The online food newsletter Food Dive recently published a story about yogurt giant Chobani pocketing $650 million to upgrade their two primary plants in Twin Falls, ID and New York state. Food Dive calls it “growth capital” from unnamed “industry thought leaders.” Click to read their story.
The problem? Those unnamed “leaders” aren’t visionaries and they were easy to find — they’re Lexington Partners, Blackstone, and Norges Bank, the same private-equity machinery fattening half of America’s processed-food sector, even though Food Dive claimed they didn’t know who was doing the financing at the time of their publication, saying “Chobani did not identify the investors who participated in the latest round.”
Nonsense. SpokenFood found them through a cursory search.
Unfortunately, for you, Food Dive’s version reads like a press release polished to a mirror sheen — the kind of journalism that mistakes access for insight. The website lauded Chobani’s financing as though it were a “victory for innovation,” when in truth it’s just another round of balance-sheet gymnastics dressed in sugar and sincerity. There’s nothing noble here — only the familiar ritual of corporate flattery passing itself off as reporting.
While Food Dive printed the press release and called it journalism, SpokenFood followed the money — and found a health-halo brand expanding on the same synthetic sugar and financial spin that define the very system it claims to reform. The benefit to you? Remains to be seen, but eat these products, and your body may bloom, but not in the way you want.
The expansion affects its Twin Falls, Idaho, plant and its new $1.2 billion food manufacturing plant in Rome, New York — the largest facility investment by the company in its history. Note: it’s Lexington Partners, Blackstone and Norges Bank’s investment, and boy, will they ever want a return on their investment (which means Chobani prices are going up – count on it).
“This capital raise marks an important milestone for Chobani,” the company said in a statement last Thursday. “This commitment from long-term oriented, industry thought leaders underscores strong confidence in Chobani’s ability to deliver on its vision of making good food for all and putting its people at the center of everything it does.”
SF Reply: Bullshit. Pardon our French.
The funding puts Chobani at a whopping $20 billion valuation, according to The Street. Chobani expects to post $3.8 billion in sales this year, a 28% increase from a year ago. Know what that means? They’re going public. This latest move is just their way of polishing things up, pre-IPO. They also purchased other companies in the coffee creamer and ready-to-drink coffee market, snapping up both Daily Harvest earlier this year and La Colombe, spending $900 million alone in the 2023 purchase of La Colombe.
Food Dive’s last smooch on the Chobani fanny: “The Daily Harvest acquisition now allows Chobani to branch out into the manufacture of organic smoothies, protein powders, frozen meals and breakfast bowls.”
Translation: MORE low-nutrition, high-markup items clogging our nation’s grocery shelves. Chobani’s health halo is just another “capital gain glaze.”
— SF Staff Writers contributed to this story.
Sources/Images: Bloomberg, LinkedIn, Chobani Press Releases, Food Dive, NYTimes