8 ms·

The big surprise in this article is that she was also the founder of Smartfood which she sold to Frito-Lay for $15m. This afforded her the space to develop the

by krrrh 6y ago

The big surprise in this article is that she was also the founder of Smartfood which she sold to Frito-Lay for $15m. This afforded her the space to develop the mac and cheese business, which she partly sold to Solera capital who developed it into a business that eventually sold to General Mills for $820m. After the deal with Solera she put her time into selling vegetables at the local farmers market. It’s a nice profile, but I would really love to read more about how she took such a simple idea (replacing neon orange cheddar powder with white on two different product lines) and quickly developed them into massive businesses and brands. She says in the article that she didn’t like business, but one gets the impression that she was exceptionally good at it.

draw_down 6y ago
Sometimes a person can be really good at something they don't really care for or care about. I can sympathize with her; "business" can mean a lot of things, including endless politicking, insincere communication, misplaced priorities, etc. And as you grow in importance you get lots more inbound attention (mostly undesirable), more decisions to make, and so on. Being a figurehead before peacing out completely was a good move.
- GordonS 6y ago
  I feel this, although on a much smaller and less financially beneficial level :) Every.single.time I write technical documentation, everyone tells me how wonderful it is. But I always feel like it took me forever to write, and the whole thing felt like a horrible, horrible chore; a total bore-fest. Later I read it back and I'm like: "meh, this is so dry and boring!". But of course, I wasn't writing prose - I was writing a reference document, so I suppose it's not meant to be anything but boring. And OK, while writing it I might of wished I was grating my face instead - but numerous people over a period of decades have told me how good I am at it, so I suppose I must be, even though I hate it.
timr 6y ago
What's amazing about this to me is less than she had two powdered-cheese-related food product hits, and more that she was able to make such a generic product, and have the segment to herself for long enough to make a windfall. These days, anyone who tried to make a product by purchasing the core ingredients from two major food suppliers would find their offering cloned within days of any kind of traction. Consider the hoverboard phenomenon, which is much more complex, and still didn't make it a year before there were dozens of identical products out of China.
- adventured 6y ago
  The cloning problem is as old as consumer products is. It's not happening faster, people just don't know the history. That's why there were a billion auto makers in old Detroit, all cloning eachother rapidly. Those automobiles were more complex and difficult to manufacture than hoverboards. If you're trying to compete in such a saturated segment, you have the same competitive targeting as has always existed since consumer goods became a mainstream thing. You can try to build a brand of some manner, which provides a self-constructed moat against competition (this is what Smartfood represented). You can lower your prices under everyone else and give up margin, in which case you compete through executing better than everyone else (being able to survive on 3%-5% profit margins). You can leverage a network you possess, human connections, to gain an advantage over your competition in one of the industry tiers (manufacturing, marketing, distribution, etc). You can cheat, bribe, get your competition put out of business (Preston Tucker was attacked that way; and it's common throughout most of the world). You can use a resource advantage, for example capital - you can out-spend the competition (economies of scale; locking up manufacturing (Apple does this); advertising, which ties to brand building), or sue them out of existence if they're far weaker (Microsoft was almost bankrupted early in its existence with this tactic). Not much has actually changed structurally in a century about how all of these things work.
  - scythe 6y ago
    Another thing Annie really excelled at was distribution, up to and including leaving boxes lying around. Amusingly, this too has been done with scooters, but not (yet) hoverboards. But distribution is especially important for a product like macaroni and cheese which is sold everywhere, and Annie's really does have (in my experience) good market penetration, which I suspect predates the investor buyout. Cars and hoverboards on the other hand are only sold in a few places or on the Internet, which means you have to compete elsewhere.
hellbannedguy 6y ago
I have a family member that buys her products religiously. Besides Mac & Cheese, they make everything from frozen dinners, to $3.99 soups. She is opening up restaurants too. Her brilliance is making the public believe they are eating slightly better than the rest of us, which is probably true? It’s to bad the bar is so low. “Natural, non-gmo, healthy, etc.”. Oh yea, the packaging is brilliant too. If you are a vegetarian, buying her foods is an easy choice. That said, most of the food seems slightly better than the brand names products in terms of healthy food. The brilliance of her product is basically marketing. I was glad when my sister said, “I am eating to many of her frozen dinners. I’m beginning to think they are not good for me?” I didn’t say anything. (Oh yea, if you live with anyone on a strict vegetarian diet, don’t say anything. Trust me.). I was thinking, the secret to her food is that mysterious cheese. You could put it on anything, and it would taste palatable, but not at her price point for myself.
- krallja 6y ago
  “her” products are owned and made by General Mills, not her.
- freyir 6y ago
  You might be mixing up Annie’s with Amy’s? I don’t believe Annie’s has frozen foods.
  - jkelleyrtp 6y ago
    I was just in a Publix and can attest to the fact that Annie's now sells frozen foods. Different types of mac n cheese and some soups.
- donw 6y ago
  > The brilliance of her product is basically marketing. I was glad when my sister said, “I am eating to many of her frozen dinners. I’m beginning to think they are not good for me?” My food philosophy is simple: I use the most basic ingredients as is practical, buy the freshest stuff I can, and cook nearly everything at home. I can be pretty confident about what's in my food, because odds are I put it there. We save a ton of money on eating out, and I think it builds better friendships when you can invite people over for a meal you cooked. This comes at a time cost, but with practice, you get to the point where you can cook amazing food pretty quickly. Not as fast as an instant meal, but it'll taste ten times better, and cost a quarter as much. Also, I've found I don't really like most processed food anymore after eating like this. Some stuff is okay -- potato chips are way easier to buy off-the-shelf -- but I honestly start to feel sick if I eat McDonalds, or drink a Coke, and I pretty much grew up on both of those. I know this isn't accessible to everybody -- if you're working two jobs and on the weekends, there's no way you've got time to cook -- but if you have the time, I'd say it's worth it.
minikites 6y ago
Sub-brands like this are a natural function of capitalism. Keep chipping away at the area under the demand curve with smaller and smaller rectangles (i.e. products with narrower but stronger appeal). It's not such a big deal when applied to consumer goods but thinking of the world in this simplistic way is problematic. Advertising leads people to identify with their choices as consumers and it makes it difficult for us to relate to each other as those choices become fragmented.
divbzero 6y ago
I too enjoyed the profile and wish there were more about her perspectives on business. Her general success and the tone of her comments [1] [2] suggest that she’s far more business savvy than she likes to admit. [1]: “Although I don’t have any contact with the folks at General Mills, I have learned that they are committed to converting one million acres of conventional, degraded agricultural land to sustainable, no-till acreage within the next decade. I am hopeful that they will quickly learn that crop yield is greater with no-till practices (plus countless other benefits) and that their conversion timeline will be accelerated.” [2]: “I do believe that General Mills gets it. There’s no denying that Annie’s is a special brand, and they know it would be detrimental not to keep the mission and culture intact.” Annie’s story reminds me of Peet’s, whose founder [3] bowed out of the business after a decade or so but inspired two of the largest coffee chains in America today. [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Peet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Peet

by krrrh 6y ago

draw_down 6y ago

Sometimes a person can be really good at something they don't really care for or care about. I can sympathize with her; "business" can mean a lot of things, including endless politicking, insincere communication, misplaced priorities, etc. And as you grow in importance you get lots more inbound attention (mostly undesirable), more decisions to make, and so on. Being a figurehead before peacing out completely was a good move.

GordonS 6y ago
I feel this, although on a much smaller and less financially beneficial level :) Every.single.time I write technical documentation, everyone tells me how wonderful it is. But I always feel like it took me forever to write, and the whole thing felt like a horrible, horrible chore; a total bore-fest. Later I read it back and I'm like: "meh, this is so dry and boring!". But of course, I wasn't writing prose - I was writing a reference document, so I suppose it's not meant to be anything but boring. And OK, while writing it I might of wished I was grating my face instead - but numerous people over a period of decades have told me how good I am at it, so I suppose I must be, even though I hate it.

timr 6y ago

What's amazing about this to me is less than she had two powdered-cheese-related food product hits, and more that she was able to make such a generic product, and have the segment to herself for long enough to make a windfall. These days, anyone who tried to make a product by purchasing the core ingredients from two major food suppliers would find their offering cloned within days of any kind of traction. Consider the hoverboard phenomenon, which is much more complex, and still didn't make it a year before there were dozens of identical products out of China.

adventured 6y ago
The cloning problem is as old as consumer products is. It's not happening faster, people just don't know the history. That's why there were a billion auto makers in old Detroit, all cloning eachother rapidly. Those automobiles were more complex and difficult to manufacture than hoverboards. If you're trying to compete in such a saturated segment, you have the same competitive targeting as has always existed since consumer goods became a mainstream thing. You can try to build a brand of some manner, which provides a self-constructed moat against competition (this is what Smartfood represented). You can lower your prices under everyone else and give up margin, in which case you compete through executing better than everyone else (being able to survive on 3%-5% profit margins). You can leverage a network you possess, human connections, to gain an advantage over your competition in one of the industry tiers (manufacturing, marketing, distribution, etc). You can cheat, bribe, get your competition put out of business (Preston Tucker was attacked that way; and it's common throughout most of the world). You can use a resource advantage, for example capital - you can out-spend the competition (economies of scale; locking up manufacturing (Apple does this); advertising, which ties to brand building), or sue them out of existence if they're far weaker (Microsoft was almost bankrupted early in its existence with this tactic). Not much has actually changed structurally in a century about how all of these things work.
- scythe 6y ago
  Another thing Annie really excelled at was distribution, up to and including leaving boxes lying around. Amusingly, this too has been done with scooters, but not (yet) hoverboards. But distribution is especially important for a product like macaroni and cheese which is sold everywhere, and Annie's really does have (in my experience) good market penetration, which I suspect predates the investor buyout. Cars and hoverboards on the other hand are only sold in a few places or on the Internet, which means you have to compete elsewhere.

hellbannedguy 6y ago

I have a family member that buys her products religiously. Besides Mac & Cheese, they make everything from frozen dinners, to $3.99 soups. She is opening up restaurants too. Her brilliance is making the public believe they are eating slightly better than the rest of us, which is probably true? It’s to bad the bar is so low. “Natural, non-gmo, healthy, etc.”. Oh yea, the packaging is brilliant too. If you are a vegetarian, buying her foods is an easy choice. That said, most of the food seems slightly better than the brand names products in terms of healthy food. The brilliance of her product is basically marketing. I was glad when my sister said, “I am eating to many of her frozen dinners. I’m beginning to think they are not good for me?” I didn’t say anything. (Oh yea, if you live with anyone on a strict vegetarian diet, don’t say anything. Trust me.). I was thinking, the secret to her food is that mysterious cheese. You could put it on anything, and it would taste palatable, but not at her price point for myself.

krallja 6y ago
“her” products are owned and made by General Mills, not her.
freyir 6y ago
You might be mixing up Annie’s with Amy’s? I don’t believe Annie’s has frozen foods.
- jkelleyrtp 6y ago
  I was just in a Publix and can attest to the fact that Annie's now sells frozen foods. Different types of mac n cheese and some soups.
donw 6y ago
> The brilliance of her product is basically marketing. I was glad when my sister said, “I am eating to many of her frozen dinners. I’m beginning to think they are not good for me?” My food philosophy is simple: I use the most basic ingredients as is practical, buy the freshest stuff I can, and cook nearly everything at home. I can be pretty confident about what's in my food, because odds are I put it there. We save a ton of money on eating out, and I think it builds better friendships when you can invite people over for a meal you cooked. This comes at a time cost, but with practice, you get to the point where you can cook amazing food pretty quickly. Not as fast as an instant meal, but it'll taste ten times better, and cost a quarter as much. Also, I've found I don't really like most processed food anymore after eating like this. Some stuff is okay -- potato chips are way easier to buy off-the-shelf -- but I honestly start to feel sick if I eat McDonalds, or drink a Coke, and I pretty much grew up on both of those. I know this isn't accessible to everybody -- if you're working two jobs and on the weekends, there's no way you've got time to cook -- but if you have the time, I'd say it's worth it.

minikites 6y ago

Sub-brands like this are a natural function of capitalism. Keep chipping away at the area under the demand curve with smaller and smaller rectangles (i.e. products with narrower but stronger appeal). It's not such a big deal when applied to consumer goods but thinking of the world in this simplistic way is problematic. Advertising leads people to identify with their choices as consumers and it makes it difficult for us to relate to each other as those choices become fragmented.

divbzero 6y ago

I too enjoyed the profile and wish there were more about her perspectives on business. Her general success and the tone of her comments [1] [2] suggest that she’s far more business savvy than she likes to admit. [1]: “Although I don’t have any contact with the folks at General Mills, I have learned that they are committed to converting one million acres of conventional, degraded agricultural land to sustainable, no-till acreage within the next decade. I am hopeful that they will quickly learn that crop yield is greater with no-till practices (plus countless other benefits) and that their conversion timeline will be accelerated.” [2]: “I do believe that General Mills gets it. There’s no denying that Annie’s is a special brand, and they know it would be detrimental not to keep the mission and culture intact.” Annie’s story reminds me of Peet’s, whose founder [3] bowed out of the business after a decade or so but inspired two of the largest coffee chains in America today. [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Peet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Peet