TowerBrook Plays Chicken, Acquires Sausage Maker Amylu Foods
August 12, 2025|John McNulty
TowerBrook Capital Partners has partnered with Prelude Growth Partners to acquire Amylu Foods, a provider of chicken protein products.
Amylu’s product portfolio includes nearly 50 varieties of branded and private-label fully cooked chicken sausages, meatballs, and burgers. These products provide individual consumers, families, and institutional buyers with clean-label foods—free from antibiotics, nitrates, and nitrites—and are sold through national grocery retailers including Whole Foods, Walmart, Jewel-Osco, Mariano’s, Meijer, and Wegmans; club stores such as Sam’s Club, Costco Wholesale, and BJ’s Wholesale Club; and foodservice channels.
Source: Amylu Foods
Chicago-headquartered Amylu was founded in 1924 as a family sausage business and was rebranded under its current name by Amylu Kurzawski – a third-generation sausage maker – in 1992 when she pioneered the chicken sausage category by combining traditional recipes with health-conscious ingredients. Today, the company is led by CEO Steven Zoll.
The transaction with TowerBrook and Prelude will allow Amylu to scale operations, expand across channels, and serve a growing consumer base nationwide.
“At Amylu, our success has always been built on delivering great-tasting, clean-ingredient products that our consumers genuinely love and trust,” said Mr. Zoll. “This partnership with TowerBrook is the natural next step for our growth strategy, and we’re confident they’re the right partner to help us expand our business across the nation given their strong track record of scaling food businesses, particularly in the protein space.”
“Amylu’s long-standing commitment to quality, innovation, and health-conscious convenience has earned it a strong reputation in the industry and outstanding commercial momentum,” said Michael Recht, a managing director of TowerBrook. “We look forward to partnering with Steve and the Amylu team to continue to build upon the company’s legacy of delivering unique products to its loyal consumers.”
TowerBrook invests in large and midsize companies headquartered in North America and Europe across an array of industries including business services, consumer products and services, financial services, and healthcare. TowerBrook has offices in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut, and international offices in London, Madrid, Munich, and Milan.
Prelude Growth was founded in 2017 by Neda Daneshzadeh and Alicia Sontag and invests from $10 million to $40 million in high-growth, disruptive consumer brands. Specific sectors of interest include personal care, beauty, food and beverage, baby, pet, health and wellness, and household. The firm closed its second fund, Prelude Growth Partners II LP, at its hard cap of $250 million in February 2021.
Debt to support this transaction was provided by MidCap Financial and Benefit Street Partners, as joint lead arrangers and bookrunners, along with Eldridge Industries, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, Willow Tree Credit Partners, and Stifel. J.P. Morgan was the financial advisor to Amylu.
TowerBrook Capital Partners has partnered with Prelude Growth Partners to acquire Amylu Foods, a provider of chicken protein products.
“Amylu’s long-standing commitment to quality, innovation, and health-conscious convenience has earned it a strong reputation in the industry and outstanding commercial momentum,” said Michael Recht, a managing director of TowerBrook. “We look forward to partnering with Steve and the Amylu team to continue to build upon the company’s legacy of delivering unique products to its loyal consumers.”
