February 8, 2016

AccelFoods has raised a $20 million fund to back packaged food and beverage companies from seed through Series B stages of growth, according to co-founders Jordan Gaspar and Lauren Jupiter, reports Dow Jones’ Venturewire.

Under the overall category of packaged foods, AccelFoods is seeking to act as an accelerator and investor for producers of allergen-free, gluten-free ethnic foods, and makers of convenient, on-the-go natural snacks.

“Families are purchasing foods to accommodate the needs of an allergic friend or family member, increasingly,” Ms. Gaspar told the Wall Street Journal. “And millennial shoppers, in particular, expect natural ingredients as a standard.”

The first six investments on behalf of the new fund, which are part of AccelFoods’ fourth class of startups, include: the brewed iced coffee producer, Wandering Bear; gluten-free noodle and natural bone broth maker, Nona Lim; maker of bagless and dissolvable tea, Tea Drops; coffee and cocoa butter bar, Il Morso; hot cereal producer, Purely Pinole, and mung bean-based savory and salty snack maker, Crunchsters.

Products such as these are stepping out of niche categories and into the mainstream consumer sightline, with major multinational retailers including Walmart, Target, and Costco expanding their range of offerings to include ‘free-from’ and organic products. And investors are taking notice. In 2015 investments from venture firms in food and beverage companies increased 60% year on year from $377 million across 46 deals to $603 million across 48 deals, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource.