Gathered Foods Sells Good Catch, Shifts Focus To B2B

Wicked Kitchen announced today that it has acquired the North American rights to Good Catch, a line of plant-based seafood entrees and appetizers. Following the sale, Good Catch’s parent company, Gathered Foods, will shift its focus solely on B2B operations with services including product formulation and co-packing.

“The idea is to take [Wicked’s] supreme marketing and branding work, and take [Good Catch’s] really good culinary proteins, put them together and let Wicked run with it while Gathered foods turns its attention back to innovating in and with novel proteins,” said Chris Kerr, Gathered Foods’ executive chair and co-founder. “We [needed to] take the burden of building a CPG play and move that onto a company that really knows how to build a CPG brand but is also asset light as it addresses local markets.”

Wicked CEO Pete Speranza said the deal was an all-stock transaction, with Gathered now a shareholder in Wicked. French investment bank BNP Paribas represented Gathered Foods, which shares common investor Unovis Asset Management with Wicked foods. Kerr is also a co-founder of Unovis, which owns roughly the same percentage of both Wicked and Gathered. Further terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Gathered will maintain the IP for its seafood proteins, and still holds the rights to the Good Catch brand in Europe; however Wicked now holds a royalty-free license for Good Catch in North America, including its Canadian arm, which is sold under the name Swell Catch. Wicked will also take on distribution and sales of Good Catch in the U.K. Good Catch is currently sold in Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, Giant, and, in nearly 500 Tesco stores in the U.K.

Gathered’s focus will shift to developing and producing new plant-based proteins. Wicked will have the right of first refusal for any new Gathered-owned seafood proteins, according to Speranza, but doesn’t have the exclusive right to Gathered’s innovations, or products it sells or creates for other retailers, brands and food service providers. Gathered’s new seafood innovations must also be slightly different from the Wicked or Good Catch formulations, said Speranza.

Gathered has retained the rights to Good Catch in other markets and plans to sell those licenses, namely for the European market, in similar deals.

Initially founded in 2018, by Kerr and chefs Chad and Derek Sarno, Wicked produces plant-based entrees, sauces, sides, frozen meals, ice cream and appetizers. The plant-based line, which began as an exclusive line for UK-based Tesco, moved into the U.S. market last year, and brought Speranza on as CEO. The brand sells over 40 products in the U.S. market, where it is in over 6,500 doors, and internationally including Finland, Estonia, and as of this fall, Thailand.

Wicked raised $14 million in 2021 in a round co-led by Unovis and Thailand-based NRF Nove Foods, while Gathered Foods has raised over $70 million from investors including New Crop Capital (the first fund managed by Unovis), Big Idea Ventures, Stray Dog Capital, PHW Group, Thrive Market and Fresh Direct. Good Catch co-founder Beyond Brands was bought out by New Crop in 2019.

Gathered Shifts Strategy Away From Products, Toward Production

Wicked is still evaluating how it will utilize the Good Catch and Swell Catch names, said Kerr. He used the example of a plant-based clam chowder to describe the relationship between the two companies – while the chowder itself would carry the Wicked name, the clams in it would be branded as Good Catch. Although the agreement allows other brands to use Good Catch clams, Kerr said he believes that Wicked’s culinary chops will serve as the point of differentiation.

Founded in 2017, Gathered Foods launched the Good Catch line in early 2018 with a line of fish-free tuna pouches. The company moved its manufacturing from Europe to the U.S. in 2020, opened its own factory, and expanded into frozen appetizers and entrees.

Marketing, sales, or distribution have never been Gathered’s strength, Kerr admitted. This led the plant-based seafood brand to a partnership with Bumble Bee Foods that would unlock Bumble Bee’s sales and distribution network for the plant-based seafood maker. However, soon after the deal was inked, then bankrupt Bumble Bee was sold to Taiwan-based FCF Co and while the two companies are not “disengaged,” Kerr said, “it’s not a strong relationship” and will likely not move forward after the Wicked deal.

With the focus on finished CPG products now off its plant-based plate, Gathered will shift to a B2B model. The company holds three fully-owned business units: Trellis, an Ohio-based production facility; Cultivated Food Labs, an R&D and product development lab in British Columbia and Gathered Proteins, a proprietary collection of plant-based proteins. It also has a JV with Wicked for The Culinary Food Lab, an Austin-based kitchen studio and event space run by Chad Sarno.

“We let Gathered Foods become just protein agnostic and just move, move, move proteins,” Kerr said. “Now that we’ve done that, [this deal] allows us to look at the entire food spectrum and play a role in all of it.”

The change in Gathered’s focus accompanies a shift in leadership as well. CEO Christine Mei, who joined the company in 2020, has departed the business while Joel Gfeller, Gathered’s chief innovation officer, has been promoted to president and COO. Gfeller spent just over 17 years roughly at plant-based protein brand Gardein, ultimately leading its product technology and development processes. Kit Ling Poon has, in turn, been promoted to CIO.

With Gfeller’s expertise with innovation now onboard, Gathered plans to accelerate operations in its other ventures. Trellis, the 42,500 square-foot production facility, contains production lines, freezing/chilling systems, as well as packaging capabilities for multiple types of plant-based proteins. Cultivated Food Labs, meanwhile, offers R&D assistance including product development, protein research and regulatory assistance as well as access to its pilot plant for extruded products. It’s a similar structure to that of product development company JPG, which also owns co-packer Snackwerks.

Brands can choose to work with both Cultivated Food Labs and Trellis, but it’s not required, Kerr said. Using the Good Catch/Wicked Kitchen deal as a test case, Gathered also aims to offer services for equity to build a portfolio of holdings across the plant-based space. Trellis and Cultivated Food Labs will also likely both raise capital, spinning off as independent businesses with Gather owning shares of both entities.

“We’ll be growing our core manufacturing operation[and] we’ll be growing our R&D operation,” Kerr said. “Collectively, that’s where we’re going to get our value. It won’t be because of just one company, it will be a group of holdings. Anybody who [invested] in the last year and thought they were going to flip a company, they made the wrong bet….[and] hadn’t looked at the lifecycle of Oatly, a company that took 25 years to build. We need to go back to thinking long term.”