Chef'd had Campbell and Smithfield backing — it still ran out of cash in a day

Chef'd launched in 2015 in El Segundo, California, selling recipe kits with pre-portioned ingredients — a competitor to Blue Apron and HelloFresh in the meal-kit boom, with a difference: partnerships with big food brands, and investment from Campbell Soup Co. and Smithfield Foods alongside venture capitalists.

On 16 July 2018 chief executive Kyle Ransford told staff in a memo that the company was closing that same day. Hundreds of workers across the El Segundo headquarters and the Brooklyn warehouse were laid off at once. Ransford blamed 'setbacks in financing' caused by 'unexpected circumstances': the company had burned through its cash and the next round of financing never arrived.

Nine days later, on 25 July 2018, True Food Innovations, a Newport Beach investment firm, bought the brand name, plant and equipment — from Chef'd's lender, not from the company. The three-year-old startup with two of the biggest food companies in America behind it ended as an asset sale.