Step Inside Wicked Kitchen’s New Home

Wicked Kitchen is on a mission to do for plant-based foods what Annie’s did for organics: Build beachheads all over the store under a unified brand. Here’s how its new owners plan to help.

If you’d never heard of Ahimsa Companies before last week, you’re not alone. The holding company that has acquired Wicked Kitchen and its associated alt-seafood brands, Good Catch and Current Foods, is a new and “pretty private” organization, said Pete Speranza, who will continue in his role as Wicked Kitchen’s chief executive following the transaction.

Wicked Kitchen, he added, was “one of the first” to join Ahimsa Companies, which according to a press release, is “leading an industry-wide consolidation effort” to remove animals from the global food system.

But despite its apparent lack of a track record, Speranza told Nosh he feels “very comfortable” with the deal, given his prior relationship with the affiliated Colorado-based Ahimsa Foundation, which has partnered with several environmental and food-system focused investment funds including VegInvest, New Crop Capital, Veg Capital and Unovis Asset Management, a lead backer of Wicked Kitchen. (Speranza has been an operating venture partner at Unovis for nearly four years).

Consolidation “is a natural thing that needed to happen in this phase of plant-based food, and who better to help do that than someone that’s really in it for the mission, right?” Speranza said, noting opportunities for Wicked Kitchen to benefit from the synergies and scale offered by additional acquisitions by Ahimsa Companies.

“There’s an inflection point that’s going on in this category, so I truly think you’re going to see more and more companies in distress, you know, having to do something,” Speranza said.

Weakened consumer demand, a downturn in investment funding and heightened competition have hindered the plant-based sector. At its peak, Wicked Kitchen had upwards of 100,000 points of distribution in the U.S. but has since discontinued products to focus on core categories, Speranza said.

The brand’s retail portfolio includes chef-crafted frozen meals, pizza, desserts and more that are sold at Sprouts Farmers Market, Target and Kroger stores. The company also offers a broad assortment of plant-based sausages, seafood, burgers, meals and desserts to foodservice operators across the U.K. and U.S.

“We know that the tip-of-the-spear folks in the category will find us, but really I want to be that everyday food for everyday people, that just happens to be made with plants,” Speranza said, drawing a comparison to the Annie’s brand, which he helped manage previously during a more than two-decade stint General Mills.

“Annie’s is that trusted brand that consumers [see] in different categories,” he said. “We see the same path for Wicked… and that’s why we sit in mainstream categories like frozen meals and ice cream.”

Under Ahimsa Companies, Wicked Kitchen is expected to expand its retail footprint, add foodservice offerings and invest in new product development in the U.S. and U.K., where the brand originated seven years ago. Speranza said the company will evaluate plans for Good Catch.

“As we go forward, we are still trying to think through the strategy around retail versus foodservice,” he said of that brand, which Wicked Kitchen acquired in 2022. Both businesses were co-founded by brothers and chefs Chad and Derek Sarno.

Prior to joining Ahimsa, Speranza estimates Wicked Kitchen had raised a total of $45 million in funding over the past “four or five years.” He said the existing management team will continue to operate Wicked Kitchen, noting, “We have a small team at this point because we were conserving cash.”

“This puts us hopefully on more stable ground,” he added.