Cerebelly Adds Fresh Bellies After Its Own Kids Bar Launch

Cerebelly bought kids snack brand Fresh Bellies on September 16, 2026, and said both labels will stay on the shelf. Terms were not disclosed. The Erie, Colorado, company already sold pouches, smoothies, and bars; Fresh Bellies sells crunchy freeze-dried fruit and veg, not another puree line.

CEO Jodie Wing, in the job since February 1, 2026, called the pair sibling brands with shared back-end muscle. The finer point is timing. Cerebelly had already put a kids bar into the snack aisle in May, and neither company owns a plant.

Kids Bars Landed in May, Months Before the Deal

On May 7, 2026, Cerebelly launched Clever Bars for kids 4+, in Apple Pie, Blueberry Muffin, and Strawberry Shortcake. Each bar carries 5g of protein, 6g of fiber, and 0g added sugar, plus protein, iron, DHA, zinc, and iodine. A four-pack is $6.49 on the brand’s site, and the bars are sold on Amazon as well.

Wing said then that nutritional needs change as children grow, and that the bars extend the brand past early brain development. Brand director Danielle Watts said parents would not have to give up taste, nutrition, or ingredient quality. The company also said about 80% of human brain development happens from birth to age three, so the next stage needed a different formula.

That May launch is why the Fresh Bellies purchase is easy to misread. Cerebelly was already selling a no-added-sugar snack for school-age kids. What it still lacked was a freeze-dried, savory, spice-forward crunch for toddlers and older grazers, and a second brand that retailers already knew how to reorder.

We are not merging these brands, we are amplifying them. The children’s nutrition category is large enough and the unmet consumer need is significant enough that two differentiated brands, operating with shared operational strength, creates more value than either could achieve alone. This is a platform play, not a consolidation.

Jodie Wing, CEO of Cerebelly, September 16, 2026, acquisition statement

Wing also said Fresh Bellies opens product-development paths in snacking, without naming SKUs or dates. Asked for more, Cerebelly said both companies have innovation plans for different occasions, audiences, and categories, and still would not give revenues.

The Freeze-Dried Snacks Cerebelly Could Not Make

Fresh Bellies, founded in 2015 by former NBA executive Saskia Sorrosa, sells plant-based, minimally processed freeze-dried fruit and vegetable snacks with no added sugar. Bags use a handful of ingredients. Pepperlicious is roasted red peppers with sunflower oil and sea salt. Party Like a Piña is pineapple with chile de árbol. Other names on the line include Strawberry Feels Forever, Two to Mango, Peas and Love, and Keep Calm and Cardamom.

Sorrosa has described the idea as serving vegetables as vegetables and fruit as fruit, then seasoning them with herbs and spices common in Latin American kitchens. She was born in Ecuador. The snacks sit in the toddler aisle next to puffs and yogurt melts, which is a different set than Cerebelly’s soft-baked bars and pouches.

HOW THE TWO LINES COMPARE

Cerebelly was co-founded by Dr. Teresa Purzner, a practicing neurosurgeon with a PhD in developmental neurobiology from Stanford. Its pouches use a patented mix of 16 nutrients mapped to early brain growth: vitamin D, iron, vitamin A, vitamins B6 and B12, zinc, copper, niacin, folate, iodine, selenium, choline, protein, DHA, vitamin E, and lutein. The company says it was the first baby-food brand with a U.S. patent on that kind of food composition, and that pouches hold eight times the brain-supporting nutrition of the seven top-selling pouches. Those are Cerebelly’s own comparisons.

The patent, US11523630B2, lists Purzner as inventor and Stanford as assignee. Cerebelly’s current mix also includes vegetable purees, smoothie pouches, bone broth purees, and snack bars, sold as organic, veggie-forward, dairy-free, gluten-free, and Clean Label Project certified.

Both Brands Rent the Kitchen

A Cerebelly spokesperson said both companies use co-manufacturers and do not have their own production plants. That is the quiet constraint under Wing’s “shared operational strength” line. Two small premium labels that already share Target, Whole Foods, and Walmart can pool volume through the same contract kitchens, freeze-dryers, and trucks without combining recipes.

WHAT STAYS SEPARATE, AND WHAT IS SHARED

• Recipes and names: Each brand keeps its own product range, formulation, and identity, and will keep selling through the partners and sites it already uses.
• Ownership and ops: They run as sibling brands under shared ownership, with back-end support for inventory, speed, and scale.
• Kitchens: Neither owns a factory; both rely on co-manufacturers, so extra volume has to clear someone else’s line time.
• Sugar rule: Both sell no-added-sugar kids food, which the companies called rare in the category and a reason the deal should read as strength in that niche.

Cerebelly uses a retort process that, it says, keeps pouches shelf-stable for up to 18 months without preservatives. Fresh Bellies freeze-dries fruit and vegetables, a method Sorrosa has said keeps most of the nutrition and a crunch you do not get from baking. Those are different machines and different suppliers. The purchase is a way to rent both without building either.

A $7 Million Credit Line, Then a Snack Brand

The price is private, so the only hard money on the table is what each brand had already raised. CB Insights lists Cerebelly at $26.02 million across 16 rounds, a tally that includes debt. Fresh Bellies is listed at $3.81 million total. That gap is the deal in miniature: a better-funded pouch brand buying a snack line that had already reached national doors on a much thinner book.

THE MONEY AROUND THE PURCHASE

• $26.02 million: CB Insights tally of Cerebelly funding across 16 rounds, including credit.
• $3.81 million: Fresh Bellies total raised, per CB Insights, before the sale.
• $7 million: JPalmer Collective line of credit closed August 22, 2025, for inventory and operations.
• 16 nutrients: The patented pouch formula Cerebelly still treats as its science claim.

On August 22, 2025, JPalmer Collective, a woman-owned asset-based lender, closed a $7 million line of credit for Cerebelly. Jennifer Palmer, the firm’s founder and CEO, called Cerebelly a women-founded food brand working on baby health. Cerebelly controller Emily White said the line let the company fund daily operations and look ahead. Law firm Loeb & Loeb, which represented JPalmer, said the money was meant for inventory, innovation, and operations.

That credit sits on top of a BizCap package announced May 7, 2025. BizCap described a multi-million-dollar financing package for inventory and working capital, and did not publish the figure. Then-CEO Don Clark said the firm did not bring a one-size-fits-all product. Cerebelly also closed an oversubscribed Series A on March 9, 2023, led by Knudsen Capital with H Venture Partners, Imaginary Venture Capital Partners, Babybelly LLC, and Redcap Investments LP. The company did not put a dollar amount on that round in its own release.

PATH TO THE SEPTEMBER PURCHASE

1. 2015: Sorrosa founds Fresh Bellies (later listed in San Antonio; earlier name Happy Belly Baby).
2. 2019: Purzner co-founds Cerebelly; the brand later says it launched that year.
3. December 13, 2022: U.S. patent US11523630B2 issues on the neurodevelopment food composition.
4. March 9, 2023: Cerebelly closes an oversubscribed Series A.
5. August 2023: Don Clark becomes CEO, succeeding Greg Shearson.
6. May 7, 2025: BizCap announces a multi-million-dollar package for Cerebelly.
7. August 22, 2025: JPalmer Collective closes the $7 million credit line.
8. February 1, 2026: Wing, the former chief sales officer, becomes CEO; Clark leaves for another role.
9. May 7, 2026: Cerebelly launches Clever Bars for ages 4 and up.
10. September 16, 2026: Cerebelly announces it has acquired Fresh Bellies. Terms stay private.

Wing joined Cerebelly in late 2020 and ran sales before the board promoted her. Hunt Allred, co-chairman, said she knew retail and CPG and had already pushed revenue and operations. Before Cerebelly she was senior vice president of sales at Ancient Nutrition and at The Hain Celestial Group, and she had been a senior buyer and group manager at Target. The Fresh Bellies purchase is her first deal as CEO, and it reads as a sales-and-fill bet more than a science bet. Purzner’s patent stays with the pouch line. The new asset is crunch, flavor, and the ability to say yes when a buyer wants more cases.

Target Already Stocks the Two Labels

Cerebelly already sells in Whole Foods, Target, Meijer, Kroger, Walmart, and Publix in the United States and Canada, plus its own site, Amazon, and Thrive Market. Fresh Bellies already sells at Target, Whole Foods Market, and Walmart, and through its own store. The purchase does not open those three doors. It puts two no-added-sugar kids brands that already sit in the same stores under one owner, then asks that owner to keep the packs from colliding.

In March 2023, Sorrosa said Fresh Bellies was in over 4,500 stores, including Whole Foods, Target, Kroger, Sprouts, Meijer, and Giant, after growing from a few hundred doors to 2,500 in the year it launched the toddler line nationally. That door count is three years old. It still shows the brand had national distribution long before Cerebelly wrote a check, which is why inventory reliability, not discovery, is the point Cerebelly chose to stress.

On Fresh Bellies’ own shop, several snack bags and sampler packs have been listed as sold out, including core freeze-dried flavors. A sold-out direct shop is a fill problem if retailers are also asking for more. It is not proof of nationwide shortages, and the companies did not publish out-of-stock rates. It does match the language in the deal statement: greater inventory reliability, speed, and scale.

Parents paying a premium for clean kids snacks are the other half of the bet. The Environmental Working Group, citing a peer-reviewed Nutrients paper that used George Institute FoodSwitch data on 651 infant and toddler products in the top 10 U.S. grocers, said 71% of U.S. baby foods met the ultra-processed test. Added sugars showed up only in those ultra-processed products, and snack and finger foods in that group had two and a half times more sugar per serving than less processed options. Both Cerebelly and Fresh Bellies sell against that shelf. They still have to keep two brand stories straight when the pouches and the pepper chips hang in the same store.

Why Sorrosa Sold the Brand She Built

Cerebelly said Fresh Bellies gets operational support and supply-chain capacity to meet retailer and online demand with more reliable inventory, faster turns, and more scale, plus a path to certifications it could not fund alone. For Cerebelly, the snack brand brings product-development history, infrastructure, and supply-chain options the pouch company did not have. Wing said the Fresh Bellies team brings “extraordinary product development opportunities” for future snacking products that make nutritious food exciting for children.

Joining forces with Cerebelly gives us the ability to say ‘yes’, yes to more retailers, yes to larger and more frequent orders, yes to more innovation and exciting new products, and yes to meaningful certifications that set our products apart. This partnership gives us the runway to grow in ways we’ve always known we could.

Saskia Sorrosa, founder and CEO of Fresh Bellies, September 16, 2026, acquisition statement

Sorrosa remains in the founder-and-CEO title in that statement. Angeles Investors, a backer of Latinx-founded companies, treated the sale as a portfolio win and repeated her “yes” line. The public conversation around the deal was thin, mostly recaps. The capital figures do the arguing: a brand that raised $3.81 million and already sat in national grocery could not, on Sorrosa’s own telling, comfortably take the next wave of orders.

Wing’s job is to keep two differentiated brands from becoming one muddy kids aisle, while the shared back office actually fills cases. She did not name the first joint snack, the first new door, or the first certification Fresh Bellies will now chase. The companies will keep selling where they already sell. The check size stays off the page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Patent Does Cerebelly Hold on Its Baby Food?

The granted U.S. patent is US11523630B2, titled for neurodevelopment-promoting food compositions, with Teresa Purzner as inventor and the Leland Stanford Junior University as assignee. It was filed May 3, 2018, from a May 4, 2017, priority date, and issued December 13, 2022. The specification walks through four formulation windows between 3 and 18 months, with different lutein, DHA, iron, zinc, and choline targets in each window.

What Are Groovies in the Fresh Bellies Line?

Groovies are sorghum-based puff snacks Fresh Bellies added beside the freeze-dried bags, aimed at older preschoolers and, in a saltier version, adults. Flavors have included Turn up the Beet, Shroomtastic, Broc N’ Roll, and Rosemary’s Carrot. Sorrosa has said sorghum is naturally gluten-free and that the seasoning still comes from herbs and spices used in Latin American cooking.

Where Is Fresh Bellies Based, and What Did It Raise?

CB Insights lists the company at 10203 Kotzebue Street, Suite 115, San Antonio, Texas, and records $3.81 million raised before Cerebelly bought it. It was formerly known as Happy Belly Baby. Cerebelly’s deal statement points buyers to freshbellies.com and does not move the snack brand onto cerebelly.com.

How Did Jodie Wing Reach the CEO Job?

Cerebelly’s board named her CEO on January 29, 2026, effective February 1, succeeding Don Clark, who had run the company since August 2023. She had been chief sales officer after joining in late 2020, following senior vice president of sales posts at Ancient Nutrition and The Hain Celestial Group and earlier buyer and strategy roles at Target. Co-chairman Hunt Allred tied her promotion to retail distribution and a push to get the pouches in front of more American families.

What Does Cerebelly’s Clean Label Project Badge Cover?

Cerebelly says it was the first shelf-stable children’s food brand to receive the Clean Label Project Purity Award, which it describes as testing for over 400 contaminants, including heavy metals, chemicals, plastics, and pesticides. The Fresh Bellies statement says the snack brand will now get access to premium certifications and quality standards it had not carried at the same level, without naming which seals come first.

Wing still has not dated the first new snack under the combined back office. Fresh Bellies stays a separate brand with the same founder title on the release, and Cerebelly still does not own a cooker. The next test is whether the shared kitchen can fill the orders Sorrosa said she had to turn down.