Plano-based healthy snack food company Stryve is making some major moves to accelerate its plans to disrupt a largely traditional industry: a merger with Andina Acquisition Corp. has been completed and Scott McCombs, a veteran of convenience chain giant 7-Eleven, has been appointed as CFO.

In entering a business combination agreement with Andina, a special purpose acquisition company, Stryve will become a public company. With the closing of the SPAC transaction, expected in Q2 of 2021, Stryve will be renamed to Stryve Foods, Inc. and be listed on the NASDAQ under SNAX.

The deal values the combined company at $170 million, according to a statement, and is predicted to provide around $67 million in gross cash proceeds to the company.

[Photo: Stryve]

Stryve is best known for its biltong, a form of air-dried cured meat that was first popularized in Southern African countries. The company describes it as “what jerky wants to be”—it’s 100 percent beef but with no sugar, MSG, gluten, nitrates, or preservatives.

And it’s been gaining more traction in the U.S.

In 2019, the meat snacks category grew by more than 9 percent, while U.S. biltong sales grew more than 500 percent. Amidst continued growth, Stryve has continued shaking up its executive team, with four big leadership moves last year, including naming Jaxie Alt as co-CEO.

Alt joined Stryve last March as its chief marketing officer after a 17-year stint with Keurig Dr Pepper. The promotion comes after Alt helped the healthy snack brand double its annual revenue and establish itself as a top-selling beef biltong brand in the U.S.

“As consumer interest in healthy eating continues, and awareness and understanding of biltong expands,” Alt said, “I believe we now have the leadership team in place to reach our goal to help America snack better.”

The latest addition to that leadership team is new Chief Financial Officer McCombs, an established expert in finance, merchandising, and operations across multiple verticals.

During his time at Irving-based 7-Eleven, McCombs held leadership roles that included VP of Finance, in which he was tasked with modernizing cost of goods management and space planning across U.S. Operations.

Prior to that, he was the senior finance leader of Merchandise Operations Finance and Business Intelligence for the Fresh & Easy and Wild Oats Organics brands. But most recently, he was the SVP of Finance & Operations for CBRE Commercial Real Estate, a role that allowed him to lead a team of finance and business operations leaders with a combined revenue of over $7 billion.

Joining Stryve marks McCombs’ return to the CPG space. He calls it a “transformative time” for both himself and the company as the executive team works to capitalize on the better snacking trend and keep driving health-driven innovation.

“Scott is a fantastic addition to our team and we look forward to benefiting from his well-established credentials and experience as he elevates our finance function to an even higher level of excellence,” Joe Oblas, co-CEO and co-founder of Stryve, said in a statement. “Throughout his extensive career, he has demonstrated effective leadership across a number of different industries and has made impressive contributions along the way. We are impressed with his skill-set and are confident in his ability to help us build a stronger organization that can disrupt traditional snacking categories.”

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