SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--San Francisco Equity Partners (“SFEP”), a private equity firm focused exclusively on partnering with lower middle market companies across the consumer value chain, announced that it has invested in Sales Concepts, Inc. (“Sales Concepts”) and Donovan Food Brokerage, Inc. (“Donovan”) to form Xceed Foodservice Group (“Xceed”). Sales Concepts and Donovan are both high-performing foodservice brokerage companies, currently covering states in the Southeastern U.S. and the Upper Midwest U.S., respectively. Sales Concepts and Donovan owners and industry veterans Darin Pounds, Josh Carnell and Jack Donovan have retained meaningful equity stakes and will form the executive leadership team of the Xceed platform. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.
Xceed was created to invest in and partner with leading regional independent brokerage companies focused on the foodservice ecosystem. The U.S. foodservice industry represents a $1 trillion market comprised of restaurants, school districts, hospital systems, and various other venues where food is consumed away from the home. Through its partner brokerages, Xceed will provide sales and marketing services to food suppliers seeking to grow their business in the complex and localized networks of the foodservice space. The platform will continue to partner with additional best-in-class regional foodservice brokerages in complementary markets.
“We formed Xceed to provide a differentiated level of service and results to our clients and other stakeholders on a larger scale. Our partner brokerages will continue to deliver the benefits of local expertise and regional focus to their clients, and through our partnership, will deliver access to an expanded set of relationships, markets, and resources,” said Darin Pounds, CEO of Xceed.
Each of Xceed’s partner brokerages will retain its existing name, management team and personnel and will operate autonomously in its regional market. Partner brokerages will continue to deliver the localized market knowledge, access and customer engagement that are critical to sustained growth in the foodservice space and will benefit from the sharing of resources, best practices and access to new markets enabled by the Xceed platform.
“We are excited to partner with the Xceed team to build a platform addressing underserved segments of the food manufacturing and foodservice operations space,” said David Mannix, Partner at SFEP.
“The SFEP team shares our vision of building a foodservice brokerage of scale that enables client growth through demand generation at the operator level. Their experience building founder-driven businesses in the consumer value chain will be instrumental to us as we continue to develop Xceed’s footprint and services,” added Jack Donovan, COO of Xceed.
About San Francisco Equity Partners
San Francisco Equity Partners is a private equity firm focused exclusively on partnering with lower middle market companies across the consumer value chain. To each of its partner companies, SFEP serves as an extension of the management team and provides both extensive operating experience and a broad network of relationships across the consumer landscape. For more information, please visit www.sfequitypartners.com.
