Bobo’s Grows Production and Team with New Funding

Boulder, Colorado-based oat bar brand Bobo’s announced this week that it received series B funding from repeat investors Boulder Investment Group Reprise (BIGR) and Ridgeline Ventures. The two firms led the brand’s $8 million series A round in February 2017. Terms of this most recent deal were not disclosed but executives did say the round was comparable to the first.

“This team has performed exceptionally well since our last investment,” Duane Primozich, founder and managing partner of BIGR, told NOSH. “They have done an excellent job operating the business, setting lofty goals and executing their plans beautifully. The people in any organization are often the difference between success and failure and we continue to be impressed with the group assembled at Bobo’s.”

Over the past year, Bobo’s used its last round of funding to help scale its retail presence with the addition of retailers such as Kroger, Publix and Wegmans. The funding also helped the company bring new innovations to market, including toaster pastry TOAST’R and nut butter filled bars STUFF’D Bites. With this growth the brand doubled its revenues since the raise, according to Bobo’s CEO TJ McIntyre. Now, with these latest funds, the brand is focusing on keeping pace with marketplace demand and increasing production capacity in order to meet its goal of tripling its business by 2020.

“Given our small internal bakery footprint in Boulder and increased monthly spikes in demand we are focused on driving efficiencies in our bakery while expanding capacity with more ovens, equipment and employees,” McIntyre told NOSH. “As we expand with more customers and channels we are focused on keeping our bakery nimble enough to meet increased spikes in demand while staying true to our simple handmade baking process.”

To support this focus on production, Bobo’s has also used the funding to grow its team. As of this month, Sarah Van Houten stepped into the role of CFO, and Rob Streight was named VP of Operations. Prior to joining Bobo’s, Van Houren worked as the senior director of finance transformation at DanoneWave and was an integral part of growing the Horizon Organic brand. Streight, formerly worked with Colorado Premium Foods as a vice president of operations.

“Rob’s expansive production experience at Colorado Premium will help us prepare for the next stage of growth,” said McIntyre,” [and] Sarah’s deep natural foods experience in both high growth and large natural foods companies will help us manage and maintain our sustainable growth.”

Much of the need to expand production is coming from the success of its most recently launched innovation, TOAST’Rs. McIntyre said the toaster pastry line has performed three times better than expected at its launch.

“We’ve seen strong early results showing we are driving incrementality to the Toaster Pastry category that has seen very little innovation over the last 20 years,” he said. “Consumers also love they can buy a variety of flavors in our single serve format and aren’t forced to buy flavors in multipack.”

The company also recently launched its updated Bites line including new PB&J and Apple Pie STUFF’D Bites, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip and Chocolate Chip bites, as well as a seasonal pumpkin spice flavor. As for future innovation, McIntyre said more products are in the pipeline, but for now the brand is focusing on its current portfolio.

“We believe our current categories and line up has set the table for us to drive significant growth and velocity in the categories we are in today,” he said.