Unreal Deli Looks To Scale As Alt-Deli Slices Gain Traction

Plant-based meat maker Mrs. Goldfarb’s Unreal Deli is looking to scale its production capacity as the demand for alternative-deli slices gain momentum. According to Jenny Goldfarb, Unreal Deli’s founder and CEO, the products have garnered positive impressions from consumers and higher than expected order volumes from retailers. Just last month, the company entered Costco with new multipack and bulk formats and the retailer has already ordered 2,000 more units than originally expected.

To support its rapid growth, the company recently opened up a Series A round with the goal of raising between $6 to $10 million. Mark Cuban, an existing investor, doled out $500,000 on top of his original $250,000 seed investment that came during a 2019 episode of Shark Tank. The Aileen Getty Foundation also helped kick off the round with a $500,000 investment. Both parties valued the company at about $50 million according to Jenny Goldfarb, Unreal Deli’s founder and CEO.

According to Goldfarb, the capital will go toward automating its production facility and scaling its co-packing capabilities to bring down operating costs and increase the company’s margins, noting that the shift will be especially important amid continued inflationary pressures and the rising cost of commodities like wheat – one of the brand’s key ingredients. Additionally, the new capital will go towards its marketing budget which has seen “zero dollar spend” thus far, according to Goldfarb.

What is Unreal Deli?

The vegan-friendly, alternative-deli meat brand was launched by Goldfarb, the great-granddaughter of a NY deli owner, in 2018. After she saw videos of animals being treated inhumanely at slaughterhouses, she transitioned her “meat and potatoes” family to a vegan diet and began “painstakingly learning how to cook from the produce and grain sections of the grocery store… with a lot of lousy meals along the way,” she joked.

At the time, there weren’t any plant-based deli slices on the market, leading Goldfarb to create her first product in her home kitchen. The result was something akin to a “corned beef pastrami hybrid,” she said. The product garnered positive impressions from her immediate family, but it wasn’t until her in-laws tried it, and raved about its viability as a nutritious business opportunity, that she realized she was onto something.

“My in-laws previously were big haters of me taking this vegan route because they were suddenly very concerned that the children weren’t going to have their calcium and vitamins… not that I was ever asked about any vitamins when they were eating chicken nuggets and mac and cheese.”

In 2018, she officially launched Mrs. Goldfarb’s Unreal Deli, and secured early partnerships from “iconic” Los Angeles delis like Canter’s, Art’s and Factor’s. Goldfarb said she maintained a focus on nutrition when developing the brand’s three products – Corn’d Beef, Steak Slices and Roasted Turk’y – and prioritized ingredients that are Kosher-friendly and that can be read without “a chemistry degree.”

While the brand initially focused on food service, it managed to get into secure a partnership with Whole Foods in 2019 when they “caught wind” of the product’s response at local restaurants: “when I say caught wind, it’s because I emailed them 6000 times and they finally opened one of them,” Goldfarb joked. However, when the pandemic hit, Unreal Deli quickly switched gears, focusing solely on retail and managing to secure 2,300 new points of distribution in 2021.

She said getting the brand ready for a widespread retail launch was not easy, noting the product‘s evolution from being “wrapped in saran wrap” and self-distributed while her children were in school to “actual retail packaging and distribution” was a long, arduous process and required more “dotting of the i’s” than she originally imagined.

What’s next?

As the brand looks to continue driving growth, Goldfarb said it has begun experimenting with new product types and plans to launch a new line of “fatty meats” featuring plant-based marbleized fat. The new capital has also been put towards securing equipment to produce the line, which will likely rollout Q1 2023, she said.

Although cheese and meats are often side by side in the deli case, Goldfarb said Unreal Deli will be solely focused on plant-based meats and doesn’t plan to expand into the vegan cheese space, explaining that her goal is to get customers who are experimenting with vegetarianism.

“There are a ton of vegan cheese companies, but not a ton of vegan deli companies,” Goldfarb stated. “Like my story, oftentimes people will first go vegetarian before they go vegan all the way. So let me meet those people.”

Unreal Deli slices, which are available at retailers including Wegmans, Publix, Ralphs, Giant Foods, and Fresh Thyme Market, among others. In addition to its recent Costco launch, the brand will also rollout to three divisions of Albertson’s, Colorado, Southern California and Portland, later this year.

“The natural shopper is in our corner all day long, the vegan shopper, the vegetarian shopper, but it’s really been important to me to be able to reach the mainstream audience with this,” said Goldfarb. “Bringing it to Albertsons is very important to me because I want to be able to show the world that this is now mainstream, this is real, it’s not just off in some hippie-dippie store on the corner.”