Three years after Acosta went through a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, the Jacksonville-based sales and marketing organization is a different company.
It’s not just the debt that was wiped off the books in the reorganization. After emerging with new owners and leadership, the nearly century-old company took steps to expand its breadth of services.
“Our clients and customers are aware we’re a different company than we were just a few years ago,” said Brian Wynne, who joined Acosta as CEO in July 2020.
Acosta was founded in 1927 and grew into a national company that focused on connecting consumer packaged goods companies with retailers to get their products to shoppers.
It has more than 35,000 employees, including more than 300 in Jacksonville, serving clients mainly in North America but also in Western Europe.
In the past three years, the company has made acquisitions that expanded its business including more services for restaurants and in digital commerce.
With its more diverse services, the company announced Feb. 28 it is rebranding itself as the “Acosta Group” to integrate its business units together.
“We have a lot of brands that are really relevant in the marketplace,” Wynne said in a Feb. 21 interview.
“Acosta Group is the string that pulls those brands together for our clients.”
Besides the traditional Acosta business serving retailers, the company’s divisions include CORE Foodservice, which works with restaurants.
The food service business grew with the 2021 acquisition of The Core Group.
That was a difficult time for the restaurant industry. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, more consumers were eating at home but Acosta decided to “double-down” on the food service industry, Wynne said.
“It was a pretty aggressive bet to be making at the time,” he said.
Another trend that emerged from the pandemic was more consumers shopping online, and Acosta has expanded its capabilities in digital commerce. It is also offering services for companies to offer brands directly to consumers, as opposed to Acosta’s traditional business of placing brands in retail stores.
“We’ve built out a lot of capabilities that really emerged during the pandemic,” Wynne said.
Acosta has also expanded into services for consumer electronic brands.
“That represents such a huge opportunity for us going forward,” Wynne said.
In Acosta’s Chapter 11 reorganization, the company converted about $3 billion of debt into equity, with a group of fund management companies becoming the owners of the company.
As a private company, Acosta doesn’t provide financial details but Wynne said the investment group has shown its confidence in the business by putting more money into it.
A large company owned by a group of investment firms would be a prime candidate to become publicly traded with an initial public offering, but Wynne said he couldn’t comment on the group’s plans.
“Each would have different views about timing of their investments and aspirations of their investments,” he said.
Wynne said Acosta Group has a lot of momentum as it launches its new brand and the investors are fully supporting it.
“They really feel like we’re on a winning team,” he said.