The Jackfruit Company Adds $5M Extension to Series B Round

The Jackfruit Company, which sells products under both that name and the Jack & Annie’s brand, has raised $5 million in a Series B extension, adding to the $23 million it previously raised in the funding round, co-founder and CEO Annie Ryu announced this week.

The Colorado-based company was founded in 2011 and produces a variety of plant-based meat alternatives made from jackfruit as well as a variety of frozen meals featuring the ingredient as well as packaged, flavored jackfruit mixes.

According to Green Queen, the extension follows on The Jackfruit Company’s Series B financing round in 2021, which was announced alongside the launch of the Jack & Annie’s brand of plant-based meats featuring sausage, buffalo wings and meatballs. The round was led by InvestEco, Creadev and Grosvenor Food & AgTech, and the brand’s lifetime funding is now around $33 million.

“We wanted to make sure that we were able to reach those consumers with the delicious real food that jackfruit can create, but in a way that was really approachable and not in a way where it feels like you have to know what jackfruit is in order to try the foods,” Ryu told Nosh in 2021, discussing the initial tranche of the Series B.

In an interview this week with Axios, Ryu said she hopes for this latest funding to “be the last round” the company raises, as it looks to better establish itself in the retail and foodservice channels.

In February, the company partnered with fast-casual chain Smashburger to introduce its Jack & Annie’s burgers as a permanent menu item at 235 of the restaurant’s locations,following a trial run last year. At the time, The Jackfruit Company said the Jack & Annie’s brand was also available in over 5,000 retail outlets across the U.S.

Jackfruit has long been popular in plant-based diets thanks to its tough texture that closely mimics meat, but has also been a more niche ingredient in the American market. As the category leader for the tropical fruit in the U.S., The Jackfruit Company has continued to focus on its position as a meat alternative – also offering seasoned BBQ and Tex Mex ingredient mixes – even as other alternative brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have faced declining sales in recent years.

Speaking to Green Queen, Ryu acknowledged that the company was “overly optimistic” in how quickly it believed meat eaters would “adopt and embrace” alternatives, but that the brand continues to see a path forward by focusing on improvements in “taste, nutrition, simplicity of ingredients/processing and price” when compared with meat.

The Jackfruit Company did not return requests for comment from Nosh.