Our story begins with company founder Daniel Staackmann, who became a vegan in high school in 1992. Over the next 14 years, Dan develops a love for seitan, but store-bought options are hard to find, and unflavored, requiring quite a bit of extra work before he can add them to his favorite recipes and only a couple of local restaurants have seitan on the menu.

Realizing that entrepreneurial life was what he wanted, Dan decided to take a chance on seitan. With no culinary background, and only having attempted to make seitan at home once (with less than ideal results) he got together with a friend in a shared commercial kitchen and started experimenting.

After a handful of failed attempts, the Italian and Chorizo Seitan products were born. Sales pitches were made to a few restaurants in Chicago, and once proven successful, it was time to start saving for the means to launch a retail line and a dedicated facility.

Did you know? Some of these early restaurant partners continue to carry Upton’s Naturals products on their menus to this day!

Upton’s Naturals has launched its first product and is operating out of a shared commercial kitchen, but the business needs a more permanent home. The biggest hurdle is financial. This is a decade before the investment boom into plant-based meats and in addition to working the production line and trying to grow the business without pay, Dan supports himself by buying (or garbage-picking) and selling Modern furniture and art. He finds a solution in a “no-doc” $40,000 home equity line of credit on his Midwestern bungalow, which gives him just enough money to secure necessary equipment and packaging and move into a rented factory on the 2nd floor of a small industrial building in Skokie, IL.

Did you know? The early disinterest of investors in the vegan food space may have been to the brand’s advantage. With a slow growth model and conservative expansion, Upton’s Naturals remains privately owned with 100% ownership in Dan’s hands to this day. A huge rarity for a business in the grocery, natural foods, and plant-based meat industries!

Every month we receive dozens of DMs and emails from folks wondering why we don’t sell our products to their local retailer, or why they can’t find certain products in their area. If it was up to us, you could buy Updogs at the gas station and Bacon Seitan would be so plentiful you’d trip over it. Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it works.

Decisions about what you find on store shelves are almost always made at the store’s corporate level by a category buyer. Brands generally have one opportunity per year to present new items to each retailer’s category buyer, and the buyers make decisions about what new items they’ll bring in (and sadly, which items will be removed to make room for the what’s new). We’ll spare you all the details – but even before that step we have to finalize recipes, design packaging, buy barcodes, source all the ingredients, calculate the data on the nutrition labels, etc.

Retailers don’t order directly from the brands, though. Imagine if each store received individual deliveries from every brand they carry. Or if you were the person responsible for placing 100,000 individual orders every week. Instead, brands sell to distributors who pick the products up and bring them to distribution centers all over the country. Then the retailer buys the products they want based on what’s available in those local distribution centers. (Some brands do self-distribute for a variety of reasons, but the process described above is how the majority of items you see in stores end up there.)

Sounds simple enough, so why can’t you find certain products in stores near you? Well, here’s where things get complicated. Distributors will only stock a product if they know they’ll be able to sell it to a certain amount of it to retailers – so most of them require a minimum number of store locations to approve a product before they’ll bring it into the regional warehouse. For example, if one independent vegan store in Austin, TX, wants to carry Updogs, most distributors are not going to stock Updogs just for them. But, if a larger retail chain wants Updogs, the distributor knows they’ll sell plenty of them. And once those Updogs are in the warehouse, both the large retail chain and the indie vegan store can order them, along with any other stores that are customers of that wholesale warehouse.

Category buyers make their decisions based on everything from trends to data to gut instinct and personal preferences, but consumer demand is important, too. So, if you aren’t finding the products you want where you shop, send an email, leave a voicemail, or drop a note at customer service and you might just make a difference.

We launch a prepared foods line in Chicago stores, including several Whole Foods locations. We stay busy delivering fresh, ready-to-eat items to stores 3 times per week. Early menu items included a calzone, an empanada (with chorizo, potatoes, and golden rasins!), a chipotle seitan wrap, sloppy joes, orzo salad, and rotini salad. Later additions included the very popular chickenbaconranchwrap, gyro wrap, BLT, foccacia sandwich, breakfast sandwich, BBQ Slaw sandwich, pastrami sandwich, and a series of bowls. This line would later expand to cover the entire Midwest region and stayed active until about 2015, when we closed down the prepared foods line to focus our attention on other parts of the business.

Did you know? Dan met his longtime girlfriend, Nicole Sopko, in 2009 when she bought an empanada from him at an outdoor festival. She has worked for Upton’s Naturals since 2010.

Having outgrown our first factory and aware that our building will be sold, we start looking for a new home. When we don’t find anything that will work for us in the city of Chicago, we decide to build. We work with Sarah Dunn and Martin Felson at UrbanLab Architects to design the most beautiful seitan factory we can imagine. In the meantime, we put a small sign on our newly-acquired plot of land and host a contest for whoever can find our new home base.

Construction takes a little under a year and in the meantime, we move into a rented space in the Fulton Market neighborhood. With our new building complete, we move into a new production facility in West Town and open Upton’s Breakroom. The Breakroom, as it is affectionately known, is one of Chicago’s first fully vegan restaurants, and serves as a kitchen where we test recipes and prepare free meals for all of our employees every day.

One of our best-selling menu items throughout the 12 year lifespan of Upton’s Breakroom (later renamed Liberation Kitchen) is our Fried Bacon Mac, featuring Bacon Seitan. This inspired the Ch’eesy Mac that we launched in retail stores in 2016. Upton’s Breakroom/Liberation Kitchen closed mid-year in 2025, but we went out with a bang by using our space to host the city’s first all-vegan weekly farmer’s market, organized by Bot Bakery.

Did you know? Upton’s Naturals’ West Town Chicago factory is featured in the December/January 2016 issue of Dwell Magazine, which highlighted prefab construction.

Upton’s Naturals is best known for our retail (sold in stores) products, but we also provide seitan and jackfruit to restaurants nationwide (food service). One of the first restaurants to add our seitan to their menu was Handlebar Cafe in Chicago, and 20 years later we’re incredibly proud to say you can still find our Chorizo Seitan and food service-exclusive Chick Seitan in their nachos, Buffalo “chicken” wrap, and other dishes. Over the years we’ve supplied meat alternatives to thousands of restaurants, even helping some to break into entirely new categories. In 2020 we partnered with Midwest Italian beef chain Buona to create a plant-based “Italian Beefless” sandwich made with our Seitan. The item, which was originally intended to be available for a limited time, sold out in 30+ locations in the first four hours they were open. Not only is Italian Beefless still on the menu six years later, but it inspired Buona to add a vegan cheese option, a Beefless Bowl, and to introduce a frozen Italian Beefless sold in grocery stores and online.

 We have an idea. While eating a jackfruit curry at our favorite Nepalese restaurant (RIP, Himal Chuli), we start to wonder why you can’t buy pre-seasoned jackfruit at the store. So, Dan gets on a plane and travels for weeks around Southeast Asia meeting with suppliers, farmers, and factories trying to find someone who believes in his weird dream. We are told often that Americans do not want jackfruit, but we think that they might. So, we persist. Eventually, we find the right fit in a partner and after a lot of recipe testing, we launch the first pre-seasoned jackfruit products in the western market. Our jackfruit is responsible for introducing this Southeast Asian ingredient to millions of Americans and Europeans, making it simpler to prepare and enjoy, as well as more environmentally friendly to transport than fresh or canned.

Did you Know? Upton’s Naturals’ Jackfruit is featured on an episode of the German TV Show, Galileo. The 15-minute long segment involves a visit to our Chicago headquarters as well as a trip with us in Thailand to visit a jackfruit farm. We get SO MANY EMAILS from people in Europe who enjoyed the show every time it airs!

This may go down in vegan history as “the year of the burger.”  We launch the Classic Burger, made with seitan, tofu, and eggplant, the same year that a now-famous “bleeding” plant-based burger hits the market. While it is delicious, it’s hard to make an impact as a small business at the time and the Classic Burger didn’t get the love that we felt it deserved.

We do get some attention around this time when we appear on the “Freaky Flavors” episode of Unwrapped 2.0 with host Alfonso Ribeiro, where we show off our Bacon Seitan making skills.

This same year, we co-found the Plant Based Food Association, the first and only U.S. trade association representing plant-based food companies and industry partners, along with Tofurky, Miyoko’s Creamery, Daiya & Follow Your Heart. Our COO, Nicole Sopko, is still serving on the PBFA Board (and the board of its sister organization, PBFI) 10 years later in 2026.

Largely inspired by the incredible daily lunches that we were eating while working on recipe development with our factory partners in Thailand, we launch six heat-and-eat meals and sides with the introduction of Real Meal Kits and Ch’eesy Macs. Our four Thai meal kits, Massaman Curry, Pad See Ew, Thai Curry Noodle, and Thai Spaghetti, are variations of some of our Thai favorites and allow us to bring a piece of those experiences home with us. Ch’eesy Mac and Ch’eesy Bacon Mac, on the other hand, are inspired by the best-selling menu item at our Chicago cafe, Upton’s Breakroom.

We’re proud to manufacture our best-selling Seitan products in Chicago where we employ an incredible team of people, many of whom have been with us for 10 years or more. So, it may come as a surprise to some folks to see “product of Sri Lanka” on our Jackfruit and a handful of other products. 

One great reason to manufacture some items overseas? Jackfruit doesn’t grow in Chicago! It doesn’t grow anywhere domestically in the quantities we require. But, in many Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Sri Lanka, it’s so plentiful that the young, unripe jackfruit we use is considered a waste product. The same is true about banana blossoms, another ingredient we source, process, and package in Sri Lanka. 

In some cases, where we manufacture is a matter of where the necessary machinery is available. Machines that package canned food, or food in pouches, cost millions of dollars, so many brands outsource the work to factories that own such equipment.

Knowing when to outsource and when to keep production in-house is an imperfect science, and over the years we’ve weathered everything from COVID-related delays to tariffs to natural disasters. Nevertheless, producing great-tasting vegan products ethically and as sustainably as possible is always a priority and our partners overseas help us to do just that.

When we built our factory in 2013 we never anticipated outgrowing it in five years, but we sure did! Our expansion into retailers nationwide meant we were producing record amounts of seitan, and we needed more space ASAP. When a 42,000-square-foot former soda syrup factory (in the Midwest we call it “pop”) in Chicago’s North Austin neighborhood became available, we moved all of our production and offices into the space.

Some time after we move in, our production manager, Tony, finds a stray dog with a broken jaw living in a nearby alley. Dan names her Flapjack and her story makes the local news when we host a fundraiser for her care. She is almost instantly adopted by her rescuer and his wife, our Sales & Marketing Director, Natalie!

We weren’t just moving factories, though, we were also moving categories… or trying to, at least. Jerky Bites were our attempt to break into the snack aisle with four flavors of plant-based jerky that came in small, non-sticky pieces so it was easy to eat on the go. We presented four flavors (Smoky Original, Tarragon Ginger Lime, Tamarind Pepperoni, and Pineapple Pink Peppercorn) to buyers nationwide, but sadly no retailers were interested and we were forced to abandon the idea.

Did you know? Flappy, as she is affectionately known, is not the only animal to be rescued during work hours by the Upton’s Naturals team. Over the years, we’ve helped at least two dogs, one bird, and one opposum find the help they need!

Jerky Bites weren’t our first “failed” product and they won’t be the last. We’ve had plenty of products that never saw the outside of a trade show or a buyers meeting. One staff favorite “failure” is Ch’eesy Squeeze, our signature nutritional yeast cheese sauce in three flavors (Original, Smoky, and Spicy) in a squeezable pouch. Honorable mentions also go to Deli Bacon, a thicker-cut line of flavored bacon seitan (think maple and black pepper); and to our Gyro and Pastrami Seitans, which have found success in our food service (restaurant) program, but have just never charmed retailers the same way. 

Likewise, sometimes we have to say goodbye to products that do make it onto store shelves, but never quite took off the way we’d hoped for. Or, we have to make cuts when ingredients become unavailable, or so expensive the end product would be out of reach for most customers. Fava Crumbles, Minestrone Soup, and Thai Curry Jackfruit are a few examples of these. 

It can be frustrating, but we keep trying. New products are a great way to stay fresh in retailers’ minds, and to stay relevant to an ever-changing consumer base. Jerky Bites got a lot of press for something that no one could actually buy anywhere! But most importantly, product innovation goes hand-in-hand with our company mission to make vegan food approachable and available. The more products we dream up, the more we’re willing to try something new and possibly fail, the better our chances of creating the item that convinces someone to opt for plant-based, and to leave an animal off their plate.

This year started off with a bang when our small team of three travelled to exhibit at BIOFACH, the world’s largest trade show for organic food, in Nuremberg, Germany, where we all promptly get food poisoning. We recover and have a great show, showing of our first certified organic products with Banana Blossom and Shredded Jackfruit.

Just hours prior to our team leaving for Expo West, our largest natural foods trade show of the year, the event is cancelled due to the pandemic. Our office goes fully remote, but that didn’t stop us from bringing new products to market. We finally introduce the Updog, our vegan tribute to Chicago’s famous kosher beef hot dogs. The ingredient list even includes celery salt, a must-have for a Chicago-style hot dog. We are disappointed not to have the opportunity to show off this product in person as we had also designed a very cute trade show booth, pieces of which now have a permanent home in our office conference room.

At the same time, we transitioned our restaurant Upton’s Breakroom to a take out/delivery model, and opened a vegan donut shop in the same space called Liberation Donuts. The logo is Upton in a balaclava, a nod to the animal liberation movement of the 70s and 80s.

Did you know? All of our Jackfruit and Banana Blossom products are now certified organic.

In late 2020, a major retailer approached us with the request that we try our hand at canned soup. After countless rounds of office-wide soup taste tests, we settled on four flavors (Chick Tortilla, Italian Wedding, Chick & Noodle, and Loaded Baked Potato). We had a soup-making party at Dan’s house and overnighted mason jars filled with homemade soup to that retailer for recipe approval. They chose all but Loaded Baked Potato. Great! But then we had to figure out how to scale those homemade recipes up… a lot. Our canned soups launched nationwide in April.

In the spring, heaven gets another angel when Dan and Nicole lose their extremely beloved dog and neighborhood regular, Greta. In her honor, Liberation Donuts hosts a full-day event called All For Greta where the only item on the menu is the popular “For Greta” donut, sandwiched with whipped cream and strawberries. All proceeds are donated to two local rescues, One Tail At A Time and Heartland Animal Shelter, where Greta was adopted.

This year also kicks off a series of challenges as there are massive transportation shortage issues worldwide and freight prices skyrocket, which contributes to higher prices for literally everything else. We do our best to keep our own expenses down and navigate the overall uncertainty which continues until this day.

Did you know? Upton’s Naturals has hosted, organized, partnered with, and contributed to hundreds if not thousands of fundraisers over the years for a huge variety of causes. We love our community and the many communities and causes that we engage with worldwide!

In the years leading up to our 19th year in business we continued to have a lot going on. We hosted a pop-up retro arcade, including an all you can eat brunch with an animatronic dog-themed Misfits cover band as entertainment. For our 18th birthday, we held a sold out all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. We took on a brand refresh with a new logo and all new packaging designs. We launched 9 new products, including some new flavors of Soup and made several more products, including our signature Seitan, available for sale in Canada. We travel to Washington DC to speak up for our industry alongside our fellow Plant Based Foods Association members. We donate food or cater events for groups including Mercy for Animals, One Tail At A Time, and Front 242, among others.

In June 2025, we closed the doors at Liberation Kitchen (formerly Upton’s Breakroom and Liberation Donuts), hosting a series of fully vegan farmers markets as a final goodbye to the West Town neighborhood we’d called home (literally, Dan and Nicole lived upstairs) since 2013.

Upton’s Naturals turns 20! Still independently owned by one vegan guy who just really likes seitan. Still innovating (stay tuned to our Instagram account for peeks at the new products we’ll be presenting to buyers this year). And still Vegan For A Reason!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s supported us, worked with us, and showed us love throughout the years. We are only here because of you!

 Thank you for visiting! Please exit through the gift shop and sign the guestbook below on your way out!