Lakeside Foods buys smoothie startup

Lakeside Foods, through its joint venture Peak Foods, purchased Blendtopia, a Nashville-based startup that makes superfood smoothies available at select retail outlets and online.

Blendtopia’s founder Tiffany Taylor will join Peak Foods and coordinate sales, marketing and product development for the smoothie line. The Peak Foods team will assume manufacturing and operations responsibilities, including procurement, inventory management and logistics.

For Lakeside, the investment represents its commitment to grow and diversify the product portfolio of Peak Foods, a joint venture between Lakeside and Interstate Food Processing Corp. Peak Foods has a manufacturing facility in Troy, Ohio, and produces private label and branded whipped topping products for the retail, food service and industrial sectors.

The purchase will allow Blendtopia to expand its retail footprint and aggressively grow sales to appeal to smoothie and juice fans.

Headquartered in Manitowoc, Lakeside Foods has 13 processing facilities, producing canned and frozen vegetable, frozen desserts, appetizer and canned pet food products that are distributed in 14 countries.

Read our January 2019 cover story on Lakeside Foods.