The first thing you notice in Nicole Sopko’s office is her dog. She’s a big gal, black and tan with ears like a German Shepherd, but she’s all slobbery smiles. 

The second thing you notice is the incredible art all around. Fun, poppy canvases living alongside heavy, metal sculptural pieces.

It feels like the cozy living room of your coolest friend from college — not the office of the vice president of a thriving alt-meat company. 

And Sopko is the first to admit that she landed in her position quite by accident, volunteering to help out around the office of her boyfriend Daniel Staackmann’s three-year-old startup 12 years ago while she was between jobs. 

“I started going once a week, just doing administrative work. Then I was going three times a week. And at some point, I just stopped looking for another job,” she laughs. “It was sort of an accident, but I have found my place here.”

In an interview with Alt-Meat, Sopko discusses how Upton’s Naturals is blazing its own path and redefining the notion of “success.” 

Alt-Meat: What’s been the best thing about growing with Upton’s? 

NICOLE SOPKO: We are a relatively small team in terms of companies in our space, and when you are part of such a small team for such a long time, you get the opportunity to have your hands in a little bit of everything. I’ve had the opportunity to learn how things work, how pricing works, how sales relationships work, how everything works across this whole industry, just by virtue of not being able to afford to hire anybody else to do it at various points in our growth. 

Alt-Meat: Can you tell me a little about Upton’s restaurants — Upton’s Breakroom and Liberation Donuts — and how they’ve contributed to the company’s growth?

SOPKO: Upton’s Breakroom started as a sort of cafeteria for Upton’s employees. But it was also open to the public because we wanted that interaction. It’s turned out to be a great way to connect with our neighbors and become part of the community, which is important to Dan and me. But it’s also been good for business. Some of the items that were popular in the restaurant, like our bacon mac and cheese, became ideas for products. We added a vegan donut concept to the space in 2020, kind of as a reaction to the pandemic and needing something to do. But donuts have turned out to be really fun. 

Alt-Meat: Upton’s has grown and changed so much over the past 15 years. As someone who’s had a front row seat, how do you think the overall business has changed over the years? 

SOPKO: The tone of the industry has changed a lot, and maybe a lot of that is because there’s more money coming in and more people coming in who aren’t mission-driven, but I don’t think that’s totally a bad thing. There are a lot of people coming into the space with different kinds of expertise, in consumer packaged goods and in other facets of the food industry. I think those new perspectives have been positive. But I also think we’re feeling some new pressure on the business to grow quickly. The problem is, I’m not sure it’s possible for consumer tastes to change so quickly — we may be giving them too much, too fast. Moreover, retailer acceptance simply isn’t there. In most retailers, there is the same six feet of refrigerated space allotted to plant-based meat as there was 10 years ago, but there are a lot of new products. Until the shelf space increases, a huge diversity of products being launched remain out of reach for consumers. That forced speed and limited shelf space is creating competition between brands that doesn’t necessarily need to be there. 

Alt-Meat: It sounds like it’s created an unsustainable situation at retail. 

SOPKO: Yes. There’s currently a lot of money being invested in getting placement on shelves and in getting consumers to pick products up off the shelf. There’s a lot of promotional push in the beginning, giving consumers free product coupons to get the initial business, but all of that interest is essentially manufactured. 

I think that consumers do want meat alternatives. The category has been steadily growing, even prior to the big investments. But I think there is a bottleneck at retail. With slotting fees so high, the only products on the shelves are the products that can afford to pay the fees. As a result, consumers aren’t able to purchase the full diversity of available products in the space, and maybe they’re losing interest in meat alternatives because their supermarket only carries five plant-based burgers. Not bashing burgers but if everything is the same, it doesn’t allow the industry to live up to its full potential. 

Alt-Meat: On the topic of consumer interest, you work on a lot of Upton’s marketing materials. What role does changing people’s minds about plant-based products play into your strategy?

SOPKO: One thing that’s important, I think, is helping consumers understand that, within the alt-protein space, there is a diversity of products and also a diversity of usages for those products. One product or brand doesn’t have to meet all of your cooking and food preparation needs perfectly. It’s all about finding the exact meat alternative that you like for your tacos or your pasta, the one product that performs the way you’re looking for. There’s so much more diversity in plant-based foods than there is with animal products. 

Alt-Meat: When you talk about different companies and different products, I feel compelled to mention that Upton’s isn’t quite like other companies. You’re mimicking meat, but in a lot of cases, the products are made from whole foods. It’s not deep science technology. 

SOPKO: We are consumers, first of all, so we’re making the kinds of foods that we like, but we’re also making the kinds of foods that are not already available on the market. We’re not currently looking to create a “bleeding” burger just because that already exists, right? We’re always looking for what’s new out there. More importantly, as a brand, we’re focused on minimally processed foods, and in some cases that means whole foods. Our jackfruit and banana blossom products are some of the only whole-food meat alternatives on the market. We’re trying to do what we do well.

Alt-Meat: It seems like this strategy is really baked into the company’s DNA. How do you think it helps set Upton’s apart? 

SOPKO: There’s so much pressure to have huge financial growth in business. In the alt-protein space, you’ll see one company having a lot of success with a particular type of burger or nugget, and all of the sudden other brands will start moving into that same area, launching similar products, trying to carve off a piece of that success. Instead of trying to just grow and grow and grow, [Upton’s is] focused on building our own thing, our own version of success. We’re going to stick to who we are and what we know how to do. 

Alt-Meat: Where do you think this philosophy will put Upton’s in the next five years?

SOPKO: Our plan is to continue to grow the business organically. We just launched a line of vegan canned soups as well as taco-style crumbles, so we’re currently focused on promoting those and also tackling a lot of the same supply chain, ingredient and price issues that other companies are dealing with right now. 

Our strategy for growth has always been slow, steady and sustainable because we’re privately owned. We don’t have financial backers or a capital cushion. All of our profits are folded back into the business. 

Alt-Meat: The fact that Upton’s is privately owned by one person really stands out amid a field of companies taking on massive amounts of investor cash. What do you see as the pros and cons of doing things the Upton’s way? 

SOPKO: In the early days, it was hard to get banks to appreciate our potential as a business and there weren’t people clamoring to invest in meat alternative brands. We were, to an extent, on our own. I think that attitude has stuck with us. We’ve worked really hard, and I think we’ve benefited from being independent in that way because we can be nimble and make really fast decisions. Of course, the other side of that is that we are competing in a crowded space with brands that are well-funded. We have to take a different approach, even down to how we get our products on the shelves as slotting fees increase. As a small company, we can’t always afford those additional expenses. That said, we do a lot with what we have. We’ve learned how to make every dollar count. 

Alt-Meat: Would you recommend this path to other brands? 

SOPKO: I think it would be a little more challenging to do what we’ve done in the current climate, but I also work with a lot of smaller brands, and I think it’s important to remember that success doesn’t have to mean getting a huge investment, going international, being in every supermarket and on every menu. Success can mean selling locally, having a great product and making a comfortable living. To me, that’s huge success. 

I think getting a bank loan and building a company sustainably is just as impressive as getting a big investment, and I think it’s important to tell that story so that people coming into the alt-protein space don’t think their company is a failure if they’re not multinational within five years. 

Alt-Meat: Let’s talk about your work with smaller companies as the current president of the board of directors at Plant Based Foods Association. How does that fit into your goals?

SOPKO: I was a founding board member of the Plant Based Foods Association, and at the start, we recognized that a lot of us were facing the same regulatory and supply chain problems. None of us were individually equipped to address all of those issues ourselves, but by coming together, forming this organization, we created an opportunity to eliminate some of the barriers that our companies were facing. 

As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to keep that focus on the 350 member companies. That’s powerful, because there are a lot of people with a lot of opinions about the plant-based food space, but unless you’re in there — doing it, dealing with the retailers, the buyers, the distribution, the ingredient supply — it’s hard to know what it’s like. 

Alt-Meat: As you’re working to sustainably grow Upton’s and working with new plant-based companies, how do you hope the industry will change in the next few years? 

SOPKO: I’m eternally optimistic that we’re progressing toward something better. There are probably a lot of good ideas out there about how to operate a business and how to create a more sustainable food system while we’re doing it. I don’t feel like I personally have all the answers, but I know the answers are out there. 

For example, I recently attended the first Plant-Based Food Summit held by my colleagues at Plant Based Foods Industry Association of India. In terms of meat alternatives, India is in a really different place than the American or European industries are. For me, it’s exciting: If you throw out the template for how plant-based foods are done in the US, what is possible? 

To be honest, I don’t know where that takes us, but I think that it gives us the opportunity to progress.