Details on the The Wicked Foods Deal: Ahimsa Companies’ Big Plans for Plant-Based Products

Wicked Foods is changing hands again….sort of. While the company is now a subsidiary of Ahimsa Companies, its backers (and “new” owner”) are familiar faces. 

To understand what I mean, you first need a quick history lesson. Let’s start with Wicked Foods.

• In 2018 Wicked Foods was co-founded by brothers Chad and Derek Sarno, alongside investor Chris Kerr. 

• The UK-based company headed stateside in 2020, bringing on former General Mills exec Pete Speranza as CEO.

• Subsequently, in 2022 Wicked acquired the North American licensing rights to the Good Catch line of seafood (it does not own the brand), and then in 2023 acquired alt-fish company Current Foods in an all-stock transaction.

Okay, so we’re up to speed on Wicked. Still following? Cool, let’s follow the money. 

• In 2015 a then “unnamed” family brought aboard Unovis Asset Management to oversee New Crop Capital, a specialized venture capital fund investing in plant-based brands. That now appears to be the Karandikar family, with Jay Karandikar listed as the Principal of the New Crop Capital Trust. The Ahimsa foundation also lists New Crop as a venture partner.

• In 2016 New Crop founded and backed Gathered Foods, which owns the Good Catch brand and several supply chain assets.

• Several years later, the Karandikars established the Ahimsa Foundation, a 501c3 that seeks to end animal agriculture. The foundation invests directly in brands via its Ahimsa VC arm and (according to a filing with the IRS) appears to be an LP in Unovis Capital, a second fund put together by the principals running New Crop. 

• In 2022 Ahimsa VC directly invested in Wicked Foods.

Now let’s get to the present.

Guess who is the majority backer of Ahimsa Companies? If you said the Ahimsa Foundation/VC you win a prize. Meanwhile, according to Ahimsa Companies CEO Matt Tullman, all of Wicked’s prior shareholders, including Unovis and New Crop have carried over to Wicked 2.0. So essentially it appears that we’re talking about a recapitalization (something I think we’ll see a lot of in the coming year). When I asked Tullman if any cash changed hands, he declined to comment. 

Of course, none of this takes away from what Ahimsa Companies hopes to achieve. The company’s focus is less on product type or attributes and more on the broader concept of “accelerat[ing] the shift towards a more sustainable, and ethical future.” 

“​​Ahimsa stands for a really beautiful concept around nonviolence and the ethical principle of not causing harm to the living things,” Tullman said. “As we look at the food system it's filled with violence, not just in terms of how we treat animals, but also, you know, like, the destructive nature of the food that we eat.” 

Tullman is a noted figure in the alt-meat world, also running media property No Meat Athlete and supplement brand Complement Nutrients, the latter of which is already profitable. Earlier this year he joined forces with some of the Ahimsa Foundation team, united in a belief that consolidation is the path forward to ensuring plant-based food companies succeed. 

Rather than having a bunch of baby brands all duplicating each other's efforts, he said, a roll-up can save brands on back office and supply chain costs. Now, let’s be honest, this is the same thing I’ve heard from other roll-ups such as Superlatus (the now owner of Coolhaus and Brave Robot) and even Speranza himself at the time of the Current Foods deal. 

But Tullman says there’s one key difference: a need to go back to business fundamentals, homing in on what each brand is good at and which of their SKUs are profitable. 

“What we're trying to achieve is to bring a very healthy balance sheet at a time of industry contraction,” Tullman said. “In terms of operating businesses, I think there's a playbook…[and] I think there's a lot that we're going to be able to consolidate.”

Ahimsa Corporation has one other trick up its sleeve: manufacturing. Remember Gathered Foods from oh, ten paragraphs ago? Well, one of Gathered’s assets is (or was) Trellis, a plant-based meat manufacturing facility in Ohio. Tullman mentioned that Ahimsa has made two acquisitions to-date, Wicked and then….a plant-based meat manufacturing facility in Ohio. Now, while he wouldn’t confirm (or deny) this was, in fact, Trellis, there can’t be that many alt-meat plants in the Buckeye State. 

That vertical integration, though, will be key to Ahimsa Companies’ success, he believes. 

“If you're trying to sell something for five bucks, and you have to pay a retailer, a broker, a sales team, and a manufacturing facility, plus your cost of goods, that's why this doesn't work,” Tullman told me. “If we want to keep the cost down to the consumer and make this more accessible, we have to focus on vertical integration as much as possible.” 

He did confirm that Ahimsa did not purchase Gathered’s Cultivated Food Labs, an R&D and product development lab, and Gathered Proteins, a developer of plant-based proteins.

Tullman added that Ahimsa Company has several other deals in the due diligence phase, with one brand expected to close in the next 2-8 weeks. By year’s end, Ahimsa Companies will likely have five brands under its umbrella. In addition to brands, manufacturers and other supply chain partners are potential targets for acquisition. 

“There's some great businesses out there that [just] need support. And they've just been kind of pushed down because of the sector dynamics, the broader macroeconomic environment and the cost of capital. All sorts of things that made it tougher to succeed,” Tullman shared.