Struck Shutters Noops, Heads to Siddhi Capital

Refrigerated dessert brand Noops has ceased operations after roughly two and a half years in business, the company’s founder and CEO Gregory Struck has accepted a new role with Siddhi Capital, Noops’ largest investor.

“In my 20 years in this business, I haven’t seen a macroeconomic environment like this one, specifically, that makes it so hyper challenging for early stage startups,” Struck said to NOSH yesterday. “[But] I feel really strongly that this experience was incredible.”

Founded in 2019 by Struck, the former COO and co-founder of both Long Island Iced Tea? and meal delivery service Hungryroot, Noops produced a low-sugar line of oat milk pudding that grew to 1,000 doors in the 18 months it was in market.

Originally debuting in 2020 via a soft launch in the New York City area, Noops aimed to offer a healthier alternative to the likes of Jello and Kozy Shack with a probiotic and fiber enhanced, date and monk-fruit sweetened organic, plant-based, dairy-free, gluten-free pudding. In the first half of 2021 the company reformulated and officially “launched” into the wider market, shifting from whimsical flavors like French Toast, Sticky Toffee and Cinnamon Bun to classics such as Vanilla and Chocolate.

Struck said the financial and logistical difficulties facing emerging brands during the Covid-19 pandemic proved too much to overcome, particularly as the company had already made the strategic choice to spend on hiring experienced executives. Going into refrigerated dairy was also an expensive mistake, Struck said, and had the business continued on it would have likely moved into shelf-stable pudding.

“Coming off of Hungryroot, of having a huge company, I unapologetically from day one wanted to hire for growth. And I think, in doing that, you make the bet that this company is going to scale,” Struck said. “There was never any concern with the product from our retail partners..I just think that if you look at the macro market as a whole, it’s just hyper competitive right now.”

Over its lifetime, Noops raised $5 million in a combination of pre-launch and seed rounds, from investors including Lerer Hippeau, Unovis/New Crop Capital, Siddhi Capital and Simple Food Ventures. Despite the sizable funding rounds for an emerging brand, Struck said he found investors are now more risk averse and less interested in funding early stage companies, instead looking to take part in series A and B rounds. Noops needed a financial boost to continue, he said, and crowdfunding, which has attracted more true angel investors, wouldn’t yield enough capital.

Struck ultimately decided to wind down the business earlier this summer, laying off the company’s five remaining employees and moving through inventory as he explored selling the company’s brand, recipe or IP. Ultimately the choice was made to simply shutter the business, he said, using its last bit of cash to pay off its remaining vendors and provide severance to employees.

While the end result is not what Struck had envisioned, it has yielded a deeper relationship with Siddhi Capital, who not only funded the business but, through its Siddhi Operations arm, helped conceptualize and formulate the line. Struck has accepted a new role as the firm’s head of growth.

“I’ve had a really great opportunity to grow with [Siddhi] over the last couple of years,” Struck said. “[I hope to be] somebody who really can see through the lens of the entrepreneur, that’s been in the trenches, that understands this game.”