STERLING, VA. – Cuisine Solutions, which specializes in food products prepared sous vide, announced a $250 million investment from Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Cuisine Solutions will use the minority investment to further its growth in the sous vide category, provide additional resources to support accelerated product innovation, expand its business domestically and internationally as well as grow its manufacturing footprint beyond the United States, France and Thailand. Felipe Hasselmann, chief executive officer, and Stanislas Vilgrain, chairman, will continue to operate Cuisine Solutions, and the Vilgrain family will retain controlling interest.

“Our future, while bright before this strategic partnership, is now even more exciting as we see substantial runway to drive growth and expansion through continued innovation across multiple product categories,” Hasselmann said. “We are proud to be the leader in the art and science of sous vide, which is the answer to so many of the challenges our clients face inside and outside of the kitchen. This investment will enable us to rapidly scale our worldwide manufacturing infrastructure, business partnerships and fortify our supply chain, thereby creating additional scale to meet the growing needs of the global partners who rely on our products every day across tens of thousands of locations.”

“My vision when founding Cuisine Solutions was to be the best innovator and food producer in our space, develop best-in-class partnerships and have our reputation speak for itself through our quality, scale and innovation,” Vilgrain said. “To have a world-class investment firm of Bain Capital’s caliber support our vision speaks to the success of our original mission and to the exciting future of our industry. I am extremely proud of our accomplishments from our humble start in 1990 to today and am looking forward to building together with Bain Capital a leading, innovative food company of the future.”

Bain Capital’s restaurant, foodservice and grocery-related investments have included Advantage Solutions, Bloomin’ Brands, Brakes Group Food Distribution, Burger King, Dessert Holdings, Dunkin’ Brands Inc., Domino’s Pizza, Gail’s Bakery, Retail Zoo, Skylark Restaurants and Valeo Foods.

 “Stanislas, Felipe and the management team have done an outstanding job building Cuisine Solutions into a clear leader in the fast-growing sous vide market that is recognized by many of the world’s top chefs,” said Cristian Jitianu, a managing director at Bain Capital. “The company’s unique range of culinary innovations offer higher quality and consistency, better food safety and lower costs, which is a win-win for their customers in the current macroeconomic environment.

“We are excited to partner with Cuisine Solutions and support the management team’s growth plans while further enhancing the value proposition as the preferred culinary innovation partner to blue-chip restaurant, retail, travel and hospitality brands,” added Jeffrey Chung, a director at Bain Capital.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close during the second quarter of 2022.