Bumble Bee to Distribute Good Catch
If you aren’t answering consumers’ call for plant-based options, you’re going to miss out. That’s the reason Gathered Foods CEO Chris Kerr says seafood distributor and producer Bumble Bee Foods is partnering with his brand in a new joint venture.
Under the new partnership, which did not include any investment by Bumble Bee, the global seafood company will distribute Gathered Foods’ Good Catch line of plant-based seafood in the U.S. and Canada. The agreement is structured so that Bumble Bee will purchase Good Catch’s shelf stable and frozen products and then assume responsibility for selling the products into retailers, distributing them via the company’s warehouses.
“Ultimately what we wanted was somebody who was selling into the exact channel that we wanted to be in,” Kerr said. “You want to make it the least amount of hands between your manufacturing and the retailer.”
Kerr said the arrangement should help Good Catch lower prices on its products, while Bumble Bee will broaden its portfolio with a plant-based option. There’s precedent for the relationship — meat producer Maple Leaf Foods acquired plant-based brands Lightlife and Field Roast in order to offer retailers both protein solutions.
“If your job is to move proteins, you should be fairly indifferent as to whether it’s yellowfin tuna or skipjack tuna or Good Catch tuna,” Kerr said. “It’s all still moving products and creating sales.”
Kerr said he was asked by investors if he is worried about partnering with Bumble Bee, which filed for bankruptcy last November before being selling its North American assets to FCF Co in January, but said that although the larger company has had issues with “structure,” it has an operating company that is “quite robust.”
Alongside the Gathered Foods relationship, Bumble Bee has made other recent steps to reinvigorate the brand. Earlier this month the company unveiled a brand refresh of its flagship line of products created by Bex Brands. Other Bumble Bee brands will also see redesigns over the coming months. The new look, Bex partner Becky Nelson Dahl said, was designed to help the brand compete against the “recent surge of other shelf stable seafood brands.”
“[Bumble Bee] felt like they needed to make some bolder moves to engage new customers who are interested in sustainable seafoods with more adventurous flavors in convenient formats,” Nelson Dahl said. At the same time, they still wanted to make sure they didn’t lose their loyal customers who account for a large percentage of their business, buying canned tuna on a regular basis.”
