Tattooed Chef, Inc. (TTCF)

Tattooed Chef was a plant-based food company that sold frozen meals and ingredients in the freezer aisles of US grocery chains and warehouse clubs. Its products included ready-to-cook vegetable and grain bowls, zucchini spirals, riced cauliflower, acai and smoothie bowls, cauliflower pizza crusts and burritos. The brand was built around Sarah Galletti, the tattooed chef of its name, while her stepfather Salvatore Galletti served as chief executive.

The business grew out of Ittella International, a food manufacturer that had long produced private-label frozen foods for retailers, with production in Paramount, California, and in Italy. It became public through a merger with Forum Merger II, a special purpose acquisition company. The combination closed on October 15, 2020, and the shares began trading on NASDAQ under the ticker TTCF the next day, replacing the SPAC's FMCI symbol.

The stock was briefly a favorite of investors betting on plant-based eating, and the company expanded quickly, adding plants in New Mexico and Ohio and moving into new categories. Revenue rose to about $231 million in 2022, but margins were poor and the company recorded a net loss of roughly $141 million that year. It also had to restate earlier financial statements after finding accounting control weaknesses, which delayed its filings.

By mid-2023 Tattooed Chef was running short of cash and received notice that its share price had fallen below NASDAQ's one-dollar minimum. Unable to find new funding, the company and several subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California on July 2, 2023, and said it would market substantially all of its assets through a court-supervised sale.

NASDAQ notified the company on July 3 that the stock would be delisted because of the bankruptcy, and trading was suspended at the open on July 12, 2023, leaving the shares on the over-the-counter market. Through an auction process, the court approved sales of the company's facilities and other assets in California, New Mexico, Ohio and Italy to 11 separate buyers, with proceeds going to creditors and little expected for shareholders.