Why Wild Zora’s co-founders acquired a local company

LOVELAND — The founders of Wild Zora have taken a friendship started five years ago into a business opportunity for two local companies.

The decision for Wild Zora, a maker of all-natural meat-and-veggie bars, to acquire fellow Loveland-based company Paleo Meals To Go didn’t start half a decade ago, but a friendship between Zora Tabin and Paleo Meals To Go co-founder Dawn Anderson did.

The two companies were in their earliest stages — Wild Zora hadn’t launched yet — when Tabin and Anderson started discussing the similarities between the two companies. Both were looking for health-conscious consumers who preferred to eat paleo and were selective in how their food was made.

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The two kept in touch, and in the fall realized that the two companies might be able to better achieve their goals if they partnered together.

“Dawn was talking about how she needed a partner or help for her company, because she was done managing it alone and being the only full-time employee there,” Zora Tabin told BizWest. “I was thinking about it and offered to help her co-pack, because we are USDA-approved. But it turned into more than co-packing; it turned into a possible partnership.”

Wild Zora decided to acquire Paleo Meals To Go, making the product in their facility and keeping Anderson on board with the company.

Ultimately, there will be slight changes, said Wild Zora co-founder Josh Tabin. They want to improve the sourcing of the meat that Paleo Meals To Go, which makes backcountry friendly ready-to-eat paleo meals, uses. But Tabin said he knows he wants to keep the brand equity that Anderson has made, perhaps just eventually branding the product as Wild Zora’s Paleo Meals To Go.

“It will be an evolution, but it will not be completely different,” Tabin said of the changes.

For Wild Zora, the acquisition means significantly increasing their production and adding many more products to their lineup instantly. But it doesn’t change the mission of what Wild Zora wants to do.

“It doesn’t change our goals very much,” Josh Tabin said. “It does give us a bit of a headstart on our annual goals. Dawn’s business is about half the size of ours; that’s a big jump all of a sudden. But it doesn’t change our long-term vision at all to have real food and ingredients with no chemicals, added hormones or antibiotics. Those are things we felt were important and Dawn already shared those feelings.”

Looking ahead, Zora said she expects the company to keep growing as it stays a family business.

“We’re seeing faster growth and are looking to hire more staff for production,” she said. “It’s a good thing and helps the local economy. We’re going to have steady growth, employ local people and use local meat, staying as geographically close to Colorado as we can.”