Industries
Food and Beverage

Food and Beverage

This is a critical time for the food and beverage industry. Many farms, producers, processers, distributors, restaurants, and retailers are affected by supply shortages, rising input costs, and limited market opportunities, all issues that can significantly impede a growing business. And yet for others, it’s also an era of excitement marked by rapidly changing consumer preferences, new direct-to-consumer brands, and big investments into ag-tech and food research and development.

Shipman’s Food and Beverage Group delivers coordinated, multi-disciplinary legal counsel, relying on our knowledge and experience built across a variety of clients and industries. We begin with a clear understanding of your business and priorities to tailor our services to strategically and cost-effectively fit your needs. We endeavor to ask tough questions and provide purpose-based, value-driven advice. We provide an experienced and fresh perspective, and the comfort and clarity you need to focus more on building your business and less on your legal concerns.

Members of Shipman’s team have been trusted advisors for local, regional, and national food & beverage companies for decades, including serving many as outside general counsel. We provide sophisticated advice on a wide variety of business, finance, and transactional matters. Whether you are forming a new enterprise, managing a franchise, raising capital, negotiating a food service or vendor/supplier contract, drafting or updating labels, creating an advertising campaign, or seeking/maintaining a new license or certification, our attorneys have the skills and experience to help you accomplish your goals. We also regularly assist individuals and businesses facing sophisticated tax, succession planning, and financial distress issues. Read more.

Experience

Business and corporate

Act as Outside General Counsel to Major Regional Dairy Cooperative

Represent premier regional dairy farmer cooperative which produces award winning cheeses and other products. Representation includes contracting, finance, cooperative governance, mergers and acquisitions, real estate and litigation.

Environmental

Ongoing Assistance to Food and Beverage Companies Regarding PFAS and Food Packaging Compliance

As state-level bans on intentionally added PFAS in food packaging continue to go into effect, we regularly assist food and beverage companies with multi-state and international footprints undertake highly nuanced legal and technical evaluations of PFAS risks associated with food packaging and compliance. This effort includes requesting certificates of compliance from upstream food packaging suppliers as well as evaluating and responding to similar demands from downstream distributors, wholesalers and retailers.

Legal and Technical PFAS Risk Management Planning for a Multi-State Food and Beverage Company

We provide comprehensive assistance to a large, multi-state food and beverage client undertaking an extensive legal and technical PFAS risk management plan to address its potential operational risks, including up and down its supply chain. The project involves engaging and directing a national environmental consulting firm, coordinating technical and legal advice on the rapidly changing legal/regulatory federal and multi-state landscape, advising on technical, health and litigation developments and addressing all stages of the client’s operations from procurement, food production, transportation, packaging and distribution. Our ongoing support also includes advising on PFAS sampling strategies, supply chain contracts, insurance coverage (looking backward and forward) and stakeholder communications.

Food and beverage

Labeling Review and Compliance

We have advised various clients, including consumer packaged goods (CPG) and dietary supplement companies, regarding federal (Food and Drug Administration) and state labeling requirements, including with respect to allergens, supplement facts (e.g., ingredients, proprietary blends), and origin/geographic descriptors (e.g., local, made in).

Local, State, and Federal Agriculture and Food Manufacturing Licensing

We have assisted various clients, including farms, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, and “non-traditional” food clients (such as independent schools) evaluate and navigate a variety of permitting, licensing, and registration requirements before local departments of zoning and public health, the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, and Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. We have assisted clients apply for local food store/service licenses and state Food Manufacturing Establishment licenses (including for wholesale) as well as register with the state under the Produce Safety Rule. Recent examples include securing local and state approvals for a farm to install a shipping container converted into a hydroponic lettuce and herb garden.

Liquor Permit Applications for Hotels and Restaurants

Various Major Hotels and Restaurant Chains

Handled liquor permit applications for major hotels and restaurant chains, including new permits, substitute permittee applications and renewal applications. Representation before Commission on liquor control violations and remonstrances.

Land use

Conservation Easement for Historic Working Farm

We represented the seller in what is thought to be Connecticut’s first lease-to-own farm sale involving a land trust. Our client, a regional land conservancy, sold a historic working farm to its long-time tenant after they satisfied the “sweat equity” requirements of the lease, including certain property maintenance, improvements, and other site work over more than 10 years. The land conservancy retained a bespoke agricultural conservation easement that allows for a range of agricultural and related uses and opportunities as well as requires the protection and restoration of the property, including its early-1900s potato shed and tobacco barn, which is one of the last in the area.