Why I Built Partake

I never planned to be an entrepreneur. If you'd asked me in 2015 where I'd be in ten years, I'd have told you I was building something meaningful at Coca-Cola, and that was enough. Then my daughter turned blue in my living room, and everything changed.

Vivienne (Vivi) was just past her first birthday. She ate a simple snack, and within minutes she was in the emergency room. She came home with a diagnosis of multiple food allergies: corn, tree nuts, eggs, and bananas. She was a baby. I was the director of national sales for Coca-Cola's Venturing and Emerging Brands division, working on brands like Honest Tea and ZICO Coconut Water. I knew this industry well, and I could not find a single snack on the market that was safe, genuinely nutritious, and actually appealing enough for a toddler to want to eat.

I spent months looking. I read every label. I called manufacturers. I found products that were safe but tasted like cardboard, and products that tasted decent but weren't safe, and nothing that was both. And I kept coming back to the same thought originally seeded by my nanny, Martha: someone needs to make this. I had the industry knowledge, the network, and the personal motivation. If not me, who?

I incorporated Partake on June 1, 2016 as Vivi’s Life in honor of wanting to make Vivi’s life better. Shortly after, I landed on Partake. The name came from a simple idea: I wanted Vivi, and anyone with food allergies, to be able to participate, to not be excluded from the shared food moments that most people take for granted. That idea turned out to be bigger than a cookie.

I spent the better part of a decade at Coca-Cola, and I loved it. I started in sales, found my professional home in the Venturing and Emerging Brands division, and eventually rose to director of national sales. I was responsible for helping brands with a mission, better ingredients, and a different vision for what food could be scale into national distribution. I helped founders build something, and I was proud of that work.

When Vivi was diagnosed, I didn't quit immediately. I spent about a year in recipe development, researching manufacturers, and trying to figure out whether I could actually build what I was imagining. I entered a local pitch competition and won. That was the first signal that this wasn't just a personal project.

I left Coca-Cola in August 2017. I had no employees, no external funding, and no distribution. What I had was a product I believed in, a decade of CPG experience, and the kind of motivation that doesn't let you stop.

 

When I couldn't find solutions that met my nutritional standards, safely satisfied Vivi's taste buds, and would allow her to confidently snack alongside her friends — I decided to make them myself.

 

One thing I want to be honest about: leaving Coca-Cola was not the romantic leap it sometimes gets described as. I had resources there that I took for granted — a legal team, broker relationships, category data, institutional knowledge built over years. I lost all of that overnight. What was harder than I expected wasn't the product development or even the fundraising (though that was harder than I thought it would be). It was having the humility, as a genuinely introverted person, to go out and ask for help. I had to learn that the hard way.

In the beginning, Partake was entirely self-funded and self-distributed. I filled my car with inventory and drove to natural food stores in New York and New Jersey to pitch, demo, and stock shelves myself. I got into a region of Whole Foods Market and Wegmans early, which was genuine validation. But the money ran out faster than the orders came in.

I drained my 401(k). I sold my engagement ring. My husband Jeremy was supportive throughout, but I want to be clear about what that period actually looked like: we were betting everything on a product that the market wasn't yet looking for, from a founder the venture community had very little practice backing.

I didn't hire a full-time employee until 2020. Every dollar we made went back into operations. I was founder, sales rep, logistics coordinator, and customer service team simultaneously. What kept me going was the response from food-allergy families. Parents wrote to say their child had been able to eat the same snack as everyone else at a birthday party for the first time. That's not a small thing. That was exactly why I built this.

 

On taste:  The single most important product decision I made was refusing to compromise on flavor. I kept seeing allergen-free products that were safe but joyless. I knew that if Partake tasted like a product designed around restriction, we'd never reach the families who needed us most — the ones whose children were already navigating enough difference. The cookie had to be good enough that a kid without any allergies would choose it first.

 

Before Partake went nationwide, 86 investors turned us down. I kept detailed notes on every rejection. Some were skeptical about the market size. Some questioned whether allergen-free could scale as a mainstream category rather than a specialty niche. A few said it outright: they didn't see the opportunity. I did not agree with any of them, and I kept going.

In 2019, Marcy Venture Partners, the venture capital firm co-founded by Jay-Z, Jay Brown, and Larry Marcus, led a $1 million seed round for Partake. That check made me the first Black woman to raise more than $1 million publicly for a consumer packaged goods food startup.

I want to dwell on that for a moment because that statistic says something important about the industry. Less than 1% of all venture capital goes to Black women founders. In the consumer food and beverage industry, that underrepresentation is even more pronounced. The market for inclusive food products is enormous, the unmet need is documented, the consumer demand is real, and the funding that reaches the founders building those products has been, until recently, nearly nonexistent.

MVP's investment unlocked national distribution at Target for Partake. The brand's retail footprint grew from a handful of stores to thousands within two years. It also signaled to other investors that this was a serious company and a brand with a mission and the potential to scale.

When I raised a Series A in January 2021, I made deliberate choices about who I wanted on our cap table. More than 50% of Partake's total funding at that point had come from Black investors intentionally.

Rihanna joined the Series A. H.E.R. had participated in an earlier round. Jay-Z's Marcy Venture Partners returned. Other investors included CircleUp Growth Partners, Lotus Bakeries' FF2032 fund, Kevin Johnson's Black Capital, Black Star Fund, Seattle Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner, and John Foraker, CEO of Once Upon a Farm. Rihanna's participation was notable as it was her first investment in a company outside her own ventures, including Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin.

 

As a Black and Asian woman, it's important to me that I am bringing profit to Black investors who are going to take the returns and reinvest them into other Black founders to keep that money circulating and growing.

 

I've been asked many times whether being deliberate about investor demographics is good business strategy or a personal values stance. My answer is that it's both, and I don't see a meaningful difference between the two. A cap table that reflects the communities I'm building for, and that recirculates capital in those communities, is not charity. It is exactly how wealth gets built. The food industry has historically been built by a narrow group of people. I believe it will be better for consumers, founders, and investors when that changes.

By the end of 2021, Partake was in more than 5,500 retail locations and had grown 200% year-over-year.

In October 2022, I closed a Series B led by Supply Change Capital, with participation from Fearless Fund, CAST US Fund, and Marcy Venture Partners. At the time of closing, we were in 9,000 retail locations across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. We were named No. 45 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America that year.

The Series B funded continued expansion into more stores, new product categories, and institutional channels. In 2023, we partnered with Ben & Jerry's (Partake cookies in their dairy-free Oatmeal Dream Pie), with Marvel for limited-edition packaging, and with DoubleTree by Hilton for an allergy-friendly chocolate chip cookie to complement their “Warm Cookie Welcome.” In 2024, we expanded onto JetBlue flights. By the time I'm writing this, Partake is in 11,000+ retail locations.

We also earned our Certified B Corporation status in 2023 which is something I'm genuinely proud of, because it's not self-declared. B Corp certification requires an independent audit. Our score reflects a company that has actually embedded its stated values into how it operates, not just how it markets.

Black Futures in Food & Beverage

In 2020, I founded the Black Futures in Food & Beverage Fellowship Program. The premise is straightforward: the consumer packaged goods industry is one of the largest and most influential sectors of the American economy, and it has historically looked nothing like the consumers it serves. I wanted to use the platform Partake was building to open a door that should have been open much sooner.

The program pairs HBCU students with paid internships at major food and beverage companies. The capstone is a demo day where fellows pitch executive leadership from household-name brands, with the explicit goal of converting those pitches into offers. By the end of 2023, we had supported three cohorts. That year, the fellowship became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — which means it can grow beyond Partake's direct support and serve more students over time.

I believe deeply in the principle of lifting as you climb. I was given opportunities that shaped what I was able to build. I have an obligation to create those opportunities for people who deserve them and haven't been given access.

Fighting Food Insecurity

We give consistently to organizations fighting food insecurity in the United States. The connection between food allergy advocacy and food insecurity is not coincidental. Black children in the United States have higher rates of food allergy diagnoses than white children. Top 9 allergen-free products tend to be more expensive. Food-insecure families have significantly less access to safe options. The mission to make safe food accessible is, at its core, a health equity mission, and I don't think you can separate the two.

When I came up with the name Partake, it came from wanting Vivi to be able to participate — to not be the kid with the separate snack, the different lunch, the birthday cupcake in a separate bag. That image of exclusion was what I was fighting against.

But as I built the company, I realized the same principle applied everywhere. As a first-time founder, I needed access I didn't automatically have. As a Black woman, I was operating in a venture ecosystem that had very little practice funding people who look like me. As a woman of color building a brand for underserved consumers, I was doing work the industry needed but had not prioritized. "Partake" stopped being just about food allergies. It became a framework for radical inclusivity — applied to products, to capital, to hiring, to career opportunity.

 

As the leader of a Black-owned, women-led business, it's abundantly clear to me how often people do not have the opportunity to partake. I view this company as a vehicle for radical inclusivity that creates a bigger table to celebrate everyone.

 

Our leadership team is majority women. Our Board is majority women of color. Our investors are primarily women, people of color, or funds that invest in those groups. That is not window dressing. It is a deliberate construction of what I believe a company should look like and one that puts its stated values into practice and is held accountable for doing so.

Every cookie in every Partake bag is a small piece of that, and the story is still being written.

Vivi is not a toddler anymore. She has grown up watching this company get built for her and for the millions of families who needed something the market wasn't providing. One of the things I most want her to see is that the hard work, the rejection, the perseverance can be enough. That what you build when you know it's necessary can become something that matters.

The 33 million Americans managing food allergies are still navigating every birthday party, school lunch, and grocery store label-reading with the same vigilance they always have. What I hope has changed is this: at least one brand in the allergen-free space was built by one of them. By a mother who sat in an emergency room with her one-year-old and decided the market needed to do better.

That's why I built Partake. And that's why I'm still building it.

 

Learn more:  Partake Foods is available in 11,000+ retail locations including Whole Foods Market, Walmart, Kroger, and more. Find Your Store