Beer Marketer's Insights - BEVNET LIVE: Generous Brands 'Open for Business' as It Seeks Additional Cold-Chain Brands to Augment Bolthouse Farms, Evo Fresh, Health-Ade; Also in Hunt for Further Partnerships Like Sambazon Tie

Among broad-based bev strategics, refrigerated brands have developed a stigma as too cumbersome to produce, distribute and display at retail, with Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Campbell and Starbucks divesting or closing cold-chain brands. That all spells opportunity for Generous Brands, the platform play that started with pickup of Bolthouse Farms juice brand after its disastrous run at Campbell and has since added Starbucks' unwanted Evolution Fresh brand and most recently Health-Ade, once a partner brand for Coca-Cola. At BevNet Live conference in Marina del Rey, Calif, yesterday, its chief transformation officer, Todd Putman, minced few words about the poor track record of strategics in acquiring and operating innovative brands, as well as his desire to offset his own "karmic debt" in selling consumers less-healthy items during his career stop at Coca-Cola. So Generous Brands is taking its place among "a new kind of strategic, almost the Goldilocks of strategics," boasting resources, scale and manufacturing network with which to acquire and integrate brands - and always refrigerated brands with a high degree of functionality compared to categories like CSDs. "So far it seems to work," he said.Backed by Butterfly Capital, Generous started with Bolthouse's carrot and juice businesses, split into separate entities in 2023, then acquired HPP play Evolution Fresh from Starbucks. In a variation on model, a year ago it partnered with acai pioneer Sambazon to manage sales and distribution without actually acquiring co. Then a few months ago it picked up Health-Ade kombucha brand, a deal in the works a year with its investors Manna Tree and First Beverage.He&#39;s very much in the hunt for further deals, tho not on any timetable dictating a certain number of new brands coming under the tent in a defined period. Targets need to be at least $50 mil in size, "much smaller than a lot of other folks in this audience can invest in . . . You've got to be big enough to scale and have toys to move around the chessboard." While declining to state any target number, "we are open for business full-stop . . . aggressively pushing other acquisitions as we speak." After having done well in protein space, other segments of interest include mood brands and fiber as next ingredient wave, playing on innovation brought by players like One Bio. GB's purview is strictly beverage, not broader food space. "We've made the decision we're just beverage . . . We're not going to put adaptogens into mac & cheese, it's going to happen in beverages."In discussion, Putman encouraged entrepreneurs considering future exit to prioritize finding a home where their brand will be able to thrive. "You don't want to sell yourself to a big corporate entity, it does not work," he declared. "My experience has been, selling to a big CPG has not been productive, to choose my words there." So founders should seek out acquirers like Generous that will "run it in the right way, conscious of founder ideas and mentality, culture is a big deal . . . We mesh culture at Generous Brands." He does not, however, see an ongoing role for founders who sell to GB. "I don't know that we love the idea of keeping founders around 5 years," he said in response to question from moderator Jeff Klineman.Asked what bigger acquirers tend to screw up, he responded, "It's culture, always culture." In case of Health-Ade acquisition, "I spent 60% of my time trying to understand the Health-Ade culture, make sure that we're bringing components of that into our organization in highly transparent way . . . If you eff up the culture, you'll eff up everything." So GB retained a "tremendous amount" of Health-Ade team and cultural icons from that org to make the new org better, he said.The Sambazon alliance was first effort within Integrated Partnerships program that Generous started. Sambazon already was a copacking client, but it felt it wasn't providing enough focus to its bevs as it grew its foodservice arm. So it enlisted GB to help with selling and distribution. Putman hopes Sambazon is first of a couple more such partners, whether or not there's an equity layer. He said 5 conversations are happening now on potential deals.At time there's lots of buzz about bevcos taking advantage of possible reopening of IPO window on Wall Street, Putman was asked if that's direction Generous is considering. But he demurred, pointing instead to ongoing work of assembling and integrating more brands. "That's like asking if you're going to run for president or not," he replied. "Right now, we've got a job to do."

BEVNET LIVE: Generous Brands 'Open for Business' as It Seeks Additional Cold-Chain Brands to Augment Bolthouse Farms, Evo Fresh, Health-Ade; Also in Hunt for Further Partnerships Like Sambazon Tie

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