Dirty Hands Acquires Sales Consultancy Firm Burgess Strategic Advisors

Natural foods broker Dirty Hands is expanding its range of client services with its acquisition of CPG sales consultancy firm Burgess Strategic Advisors (BSA).

Announcing the deal earlier today, Dirty Hands called the acquisition a “unification of the two companies” that will allow the broker to offer additional merchandising and brokerage services while also providing Dirty Hands more long term sales strategy plans for the business.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“BSA gives us immediate access to being able to sell into conventional markets for our brands,” said Dirty Hands president Will Ahearn. “Our focus has been around natural, so being able to combine [BSA’s] conventional and big business experience with our established foothold in natural, we think we’re a pretty strong combination.”

Through the partnership, Dirty Hands will also use BSA’s “impressive” structure and reporting system to create better outputs for the company’s brand clients, Ahearn added.

After the acquisition is completed, the combined organization will have at around 180 employees with about 140 positions in merchandising and over 30 sales representatives, according to people familiar with the deal.

In a LinkedIn post, Dirty Hands said “for the first time, we’re offering a system that scales distribution nationally and drives in-store velocity – all under one roof.”

Through the partnership, Dirty Hands will gain access to BSA’s expertise as well as its client list of food brands, opening the door to new business opportunities for the combined companies to pursue.

Dirty Hands was founded in 2013 by Ahearn and his father Rory to provide more hands-on support to emerging natural channel food and beverage brands. The group manages merchandising on the store level as well as brokering new distribution partnerships for its clients. Will Ahearn serves as the company’s president.

BSA was founded in 2020 by Grant Burgess, who has worked in CPG sales for companies like Unilever, General Mills, Cadbury and Fiji as well as leadership roles at IGNITE Sales Management where he served as president for about six years.

Ahearn and Burgess have been friends for a while, Ahearn said, and have been talking about a partnership between the two separate businesses for years. In the last six months, the two business leaders began to talk more seriously. Once completed, Burgess will serve as chief growth officer and Ahearn will be president.

“With this unification of BSA and Dirty Hands from your strategy to the shelf, we’ve got you covered,” Ahearn said. “I think that’s unique to the industry.”