Honey Stinger Teams Up with Professional Athletes in $15M Equity Round

November 10, 2022

Investor group includes professional baseball, basketball and hockey players

Steamboat Springs, Colo. (November 10, 2022) /OUTDOOR SPORTSWIRE/ – Honey Stinger is proud to announce that 10 professional athletes have joined its ownership team. The athletes participated alongside Honey Stinger’s main investor, Factory LLC, as part of a $15M raise for the rapidly growing sports nutrition brand. The investment was facilitated by Chaos Ventures.

Honey Stinger, founded in 2001, has deep roots in elite athletics, having fueled a generation of ultra-endurance runners, bikers, and skiers. In 2019, the brand began to actively expand its target market to include team sports, physically active fitness seekers and recreational competitors. Today, athletes on over 1,000 professional and collegiate teams rely on Honey Stinger to Prepare, Perform and Recover™ while practicing and competing.

The 10 pro athletes (including 2022 Roberto Clemente Award winner Justin Turner and two-time Olympic gold medalist Angel McCoughtry among others) participating in this funding round know and love the brand from their own experience. Echoing the group, Angel McCoughtry, professional basketball player and 2X Olympic Gold Medalist, said, “Honey Stinger has invested in me as a person and has been fueling my athletic performance with great tasting products for the past 3 years. I am humbled to have a stake in a company that continually engages the athlete community and always takes action to make a difference.”

“Honey Stinger is the third fastest growing brand in the wellness bars and gels category for the multi-outlet market channel (MULO), which includes food, drug, mass, and military retailers,” said Rich Thompson, CEO of Honey Stinger. “The brand was built by athletes for athletes, and we are excited to be taking this step forward with some of the best athletes in the business. The experience and expertise of our new shareholders will be invaluable in helping our brand expand its reach in the athlete community.”

Since expanding its purview from endurance athletes to the broader market, Honey Stinger’s business has grown over 250%. Long a fixture in running, biking and outdoor retailers, the Honey Stinger brand is now widely distributed in grocery, mass, convenience, drug and sporting goods retailers across the U.S., online, and in select international markets. The recent infusion of cash from stars of America’s largest professional sports adds both credibility and financial resources as the brand continues to grow its distribution and customer base.

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About Honey Stinger

Honey Stinger fuels more than 1,000 professional and collegiate athletic teams, plus countless individual and youth athletes and fitness enthusiasts. Offering sports nutrition for every ambition, Honey Stinger’s great tasting, convenient sports nutrition products – waffles, bars, chews, gels, and hydration powders – help users Prepare, Perform, and Recover™. Based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado since 2001, Honey Stinger products can be found at omni-channel retailers everywhere and online at  www.honeystinger.com.

About Factory LLC

Factory LLC is an innovation and scale-up company that invests in high potential food, beverage, and pet brands. Factory’s team of 48 experienced and diverse talents are led by seasoned operators who have created over $3 billion in market value during their entrepreneurial careers. Operating out of a 40,000 square foot multi-disciplinary facility on the former Bethlehem Steel campus one hour from Newark and Philadelphia airports, Factory provides fresh capital and operational expertise to help high potential companies rapidly innovate and scale.

About Chaos Ventures

Chaos Ventures is a community of technology entrepreneurs, industry executives, professional athletes, and crypto experts. Chaos brings a diverse and curated base of investors to entrepreneurs and strives to plug its most strategic limited partners directly into the information flows of portfolio companies. Chaos general partners have extensive operating and investing experience, having held leadership roles at unicorns such as Uber, Afiniti, CBRE, and Rokt, and have filled investing roles across various asset classes such as private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital.