Kraft Launches Rebranded Mac & Cheese
For 85 years, Kraft Mac & Cheese has been America’s original and favorite comfort food. With more than a million boxes sold every day, the cheesy bowls of deliciousness haven’t just filled America’s bellies; they’ve played an iconic role in every stage of people’s lives. Now, Kraft is unveiling a brand identity that includes an updated logo, noodle smile and even a new name that redefines the brand as feel-good food for everyone.
The new look updates all aspects of the brand identity: the name, the logo, brand colors, typography, photography, iconography and packaging. The change from “macaroni and cheese” to “mac & cheese,” is meant to reflect the way fans organically talk about the brand. The iconic blue box now features just a single-color hue of blue and amplifies the brand’s most recognizable asset — the noodle smile, now even more delicious and dripping with creamy, cheesy goodness.
“We know that people aren’t turning to comfort food as a guilty pleasure, they are positively embracing comfort, saying yes to feeling good, saying yes to caring for themselves,” said Victoria Lee, Kraft Mac & Cheese brand manager. “There is a familiar, craveable, positive comfort to Kraft Mac & Cheese that makes it so special and iconic to millions of people across the world and our new look is a reflection of what our brand means to our consumers.”
The new look will appear across social channels and on the website this summer and packaging will start to hit shelves in August.
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General Mills to Sell Helper, Suddenly Salad to Eagle
General Mills has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Helper main meals and Suddenly Salad side dishes businesses to Eagle Family Foods Group, a portfolio company of Kelso & Company, in a cash transaction valued at approximately $610 million. The proposed transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal 2023, subject to regulatory approval.
“With this divestiture, we are continuing to reshape our portfolio and advance our Accelerate strategy,” said Jon Nudi, General Mills group president, North America Retail. “This transaction improves our North America Retail segment’s growth profile and allows us to increase our focus on brands and categories where we have the best opportunities to drive profitable growth.”
Net sales for the Helper and Suddenly Salad businesses totaled approximately $235 million in fiscal 2021. The company expects the divestiture to be dilutive to its adjusted earnings per share in the range of approximately 10 to 11 cents in the first 12 months after closing, before factoring in any potential benefit from the use of proceeds from the sale. The company will provide more information on the transaction on its fourth quarter earnings call in late June.
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as financial adviser to General Mills for the transaction and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP served as legal adviser.
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Impossible Foods Launches Nuggets, Patties in UK
California-based Impossible Foods, the fastest-growing plant-based meat company in the United States, is making its European debut in the United Kingdom this week with the launch of two of its latest products — Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets Made From Plants and Impossible Sausage Patties Made From Plants.
Both products will be available starting May 19 at restaurants across the country — including many of the UK’s best-loved chicken shops. Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets are preferred two-to-one by UK consumers, according to the company.
“The UK has a unique and unrivalled chicken shop culture that we’re confident our nuggets will compete in because first and foremost they taste better, and they’re also better for you and better for the planet,” said CEO Peter McGuinness. “And there’s more to come — later this year, we’ll be expanding to supermarkets and rolling out additional products. We can’t wait for our friends and fans in the UK to finally taste our products.”
Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets launched in the United States late last year and quickly became one of the company’s top-selling products and the fastest-growing brand of plant-based chicken nuggets in the category. Impossible Foods’ expansion to the UK marks the international plant-based chicken debut of Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets outside of the United States.
This is the fourth new market the company has expanded to in nine months, following the launch of its flagship Impossible Burger in Australia, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates last fall. The company plans to launch its full product portfolio in the UK, including products containing heme (soy leghemoglobin) — a key ingredient in the Impossible Burger and other Impossible products — at a later date.
Impossible products will be available in thousands of restaurants and foodservice establishments in the UK within a year, starting with more than 300 this month. The country’s first Impossible dishes will appear exclusively on the menus of select restaurants and chicken shops, including Chicken Cottage, Halo Burger, Le Bab, MEATliquor, Patty&Bun and others.
Later this month, Impossible products will launch at more than 250 Hungry Horse pubs owned by Greene King, the UK’s leading pub company and brewer.
“At Hungry Horse, we’re big on getting together, and our customers come to us for the generous and unique food creations in a ‘home away from home’ environment,” said Robert Calderbank, business unit director for Hungry Horse. “We’re so excited to bring the Impossible ‘Chicken’ Nuggets to our pubs and really believe these will deliver on that promise, tantalising the taste buds of our customers across the country, we can’t wait!”
Impossible Foods celebrated its UK debut with a launch party hosted by fictional TV character and bossman Chabuddy G, played by Asim Chaudhry, a star on BBC’s hit mockumentary “People Just Do Nothing.” The company invited hundreds of \Impossible fans to be among the first to taste Impossible products on UK soil at its “Chicken Paradise & Sausage Palace” themed event emceed by Chabuddy at Maison Bab, a popular London restaurant offering modern gourmet kebabs.
“From the beginning, our goal at Le Bab was to offer a new kind of kebab, fusing global influences with amazing ingredients, always with a mind to sustainability,” said Stephen Tozer, co-founder of Le Bab, Maison Bab and Kebab Queen. “Impossible’s products are extraordinary. I first tried Impossible years ago and it blew my mind. I’ve wanted to collaborate with them ever since, so this is a bit of a dream come true! I’m absolutely certain that their plant-based meats are going to fundamentally change the way the world eats.”
Chicken is the most commonly consumed meat per capita in the UK, with three-quarters of consumers reporting that they eat animal-based chicken on a weekly basis, and nearly 90% saying they eat it on a monthly basis, according to an Impossible Foods study.
Made for chicken-lovers everywhere, Impossible “Chicken” Nuggets require far less resources to produce: 55% less water, 24% less land, and 24% less GHG emissions than animal chicken nuggets. They feature a golden, crispy breadcrumb coating on the outside and a tender, juicy bite on the inside, with 13 grams protein per 100-gram serving and 25% less salt than animal chicken nuggets.
Impossible Sausage Patties Made From Plants are also better for consumers and for the planet, designed to be conveniently slipped into a breakfast sandwich or enjoyed as a center-of-plate delicacy. In addition, they’re produced using 88% less water, 77% less land and 47% less greenhouse gas emissions than animal pork sausages. They’re also packed with 5.6 grams protein, 2.5 grams fiber, and 1.1 milligrams iron per patty.
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