Fruit Jerky Maker Watermelon Road Acquired
Fruit jerky brand Watermelon Road has been sold and will now operate under new ownership, founder Jamie Melzer announced last week. The brand, winner of NOSH Pitch Slam 4, will now be helmed by new owner and CEO Cortney Rhodes, with Melzer remaining on as a consultant but stepping away from day-to-day operations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Angel investor Melzer launched Watermelon Road in 2017 with a line of no-sugar-added tropical fruit-based jerkies, with a goal of offering clean label products that “weren’t boring to eat,” she said. Originally produced in a commercial kitchen in Brooklyn, New York, Meltzer said the brand quickly outgrew its manufacturing space and moved to a local co-packer as a “short term” solution in the summer of 2018, Melzer said.
Looking to affordably scale the business, she soon realized that moving operations to Mexico would be the most realistic long-term manufacturing strategy for the brand due to the tropical ingredients Watermelon Road used. Pregnant with her second child and unable to travel to Mexico, while also facing the task of raising capital for the previously self-funded brand, in 2019 Meltzer ultimately decided to “slow down on growth a little bit” and began looking for acquisition partners.
“I kind of had to take a step back and just say…this isn’t the right time in my life for me to grow this company,” she said. “I just felt like somebody else was going to be able to come in and bring some expertise and bring some capital and I wanted to find someone who really believed in the mission, and who wanted to continue what we had started.”
Melzer eventually met Rhodes through the brand’s design agency Paperwhite Studio, which is owned by Devi Rhodes, Courtney’s Rhodes’ sister-in-law.
Meanwhile, Rhodes, who is based in Chicago, was looking for “a new role and a new challenge” when she met Melzer, and was impressed by the brand’s clean ingredient label and potential to appeal to a wide variety of consumers, she said. While Rhodes’ background is in sales and marketing mostly outside of the CPG industry, she said she has gained “exposure” to the industry through family members who have worked for ingredient suppliers and produce distributors. Melzer added that she felt confident the company’s new owners would be able to “come in and take on the challenge,” she said.
Under Rhodes’ new ownership, which took effect this summer, the brand has now officially relocated its manufacturing to Mexico, enabling the brand to produce larger volumes for a lower cost. The company was out of stock over the summer due to a lack of inventory as it transitioned to the new production facility. Rhodes said that after receiving consumer feedback, the brand has also increased its product size — moving to 1.5 oz. pouches, which have doubled the amount of product in each pouch while maintaining the same price.
Over the next six months, Rhodes said she will focus on expanding retail distribution. The brand is currently sold in approximately 75 boutique, grocery and health food stores in the New York metro area and also has placement in subscription boxes and hotels. Future products from the brand may include savory jerky options, as well as products beyond the dried fruit space, with the ultimate goal for the brand to “be there as a health food option whenever you need it.”
While still consulting for Watermelon Road, Melzer plans to devote much of her focus again to angel investing, now applying her experience as a founder to help other founders on the “really hard and lonely” entrepreneurial journey, primarily focusing on female-founded CPG brands.
“Once I launched the company, I really got integrated into this amazing early stage founder community, mostly female founders, which is such a supportive and such an inspiring community,” she said. “I found that I really loved diving into other people’s businesses and helping them with business models and strategy and pitch decks and investing in them and championing them and helping them along the way.”
