Yasir Abdul, the entrepreneur behind ‘As seen on TV’ infomercial company InvenTel, has emerged as the mystery prospective buyer of fungi-fueled alt meat business Meati, with Wild Earth CEO and early stage alt protein investor Ryan Bethencourt assisting during the transition phase.
Colorado-based Meati—which makes fungi-based whole cuts via submerged fermentation—has had the sword of Damocles hanging over it since late February when lender Trinity Capital swept two-thirds of its available cash following a technical default.
Meati, which sells fungi-based cutlets and steaks in several thousand stores across the US, issued a WARN notice to staff on March 7 explaining that production would cease on May 6 with all 150 employees to be terminated unless the company could secure additional funds.
Several key team members including CEO Phil Graves have left in recent weeks, Bethencourt told AgFunderNews this morning, but the business remains operational as the firm navigates the Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (ABC) process, which serves as an alternative to bankruptcy.
Emergy Inc (doing business as Meati Foods) filed an ABC agreement with the Adams County District Court (case 2025-CV-030671) on May 2.
Under the ABC process, a financially distressed company transfers its assets to a third-party fiduciary (the assignee – in this case an attorney called Aaron Garber) who handles the sale of the assets or the sale of the business as a going concern in the best interests of the creditors.
Deal has yet to be approved by the court
According to Bethencourt, Meati and principal secured creditor Trinity Capital and a proposed buyer called Meati Holdings recently negotiated the terms of a deal that has yet to be approved by the court. Other interested parties include plant protein brand LiveComplete.
According to court filings referenced by BusinessDen, Meati had $158 million in assets, a number vastly exceeding the $4 million price tag for the company quoted by BusinessDen last month.
Bethencourt told AgFunderNews: “Yasir says the $4 million figure is not accurate, although he can’t say any more than that at this stage.”
He added: “There are many things we can’t share yet as this is a legal process, but the immediate priority is how do we stabilize Meati? Several parties were interested but Meati Holdings was the party selected by the venture debt holder (Trinity Capital) to provide management support for Meati as it goes through the ABC process with the trustee.”
So who is Meati Holdings?
“Yasir Abdul is one of those involved in his personal capacity so InvenTel is not involved, but there are potentially other investors he’s currently talking with to provide additional capital,” said Bethencourt. “I’m part of the transition team to support the Meati team to make sure that everything keeps running at the plant, that customers and employees are being taken care of.
“The plant is up and running and we’ve been helping them bring their expenses into line to deliver lower cost, more affordable products going forward. Meati’s pricing at the moment is definitely, I would say, ultra-premium. We would love to see if there’s a way to bring that down to be more cost competitive.”
‘Extremely unprofitable’
“The intention is to get to break even,” said Bethencourt. “But there’s not one silver bullet. It’s multiple lead bullets. Maximizing yield, lowering costs, it’s a myriad of things.”
Asked whether Meati had lost much retail distribution in recent weeks amid all the uncertainty, he said: “Surprisingly little, and the sales and marketing team is still intact.”
He added: “Yasir really likes the product and thinks it has a lot of potential. It’s doing well in the higher end grocery stores.”
According to one industry source: “Meati’s plant [in Thornton, Colorado] is extremely unprofitable. The business was losing something like 7-figures a month. They scaled very rapidly, and they were quite effective at building a brand, but the reality is that the key things that drive the cost of your fermentation are the strain, the media, the downstream costs, and every sale they make is unprofitable, so it’s a very difficult situation.
“But anything is possible. The idea that you can’t grow mycelium in bioreactors at commodity food prices has been proven wrong by Quorn, but they spent years on R&D before they commercialized, and they are still struggling.”
‘Gut-wrenching’
The crisis began earlier this year when Meati breached a financial covenant tied to revenue and gross profit, what’s known in banking as a technical default, although it was current on all of its payments.
According to one source, the lender had assured the company in late January that it would not sweep cash unless fraud was involved.
But things changed rapidly although Meati had term sheets coming within weeks, rather than months, added the source. “I’ve never seen that in my career, where a lender sweeps that much cash because of a technical default, where you jeopardize a company’s financial future without a conversation. It’s inexcusable and gut-wrenching.”
According to the source, staff had been optimistic about the company’s future despite several rounds of layoffs given some recent retail distribution gains and revenue growth, so the news was a “big surprise.”
A high-profile player in the meat alternatives space with over $365 million in funding from backers including Grosvenor Food & AgTech and Prelude Ventures, Meati has engaged in four rounds of layoffs over the past couple of years in a bid to streamline operations and accelerate the path to profitability.
However, things had been moving in the right direction, according to former CEO Phil Graves, who spoke to us in January after launching a new line of breakfast patties.
While sales of meat alternatives continue to decline in the US, Meati is tapping into demand for simpler products with fewer ingredients and less processing, claimed Graves, a former Patagonia executive who took the helm at Meati last February following the departure of CPG veteran Scott Tassani.
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