With 125 products, from organic BBQ sauce and gluten-free mac 'n' cheese to uncured pepperoni frozen pizza and vegan pretzel bunnies, Annie's went public just as it was hitting what Foraker describes as the sweet spot of its growth curve. And just as the company began adding more organic products to its lineup, the mainstreaming of the organic movement was gaining momentum. As a result, Annie's had time to grow organically (pun intended). Solera didn't seek a quick exit, which in the packaged foods industry almost always means selling to one of the big players, the way Withey sold Smartfood to Frito-Lay. "I viewed it as a brand that stood for a lot of important things." "It wasn't just a pasta company," he says. That could have killed the personality that Annie had instilled in her namesake company, but Foraker says Solera understood that shooting for financial goals didn't mean sacrificing what he saw as the company's vision or its heritage. With big money behind Annie's, Foraker says the company developed a "performance-oriented culture" focused on meeting quarterly and annual goals. Annie's Shells and White Cheddar, the mac 'n' cheese in the purple box with the bunny, came out in 1989 and helped pioneer a product niche that more than two decades later has become a big business: healthy convenience food. Fishing around for something to do next, the two stuck to what they knew: packaging and white cheddar. The resealable bag didn't take off, but the popcorn did: Frito-Lay bought Smartfood from the pair for a reported $15 million. The bag needed a product to show it off, so Annie started experimenting in her kitchen and came up with Smartfood, the now ubiquitous white cheddar-flavored popcorn in the black bag. In the mid-'80s, Martin had helped invent a new kind of resealable bag for snack food. But the story of Annie's' rise to success doesn't read that differently than that of an internet startup.Īnnie's is named after Annie Withey, who started the company with her then-husband Andrew Martin in a fit of what you'd now call serial entrepreneurship. After all, one sells eyeballs, the other kids' food. The success of the Annie's IPO, and the failure to date of Facebook's, could be just a flukey coincidence. In what kind of world does a company that makes bunny-shaped pasta go public and get a dotcom-style pop, while a social media juggernaut that has fundamentally changed the way humans communicate turns into one of the great stock market stinkers? You would have nearly doubled your money on that first day of trading alone. You'd be even better off if you'd gotten in on the ground floor of the Annie's IPO in March, when shares were priced at $19. Facebook shares, meanwhile, are down more than 40 percent. If you'd bought Annie's that day, your shares would be up by nearly one-third right now. That same day, shares of organic mac 'n' cheese maker Annie's ( BNNY) closed at just a little less than that at $36.39. The day Facebook ( FB) went public, its shares closed at $38.23, just pennies above the initial asking price of $38. In the hype tsunami prior to Facebook's May IPO, I doubt anyone wrote these words: "Instead of social media, you should invest in macaroni and cheese." As it turns out, that's exactly what you should have done.
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