Decatur Company Has Securities Offer Seeking to Raise $75M

Chickens on Cooks Venture’s 800-acre farm in Decatur (Benton County). The company, led by Blue Apron co-founder and chef Matthew Wadiak, expects to have their heirloom pasture-raised chicken available direct to consumers and on store shelves starting in July.

You may have heard of Cooks Venture, the company that’s producing pasture-raised “superchickens” in Decatur on the old site of Peterson Farms, but did you know it has a securities offer seeking to raise $75 million?

The company, which has a production facility in Jay, Oklahoma, and was incorporated in 2018, filed a notice of an exempt offering of securities with the Securities & Exchange Commission last month. The filing listed the total offering amount as $75 million, with just under $12 million already sold. The date of the first sale was listed as Jan. 13.

Company CEO Matthew Wadiak, who in a previous life was one of the founders of the meal service Blue Apron, was the signer on the SEC notice, dated Jan. 27. He didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the equity offering, nor did a company spokeswoman.

The company’s base in Benton County is where Lloyd Peterson developed a male breeding chicken that eventually dominated the poultry industry. By 2006, the year before Peterson died, Peterson Farms had annual sales of $128 million.