The Wall Street Journal has a nice profile of Molly Ashby, the private equity rock star whose firm took a controlling interest in Annie's, Inc., the organic food products company, in 2002, and which just took it public. With the ticker symbol, obviously, BNNY.
Our kids only ever eat Annie's, and I've always been impressed at how the name Bunny Pasta helps lodge it so successfully into kids'--and parents'--brains. Pure branding magic. It really makes it feel like a generational shift from Mac & Cheese, which has to have Kraft nervous. [Actually, it does, and the company's hilarious social media campaigns to make Miracle Whip hip by infiltrating the vernacular.]
Not sure I feel the salad dressing just yet, but I guess Bunny Lettuce was on the Marketing and Chief Mom Officer's next slide.
The Buyout Brain Behind Annie's IPO [wsj via @ronleiber]
2009: Miracle Whip: The App [greg.org]
The sesame ginger (not the lighter ginger) is very good but none of their other dressings do much for me. One of the barbeque sauces I also really good... The maple something?
I like my Annie's as much as the next dad but their mac and cheese has more in common with Kraft mac and cheese than it does with "real" food. The genius of Annie's is that they somehow have parents feeling good about serving mac and cheese from a box. The organic language on the box is really just the evolution of the technique that has adorned boxes of Lucky Charms with claims about vitamins, minerals and whole grains.
I'm pretty sure the most important thing to know about feeding your kid industrially produced powdered cheese is whether it's organic.
Yes. Nothing makes me feel more connected to earth than the feel of organic powdered cheese sifting through my fingers.