A group of poultry growers is suing the founders of Cooks Venture that filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in April. Blake Evans and Matt Wadiak co-founded Cooks Venture after their involvement in Blue Apron a consistently unprofitable meal-kit company with a questionable future.
Cooks Venture, a somewhat hairbrained operation was chronically underfunded. The Company required a Regenerative Agriculture Poultry Production Agreement, the use of a slow-growing breed and an attempt to sell a non-competitively priced perishable product through the internet with direct shipment to customers. The plaintiffs maintain that the defendants misrepresented the viability of the company inducing them to invest in facilities and upgrades and initiate growing. The plaintiffs alleged gross mismanagement including attempting unrealistic expansion beyond the availability of working capital.
Despite successive infusions of capital from venture investors including PIUS and Golden West Food Group amounting to close to $70 million, the company failed closing facilities in both Oklahoma and Arkansas in November 2023. Why do bright, newly-minted MBAs believe their own spread sheets and assumptions inspired by fast-talking entrepreneurs to funnel investors’ cash into questionable enterprises? Are they bamboozled by aspirations of sustainability and claims of flock welfare and Heritage breeds? Whatever happened to the traditional banking criteria of character, capacity and collateral?