October 21, 2015

Chicago-based S2G Ventures, a new venture fund focusing on food, beverages, and agriculture has been launched with an initial corpus of $125 million, making it the largest such fund in the U.S.

Co-founded by its three managing directors, Victor E. Friedberg, who was himself a co-founder of the Launch accelerator, Sanjeev Krishnan, formerly with CLSA Capital and the Global Environment Fund, and Chuck Templeton, the founder and former chief executive of Open Table, S2G, (which stands for ‘seed to growth) has already deployed 18% of its fund exclusively to agriculture and food ventures.

The firm is targeting and seeking out investment opportunities not only within the ag and food sectors, but more specifically, with companies and ventures that understand and deliver what today’s consumers want – namely, a high level of nutrition, organic products, a high level of transparency, and local production. The fund will also pursue investments in innovative companies involved in soil health and land management, controlled environment food production platforms, healthy food retail outlets, and food storage, distribution and transportation systems – an investment strategy that the founders refer to as ‘soil to shelf’.

S2G has already made investments in eight companies including, plant-based meat alternative company, Beyond Meat, healthy food shopping app, Shopwell, soil health company, Midwestern BioAg, live and fresh-cut herb company, Shenandoah Growers, food processing platform that uses mushroom technology to improve the taste and functionality of foods, MycoTechnology, 100% grass-fed and organic dairy and yogurt company, Maple Hill Creamery, health food endeavor, Sweetgreen, and online marketplace and data subscription service for organic and non-GMO commodities, Mercaris.

“We’re seeing tectonic shifts in the food industry that consumers are driving,” says Friedberg. “People want better tasting, more nutritious, healthy and sustainable food. The problem is our existing food system is designed to produce cheap calories, and it is not designed to supply healthy, sustainable and affordable nutrition at scale. This provides a great opportunity for innovators and investors, and S2G is seizing the opportunity.”