Fledgling plant-based cheese maker Jay & Joy has new owners after three months in receivership.
César Augier, Paris-based VC firm High Flyers Capital and other unnamed investors have snapped up the business. Augier, formerly at consultants McKinsey & Co., is now the company’s CEO.
Jay & Joy, which had secured listings in 1,900 stores in France and had customers in seven other countries in Europe, went into receivership weeks after stopping production in January due to a product recall.
Manufacturing at the French company’s factory in La-Croix-Saint-Ouen was halted after cases of listeriosis were linked to its products.
French food-safety officials only confirmed the “suspicion of listeria”.
The halt means Jay & Joy’s plant-based cheese has not been on sale since January.
The company hopes to resume output in the coming weeks
“We want to start production again this summer. We are unable to give a precise date yet. We are concentrating on quality measures for the moment before restarting production at full capacity,” Augier told Just Food.
He said “the vast majority of the company’s points of sales and distributors want to continue selling Jay & Joy products” after the relaunch.
Augier – now Jay & Joy’s biggest shareholder – led a €2m ($2.2m) fundraising round.
The funds will be used to expand production and for recruitment. “We have recruited an experienced quality manager who will oversee the whole quality health control plan as well as compliance with all procedures. We are also recruiting in production and R&D,” Augier said. “We can easily double production in our current facility.”
Augier has joined Jay & Joy from McKinsey and Co.
He worked as a hedge fund analyst and a VP for the French bank Société Générale between 2006 and 2018 and as a senior consultant and an associate partner for McKinsey and Company from 2018.
“It is an immense pleasure to take the helm of a company that works towards modernising French culinary tradition with exquisite products that are both better for health and the planet,” Augier said.
