Daiya Case Study

In 2014, the Board of Directors of Daiya Foods engaged Stockton Road Capital as strategic advisor to the Company and strategic consigliere to CEO, Terry Tierney. The Company had to that point been self-funded by its founders and a local community of angels and individual investors.

Daiya was a fast-growing vegan cheese company that had recently diversified into the frozen pizza category. Diaya’s core brand promise was products free of key food allergens gluten, dairy and soy. The Company had just recently turned profitable.

A year later, the founders of the business turned to Stockton Road to arrange an investment to provide them with a level of desired liquidity to allow them to be patient for a realization at a more opportune time in consideration of the broader shareholder base. Stockton Road partnered with Northwood Ventures on the transaction and completed it with minimal disruption to the business given Stockton Road’s existing deep knowledge of the business and trusted relationship with Northwood.

Stockton Road assisted the Company’s efforts to expand into numerous categories including frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese and yogurt (among others), proving the Daiya brand could be a master brand for the category. During this time, the core non-dairy cheese line became the market leader, and the positioning of the brand was expanded to the larger plant-based foods category.

In 2017 Daiya was sold to Otsuka Pharmaceutical of Japan for $C405 million, which plans to develop a worldwide food business with Daiya as the core platform.