Fresca Foods grows with clients’ success

LOUISVILLE – The outside of natural foods contract manufacturer Fresca Foods Inc. looks like just another unassuming warehouse in a Front Range business park.

But inside the plant, employees in white coats, hairnets and plastic gloves bustle around making products such as “crisps,” or crackers, for 34 Degrees LLC, and flavored nut butter squeeze packs for Justin’s Nut Butter in Boulder, among others.

Cooking smells assail a visitor’s nose.

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Fresca has been able to grow rapidly by taking an entrepreneurial tack similar to that of the companies it partners with, said Liz Myslik, executive vice president. It now has 209 employees working in shifts on a variety of natural food brands, Myslik said, declining to name them all.

In particular, Fresca uses an untraditional financial model to help its clients. Fresca buys a company’s raw materials and distributes the final product, once it’s ready for sale. Food company customers are charged for the finished products as they’re shipped out the door.

Traditionally, companies spend a lot of money up front on their own manufacturing processes, equipment and distribution, Myslik said.

As a result of working with Fresca, customer companies have more cash flow for sales and marketing and to invest in other areas of their business, Myslik said.

“We are very unusual in the food company world,” Myslik said. “As companies that are on a high-growth trajectory grow and scale their business, we operate in a similar fashion.”

While privately held Fresca does not disclose details of its revenue models, the company has experienced a 45 percent annual compound growth rate for the last nine years, Myslik said. She declined to give specifics. The company operates in a 135,000-square-foot building in the Colorado Technology Center business park in Louisville.

“We really want to let people know we’re here and what we do. We’re really proud of it,” Myslik said.