BLAINE — A Blaine company known for its cheesecakes is making plans to keep growing after being acquired by an investment group.
Chuckanut Bay Foods was purchased by Bookend Capital Partners in a deal that was finalized earlier this month. The Northern Light newspaper in Blaine reported the sale price was $6.6 million.
With the new investors, the company plans to expand production capacity and potentially hiring more workers while staying in Blaine, said Tony Battaglia, the company’s new CEO.
“Our whole purpose for investing is to take it to the next level,” said Battaglia in a telephone interview, noting that they were impressed with the bakery and its workers.
Battaglia will be working with the company’s founders — Matt Roth, Jim Gibson, and Dave Loeppky — to assess the capacity of the 20,000-square-foot Blaine facility, which was completed in 2019. The Blaine facility is twice the size of its former Ferndale building and there is enough room for the company to double its capacity again if needed, according to a May 2019 article in The Bellingham Herald.
The company currently employs around 160 people, focusing on premium cheesecakes and other gourmet desserts. Chuckanut’s products can be found in more than 10,000 grocery and specialty stores.
Battaglia said the plan is to assess the company’s capacity and current markets in the next six months, mapping out a plan for the coming years. While Chuckanut Bay Foods has a strong foothold in the western U.S., Battaglia believes there are opportunities to grow in stores east of the Mississippi River as well as potentially going more into the restaurants and other food service businesses.
Gibson said the founders of the company wanted to partner with someone who was capable of helping the company take the next step.
“Dave, Matt and I wanted to partner with an investor with the resources and expertise to continue to grow the company. Bookend shares our vision — not only for increasing the availability of our hand-crafted desserts to even more customers, but also for expanding the bakery in Blaine and creating more jobs here,” Gibson said.
Bookend Capital is a private equity firm based in New York City that invests in consumer companies, focusing on the food sector. The company’s CEO, Alexander S. Panos, is a Washington native.
“We were specifically looking for a quality company in my home market of the Pacific Northwest, and we found exactly that in Chuckanut,” Panos said in a news release about the announcement.
