Detour, Overnight Oats: Bar Brands Go To Auction

Adrianne DeLuca
Forward Foods Auction

Forward Foods LLC, parent company to bar brands Overnight Oats and Detour, will undergo a public foreclosure and sell all assets of the two brands at auction tomorrow. The sale will include trademarks and associated recipes; warehouse, sublicense, and distribution agreements; accounts receivables; raw material and finished good inventory; as well as domain names and social media accounts.

The auction will be held by phone and all assets will be sold in a single package to the highest bidder, according to a press release. The sale will be conducted by Heritage Global Partners (HGP), a global asset advisory and auction firm.

Forward was acquired by Emigrant Capital Private Equity in 2006 and also operates Boylan Bottling Company and manufactures beverage brands MASH Juice and Jolt Cola. The company could not be reached to comment on the future of those businesses.

“This is a great opportunity to acquire the assets of a well-known brand, especially for those in the health and nutrition and food & beverage sectors,” said Nick Dove, President of HGP, in a press release.

Detour Bar and Overnight Oats Bar reportedly tapped into its parent company’s beverage DSD network in 2020 with the latter brand honing a specific focus on c-stores, according to Beverage Business Insights. Both products have an established presence in club, mass and c-store channels through partnerships with retailers including Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Wegmans, Circle K and 7-Eleven.

According to the LinkedIn page of Patrick Muldoon, Forward Food’s former President and COO, the company’s portfolio products were distributed to nearly 56,000 doors at the time of his departure in 2019. Around that time, the Detour Bar team was preparing to launch the Overnight Oats bar brand and the product officially rolled out in 2020 with three SKUs – Apple Cinnamon, Banana Nut and Classic Blueberry – each containing 10 grams of whey protein and 4 grams of sugar.

Muldoon’s LinkedIn page also suggests this is not the first bout of financial distress for Forward Foods. He claims to have led a full turnaround in sales “after correcting a flawed acquisition,” which included a settlement agreement “due to misrepresentations of sales and profit during buyout.”

In 2021, Overnight Oats Bar signed on with Big Geyser to grow its presence in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester markets, looking specifically to “non-traditional” channels like health and wellness centers, corporate foodservice, universities and institutions.

As the protein bar category continues to see increased competition and the hype around overnight oats slows down, the two brands face a competitive landscape and narrowing space for differentiation. Detour Bar is positioned as a whey protein bar and has extended its platform to include additional lines like low sugar, lean muscle and Detour Smart, however many of those products are listed as out of stock online.

Earlier this year, competition in the bar category came under scrutiny when global snack corporation Mondelēz International acquired Clif Bar. The deal marked the acquisition of the last independent, top selling bar brand.

Additionally, entrepreneurs like Robert Broome, a former RX Bar brand manager and innovation associate, launched new bar brand Mooski with a refrigerated oat-based bar and a goal of becoming a clean ingredient, portable version of overnight oats. The clean label, low ingredient list positioning has also been honed by shelf-stable oat bar brand Over Easy which recently extended its platform into breakfast shakes.

While the snack and nutrition bars have seen growth rebound since the pandemic mainly driven by the emergence of low-sugar and gut-health positioned lines, according to IRI, granola bars have made a slower comeback in terms of sales.