We are a plant-based food company specializing in snacks in the dehydrated food category – avocados and and bananas. (Incorporated in Nevada)

BranchOut is an emerging natural food brand with a licensed technology platform that enables the manufacturing and marketing of plant-based dehydrated foods. BranchOut has licensed rights from an independent third party to a new dehydration technology designed for drying and processing highly sensitive fruits and vegetables such as avocados, bananas and others. Using the licensed technology platform, we believe BranchOut’s line of branded food products speak to current consumer trends. In our experience, conventional dehydration methods, such as freeze-drying and air drying, tend to degrade most fruit and vegetables through oxidation, browning/color degradation, nutritional content reduction and/or flavor loss. As a result, certain highly sensitive fruit, such as avocados and bananas, have not previously been successfully offered as a dehydrated base for consumer products. Other dried fruit- and vegetable-based products are on the market but are of low quality. To our knowledge, BranchOut’s licensed technology platform and process is the only way to produce quality avocado- and banana-based snack and powdered products. Additionally, we believe our licensed technology platform produces superior products when using other fruits and vegetables as the base when compared to conventional drying and dehydration technologies. With more than 17 patents registered in 14 countries, BranchOut has been granted the exclusive rights to use the licensed technology platform as applied to avocados, in addition to BranchOut’s own patent pending process, and nonexclusive rights to use the licensed technology platform for other products.

Our Products

Over time, BranchOut plans to grow revenues aggressively and strategically by further penetrating the multi-billion dollar market opportunity presented by our current product lines, as well as expanding our platform to include additional products that meet our strict plant-based ingredient criteria to diversify our revenue base and increase BranchOut’s total addressable market (“TAM”) opportunity. BranchOut’s current products are primarily:

BranchOut is currently developing additional products, including chocolate covered fruit items and many private label products for large retailers.

Our Market Opportunity in the Evolving Food and Beverage Industry

BranchOut participates in what the U.S. Census Bureau estimated to be a $695 billion grocery market as of 2019, which is the second largest retail market after the automobile industry. BranchOut is specifically focused on the fastest growing sub-segment of the food and beverage market: Natural, Organic and Functional Food and Beverages. According to the Nutrition Business Journal, in 2018, Natural, Organic and Functional Food and Beverages sales in the U.S. were approximately $152 billion and grew 6.6% from the prior year, which was faster than the 4.0% growth in the overall food and beverage industry according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Further, according to the Nutrition Business Journal, during the same period, third-party and direct e-commerce sales represented two of the four fastest growing channels for Natural, Organic and Functional Food and Beverages sales in the United States, which bodes well for BranchOut due to our plan to launch our e-commerce and omnichannel channel strategy once our production capacity allows.

We believe that consumer preferences within the evolving food and beverage industry are shifting away from processed and sugar-laden food and beverage products, as well as those containing significant amounts of highly processed and artificial ingredients. We believe that there is also increasing recognition of the environmental impact of animal-based products. This has led to significant growth in plant-based foods and beverages. According to the Plant-Based Foods Association, U.S. retail sales of plant-based foods increased 11% from 2018 to 2019, reaching a market value of $4.5 billion, compared to increases of 4% and 7% in the general grocery and natural foods categories, respectively. Among plant-based food categories, plant-based snacks are a rapidly emerging category but, in our opinion, lack product offerings similar to the BranchOut Snacks line. A report published by Persistence Market Research opines that the global plant-based snacks market is poised to witness lucrative growth by clocking a notable Compound Annual Growth Rate (“CAGR”) of 8.7% by the end of 2028. North America contributes massively to the growing size of the plant-based snacks market, on account of the rapid adoption of the flexitarian, vegetarian, and vegan diet. The North American plant-based snacks market is projected to produce a healthy CAGR of over 7% and exceed a market value of over US$23.2 billion through 2028.

BranchOut’s long-term goal is to build a scale-level and widely recognized brand and private label solutions that authentically focuses on natural ingredients, nutritional density and functionality in the plant-based snack and nutritional powder space. We believe an authentic and trusted brand is the strongest barrier to entry and a sustainable source of differentiation in the consumer-packaged goods (“CPG”) industry. We also believe a strong brand is a valuable platform that can be leveraged to expand beyond our current markets to achieve relevance across multiple grocery aisles, online and a wide array of other relevant points of distribution. While the barriers to entry for launching a food product in the CPG industry have fallen in recent years as a result of unlimited shelf space on the internet and targeted online marketing, we believe that the barriers to building an internationally recognized and trusted brand relevant to today’s consumer remain high.

Our Growth Strategy

We believe there is a great opportunity to leverage the strength of our platform and build BranchOut into one of the world’s preeminent natural food brands and private label suppliers. Consumers are increasingly incorporating natural alternatives into their diets but there are limited options. BranchOut is seeking to build a high level of brand recognition, as well as develop a trust and understanding with consumers that, regardless of category, any product labeled BranchOut will taste great and maintain a high-quality ingredient set. In addition, BranchOut aims to leverage our capabilities by offering major retailers private label products. These two approaches make up the heart of our platform strategy. Our primary growth strategies are as follows:

Open-Ended and Long Duration Growth Opportunity in the Enormous Grocery Market

At $695 billion, the U.S. grocery market is one of the largest retail end-markets in the world. BranchOut’s strategy is to maximize penetration of this opportunity through a variety of avenues, including growing brand trust and recognition, significantly expanding our grocery distribution footprint to multiples of our current level of doors, driving shelf velocity through an acceleration of online and offline advertising and introducing new products to expand our store footprint.

Exposure to Plant-Based, Functional and Natural Foods Portions of the Grocery Market

Within the grocery category, there is an ongoing secular shift from highly processed legacy brands that demonstrate little nutritional benefit to natural, nutrient-dense, functional and plant-based alternatives. We expect the shift in consumer tastes driving the growth of natural and plant-based alternatives will continue throughout the foreseeable future as consumers become better educated on nutrition and focus on the health and wellness of themselves, their families and the environment. There is also clear evidence that an increasing number of natural and plant-based products in stores are moving beyond the natural and specialty segments and into conventional grocery stores. The continuation of these trends should benefit BranchOut as it seeks to penetrate the very large overall grocery market.

Continued Expansion of Distribution Footprint

Based on our estimate of what wholesale penetration for a leading CPG industry brand should be at maturity, we believe BranchOut’s wholesale distribution footprint should eventually be multiples of its current size. Currently, our products are marketed and sold through a diverse set of physical retail channels, including grocery chains, club stores, specialty and natural food outlets, and on our website at www.branchoutfood.com and Amazon.com. Maximizing potential distribution will be a key growth driver for BranchOut and our goal is to expand distribution so that our products are available wherever our customers choose to shop, whether it be a retail store, food service environment or directly online. While expanding distribution, we plan to simultaneously increase our brand awareness through an extensive program of online and offline marketing initiatives to accelerate the sell-through velocity of our products once they reach the shelves of our wholesale partners.

Maximize Market Penetration of Existing Product Lines

We believe that BranchOut’s existing snacks and nutritional powders represent a multi-billion-dollar TAM. We believe simply penetrating these core markets with our differentiated product lines provides BranchOut with a large and long-duration growth opportunity. In the near-term, BranchOut plans to focus on growing its share within these categories. We plan to continue to drive growth of both our snacks and nutritional powders through distribution expansion and increased marketing and advertising to drive brand recognition and shelf velocity. We plan to also attempt to leverage our new and existing wholesale relationships to gain additional shelf space for our full suite of existing products.

Expected Increases in Gross Margins, Fixed-Cost Leverage and a Capital Efficient Sales and Marketing Strategy Should Allow Earnings to Grow Faster than Sales, Providing a Path to Profitability

While generating topline growth is of primary importance to BranchOut, we are also highly focused on growing earnings faster than net sales and achieving profitability within a reasonable period. Multiple aspects of BranchOut’s business lead us to believe there is substantial operating leverage that should allow us to achieve profitability. First, our gross margins should expand due to the efficient nature of manufacturing our snacks and powdered products, expanding capacity in our manufacturing facilities and the ability to leverage fixed costs in our factory over higher volumes. Second, we believe that outside of incremental new expenses associated with being a public company, general and administrative expenses should grow slower than net sales. The move from small batch system dehydration machines currently in operation to the larger continuous throughput machines, should have a dramatic effect in addition to our planned freight and supply chain improvements. Our new large-scale continuous throughput dehydration machine was commissioned in September 2022 and we completed the first production run in the first quarter of 2023. BranchOut remains committed to a business model focused on not just top line growth, but on steady progress toward profitability.

New Product Development

BranchOut’s current product lines are growing strongly and address multi-billion dollar market opportunities with differentiated products. We intend to enhance our growth by launching new products over time, including planned launches in 2023. In the first and second quarters of 2020, we launched three flavors of Avocado Chips, three flavors of our Chewy Banana Bites and our Pineapple Chips. In the first quarter of 2022, we launched Banana Powder and Blueberry Powder to complement our Avocado Powder which was already on the market. In 2023, we launched a line of vegetable-based snacks including Brussels Sprout Crisps, and Bell Pepper Crisps. 

(Note: Net loss and revenue figures are for the year ended Dec. 31, 2022.)

(Note: BranchOut Food slightly upsized its IPO at pricing on June 15, 2023, to 1.19 million shares – adding 90,000 shares to the 1.1 million in the prospectus – and priced the IPO at $6.00 – the low end of its $6.00-to-$8.00 range – to raise $7.14 million.)

(Background on previous SEC filings: BranchOut Food cut its micro-cap IPO in an S-1/A filing dated May 23, 2023, to 1.1 million shares – down from 1.25 million shares – and said the assumed IPO price is $7.00 – to raise $7.7 million. Background: BranchOutFood filed an S-1/A dated May 12, 2023, and disclosed terms for its micro-cap IPO: 1.25 million shares at $6.00 to $8.00 to raise $9.1 million. On April 24, 2023, BranchOut Food filed its S-1.)