Teasdale Latin Foods, a provider of private label and branded Hispanic foods and a portfolio company of Snow Phipps Group, has acquired Rudy’s Tortillas, a maker of tortillas and chips sold through the foodservice channel. The acquisition of Rudy’s Tortillas is the fourth add-on completed by Snow Phipps since it acquired Teasdale in October 2014 from Palladium Equity Partners.
Family-owned Rudy’s Tortillas is a manufacturer of flour and corn tortillas, burritos, wraps, and pre-cut uncooked tortilla chips. The company was founded in 1945 by Jose Guerra and was originally named Texas Tortillas Factory. In 1949 the company had one tortilla machine and three employees and produced 600 tortillas per hour. Today the company produces millions of tortillas a day with its state of the art tortilla equipment technology. Rudy’s will continue to operate as a division of Teasdale Latin Foods with the existing management team continuing on with the business. The company is based near Dallas in Carrollton, TX (www.rudystortillas.com).
Teasdale Latin Foods is a provider of private label and branded beans, hominy, tortillas, taco shells, flatbreads, peppers, sauces and seasoning products to the retail, foodservice, wholesale, industrial and international channels. The company sells kidney, pinto, black, chili, garbanzo, great northern and other beans to its customers in brine, bulk, sauces, and refried varieties, in dry packed canned, bags, and pouches in both conventional and organic varieties, as well as hominy, tortillas, taco shells, flatbreads, salsa, sauces, peppers and seasoning products. Brands include Teasdale, Casa Fiesta, Viva Mexico, Mexene, D.L. Jardine’s, 7J and Sontava!. Teasdale services all channels of distribution nationally and operates facilities in Atwater, CA; Hoopeston, IL; Greeley, CO; Buda, TX; Louisville, KY, Carrollton, TX and is headquartered in Dallas (www.teasdalelatinfoods.com).
“The Rudy’s acquisition provides additional scale and stability to our growing Hispanic food business while simultaneously balancing our product offering and diversifying our customer and channel base by adding a new foodservice component to our tortilla business,” said Sundip Murthy, Partner and head of consumer investing at Snow Phipps. “We are proud of the unique consolidation platform that we, together with the Teasdale management team, have successfully built and look forward to driving further growth across our diversified products, customers and channels.”
Rudy’s is the fourth add-on acquisition that Snow Phipps has completed since acquiring the company in October 2014. In October 2015, Teasdale acquired Jardine’s Foods, a producer of natural and organic sauces including salsas, dips, quesos, BBQ and hot sauces. In December 2015, Teasdale acquired Casa Fiesta, a provider of authentic Mexican foods in the beans, peppers, sauces, taco shells, dinner kits and seasonings categories. In June 2016, Teasdale acquired Mesa Foods, a producer of tortillas, taco shells, flatbreads and chips into the retail channel.
The buy of Rudy’s advances Snow Phipps’ strategy of building a Hispanic foods platform diversified across product, customer, channel and geographic exposure, and further enhances Teasdale’s national footprint in the Hispanic foods category, specifically within the bakery and foodservice channel. With the acquisition of Rudy’s, Teasdale Latin Foods is able to provide an entire suite of private label and branded Hispanic food products to a diverse customer base across a variety of channels including retail, foodservice, wholesale, industrial and international.
“We are pleased to have executed on a number of Teasdale’s unique growth opportunities and are excited by our future growth prospects across an array of attractive food categories,” said Peter Shea, Chairman of Teasdale and Operating Partner at Snow Phipps. “Rudy’s deepens our Hispanic bakery product offering and allows us to drive further growth across the foodservice channel, providing the company access to larger adjacent markets across an even broader consumer base. Teasdale is primed for continued growth as consumers increasingly focus on convenience, Hispanic meals and natural and organic products, both in and out of the home, and retailers focus on increasing the presence of their private label product offerings.”
Snow Phipps makes control investments in companies primarily located in North America with enterprise values ranging from $100 million to $500 million that require equity investments ranging from $40 million to $100 million. The firm has $1.5 billion of assets under management and was co-founded by Ian Snow and Ogden Phipps in April 2005. Snow Phipps is headquartered in New York (www.snowphipps.com).
© 2017 Private Equity Professional | July 13, 2017
