The rise and fall of The Very Good Butchers is one of those business stories that feels like a fever dream. One minute, they were the darlings of the vegan world, smashing records on Dragon’s Den and seeing their stock price skyrocket. The next? They’re shuttering doors, leaving investors holding the bag and fans wondering where their favorite plant-based ribs went. Honestly, it’s a mess.
You’ve probably seen the headlines. Or maybe you just noticed the empty shelves where the "Very Good Pepperoni" used to sit. It wasn't just another meat alternative company; it was a movement born out of Victoria, British Columbia, that promised to "butcher beans, not animals." It felt different. It felt local even when it went global. But the transition from a small shop in a public market to a publicly traded entity on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) is a brutal gauntlet that many companies fail to run.
Why The Very Good Butchers Scaled Too Fast
The math didn't add up. Basically, the company—operating under the parent name The Very Good Food Company—hit the gas pedal before they had enough fuel in the tank. They weren't just making sausages; they were building a massive production empire. They opened a production facility in Vancouver. They looked at another one in California. They were everywhere.
Success came too quickly.
In 2020, they went public. The stock symbol was VERY, and for a while, it was. The share price surged as retail investors poured money into anything plant-based, riding the coattails of Beyond Meat’s success. But behind the scenes, the burn rate was staggering. When you're spending millions on marketing and infrastructure while your cost of goods sold is still sky-high, you’re essentially subsidized by investor cash. When that cash dried up as the market turned sour on "growth at all costs" tech and food-tech stocks, the floor fell out.
It’s easy to blame the market. But internal shifts played a massive role. The founders, Mitchell Scott and James Davison, were eventually ousted by the board in 2022. That’s usually the "beginning of the end" signal for a brand built on a specific, personal mission. New leadership came in to "optimize," but by then, the debt was a mountain.
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The Dragon’s Den Effect
Remember the pitch? It’s legendary in Canadian startup circles. They walked into the Den and walked out with a deal from all five Dragons. It was the kind of television moment that creates instant brand equity. People trusted them because they saw the passion. They saw the "Butcher's Select" line—their premium, soy-free, gluten-free offering—and thought this was the future of food.
The problem is that TV hype doesn't fix supply chain issues.
Shipping frozen plant-based meat is expensive. It’s heavy. It requires cold-chain logistics that eat margins alive. The Very Good Butchers tried to do a heavy Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) model alongside retail. Managing thousands of individual shipments of frozen bean-burgers across North America is a nightmare. Customers started complaining about long wait times and thawed packages. You can have the best marketing in the world, but if the box arrives a week late and it's a puddle of melted "taco stuffer," you’ve lost that customer forever.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Failure
People think the world stopped eating plant-based meat. That’s not quite it. While the "hype" cooled off, the real issue for The Very Good Butchers was the "bridge to profitability." They never crossed it.
They weren't just competing with meat; they were competing with Big Food. When Maple Leaf Foods (through Greenleaf/Field Roast) and Nestlé entered the space, the cost of shelf space went through the roof. A small-ish company from Victoria simply couldn't outspend the giants for the prime "eye-level" real estate in the grocery store.
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The Receivership Reality
In early 2023, the hammer dropped. The company entered receivership. Wayland Management was appointed, and the search for a buyer began. It was a fire sale. The assets—the recipes, the brand name, the equipment—were eventually sold to Reef Capital.
Is the brand coming back?
Sorta. But it won't be the same. When a brand goes through the "liquidation wash," the soul often stays behind. The original Victoria shop, the heart of the whole operation, is gone. The community-centric vibe has been replaced by a quest to recover value from the intellectual property.
The Quality Paradox
Let’s be real: the food was actually good. Unlike some of the ultra-processed "lab meats" that taste like chemistry experiments, The Very Good Butchers relied heavily on whole foods. Navy beans, chickpeas, wheat gluten, and beets. It was "meat" you could identify in a garden.
This was their greatest strength and their biggest weakness.
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- Whole ingredients are often more expensive to process into a meat-like texture.
- Shorter shelf lives mean more waste at the retail level.
- Labor-intensive production methods (hand-stuffing sausages) don't scale easily to millions of units.
The "Butcher's Select" line was supposed to be the savior. It was targeted at the health-conscious vegan who avoids soy. It won awards. It tasted great. But it was priced at a premium during a time when inflation was making everyone reach for the cheaper, private-label canned beans instead of a $12 pack of plant-based brats.
Actionable Insights for the Plant-Based Future
If you’re an entrepreneur or just a fan of the industry, there are cold, hard lessons to be learned from the VERY wreckage. You can’t ignore the unit economics just because your mission is noble.
Watch the Burn Rate
If you're a business owner, growth should never outpace your ability to fulfill orders profitably. The Very Good Butchers spent like a Silicon Valley software company but operated in a low-margin food industry. That's a recipe for a crash.
Niche vs. Mass Market
Sometimes, staying "small and local" is the most profitable path. The original Victoria location was a goldmine. Expanding to a global footprint required a level of capital and logistics expertise that the company just wasn't ready for. If you have a cult following, protect the cult before trying to convert the masses.
Transparency is Key
Investors and customers felt blindsided by the sudden collapse. In the modern era, if things are going sideways with your shipping or your debt, being upfront can sometimes save the brand's reputation, even if the business fails.
Diversify Your Distribution
Relying too heavily on DTC (direct-to-consumer) for frozen goods is risky. If you're in the food space, getting into regional distributors who already have the "cold trucks" on the road is vital. Trying to build your own logistics network from scratch is almost always a mistake.
The story of The Very Good Butchers isn't just about vegan food; it's a cautionary tale about the "green rush" in the stock market. It reminds us that at the end of the day, a burger—whether it's made of a cow or a kidney bean—has to make sense on a balance sheet. For now, the "very good" era of the Victoria founders is over, leaving behind a blueprint of what to do—and exactly what to avoid—in the world of sustainable business.