Funding Roundup: Abbot’s Butcher Raises $7M; Better Brand Lands $2.5M

Abbot’s Butcher Closes $7M Series A Round

Plant-based meat maker Abbot’s Butcher yesterday announced it had closed a $7 million funding round that the California-based company will use to support growth in foodservice and retail along with new product development.

Melitas Ventures led the round, with actors Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson and wife Laura Harrelson also participating alongside existing investors Unovis and SOSV. The brand will use the funding to add to its foodservice sales, supply chain and marketing teams.

“Abbot’s Butcher is paving the way for the next generation of plant-based meat alternative products,” Melitas managing partner Alex Malamatinas said in a press release. “The company’s products are uniquely positioned as premium plant-based meat alternatives which are attracting strong interest from grocery and food service.”

Founded in 2017 by CEO Kerry Song, Abbot’s Butcher produces premium pea-protein based beef, chicken and chorizo alternative products. The brand first began in foodservice, Song noted, but pivoted to retail at the onset of the pandemic. It has since gained distribution in the natural channel at Sprouts nationwide, Whole Foods, Gelson’s and Erewhon, and debuted at Natural Grocers last week.

“We’re really just focused on going deep, not so much wide in the immediate future,” Song said. “[We’re’] really nurturing our relationships, not only with our retailers, but with our customers in just learning, innovating and continuing to grow thoughtfully.”

The company has now found itself at a “great inflection point,” Song said, in which its retail presence is growing while it resumes pushing into foodservice as the channel slowly returns to pre-pandemic levels. Abbot’s Butcher products are currently carried in local restaurant chains like Urbane Cafe, with several larger partnerships also in the works, Song said. It’s also currently working with foodservice partners to introduce a new plant-based meat product.

“We want to make plant-based eating as seamless as possible for people,” Song said. “We don’t think people need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to learning how to cook something plant-based. They just want to have their favorite recipes and then just swap in and swap out.”

Better Brand Raises $2.5 Million

Better Brand, maker of low carb bagel Better Bagel, closed a $2.5 million funding round earlier this month to accelerate its research and development efforts and grow its team ahead of a planned brick-and-mortar retail launch. Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six led the round, with Soma Capital, VERSO Capital, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt and actor and investor Patrick Schwarzenegger also participating. The round follows $1 million in pre-seed funding the brand secured earlier this year, bringing its total raised to date to $4 million.

“Better Brand is revolutionizing the foods we love by making major advancements in food tech — starting with refined carbs by creating healthy & delicious alternatives,” Ohanian said in a press release. “With the exponential growth we’ve seen in the plant-based sector, there’s clear demand for alternatives to foods considered unhealthy and unsustainable.”

Launched direct-to-consumer on the brand’s website this summer, the Better Bagel uses modified enzyme technology to produce a bagel that contains just five grams of net carbs, down from a typical bagel’s 48 grams, as well as 24 grams of protein per serving, the company said. Better Brand said it hopes to use this technology to tackle refined carbs across several product categories in the future.

Following its seed round this year, Yang said the company was “accelerated a lot faster than we could have anticipated.”

“We didn’t go out to fundraise — the round and process materialized really organically which was great and allowed us to remain focused on building the business,” she said.

Yang added that the company is currently focused on ecommerce, which allows it “to capture the most accurate data and iterate quickly according to customer needs.” However, the company is looking to expand into grocery and foodservice in 2022, she noted. As it grows, Better Brand will also look to make its product more accessible. The Better Bagel is currently sold for $18 per four-pack, a much higher price tag than traditional packaged bagels.

“By leading innovation in this space, we aim to create a world where consumers have the ability to eat freely without restriction or worry, while improving human health on a macro level – that has the ability to drive large-scale impact across the board,” she said. “R&D is expensive, and at this price point we’re not profitable right now. We’re excited to start getting this into the hands of consumers, and then be able to bring the price down once we scale.”

Cresicor Closes Seed Funding Round

Cresicor, a consumer packaged goods trade promotion management (TPM) software company, last month closed a $5.6 million seed funding round led by Costanoa Ventures, with Torch Capital also participating.

The company was founded in 2017 by engineers Alexander and Daniel Whatley and CPG veterans Stuart Kennnedy and Nikki McNeil, who both held positions in trade accounting and analytics at Perfect Snacks, Lily’s and Justin’s.

While at Perfect Snacks, Kennedy and McNeil, who have worked together at food brands for over a decade, said they had sought out a TPM software to meet their budget tracking and spending needs but couldn’t find an existing tool. They were inspired to team up with Alexander and Daniel Whatley to develop one, saying the “timing felt right” in their careers to make the jump from CPG to software after Mondelez acquired Perfect Snacks in 2019.

The co-founders sought to build a user-friendly platform to manage brands’ trade promotions, which Cresicor says is the second largest spending cost that many companies face, after manufacturing. While TPM is often managed manually through spreadsheets — “an extremely inefficient process” — the software helps customers plan and analyze promotions and improve financial reporting, Kennedy and McNeil noted. The company currently works with a slew of food and beverage brands like LesserEvil, Oatly, Bulletproof, Nutpods and Barnana.

“Large CPG companies have more budget to spend on complicated systems and manpower, but emerging CPG companies may not have this luxury,” they said. “We launched Cresicor to help small-to-midsize CPG companies manage their trade process — our vision is to transform and optimize the way these companies tackle trade promotion management.”

The Supplant Company Secures Investment from Ayesha Curry, Chris Paul

Fiber-based sugar producer The Supplant Company announced last week the addition of celebrity cook Ayesha Curry, NBA player Chris Paul and Ryan Shadrick Wilson, former chief strategy officer for Partnership for a Healthier America, as early stage investors.

They join investors Manta Ray, Agfunder, Melitas Ventures, EGT and Y Combinator, which participated in the brand’s $15 million Series A round in February. The company has now raised over $27 million to date.

Founded in 2017, London-based Supplant produces sugar made from fiber using upcycled ingredients like wheat straw, oat husks, corn cobs and rice straw, featuring half the calories and a lower glycemic response than cane sugar. The company expanded to the U.S. market in June, supplying both restaurants and consumer brands.

CEO and founder Dr. Tom Simmons said in a press release that the new investors will help the company advance its mission to “build a food system that can feed the world nutritiously, while reducing our impact on the environment.” This includes reaching underserved communities, Paul noted.

“Sugar is in almost everything we eat,” Paul said in a press release. “If we are going to transition to healthier food options for all—especially for people that experience high rates of diabetes and obesity like we do in Black and Brown communities—we’re going to need to change how things are made. It’s not going to happen by people magically waking up and not liking the things they like. I look forward to working with The Supplant Company to move the food system in a better, more sustainable direction.”