Ten years ago Wild Zora Foods LLC launched its first product, The Original Meat & Veggie Bar®. Following on the company’s early success in the specialty snacks market, Wild Zora is now expanding into convenient, freeze-dried meals with the acquisition of Paleo Meals to Go.

“Paleo Meals To Go was an obvious choice for us when we decided to expand our product line through acquisition,” said Josh Tabin, Co-Founder of Wild Zora Foods. “Their commitment to using only real ingredients with no added chemicals or preservatives, aligned perfectly with our mission and our existing customer base. These new products help us make the leap from snacks to complete meals.”

Wild Zora distributes its products online via its own e-commerce site (http://www.wildzora.com), Amazon, and a few select authorized resellers. They are also available in select retail stores across the United States including Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, and REI. The company plans to offer Paleo Meals To Go products across all of their distribution channels.

Wild Zora is bringing production of Paleo Meals To Go freeze-dried products in-house at their Loveland, CO-based facility where they’ll modify the recipes to use only grass-fed and sustainably-raised meat mixed with organic fruits and vegetables. The only way to maintain the company’s commitment to grass-fed and sustainably-raised meat was to bring the freeze-drying process in house, because the only freeze-dried meat available on the market is conventionally raised.

The privately-funded acquisition also gives Paleo Meals to Go mother and son founders, Dawn Anderson and Ty Soukup, the opportunity to see the vision for their products fulfilled. Anderson will stay with Wild Zora and continue working on creating and providing the meal products about which she is so passionate. Both companies are privately owned and won’t be releasing any additional details of the acquisition.

“Dawn and I met at the networking group she started for women entrepreneurs. We became friends and quickly discovered that there was a lot of synergy regarding our company goals and missions,” Said Zora Tabin, Wild Zora Co-Founder. “Once we brought Josh, the numbers guy, into the discussion, we quickly realized that bringing the two companies together was the best way for all of us to meet our goals.”

Paleo Meals To Go was using co-packers and other vendors for product fulfillment. The model was tough to scale, and with Dawn and Ty as the only full-time employees, they found scaling up while maintaining profit margins to be very challenging.

“Under our previous manufacturing model, we couldn’t produce affordable products with organic and sustainably-raised, grass-fed beef, and the only thing available on the market was conventional meat, so we used only conventionally-grown and raised products,” said Anderson. “With Wild Zora’s production capacity and know-how, we’re thrilled to finally see our products move to that next step and broaden the appeal to more health-focused consumers.”

Over the course of the coming months, Paleo Meals To Go will become part of the Wild Zora brand family, but the company is cognizant of the good work that has been done to build equity in the name Paleo Meals To Go.

“We’ll take some time and do it right,” said Josh Tabin. “We’ll integrate the new products into the Wild Zora brand without losing any momentum that Dawn and Ty have already built.”

About Wild Zora, LLC
Wild Zora was founded in Loveland, CO by husband and wife, Josh and Zora Tabin in 2014. The organization’s mission is to deliver healthy, convenient food to families that tastes great and doesn’t contain added sugar or preservatives. They’re fulfilling that mission by manufacturing their food on-site, under their supervision, using products sourced from farmers and ranchers that they have personally vetted. Their first product line, The Original Meat and Veggie Bar® has become one of the top-10 natural meat snacks in sales volume. The bars are available in seven flavors ranging from Mediterranean Lamb to BBQ Beef. They offer six Paleo Certified® and Whole30® Approved flavors, and two flavors that are Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) compliant.

About Paleo Meals To Go
Paleo Meals To Go was also founded in Loveland, CO. The company was launched in 2013 by mother-son team, Dawn Anderson and Ty Soukup. Their product line includes five gluten, grain, milk and soy-free savory meals such as Bedrock Beef Chili and Caldera Chicken Curry, as well as three gluten, grain, milk, soy and nightshade-free breakfast flavors. The company’s story began when Ty, an avid backcountry hiker, realized he could find nothing that met his dietary requirements to take with him into the wilderness, and that there was an opportunity to provide other hikers like him with a healthy, backcountry-friendly product.