The New Primal Raises $15M As It Moves Beyond Meat Snacks

If The New Primal was started to help consumers eat like cavemen, then the company has certainly evolved. To help fund this growth, the condiment, sauce and snack company announced today it has raised $15 million from investor Manna Tree.

Jason Burke, founder and CEO of The New Primal, declined to disclose the amount of prior capital raised, but SEC filings indicate that the company has taken in roughly $4.7 million since its founding in 2013. Burke added that New Primal’s only other institutional partner to-date is Third Prime, a venture firm that does not traditionally invest in CPG.

Founded as a jerky company, The New Primal has since grown to encompass cooking sauces, salad dressings, spices, meat sticks and crunchy meat snacks — adding 30 new products over the last three years alone — and subbrand Noble Made.

The capital will go toward investing in marketing to support the company’s growth both online and in brick-and-mortar stores. The brand is sold in 7,000 doors with an almost even split in sales between conventional and natural retailers. In the past, the company lacked the capital to invest heavily in in-store marketing, Burke said. Meanwhile, e-commerce has also grown as a revenue stream for the brand, both via its own website and Amazon.

“The pandemic accelerated e-commerce buying by several years, and so ensuring that we are set up functionally to support customers where they buy products online, is a huge focus,” Burke said. “We’re seeing triple-digit growth online and on Amazon, and we want to nurture and support it — that’s low hanging fruit.”

Still, there’s perhaps one retailer that’s central to The New Primal’s success — Whole Foods Market. Over the past three years, the company has launched all new items at the natural products retail chain. Not only does this help the emerging company immediately reach scale for every item, Burke said it also offers the ability to refine and tweak products before going wide with them.

The capital will also allow the brand to expand its team, adding five new hires over the last 10 days alone. Most notably, it brought on Heather Laughter as director of field marketing, who previously served as national field marketing director for Sonoma Brands and for baby food brand Yumi. In 2020, the company launched 12 new items. Laughter will be tasked with reintroducing these new products to consumers, many of whom had cut back on their shopping trips during the pandemic, Burke said.

The rapid fire innovation schedule will continue in 2021 with five new products slated to debut in the coming months, including more seasonings and meat snacks.

Though launched as a beef jerky brand, The New Primal discontinued its jerky items earlier this year. Although the impetus may have been a pandemic-related sales drop, Burke said the idea of a sugar-free jerky “wasn’t that unique anymore.”

“We saw the pantry loading, like everyone else did, and then a drop off, like everyone else did, as pantries got stocked,” he added. “Then there was a slow rebuild back to the baseline, but the core beef jerky never did. … We decided it was best for everyone to invest our resources into products that consumers were adopting at a faster rate and were healthier to the business.”

Moving forward, Burke said he is focused on achieving profitability rather than growth at all costs. In addition to marketing and hiring, he said the funding will allow the company to improve product margins, the cost of goods sold and possibly lower retail price points. These opportunities, he added, come not only from having capital, but also the backing and expertise of the Manna Tree team.

“Having a partner that has consumer products experience and has helped brands scale is invaluable to us. We’ve mostly gone at it alone to date,” Burke said. “I want to have a healthy profitable business and I want to grow with some intention.”