A Few Small Plants — Boulder Ventures Ltd.

*Barney Feinblum dedicates the Jules and Barney Herb Garden at Colorado State University, April 24, 2026.*

Celestial Seasonings was the anchor tenant in the history of Boulder’s natural foods industry. It was started by Mo Seigel and John Hays, two stoner Boulder hippies who gathered herbs and mushrooms in the hills above Boulder in the 1970s and made tea, among other things. But Celestial didn’t become a company until Barney Feinblum took over as CEO in 1986 and led its buyout from Kraft in 1988.

Barney didn’t want to work at Celestial, but his wife Jules loved herbs and convinced him that it would be cool. Barney was an original investor in Merc’s and my fund, Colorado Venture Management (CVM), and we were investors in Alfalfa’s, Hass Hassan and Mark Retzloff’s organic grocery store chain, where Barney was Chairman.

After he sold Celestial Seasonings a couple times, Barney took over as CEO of Horizon Organic Dairy, the first national organic milk brand in the US. Barney didn’t start that either – Retzloff and Mark Pepperzak, a renowned dairyman, did. But Horizon didn’t become a company until Barney Feinblum took over as CEO in 1996. By then, Barney was a founding investor in my new fund, Boulder Ventures, and I knew what to do.

Barney and I raised two rounds of equity for Horizon Organic Dairy and took it public in 1998. HCOW got to $100 million in revenues faster than any natural foods company ever had at the time, and Barney sold it to Dean Foods in 2004. That was a great deal for Boulder Ventures I & II.

Around that time, Hass and Barney merged Alfalfa’s with another organic chain in Boulder called Wild Oats and took that public in 1996, a good deal for our CVM funds. Part of that deal was that Hass and Barney wouldn’t start another organic grocery store in the US for a few years.

So Hass went to London where he’d grown up and started the first chain of organic grocery stores in England called Fresh & Wild. Barney and I financed Fresh & Wild with some fancy London investors, and Hass grew the chain to seven stores before we sold it to Whole Foods in 2004 for equity. Whole Foods under John Mackey was a great stock and Fresh & Wild was a great deal for Boulder Ventures III.

Along the way Barney was the key investor or Chairman in a bunch of other successful natural foods companies that I wasn’t involved in but wish I had been, like Izze Beverage which got bought by Pepsi, and Seventh Generation which got bought by Unilever. Today, Barney and I are backing Hass again in a chain of fresh markets in San Francisco called Luke’s Local. Luke Oppenheim, the founder, is the son of Tom Oppenheim who founded Tom’s of Maine (a Barney deal), the first organic toothpaste brand that sold to Colgate Palmolive, where Luke worked.

This history serves to make a point about an American industry that started with Celestial Seasonings in Boulder: all of it owes its existence directly or indirectly to Barney Feinblum, the greatest serial entrepreneur in the natural foods business.

Barney went to Cornell and supported its herb garden for many years. He and Jules decided that Colorado needed its own herb garden and endowed a new one at Colorado State University. Cindy and I went to the dedication and groundbreaking last week, where Jared Polis, another great serial entrepreneur from Boulder and now our Governor, introduced Barney to the assembled dignitaries.

Referencing Celestial Seasonings, Barney said something profound: “You can change the world with a few small plants”.