Vital Farms, an Austin-based "ethical" egg producer, made its Wall Street debut Friday, with shares soaring 68 percent after trading began.
Husband and wife team Matt O'Hayer and Catherine Stewart founded the company in 2007 as a small urban farm in south Austin with 20 hens. It has since expanded distribution into 13,000 stores, including Target, Whole Foods Market, and Walmart, and become the number one producer of pasture-raised eggs and butter.
"They saw an opportunity to bring food to Americans in a more ethical way with better outcomes for all stakeholders, most notably the animals that produce the food," CEO and president Russell Diez-Canseco told Cheddar shortly before the closing bell.
The pasture-raised label is not officially recognized by the USDA, but it generally refers to the amount of space afforded to livestock. Vital Farms' hens are provided 108 square feet of space and "plenty of fresh air and sunshine year-round," according to the company.
Diez-Canseco noted that Vital Farms is currently in just 2 percent of U.S. households and that the company plans to expand beyond its main product categories of eggs and butter.
"Beyond that, you could certainly imagine us continuing to expand within value-added dairy, which is a really big and growing market," he said. "Consumers we've talked to would love to have lots of different kinds of food produced by Vital Farms."
Vital Farms' high price point compared to competitors does present a challenge amid the ongoing economic downturn brought on by coronavirus.
"We certainly put a lot of thought into that every day," Diez-Canseco said. "The truth is, producing food in a way that's sustainable for all stakeholders, meaning that delivers on better outcomes for small family farms (who often lose at the end of the movie in this country), for consumers, for our employees, for communities, and for shareholders, isn't a cheap endeavor."
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Jeff Benedict, author of 'The Dynasty,' weighs in on the Kansas City Chiefs being the next big dynasty, who he thinks will win Super Bowl LIX and more. Watch!
