Partake Foods Closes Round, Expands into New Category

Allergen-friendly snack brand Partake Foods today announced it had raised $4.8 million from investors including Marcy Venture Partners, FF2032 (the investment arm of Lotus Bakeries), CircleUp Growth Partners, and others. The investment comes on the heels of the brand’s news earlier this week that it would expand beyond the cookie category, launching an all-purpose baking mix.

Other investors in the round, which officially closed the last week of December, included Kevin Johnson’s Black Capital, NFL athlete Bobby Wagner, Black Star Fund, singer Rihanna and John Foraker, CEO of Once Upon a Farm. As part of the deal, Chuck Muth, who previously worked with Partake founder and CEO Denise Woodard during her time at the Coca-Cola Company, and Aditi Dash, partner at CircleUp, will both join Partake’s board of directors.

Founded in August 2017, Woodard said she has taken “baby steps” when it comes to investment, preferring to raise smaller rounds and then evaluating how the company performs. Partake first closed $400,000 from friends and family over the second half of 2018 followed by a $1 million seed round from Marcy Ventures, The Factory, family offices and angel investors in June 2019. In summer 2020, the company closed a subsequent seed round from existing investors, and while Woodard declined to disclose the raise amount, SEC filings indicate it was just over $1 million.

Retail growth has followed the same measured plan, she said, with Partake scaling slowly, first with independent retailers in New York and later, in 2018, with Whole Foods Market Southwest region and Wegmans. Last year, Woodard said, the company continued growing deliberately, prioritizing “strategic accounts” such as Target, Whole Foods, Sprouts and the Fresh Market. Partake currently sells its crunchy and soft-baked cookies in roughly 3,500 stores, with the target of being in over 5,000 by year’s end — a goal that will be made possible with this round of funding.

“This will give us the capital we need to continue to grow distribution in the right retailers in the right channels of business… and turn the brand into the platform I really had the confidence from day one to become, but wanted to make sure we were marrying that with positive response from retailers and customers before we tried to move too quickly,” Woodard said.

Investment firm CircleUp noted in a blog post today that its proprietary data analysis platform Helio identified Partake as the number one brand within the cookies and desserts category, out of over 2,000 brands.

“While we value Partake’s positioning within allergy friendly, our broader thesis is that consumers will start to associate “allergy-free” with “better-for-you,” the post states. “We noticed that only 23% of Partake reviewers mention ‘allergy’ or ‘allergen’ in their reviews. The brands’ consumers are also concerned with plant-based, health, low-sugar and dairy. This opens up a much bigger market.”

While there may be a larger market than just food allergy sufferers, Woodard does still see opportunity with this group of shoppers.

Partake also announced this month the online exclusive launch of a new vegan, top-8-allergen-free baking mix that can be used as the base for pancakes, waffles, muffins or cakes, with other mixes set to launch in the weeks to come Innovation for retailers will launch in the second half of 2021. Developed after the only baking mix her daughter, who suffers from food allergies, could eat was discontinued, Woodard decided while there was enough traction to take the product to market, it would serve as a distraction in retail.

“I know baking mixes are a really hard category with really low velocities,” Woodard said of the choice to keep the mix direct-to-consumer. “We’re a small team still and I want to make sure we’re keeping the bandwidth to support our cookies and to support our retail business and I don’t think we have the bandwidth to support baking mix well.”

The company will continue to expand its focus on allowing all consumers to “partake” in access to better-for-you foods. While the name originally referred to helping food allergy sufferers have access to their favorite foods, it is also relevant to the brand’s support for social causes. In 2020 the brand also launched its Black Futures in Food and Beverage Program, which brought eight fellows from four Historically Black Universities (HBU) together for an eight week CPG crash course. Classes for the fellows were taught by leaders from food companies such as Chobani and Cleveland Kitchen, and the program culminated with a virtual career day to help place the students in summer internships.

Woodard plans to replicate the program on a larger scale in 2021. With the capital investment closed, she also hopes to expand Partake’s team and will continue to prioritize inclusion and diversity in hiring. Currently the company has five employees, all women, 30% who identify as People of Color.

“What I’ve learned over time is that as a woman and as a Person of Color and as a first time founder, there’s a lot more people that need a seat at the table and the opportunity to partake,” Woodard said. “We stand for inclusivity and access and have a strong mission of lifting as we climb.”