More Beans: A Dozen Cousins Locks In ‘Manufacturing and Manpower’ Via Verde Valle

Cash is hard to come by, and the future is uncertain. Just look at the earnings reports of nearly every publicly traded CPG conglomerate lately.

As Ibraheem Basir, founder and CEO of A Dozen Cousins, began to strategize his business’ next stage of growth, there was one major capability on his mind, and the route to secure it was poised to provide much more support than someone simply cutting a check.

On Wednesday, A Dozen Cousins announced its acquisition by Verde Valle Foods, the U.S. subsidiary of Verde Valle, a ready-to-eat pouched bean and Mexican meal manufacturer producer of Mexican bean and meal brand Isadora. We sat down with German Rosales, Verde Valle Foods U.S. CEO, and Basir, now general manager, to learn what potential benefits both sides saw in a business combination.

Rosales said Verde Valle has admired Los Angeles-based A Dozen Cousins virtually since its founding, but a brief encounter with Basir at Natural Products Expo West in 2024 started a conversation about the potential to collaborate. According to Basir, he was not necessarily seeking an exit, but as he assessed his business’ runway, he recognized that it needed manufacturing capacity and support.

“We always try to think about capital as a tool – like what is the funding needed to get to the next stage in the business,” Basir explained. “Sometimes that has been traditional equity, at other times it’s been debt, at other times it’s been creative terms with suppliers. We take a pretty creative approach in terms of what we do to get to the next stage. This past year what became clear to me was, what we really need is support in terms of manufacturing and manpower.”

A Dozen Cousins received early support from the Chobani Food Incubator, and it has received investment from firms including Emil Capital Partners and RCV Frontline, as well as notable CPG execs including John Foraker and Gail Peterson. As the conversation with Verde Valle evolved, and as Basir got to know the team, he said the backing of a large, legacy company was an appealing proposition.

It helped that Basir was a fan of Verde Valle’s Isadora brand as well. He recounted that just weeks before meeting the team at Expo, A Dozen Cousins had conducted an in-house competitive tasting that included Isadora’s refried black beans as part of the panel.

“We tasted Isadora and I was like, ‘Man, these are really good,’” said Basir. “Honestly, they were better than ours, which I didn’t say at the time, but I don’t feel shy admitting now.”

It became clear to Basir that the synergies and capabilities Verde Valle could provide would unlock plenty of runway for years to come. As general manager, Basir will also retain control of the brand’s day-to-day operations within Verde Valle’s larger organization, and he will continue to lead the business and its growth with the entire A Dozen Cousins team now on board at Verde Valle, per terms of the deal.

“We obviously liked the brand a lot, but we were also very excited for the opportunity to have Ibraheem join the team,” said Rosales. “That was a big part of the rationale behind the acquisition and his new title, general manager, it tells you a lot about what you need to know in terms of his decision making ability going forward.”

Long term, A Dozen Cousins plans to leverage Verde Valle’s internal manufacturing network and R&D team, which Basir said was a “big value driver” in the deal. He said that as the brand has grown over the past two years, it has not been able to thoroughly meet market demands.

“As a startup, you’re constantly fighting for line time, making sure you have enough capital to build inventory, trying to turn things around really quickly from producer to retailer,” Basir said. “As a result we’ve never felt like we fully satisfied the market demand for our products… as an entrepreneur, you spend so many years and hours trying to build a brand and a product that people want, and then once you’ve created that demand, to not be able to fully fulfill it is really one of the most frustrating feelings in the world.”

That added capacity is what Basir claims he is “most excited about,” in addition to tapping the expertise of its R&D team. He believes that the ability to “jointly imagine” new products, while also having the resources and “ability to help bring it into the world” on hand will be a major unlock for the business.

Though A Dozen Cousins will accelerate its growth in the coming year, Basir said he will maintain the thoughtful approach he has always taken when entering new retailers and markets. The brand, which currently spans beans, sauces and pouched rice products, distributes to retailers nationwide including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, Fresh Market, Publix, Meijer, Target, Walmart, Kroger, Thrive Market, Wegmans and more.

Verde Valle remains the category leader in pouched ready-to-eat beans in Mexico, Rosales emphasized, and brought its Isadora brand to the U.S. nearly a decade ago. However, over the past year, the brand has found a new consumer base in non-Hispanic markets and is working to expand its presence across retail channels.

That’s where A Dozen Cousins comes in.

Rosales believes the brand’s strong natural retail relationships will be integral to Isadora’s growth and evolution. The two brands complement one another, he added, noting that Isadora is rooted in “authentic Mexican recipes” while A Dozen Cousins takes a unique approach to its formulations, blending flavors from  Latin America, Creole and Caribbean cuisines.

“We don’t necessarily see our products competing with each other,” Rosales said. “More than half of our consumers are non-Hispanic [per Nielsen data] so we’ve now seen the opportunity to cross over Isadora to mainstream consumers. We’ve seen success last year, and so we’re very excited to expand our client base as part of a partnership with A Dozen Cousins.”