Snack-makers Ka-Pop! and Bubba’s Fine Foods merge

LOVELAND — The companies behind the Northern Colorado snacks Ka-Pop! and Bubba’s Fine Foods are merging and opening a new contract-manufacturing operation for other snack-makers at the same time.

The new company, called Awakened Foods LLC, will act as a holding company for the two snack brands and operate a separate private-label manufacturing line out of the Bubba’s plant in south Loveland — at 225 42nd S. SW — under the name Awakened Food Crafters, CEO Dustin Finkel said.

Ka-Pop!, the trade name for inGRAINed Inc., makes air-popped chips from sorghum. Finkel, who founded that brand, appeared on the venture-capital show “Shark Tank” last year but did not receive funding. Bubba’s Foods LLC produces flavored banana chips and grain-free granola made out of bananas, coconut flakes and nuts. The company specifically uses saba bananas, a cultivar that has the texture of a plantain and tastes like sweet potato when cooked.

The two companies were based in Erie and Loveland, respectively. Both brands and their products will not be changed as a result of the merger.

Finkel said he and Bubba’s co-founder Jeff Schmidgall met during a series of weekly Naturally Boulder meetings for chief executives of natural-food makers in the area. While Finkel felt he was strong at building brands, partially due to his second job as an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Colorado Boulder, he was struggling to find operational flexibility.

Bubba’s already had a private-label operation where it made snacks for other companies on a contract basis, but it was struggling to establish itself as a brand.

Eventually, Finkel and Schmidgall decided that combining the companies would cover their individual weak spots.

“It really was a perfect marriage of the synergies between Jeff’s (Schmidgall’s) skill-set and building operational footprint and my team’s expertise in building brands and business strategy,” he said.

Schmidgall will stay on as the company’s chief operating officer.

The combined company employs approximately 30 people in a 25,000-square-foot facility, which can be divided between no-allergy production and production with allergy-causing ingredients. The entire plant is certified vegan, genetically-modified organism and gluten-free, and can be arranged for specific processes. Its production capacity sits around 10 million pounds of goods annually.

As a contract manufacturer, Finkel said he thinks Awakened Foods can fill a niche for natural-foods makers that don’t have their own space or resources to create 

As the pandemic raged on last year and into this year, consumers became more interested in buying food online, and several brands are trying to make special releases of their existing snacks or test runs of new flavors to see what’s popular. Finkel believes that Awakened can be viable by catering to other snack brands, and by helping major grocers test-run snacks before committing to filling their shelves.

“There’s plenty of brands out there that have proven that limited time offerings, special releases or constant new innovation, i.e. the ‘Throw it on the wall and see what sticks’ before going bigger with the retail launch, is really, really effective,” he said.

Finkel said the company plans to move into a space between 35,000 to 40,000 square feet next year and is aiming to generate $12 million in revenue in 2021.

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