Brami Protein Pasta Closes $33 Million Series B Round, Set To Expand Retail Presence And Strengthen Lupini Bean Supply Chain

Brami Raises $33 Million Series B

Brami

Brami protein pasta is quickly becoming the pasta brand of choice for many American families. It balances a functional element–fortifying real durum wheat semolina with naturally high-protein lupini beans–along with a taste and texture that rivals some of the highest quality boxed pasta brands on shelves.

Founder Aaron Gatti tells me today that Brami has raised a $33 million Series B investment round led by VMG Partners.

“It’s been two years of exponential growth and major retail distribution gains,” Gatti tells me. “There are big supply chain implications when you have this kind of growth across channels.”

Launched in 2016, and introducing its pasta line in 2021, San Diego-based Brami is the fastest-growing pasta brand in the US, expecting about 400% year-over-year growth by the end of 2026 and profitable.

As early investors in brands like KIND and Pirate’s Booty, and more recently Fruit Riot, VMG Partners has been at the forefront of emerging better-for-you consumer products for two decades. The investment in Brami is part of its $1 billion sixth fund.

“Brami has all the makings of becoming a transformational brand in a longstanding category that has the opportunity to seed its next chapter,” Wayne Wu, Principal at VMG Partners, tells me. “I want to be the one to help Aaron get it all the way there.” Wu also becomes a Board Member of Brami.

In the last 52 weeks, according to new NielsenIQ data, the only pasta made with alternative grains that is seeing an increase in year over year sales is ‘Grain and Legume’–a segment which has more than doubled in the past three years. Alternatives like Chickpea, Whole Wheat and Brown Rice are all seeing declines, while only Durum Semolina is experiencing significant declines–nearly 25%.

“Brami is driving a lot of dollar growth in the pasta category,” says Gatti. “This is pasta that can be an alternative to regular pasta in daily use, just much more powerful from a nutritional perspective and accessible from a price point.”

It was an attractive investment for Wu and his partners at VMG, speaking loudly to the increasing number of Americans who are on GLP-1 medications and need more bioavailable protein to minimize muscle loss, along with overall dissatisfaction with excessive ingredients. “Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of ultra-processed foods,” Wu says. “The nutritionals in Brami are coming from two ingredients, not supplemented by another ingredient like a protein isolate.”

Brami stems from Gatti’s first generation Italian-American heritage, visiting family in Italy over the summer growing up in New York. “I discovered lupini beans on my own…It was this secret passion of mine,” he says. “My parents used to let me roam little Italian towns–I remember buying a bag at a little alimentari, finding some shade under a tree and crushing these beans. I didn’t even know what they were.”

In 2014, Gatti brought his now-wife to Italy for the first time, and she also became quite fascinated with the beans as a nutritious yet salty natural snack that actually would make her feel full. While he was working as an entrepreneur-in-residence at venture capital firm, Lerer Hippeau, Gatti was tasked with finding a new venture to incubate that would speak to changing consumer demands. He pitched the idea of selling the lupini beans with different flavors and making them accessible to the US market. Lerer Hippeau wrote the very first check for $300,000 to get the project off the ground.

“It was this promise that lupini beans had for solving the world’s need for good, sustainable protein,” Gatti says. “It’s said to be the most ancient legume known in Western civilization, but with mass-processed snacks, they got forgotten.”

Brami began as a cured lupini bean snack in resealable pouches. They are further-pickled to add a deeper briney flavor and soften the shells before incorporated in Garlic & Rosemary, Sardinian Sea Salt, Mediterranean Medley and Chili & Lime flavors. They are often described as an Italian edamame.

“Lupini beans have the highest density of protein and fiber per calorie of any crop grown on the planet,” Gatti explains. “They’re naturally low in trypsin inhibitors, lectins and phytates that make other beans hard to digest, and they’re naturally umami in flavor.”

Gatti initially sold Brami lupini beans to stores in New York City like Westside Market, whose CEO ended up chipping in an extra $100,000 investment. Almost immediately after, Brami got picked up by Whole Foods and Wegmans. It was at this infant stage of the company that Gatti happened to have met Wu at a startup accelerator event. They remained in touch.

Pasta is an easy dinner for families to make that kids actually enjoy eating, and as the business slowly grew, so did Gatti’s family. It became a staple in the Gatti household even though he knew it was void of proper nutrition for them.

“I never feel guilty eating real pasta in Italy the way that we tend to feel guilty eating pasta in America,” he says.

That’s when the light bulb popped to combine the nutrient-dense lupini beans into a high-quality durum wheat pasta. “We call it innovating backwards,” he says. “These are two of the most nutrient-dense ancient Mediterranean ingredients that exist. We’re just bringing them together using timeless methods for the first time to deliver a complete base meal.”

The lupini beans used in Brami’s pasta are a slightly different variety than those of the snack pouches. They’re a naturally-selected sweeter variety that is able to be milled into a flour because they don’t need to be cured.

Brami works with cooperatives in Italy to source its lupini beans, which are also quite beneficial for regenerative farming systems. “All legumes are rotation crops that naturally fertilize the ground. But lupini plants have really impressive root structures that replenish nitrogen and phosphate into the soil,” Gatti explains. “They’re naturally pest-resistant compared to other crops and require little water.”

About a year later, Brami protein pasta began to really take off once word started to spread that this functional pasta was not quite like others on the market. Brami pasta doesn’t crumble the way that many others made with alternative ingredients do, nor does it lean to the other side of the spectrum with a tough texture. With a strong and hearty structure that has a pleasing bite to it and finds a marriage with the sauce it binds to, Brami strikes an ideal balance that makes it hard hard to distinguish from a good durum wheat pasta once it’s in the bowl being forked up.

A large chunk of this new investment will help Brami further nail down its Italian-based supply chain. “We’re not just buying pea protein isolate that you can get anywhere and putting it into pasta, which is very easy to do,” Gatti says. “Lupini is a very unique ingredient with a very unique supply chain. There’s a lot that has to be done sourcing side, on the inventory side, on the capacity side. We’re doing it the hard way, but it’s worth it.”

Brami is now about to enter every Walmart location in the country, plus Kroger stores, Whole Foods Market, Target and Costco nationally, marking more than 4,000 retail doors.

“If you look at the environment from Walmart to Whole Foods, where you have total distribution point velocity across all these different retailers, it shows these attributes–simple ingredients, high protein and fiber, and tasting incredible–has universal appeal,” Wu explains. “When you combine those all together, it’s lightning in a bottle.”