The Capital Play
Meat N' Bone is raising $4 million in pre-Series A equity to fund the infrastructure behind an aggressive national expansion — franchising buildout, logistics, marketing, and debt repayment among the stated uses. The Miami-based premium protein retailer currently operates eight boutiques and a central fulfillment center, with same-day delivery available across South Florida and nationwide shipping fulfilling what the company reports as 500,000+ orders for more than 150,000 customers. The company is tracking toward $13.5 million in revenue for 2026, with targets of $70 million by 2029 en route to a $100 million run rate.
The raise is accompanied by the formation of a formal Strategic Advisory Committee, drawing operators and investors with backgrounds across restaurant group scaling, CPG brand building, protein manufacturing, and experiential marketing. The committee includes Rob Wilder, co-founder and vice chairman of José Andrés Group — the 45-restaurant hospitality company — and co-founder of World Central Kitchen; Carlos M. Herrera, former president and CEO of Durham Meat and Seafood, a $180 million protein distribution platform; Deb Luster, founding team member of Annie's Homegrown, now a $1 billion General Mills brand; Barry T. Kates of Innovative Group, whose experiential marketing work spans the NFL, PepsiCo, and Heineken; and Roberto Lopez, Meat N' Bone's first institutional investor, who brings board-level governance experience across capital-intensive retail.
The Omnichannel Model
What makes Meat N' Bone operationally distinct — and relevant to hospitality technology observers — is its hybrid fulfillment architecture. Each boutique location doubles as a local fulfillment hub, enabling same-day pickup, same-day delivery, and nationwide cold-chain shipping from a single networked inventory layer. The company also operates three distinct food and beverage concepts — The Wagyu Bar, The Wagyu House, and Get The Cook — alongside its retail boutiques. This multi-format approach means the franchising infrastructure being funded by this raise must support both physical retail and direct-to-consumer e-commerce logistics simultaneously, a complexity that aligns Meat N' Bone more closely with omnichannel foodservice platforms than traditional butcher-shop franchisors.
For operators watching digital ordering and delivery platforms evolve in the premium food space, Meat N' Bone's network design echoes strategies seen in ghost kitchen and dark kitchen buildouts — centralized production and fulfillment paired with consumer-facing storefronts — applied to a retail protein context. That architectural bet is precisely why the advisory committee's supply-chain depth matters: Herrera's experience running U.S. protein facilities with Asian export operations, for instance, directly informs the cold-chain logistics challenges of scaling a nationwide shipping-plus-same-day-delivery hybrid.
Why the Advisory Stack Matters
The premium protein retail category — which Meat N' Bone pegs at $400 billion with no established national premium leader — sits at an intersection increasingly shaped by technology: inventory and demand forecasting, last-mile delivery routing, loyalty and CRM for high-value repeat customers, and franchise operations software. For franchise and multi-unit restaurant tech vendors, a company scaling from 8 to 40+ locations is exactly the inflection point where POS standardization, centralized back-office reporting, and labor management tooling become urgent purchase decisions.
"This Board of Advisors represents exactly the right blend of brand-building prowess, hospitality expertise, supply-chain mastery and capital discipline we need to establish Meat N' Bone as America's premium protein leader," said Luis Mata, CEO of Meat N' Bone. The advisory committee's combined experience — the company cites 110+ years — spans precisely the disciplines required to operationalize that vision at scale: brand activation, restaurant operations, CPG distribution, and capital governance.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
