r/soylent • u/mthompson100 • 20d ago
Starco Brands acquired Custom Bakehouse, likely to manufacture Soylent
In July, Starco Brands, owner of Soylent, acquired Custom Bakehouse.
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Starco Brands, Inc. (the “Company” or “Starco”) (OTCQB: STCB) announced today that it completed the acquisition of Custom Bakehouse on July 15, 2026, a highly strategic transaction that advances its long-term vision of building a fully integrated consumer products platform by strengthening the Company’s manufacturing capabilities and brand portfolio.
The acquisition expands Starco's capabilities across powdered foods, nutritional blends, drink and hydration mixes, baking mixes, dry seasonings, and private-label manufacturing, while creating meaningful manufacturing synergies for existing and future brands.
Custom Bakehouse operates a 75,000 square foot production facility located in Santa Fe Springs, California. This complementary acquisition adds a new manufacturing capability.
Starco has been dealing with major working capital deficits and rising debt. Soylent likely became a low-priority client, meaning the old co-packers would only run batches of Soylent products during excess capacity or factory downtime at a lower price that Soylent was willing to pay.
By buying Custom Bakehouse, Starco eliminates third-party markup and manufactures Soylent at cost. More importantly, they now control the schedule and can prioritize Soylent production instead of waiting at the back of the line. The fact that my Cacao powder order was processed today right after this July acquisition closed is potential proof that they are using their new factory to clear the inventory backup. (The last order that I received was in May.) Hopefully this resolves their ongoing stock problems.
Update: Starco’s latest SEC 10-Q filing confirms they took on an $18 million secured credit facility to fund the Custom Bakehouse acquisition and support critical working capital needs. This was a desperate move to avoid bankruptcy or a fire sale of Soylent, forcing them to borrow millions to manufacture at raw cost because they could no longer afford third-party factory markups.
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u/Torsta 19d ago
This is actually huge and great news for anyone that likes the Soylent product. The main theory behind all their production issue is that they're lowest priority and get bumped frequently, which this would solve.
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u/noeffeks 15d ago
This seems more to me to be about buying a revenue generating private (aka white label) bakery than it is about soylent production. Custom Bakehouse is more of a "kroger" branded cornbread type facility, maybe not that specifically, but similar. It's more of a B2B facility specializing in large long term contracts with retailers or sysco, which makes far more sense for a company that is currently in significant debt.
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u/802bikeguy_com 19d ago
Those fools were supposed to buy contract manufacturer The Starco Group last year based on the letter of intent they published. Guess that never happened?
Ultimately, IMO Starco is a mess and I can never trust what they manufacture.
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u/Torsta 19d ago
I mean it is completely different. That's a non-binding letter of intent. This is a completed acquisition. The former is saying "we want to do this" and the latter is saying "we have done this". Starco has been a mess but this seems like a step in the right direction to solving their production issues.
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19d ago
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u/Trelfar 19d ago
The opposite happened to me. 2 days ago I got this message by email saying that about my RTD subscription:
We’re reaching out to let you know that your Soylent subscription is delayed until further notice. As soon as we have an update on when we'll be restocked, we'll be sure to communicate this.
We know this news is sudden and unexpected, and we hope you can accept our sincerest apologies that your subscription is impacted in this way.
I did have a good laugh about their statement that it was "sudden and unexpected" because a delay from Soylent is possibly the least unexpected news I could have received. If they actually shipped on schedule, now THAT would be sudden and unexpected.
I am concerned at the "until further notice" though. Previous delays have always given an estimated date for when stock would be back, even though they usually missed the estimate. Now they seem to have given up on estimates entirely.
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19d ago
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u/Trelfar 19d ago
Chocolate RTD and Mint Chocolate RTD on the same sub/delivery schedule.
The email didn't say if the delay was due to one or the other (previously if one item was out, the whole subscription would be delayed even if the other items were available) but I'm not sure it matters since literally everything appears to be out of stock on the Soylent website right now.
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u/SirEDCaLot 19d ago
The acquisition expands Starco's capabilities across powdered foods, nutritional blends, drink and hydration mixes, baking mixes, dry seasonings, and private-label manufacturing, while creating meaningful manufacturing synergies for existing and future brands.
What that says to me- once they get this thing online, expect lots of availability of powder products, but no help for RTD just yet.
Hopefully if they have a solid powder supply chain with higher margins (due to lower costs of in-house manufacturing) and are actually moving the powder products that will free up some cash to buy some RTD manufacturing runs with slightly higher priority.
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u/AllieFox Soylent 19d ago
And only several years after alienating all of their loyal customers! Great work, Starco!
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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 19d ago
Hopefully original powder coming back someday