General Mills Completes $610M Sale of Helper, Suddenly Salad Businesses
General Mills has completed the sale of its Helper main meals and Suddenly Salad side dishes businesses to Eagle Family Foods Group in a cash transaction valued at approximately $610 million.
Eagle Foods, a portfolio company of Kelso & Company, is a leading producer and marketer of canned sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk products and retail snack foods, distributed through U.S. retail channels, foodservice and export, U.S. military and private label channels.
Net sales for the Helper and Suddenly Salad businesses totaled approximately $235 million in fiscal 2021. General Mills included the impact of this transaction in its Fiscal 2023 guidance issued in its fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2022 earnings press release on June 29, 2022.
“We are builders of brands, categories, and people,” said Bernard Kreilmann, Eagle Foods CEO. “The Helper and Suddenly Salad brands, with strong heritage and high consumer awareness, are a perfect fit for what Eagle does best – investing in, innovating, and revitalizing brands to drive growth and nurture them to reach their full potential.”
The acquisition creates three diversified platforms within Eagle Foods focused on growing center store categories for retailers – snacks, baking, and meals and sides. Eagle will continue investing in its growing snacks and milk business in parallel with this new investment.
Eagle Foods has been successful in driving brand and category growth by investing in R&D, innovations, marketing and strong supply chain efficiencies. As the leader in the sweetened condensed milk category, Eagle Foods has consistently driven sales and share growth by bringing new households into the category. Eagle Foods also reversed negative share and distribution trends of two struggling popcorn brands it acquired, Cretors and Popcorn Indiana, turning them into two of the fastest growing brands in their category.
“We will leverage our core values of entrepreneurship, collaboration, and quality to grow all of our brands and further expand into the center of the store,” Kreilmann said. “We will immediately start expanding the positioning of these two iconic brands and bring consumers tasty, convenient, and affordable meal solutions.”
Headquartered in Minneapolis, General Mills generated fiscal 2022 net sales of U.S. $19.0 billion. In addition, the company’s share of non-consolidated joint venture net sales totaled U.S. $1.1 billion.
For updates on the specialty food and beverage industries, subscribe to Gourmet News.
Happy Fourth of July From Gourmet News!
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.
For updates on the specialty food industry, subscribe to Gourmet News.
