Perfect Day Lays Off 15% of Its Workforce As It Shifts Focus Back to B2B Operations

Pioneering precision fermentation food tech company Perfect Day has dismissed approximately 15 percent of its staff as it shuttered its consumer-facing arm, The Urgent Company.

Perfect Day, which put “animal-free” precision fermentation dairy on the map, says it’s going to focus solely on its B2B efforts rather than its consumer-facing brands that include CoolHaus and Brave Robot.

Last September, Perfect Day launched Nth Bio, its tech-focused spin-off platform that leverages its expertise and technology services for collaboration and hire. Perfect Day, which has focused on precision fermentation whey, has seen a number of high-profile collaborations including products for Mars, Nestlé, and General Mills.

Refocusing efforts

Employees were informed of the layoffs in a letter sent out late last week. The company’s president, Narayan Tripunithura Mahadeva, explained the decision in the letter, stating, “We [are] refocus[ing] all efforts on our founding principles of R&D innovation and the resulting B2B partnership opportunities from our investment into the technology we have been building over the past nine years. As part of this, we have to take the incredibly difficult step of parting ways with our talented B2C team members and reducing some Perfect Day positions to support this focused business.”

Speculations about changes started circulating within the company late last month, after Alex Brittian, the head of Perfect Day’s consumer division for Asia and the U.S., was laid off. By July 6, the termination was officially communicated to the consumer division employees via a letter sent to their personal email accounts.

The layoffs impacted a total of 134 employees globally, with 122 from the U.S. and 12 from the U.K. and Asia. The India-based manufacturing business of the company, acquired in 2022, remains unaffected by the downsizing. Other layoffs have taken place within the past year, although the company has not disclosed precise figures.

B2C brand’s future is uncertain

Perfect Day says it aims to prevent disruptions in its retail services and sell through its existing inventory by retaining a small number of TUC employees as consultants. The company has also expressed intentions to sell all or part of The Urgent Company, with plans to fully exit all consumer-facing businesses by September.

Perfect Day confirmed that it “will not be investing any more time or resources into brands,” and is “look[ing] for places where we can be opportunistic in offering partner products” to retailers.

“As you can imagine, the economic climate right now is different than it was even just two, three years ago,” a Perfect Day spokesperson told NOSH. “There’s just a different level of focus that investors are expecting with their capital. And for us, that has always been B2B. There’s not the luxury that there used to be to be able to expand and maximize opportunities in different adjacencies.”