Investment

GeeFree was founded in 2013 by partners Susan Hougui, a food consultant, and Steven Leyva, a baker. The duo baked the business from there, growing the company to about $500,000 in sales in its second year. Then in March 2017, Billy Procida, founder of the multi-billion dollar real estate investment group Procida Funding & Advisors, invested $1 million dollars for half the company. Now post investment, the company said it’s already seeing a tenfold increase in its month-to-month sales from March to May thanks in part to a new COO and a ramped-up marketing campaign.

Big strategics looked to both invest and acquire in the past two weeks, looking to a fund, a coffee company, and a delivery platform for revenue expansion. Here’s a look at the deals:

A list compiled by market research firm CB Insights of the 15 most well-funded venture capital-backed food and beverage startups reveals the increasing value placed on brands that are offering healthier choices and disrupting established categories like meat and dairy and innovating with plant-based offerings.

At the 2017 Sweets and Snacks Expo this week in Chicago, Illinois legume-based snacking brand HIPPEAS booth was pulsing with excitement – both due to the brand’s popularity in retail, but also thanks to the announcement that Strand Equity Partners and Academy Award-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio have joined as investors.

Last week, plant-based snack brand Peeled Snacks announced the close of a round of fundraising led by Seurat Capital. Investment bank Whipstitch Capital served as an advisor to Peeled for the deal.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed but an April 2016 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicated the company had closed roughly $850,000 of a $1.5 million round. The Portland, Maine-based brand previously raised $1 million in Spring 2016.

Today dairy processor and distributor Dean Foods announced a minority investment in Boulder, Colorado based Good Karma, a producer of flaxseed-based, dairy alternative food and beverage products. Originally a private label manufacturer of dairy-alternative milks, Good Karma developed its own branded CPG line in 2014 and expanded beyond beverages to yogurt in late 2016.

The nutrient-dense meal replacement drinks and powder company has pulled in some Silicon Valley-grade investors, closing out a Series B financing round today with $50 million in funding, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), bringing the company’s total funding to $74.5 million.

This week Venice Brands, a new consumer-focused VC fund, announced an investment in The Osso Good Company, a producer of frozen bone broths. In addition to putting dry powder behind the bone broth company, the deal marks the first investment for Venice, which was launched in January of this year and is an offshoot of Monogram Capital.