Once Upon a Farm Co-Founder Heads to Coconut Cult as CEO

Moving from youngsters to yogurt, Once Upon a Farm co-founder and president Ari Raz announced today he has joined Coconut Cult as the company’s new CEO.

As Raz joined the team in early August, Coconut Cult’s co-founder and now former CEO Noah Simon-Wadell also shifted his focus to product development and creative projects in his new role as chief innovation officer. Raz will remain based in San Diego, with the company’s production team of 11 employees continuing to operate from its San Luis Obispo, California manufacturing facilities. Additional team members in sales, marketing and administration will likely work remotely.

Raz co-founded cold-pressed baby food brand Once Upon a Farm in early 2015 and served as the company’s CEO until 2017. At that time, former Annie’s CEO John Foraker took over the role, also becoming a co-founder alongside actor Jennifer Garner, and Raz took on the position of president of the company.

For the last four years Raz has focused on the childrens’ food brand’s e-commerce efforts and specialty sales. When Foraker joined the brand, Raz said, the company needed a more seasoned executive at the helm, but after four years working under Foraker and alongside a team of experts in their respective fields, he feels more confident with his own leadership skills.

“[In 2017] I wanted to lose some responsibility across departments because I did not have the experience required to scale any of those departments as quickly as they needed to be scaled and John knew what to do,” Raz said. “I’ve learned what steps were taken in the short, mid and long term to really turn Once Upon a Farm into a world class CPG operation. I’ve really gotten the full scope of what that entails and I do feel far more ready and far more comfortable assuming this role today.”

The company’s yogurts are currently sold in roughly 800 doors. The products’ unique tart flavor profile, higher price point (on the company’s website, an 8 oz jar is roughly $19 while a 16 oz jar is $39), and labor intensive manufacturing process has put Coconut Cult on a slower growth trajectory, Raz said, adding that his immediate priority will be to bring in additional talent that can help the company quickly add more retailers and new channels.

“My goal is to deliver innovation that will open up new channels — [moving] beyond our current line,” Raz said. “I’m making big shifts in our strategy because we need to make these calls in order to really emerge in a big way.”

To support these efforts, Coconut Cult is currently in the process of raising additional capital, with 35% of the funds closed already and a final round expected to close later this year. Investors in the brand include CircleUp and Able Partners.

Raz declined to comment on the details of any new products, but added that the company is focused on new items that can have a broad appeal because “our current line is not appropriate for many channels.”

To that end, the company also announced that it will discontinue it’s probiotic, plant-based gelato line, which had launched in summer 2019. Raz said for now, he believes the company needs to focus and the frozen line not only “stymied our growth in yogurt” but also was too expensive to produce and margin dilutive. The line may reemerge as a direct-to-consumer option in the future, but for now, is being discontinued entirely.

“The category has such great incumbents as well as new brands coming in and we felt that it would divide up our time and resources to try and grow meaningfully in both categories,” Raz said. “We really believe that we can innovate, and lead the charge on the next great innovations to come to the plant-based yogurt category, and that’s what we intend to do.”