The Livekindly Company

The Livekindly Company

The Livekindly Company launched in March 2020 as a vehicle to consolidate plant-based food brands into a single operating collective. Blue Horizon, a Swiss impact investor, anchored the firm alongside S2G Ventures. Kees Kruythoff, a former Unilever and FrieslandCampina executive, became CEO to build a multi-brand, multi-continent operation designed to accelerate the shift away from industrial animal agriculture. The company pursues a buy-and-build strategy, acquiring established plant-based food brands and scaling them through shared manufacturing, distribution, and marketing infrastructure. Within its first 18 months, Livekindly completed four acquisitions: South Africa's Fry Family Food, the UK's LikeMeat, Germany's Oumph!, and a majority stake in Iceland's No Meat. Its product portfolio spans frozen meat alternatives, chilled items, and pantry staples distributed across retail and foodservice channels in Europe, North America, South Africa, and Australia. Livekindly shares a name and brand umbrella with Livekindly Media, a plant-based lifestyle publication founded by Jodi Monelle, but operates as a separate entity. The firm's founding postures it as a commercial consolidator rather than an early-stage venture investor. In May 2022, the company rebranded its U.S. operations as Livekindly Collective North America and named former Danone executive John Burke as President, signaling a deepened focus on the U.S. market. The structural differentiator is the conglomerate model itself. Rather than backing individual startups and hoping for exits, Livekindly acquires proven regional brands, removes duplicative overhead, and pushes them through established retail relationships. This approach borrows from traditional CPG roll-up playbooks rather than Silicon Valley venture capital — a strategic divergence in a field otherwise dominated by asset-light, VC-funded startups.