Seeding Growth: Why CBD Giant Manitoba Harvest Is Hungry For Snacks
Last week, Canadian hemp food producer Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods has acquired The Humble Seed in an asset purchase that includes IP, brand and formulations. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Manitoba Harvest, one of the largest hemp food producers in the world, had been exploring how it could move deeper into the snacking category either by building a brand itself or “looking for a partner with a running start,” said company president Jared Simon.
As Manitoba’s first foray into crackers and the snack category under its Fresh Hemp Foods Ltd. division, The Humble Seed — which makes three varieties (Sea Salt, Everything and Garlic Herb) of crackers made from a blend of sunflower, flax, pumpkin, sesame, chia and hemp seeds — ticked a lot of boxes for Manitoba from a nutritional and sustainability standpoint as well as being a “seed-forward” brand, he added.
Launched in 2022, The Humble Seed had grown its retail footprint over its two years into 2,000 stores including Sprouts, H-E-B, Fresh Thyme, The Fresh Market and HyVee with a SRP of $5.99 per 4.25 oz box. But at the beginning of 2024, the Denver-based brand had reached an “inflection point” in its growth trajectory, said co-founder Sarah Meis, who was running the brand with partners Steve Shaffer and Jennifer Mancusco.
“We were prepared to continue to run the brand,” she said, but were exploring “what the next stage looked like for us.”
What started as a dialogue about a partnership between the two brands at Expo West in March developed quickly into “ongoing conversations” about how Manitoba Harvest could put more resources into “shepherding” the grain-free crackers into a “new phase of growth,” Meis said.
It is telling of an increasingly difficult environment for startup brands to operate independently and raise new capital.
“It’s no surprise that young brands need financial resources in order to grow. Growth doesn’t come without that cost,” she said. “It is one of the challenges where small brands are always very disadvantaged. We don’t have the supply chain relationships and the sort of purchasing power that a larger umbrella organization could.”
Founded in 1998, Manitoba Harvest produces a variety of hemp seed ingredients including granola, oatmeal, oil and powdered supplements. The company was acquired from Compass Diversified Holdings in 2019 by cannabis company Tilray.
Simon said that Manitoba Harvest will leverage its logistics, sourcing and procurement resources to begin to scale the cracker brand. Initially, The Humble Seed will not be produced by Manitoba because it doesn’t currently have cracker making equipment, though there are plans to innovate within the hemp seed company’s “snack-making capabilities.”
Manitoba Harvest owns two production facilities in Canada.
The hemp food producer plans to “infuse” some investment in the cracker brand while utilizing Manitoba’s sales team and network of brokers to “accelerate” The Humble Seed’s retail footprint.
Snacking appears to be ripe terrain for acquisitions. Newly launched CPG private equity firm Forward Consumer Partners snatching up cracker maker Firehook Bakery and Dallas, Texas-based tortilla chip and salsa brand Xochitl between April and May. Dried fruit maker RIND vertically integrated its supply chain by acquiring Vermont granola manufacturer Small Batch Organics at the end of 2023.
As for Meis, who previously held senior level positions at Good Karma, Lily’s Sweets, Purely Elizabeth and Van’s before founding The Humble Seed with Shaffer and Manusco, she will no longer be involved with any decision making for the grain-free snack brand. For now, Meis will be taking a little time off but plans to announce what’s in store for her next chapter soon.
“One of the things that I learned about being a founder was, honestly, I missed working on a team,” said Meis. “I had my co-founders, but there’s a lot of being an entrepreneur that’s pretty solitary.”
