Love Beets Launches Offshoot Brands to Acquire & Support Better-For-You Brands

Seeking to broaden its presence in CPG, the team behind produce oriented brand Love Beets announced last week the debut of Offshoot Brands, a venture group and consulting business that will acquire, invest in or assist other better-for-you brands.

Founded in 2010 by the Shropshire Family, Love Beets is a subsidiary of one of Europe’s largest produce suppliers, G’s Fresh. The company’s products — which include marinated beets, cooked beets, beet powders and beet juice — are sold in 17,000 stores across North America, and are also distributed in the UK, the Netherlands, South Africa and Australia through a variety of partnership or licensing agreements. All products are manufactured from the company’s Rochester, New York production facility.

The launch of Offshoot was inspired both by the brand’s desire to take on more than one brand, said George Shropshire, general manager for Love Beets, as well as by retail partners who increasingly have been asking the company for more value-added produce options.

“We thought as a company, ‘As we build out our portfolio, and when the time is right, let’s put an overarching brand above it and have a portfolio of products with which Love Beets is the backbone,” Shropshire said.

Offshoot has launched with three of Love Beets’ existing partners. In 2018 the Love Beets team partnered with Spanish brand Genuine Coconut, which sells fresh coconut meat and coconut water. Then earlier this year, Love Beets acquired D.C.-based Veggie Confetti, taking on production and sales for the pickled vegetable line and appointing founder Kelsey Tressler as head of innovation for Offshoot. The newest addition to the lineup, and not yet sold in the U.S., is roasted fava bean and chickpea brand The Happy Snack Company.

Shropshire declined to detail if Offshoot’s partnerships with The Happy Snack Company and Genuine Coconut involve investment or licensing fees, but said that Offshoot is managing all sales, marketing, and distribution for both brands in North American. Production will also be shifted to Offshoot’s New York plant at a future date. There’s also the potential, Shropshire added, to eventually expand the partnerships to other countries where Love Beets has a presence.

In addition to larger partnerships, brands can also opt to work with Offshoot on specific areas such as R&D, finance or supply chain teams. Still, Shropshire said the priority is to work with brands where Offshoot can play a larger role in their success and not act as simply a broker.

Though most of the current Offshoot brands have an agricultural bent, Shropshire said the group won’t limit itself to just brands sold in the produce department. More importantly than the category or temperature state, is making sure that it’s a brand that fits into a “healthy lifestyle,” said Natasha Lichty, Offshoot’s brand and marketing manager.

“Any brand that came into our portfolio would have to check a lot of boxes and one of them being that we felt like this is something that we could feel really good about selling to consumers,” she added. ”Whether that is a refrigerated item, or more of a grocery item, as long as it kind of felt like fresh, real food that fits that better-for you-box, that would be the core of what we are looking for with these brands.”

In addition to partnering with external companies, Shropshire said Offshoot is also in the process of developing other brands in response to retailer requests. Overseas, its parent company also owns Love Fresh, which sells cut celery sticks, packaged with dips or cream cheese,as well as salad greens brand Fresh & Naked salad greens. Ultimately, the goal is to create a larger set that can act as a destination in produce for value added items, Lichty said, as well as increase sales across the portfolio by developing a brand block.

“I think it’s been a fresh approach to [retailers], coming with items like this,” Shropshire said. Now we can actually start to build this set out with other like minded products and so it’s definitely a win-win for everyone.