- HQ: Louisville, KY
- Category: Manufacturing / Distribution
- Investment: Sold to Teasdale Foods
Mesa Foods is a leading manufacturer of private label flour and corn tortillas, flatbreads, tacos shells and taco kits serving a long standing, multi-channel customer base across leading retail, food manufacturing and foodservice accounts.
Mesa’s location in Louisville, Kentucky enables it to have a geographical advantage to serve key markets in the Southern U.S. and on the East Coast as two thirds of the U.S. population is within 600 miles of Louisville. Mesa is the largest supplier of tortillas, flatbreads, and taco shells within a 400-mile radius, and has the flexibility of a smaller manufacturer combined with the capacity and efficiency to serve large, national customers.
Encore provided Mesa with liquidity for shareholders and the founders maintained a meaningful minority share of the Company.
Encore partnered with management to acquire Aidells Sausage Company. Aidells was privately owned by the retiring Chairman and the Company’s President. The Aidells management team remained intact after the acquisition and reinvested in the Company alongside Encore.
Investment Period Highlights
- Innovation of on-trend offerings, such as organic, flavored, and gluten free tortillas and taco shells enabled new customer wins
- Strategic focus on developing private label tortilla programs for retailers resulted in significant customer growth in the East and Southeast
- Invested in two new production lines to add capacity and drive revenue growth
- Focus on infrastructure, labor and process efficiencies significantly increased productivity as EBITDA nearly doubled in 3 years
Encore has been a great partner over the past three years. They’ve provided strategic guidance and helped us expand our capacity and capabilities. We look forward to continuing producing high quality products for our customers as a part of the Teasdale organization.
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