Real Estate Developer Enters CPG With $50M Venture Fund

Beckett Industries is taking its investing expertise in real estate development to launch a $50 million venture capital fund that will target early-stage food and beverage businesses.

The venture arm of the Grand Rapids, Mich. firm has already made small-dollar investments this year in notable beverage companies like Liquid Death, instant espresso brand Diamond Brew, low-calorie wine label Libby and, most recently, prebiotic RTD maker Waku Tea. Yet, these initial investments were stage-setting for the $50 million fund that Beckett is currently raising and expects to start deploying out of in Q1 2026.

Founded in 2023, Beckett Industries has focused on developing real estate – often in partnership with the Catholic Church through Notre Dame University – into 150+ unit, multifamily and mixed-use projects.

At the beginning of 2025, the company started investing in beverage brands (along with a couple of B2B software and business services startups), using Beckett’s existing base of SVPs (strategic value partners) and family offices.

Alongside these SVP investments, Beckett is currently raising a $50 million fund which will include a “fairly large natural retailer, a broker organization and a few other industry groups,” reported general partner Brian Polencheck, who is overseeing Beckett’s venture arm. “Part of what we want to do is to provide more than just investments, but also bring in people who could help brands.”

“Smart money is the term I’ve heard recently,” he added. “The belief is that if we create something a little bit different with people that have different backgrounds, we could help these brands achieve their goals earlier.”

The fund will be focused on pre-seed, seed and early series A round companies, deploying checks between $250,000 and $3 million.

Polencheck, who founded and ran a CPG broker business FDM Sales before exiting to Advantage Solutions, has spent the last nine months gathering a group of knowledgeable people like seasoned natural channel buyer Dwight Richmond, Joel Warady, former Amway executive Greg Clark, and others, to advise the venture arm.

The institutional knowledge and experience of former operators, founders and entrepreneurs, paired with distributors, brokers and retailer specialists, will be a valuable asset to help guide the early-stage brands that Beckett will invest in.

For now, Beckett is taking calls from brands in high-velocity categories like beverages, snacks, yogurt or ice cream, but is open to “anything in food and beverage that has potential to disrupt,” Polencheck said, citing conversations with baking and condiment category brands.

“Show me a product in a category that is maybe flat or missing innovation and we’re going to be interested in it, just like a retailer would be interested in it,” he said.

While early-stage businesses are the focus, “when a Liquid Death comes around, you have to take it,” he said. “You need to have some doubles along with some potential home runs, and those early-stage brands take a lot longer.”