Food And Beverage Brands That Went Bankrupt In 2025

Every year brings its share of business bankruptcies, and most of them go unnoticed. A few do catch the eye, if they center around high-profile companies or CEOs, or — especially — if they involve brands we interact with every day. That’s probably why bankruptcies in food-oriented businesses are so memorable, because we all eat every day. The restaurant industry, for example, is notoriously tough, and definitely saw its share of bankruptcies in 2025.

But restaurant bankruptcies aren’t the only ones that have an impact on our eating habits, because prominent food and beverage brands are frequently affected as well. Remember the Great Twinkies Panic of 2012, when Hostess was shut down by its previous ownership group? Yeah, like that. Only one of 2025’s food and beverage bankruptcies (so far) has been on that scale, but this year’s batch ranges from niche startups to some of the oldest and most iconic brands on the shelves.

This one won’t be a surprise to anyone who pays attention to food safety and food-related recalls. Fresh cheeses, like Mexican-style queso fresco, are especially vulnerable to foodborne pathogens like listeria, which is why the FDA offers specific guidance about it.

Modesto-based cheesemaker Rizo Lopez foods has been a big player in that market, selling its products under a range of brands including its own brands (Don Francisco, Tio Francisco, Rizo Brothers, Santa Maria, and many more) as well as filling orders as Whole Foods’ 365 brand. Unfortunately for Rizo Lopez and its customers, the company was forced to recall massive quantities of cheese, and cease operations, after the CDC traced a long-running listeria outbreak to its production facilities.

The fatal infections took place over a period of 10 years and an area including 11 states, causing 26 illnesses and 2 fatalities. Unsurprisingly, after taking such a hit to its core business, the company announced in 2025 that it was shutting down. To be clear, this isn’t one of the worst listeria outbreaks in US history, but it is one of the biggest cheese recalls.

Stoli Group USA, the American subsidiary of the company best known for its vodka, entered chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2025 after some big hits to its bottom line. It was caught in the anti-Russian backlash after the invasion of Ukraine, for example, which is when the name was shortened from Stolichnaya to just “Stoli.” Ironically, the vodka has been produced in Latvia since the beginning of this century, when its founder got on Vladimir Putin’s bad side.

A second irony is that, despite the beverage company’s Russian and European roots, much of its current cash crunch came from its investment in American spirits, specifically whiskey. Bourbon enjoyed a boom from the beginning of this century until about 2023, according to figures from the Distilled Spirits Council, and Stoli joined the bourbon “gold rush” by purchasing the recently revived Kentucky Owl brand. The problem was that it takes a long time for bourbon to age, and it wasn’t until 2025 that the new, state-of-the-art distillery was ready to hit full production. Unfortunately for Stoli, by this time spirits sales in general were sagging. Kentucky bourbon was especially hard-hit, in part because of all the new players (like Stoli) trying to cash in on the boom. A politically-inspired boycott by Canadians, traditionally Kentucky’s biggest export market, certainly didn’t help.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy just means a company is restructuring its debt (like you refinancing your mortgage), so Stoli Group and its brands aren’t going anywhere.

Lots of startups try to follow in the footsteps of Amazon or Uber by disrupting an established industry. Agriculture goes back thousands of years, which is pretty “established,” so it’s unsurprising that companies like Plenty Unlimited chose that industry to target. Many publications (including Tasting Table) touted vertical indoor growers like Plenty as “the future of farming.”

For Plenty and its peers, the future isn’t quite here yet. The company filed for bankruptcy in March of 2025, citing “larger market dynamics” (ie, “it’s not us, it’s the economy), and emerged from Chapter 11 at the end of May. The reorganization including closing the company’s farm in Compton, CA, opened just 2 years ago in 2023 and still described on its site at the time of writing as “our flagship location,” but Plenty’s research center in Laramie, WY, and its new strawberry-growing facility near Richmond, VA, remain open.

Part of the issue for Plenty and its peers has been that growing low-margin salad greens in high-cost locations (like LA-area Compton, with its stiff energy pricing) is a tough business model. Plenty is now shifting its focus to growing premium strawberries, a higher-margin product, under an exclusive deal with California-based Driscoll’s. Its existing financing from Silicon Valley giants, the Driscoll’s deal, new investment from Walmart, and a deal to put Plenty’s product in the chain’s stores, might be enough to finally get Plenty over the (vertical) hump.

Loma Linda is the exact opposite of a disruptive startup. The longtime food brand’s history goes back over a century: it was founded by John Harvey Kellogg (the brother of breakfast-cereal tycoon W.K. Kellogg, and co-inventor of Corn Flakes), back in 1905.

The company had been operated by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church until 1990, eventually (after a few acquisitions) being owned by Atlantic Natural Foods. The vegetarian emphasis the Loma Linda brand inherited from its longtime Adventist ownership made Loma Linda a natural fit for Atlantic, which also owns well-known vegetarian brands including plant-based chicken substitute Chick’n, fish-free canned “Tuno,” and faux-meat brand neat (the small ‘n’ is deliberate, like the i in iPhone), among others. .

Unfortunately for Atlantic Natural Foods and all of its subsidiary brands, a failed merger with Above Foods (a similarly vegetarian-oriented operation), left the company with significant cash flow problems. ANF entered Chapter 11 in 2025, and has announced an auction of its assets. Philippine-based company Century Pacific, which manufactures Loma Linda and other brands under license for the Asian market, already has an asset purchase agreement in place with Atlantic. The bottom line? The company has some work to do to get its financial house in order, but if you’re a fan of its vegetarian/plant-based products, they’ll still be available at your favorite retailers.

Fans of the TV show Shark Tank will know that food-oriented entrepreneurs regularly pitch their businesses to the “Sharks.” Some make deals and some don’t, but just the exposure of being on the show has helped launch some of the best shark tank food.

If you were watching in February of 2025, the name “Joyebells” might (cough) ring a bell. The small, family-owned company, a literal mom-and-pop startup, had its origin in a really sweet idea: Take the founders’ own family pie recipes, and sell them. The slogan “(Yes, it’s that good”) has some substance behind it; in 2023, Joybells took a blue ribbon at the National Pie Championships. While the Sharks ultimately passed on the company, that exposure gave Joyebells a big bump in popularity.

Unfortunately, as the owners quickly discovered, one of the hardest things to do is successfully scale up a business. Supply chain issues and problems with a key ingredient (underripe peaches) caused a ton of problems for the owners, despite the pies’ popularity. The company is now in Chapter 11, and has shifted to crafting its pies in frozen, ready-to-bake form, which will be sold regionally at outlets like Kroger’s and Costco. Sadly for the owners, they’d put everything into the company and are undergoing a personal bankruptcy too. We wish them well, because we’re big fans of a good pie, and they have a great story to tell.

The kombucha craze was good for a lot of companies, and it’s built to last: Industry figures project sales will more than double between 2024 and 2030. Of course, any boom market brings both winners and losers, and in 2025, gravity caught up to Washington-based Kombucha Town.

The company was founded in 2011 by farmer’s market vendor Chris McCoy, in Bellingham, Washington. His timing was good, with industry figures showing kombucha sales overall growing from just $1 million in 2014 to $1.8 billion in 2019. Its first few years read like a classic American success story: It grew steadily from a home-kitchen setup to a fully professional operation, adding employees and a hometown storefront as it went. Sales tripled from 2015 to 2019, when Kombucha Town was in 1200 stores across 30 states, and topped $1.1 million in revenues, and invested in enough new production capacity to expand into an additional 800 stores. Then … COVID hit, with supply-chain disruptions in its wake. Revenues dropped to under $800,000 in 2020 and less than $550,000 in 2021, and the company faced a serious cash crunch.

Federal COVID relief programs, crowdfunding and a local angel investor all helped keep things going, and sales rebounded strongly (as of 2024 the product was in over 4000 stores, and revenues topped $5.6 million), but the company remained financially overextended. By July 2025 owner Chris McCoy had no choice but to put Kombucha Town into Chapter 11. He hopes to restructure the company’s crippling debt, and continue operations.

There isn’t much doubt about the most notable bankruptcy in food this year. With its high profile, its 130-year history and the massive scale of its liabilities, that title has to go to Del Monte.

When Del Monte filed for bankruptcy on July 1, 2025, it was a shock to grocery shoppers but not to industry observers. Despite the company’s massive size and long history, its financial standing has been clouded for several years. It spun off the fresh-produce side of its business in 1988, followed by its Starkist seafood brand and pet food division in this century, left the core canned-food business as its major money-maker. That meant it was susceptible to market forces, like a consumer shift to fresh produce, the past few years’ notorious supply-chain issues, and the current on-again, off-again tariffs on imported metals.

Another massive issue was the company’s leveraged buyout by private equity in 2011, and then a second highly-leveraged buyout in 2014. The two buyouts stripped the company of assets (like the selloff of the pet food division), while simultaneously saddling it with a mountain of debt, making it more vulnerable to the market forces we just mentioned.

That’s why the Chapter 11 filing cited liabilities (and assets) of and eye-popping “$1 billion to $10 billion.” So what happens next with Del Monte? Don’t worry, the iconic brand isn’t going anywhere just yet. There’s money in place to keep operating while its negotiates settlement and restructuring options with creditors.