BONITA SPRINGS, Fla., Jan. 31, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Innovative Gourmet, a subsidiary of Innovative Food Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB:IVFH), a leading provider of high quality specialty food for both professional chefs and consumers, has acquired substantially all the assets of one of North America’s leading online gourmet food and gift retailers. The business will operate under igourmet’s valued and trusted trade name.
igourmet offers a wide assortment of high quality gourmet and specialty food products through www.igourmet.com, and through a full line of omnichannel partners. In addition, through its specialty foodservice division, igourmet offers a wide assortment of specialty food products to restaurants, specialty retailers and other business establishments. Operated by industry veterans, igourmet is a trusted resource for millions of gourmet food shoppers.
“The acquisition of igourmet’s business is synergistic to our current mission of providing small specialty food companies direct access to the kitchens of end users nationwide,” explained Sam Klepfish, CEO of Innovative Food Holdings. “Our professional management systems will benefit igourmet and they will serve as an additional distribution center for us.”
A key goal of the acquisition is to leverage igourmet’s current available capacity, including 19,000 square feet of underutilized space available in the igourmet 65,000 square foot warehouse, as well as capacity available due to the seasonality of the current igourmet business, to drive additional revenue growth opportunities, including additional foodservice opportunities in new geographic markets and locations.
“We plan on working closely with the igourmet team towards quickly driving bottom line profitability through operational efficiencies, cross-company synergies and margin improvement,” explained Justin Wiernasz, President of Innovative Food Holdings. “We believe this acquisition provides Innovative Food Holdings with both near term and long term revenue and bottom line opportunities, in several key specialty food market areas.”
The CEO and founder of igourmet, Spencer Chesman, a gourmet and specialty food industry leader, has been named President of Innovative Gourmet. Innovative Gourmet will operate the igourmet business as a wholly-owned subsidiary, with its officers reporting directly to senior management of Innovative Food Holdings.
Spencer Chesman commented, “I am excited to be part of the Innovative Food Holdings family of companies. I believe this transaction provides significant opportunity to increase top and bottom line growth at igourmet as well as expand into several new ecommerce food markets. I look forward to working together with the Innovative Food Holdings team and bringing our expertise and industry relationships towards the success of igourmet.”
Mr. Klepfish concluded, “As the specialty food world rapidly evolves, we continue to see significant shifts towards e-commerce across multiple channels. We are particularly excited to have acquired one of the leading direct to consumer e-commerce brands in the specialty and gourmet food space, which significantly expands our specialty food distribution channel capabilities. We believe that Innovative Food Holdings’ expanded range of distribution channels can provide significant value to new and emerging foodservice and CPG brands across a broad spectrum of unique specialty food products, and enables Innovative Food Holdings to be well positioned for multiple revenue and value add growth opportunities.”
About Innovative Food Holdings
Innovative Food Holdings (OTCQB:IVFH) is the industry-leading specialty food platform in the foodservice and consumer markets, providing chefs and consumers direct access to the highest quality specialty food products across the United States. For more information, visit www.ivfh.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains certain forward-looking statements and information relating to Innovative Food Holdings, Inc. (the “Company”) that are based on the current beliefs of the Company’s management, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, the Company. Such statements reflect the current views of the Company with respect to future events and are subject to certain assumptions, including those described in this release. Should one or more of these underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as “should,” “could,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “intend,” “plan,” “might,” “potentially” or “expect.” The Company does not intend to update these forward-looking statements. Information about third parties was supplied to the Company by third parties and we accept no responsibility for its accuracy.