE offers nutrition products that help customers prepare and recover from surgery. PR Newswire

  • Mighty Slice, a UK-based purveyor of high-protein, low-sugar cheesecakes, raised £750K in fresh funding. Investors include CPG veteran Giles Brook, YouTuber Willne, and agency owner Harry Hugo. Mighty Slice contains 16g of protein per slice and retails at Asda, Sainsbury’s, and Gopuff. The Grocer

  • Formo, a German producer of animal-free cheese products, secured €35M in debt financing from European Investment Bank (EIB). Formo uses precision fermentation to produce their cheese alternatives. The company raised $61M in equity funding in September. Vegconomist

Fight Deductions With Glimpse ⚔️

Lil Bucks has grown super quickly in the natural channel, and with that came some of the weirdness of working with big distributors. 

Maybe you've wondered the same things as Lil Bucks CEO Emily Griffith:

  • Why are KeHE and UNFI taking so much money from me? 

  • What do these strange chargeback codes mean?

  • How can we possibly keep up with this as we scale the business?

The Lil Bucks team heard about Glimpse and after speaking with Glimpse CEO Akash Raju, it was a no-brainer to automate the entire deductions workflow to future-proof the business.

Now Lil Bucks can spend their time on higher-value work, while Glimpse does all the work of importing and reconciling each deduction, as well as checking every single chargeback and proactively disputing any that are invalid. 

In the first six months, Glimpse got the Lil Bucks team $27K back from distributors, as well as saving the team 10 hours a week. This represents an 8-10x ROI. 

No wonder more than 80 challenger brands have partnered with Glimpse since they launched just 8 months ago!

Learn more about Glimpse here or schedule a demo here.

What’s New 🤩

Apparel, Cosmetics, and Wellness

  • Popular haircare brand Gisou unveiled their newest product — Honey Gloss Ceramide Therapy Hair Mask. The new SKU launches on January 20th and will be available exclusively via their website and at Sephora. It’s a beauty. Instagram

  • Viral beauty brand Fazit expanded their offering with a limited edition product called Snowflake Speckles. Very easy company to root for. Instagram

  • HOKA opened a pretty killer pop-up in East London called The Run Stop Corner Shop. The company will use the convenience store-inspired space for run clubs and collaborations. Footwear News

  • Hero Cosmetics has launched their largest patch yet with Mighty Patch Body. The XXL acne patch helps combat body breakouts and absorbs pimple gunk in 6-8 hours. Instagram

Food, Beverage, and Alcohol

  • Anheuser-Busch announced a new partnership with 1st Phorm, a sports nutrition and supplements company, to scale the latter’s energy drink business. Dana White is also involved in the beverage partnership which augurs well for 1st Phorm. The partnership’s initial energy product is expected to hit the market by summer 2025 and will obviously be distributed by Anheuser-Busch. Business Wire

  • Magic Spoon launched a new cereal line that’s available exclusively at Whole Foods Market. Magic Spoon Protein + Fiber features 13g of protein, 6g of prebiotic fiber, and only 2g of sugar per serving. Instagram

  • Another day, another seed oil free certification. TRUBAR just announced that they secured the seal from the Seed Oil Free Alliance. TRUBAR joins a variety of other brands like Daily Crunch, Algae Cooking Club, and Stars + Honey as seed oil free. Business Wire

  • Cleveland Kitchen, a leading purveyor of fermented foods, expanded into a new category with their Everything Sauces range. Two flavors are available: Kimchi Ranch and Dill Pickle Buffalo. The new range is available at select Whole Foods Market stores. PR Newswire

  • Por Osos Vodka, the spirits brand co-founded by comedians Bert Kreischer and Tom Segura, named Brent Wunder as its new CEO. Wunder previously held senior positions at Constellation, Pernod, Mark Anthony Brands, and Sprinter Spirits. PR Newswire

  • MALK just refreshed their shelf stable packaging. It’s a huge improvement IMO. The callouts are more legible and easier to process and you can’t miss the supersized wordmark. Love it 👇 Twitter

Data 🖥️

  • Black Rifle Coffee expects to finish 2024 with net revenue in the range of $390M to $395M. The Utah-based company also expects adjusted EBITDA to land between $35M-40m. Business Wire

Distribution News 🚚

  • Wildwonder is now available nationwide at Whole Foods Market.

  • Evergreen also went nationwide at Whole Foods Market.

  • Munk Pack expanded their retail presence at Kroger.

  • Fruit Riot launched in another 200 Costco stores.

  • Sow Good launched online at Walmart.