Green Spoon goes nationwide with West Coast expansion

BOULDER — Green Spoon Inc., a Boulder-based natural and organic foods brand brokerage, recently announced the opening of a trio of new West Coast divisions, expanding the company’s footprint nationwide.

The firm, which helps match food brands with retailers, currently has about 75 employees across the country now, with 15 of those in the Boulder headquarters. With the addition of three new teams in Southern California, Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, Green Spoon expects to soon have an employee headcount of more than 100.

In many cases, growing brokerages opt to acquire smaller firms in order to expand into new markets. Green Spoon chose to build its new West Coast operations  from scratch. 

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“For us, our culture is super important and super special,” Green Spoon CEO Kari Pedriana said. “That’s not something you can buy, so we wanted to build it brick by brick.”

Pedriana said she expects its will take about a year for Green Spoon to fully build out its West Coast teams. During the next year, the firm will be searching for permanent office spaces to house its West Coast operations. 

The firm works with “emerging brands that are really disrupting the [natural and organic foods] industry,” she said. 

Green Spoon clients include Primal Nutrition LLC, which makes sauces and dressings under the Primal Kitchen brand. The firm was bought by The Kraft Heinz Co. earlier this year for $200 million. 

“We have a lot of national clients, but we really love working with our local brands here in Boulder, such as Rowdy Mermaid Kombucha and Quinn Snacks,” Pedriana said. 

After nearly a decade building relationships with brands at retailers from the Rocky Mountain region to the Midwest to the East Coast, Pedriana said the time was right to go national. 

“I didn’t realize we would ever be able to take it this far; it’s pretty amazing,” she said.

While Pedriana said the company still has room to grow, there are no plans to expand Green Spoon’s operations internationally. 

“We’re going to keep digging deeper into our accounts and supporting our brands the best we can,” she said.