Last updated on June 13th, 2024
Stonewall Kitchen, a specialty food manufacturer, marketer and retailer owned by Centre Partners, a New York private equity firm, has completed its acquisition of the Tillen Farms brand of premium cocktail garnishes, including crisp pickled vegetables and Pacific Northwest cherries.
“We are very excited to combine our two premium specialty food brands,” said John Stiker, Stonewall Kitchen CEO. “Tillen Farms is a strong and well-recognized brand and a leader in the pickled vegetable and cocktail cherry categories, with offerings like pickled asparagus, spicy dilly beans and their signature Bada Bing cherries. We look forward to welcoming the Tillen Farms team into our organization, which will allow us to leverage the strengths of both brands to help grow each other.”
Tim Metzger, founder of Tillen Farms, added, “Joining the Stonewall Kitchen family is the perfect fit for us. They have long been known for their strengths in product development and brand building, and we’ve already started working together on several new products set to launch later this year which will be wonderful additions to our already successful product line-up. I look forward to working with the Stonewall Kitchen team to bring Tillen Farms to the next level and to realize our full growth potential.”
Stiker said the acquisition of Tillen Farms represents Stonewall Kitchen’s “first step towards achieving our vision of becoming the premier specialty foods platform in North America. With our expertise in brand building, product development and omni-channel distribution, we are excited to continue to grow our business both organically and through additional selective acquisitions.”
Stonewall Kitchen, a specialty food producer headquartered in York, Maine, was founded in 1991 by partners Jonathan King and Jim Stott. The two established themselves selling jams and jellies at local farmers’ markets, fairs and festivals with their line of distinctive and high-quality food items.
Over time, they expanded their product line to include sauces, condiments, dressings and baking mixes. Today it serves more than 6,000 wholesale accounts nationwide and internationally in addition to thriving catalog and web divisions and 10 retail company stores along the East Coast.
Stonewall Kitchen has won 29 awards from the Specialty Food Association, including winning the Outstanding Product Line Honors three times.
Introduced in 2004, the Tillen Farms brand features a line of 12 “best in class” cocktail garnishes sold to the grocery, specialty, health food, liquor and foodservice classes of trade. A SOFI award Finalist in the appetizer category, Tillen Farms’ vegetables and cherries are gluten free, vegan and nut and peanut free; most varieties are kosher and non-GMO certified.
