John Foraker’s Post

Winning a Vendor of the Year award at any retailer is a really big deal, but especially at Target. I'm so proud of the entire Once Upon a Farm team for this milestone, as it truly is an enterprise-wide award. Every person in the company makes it possible because of their commitment to our mission, our products and values every day. Thank you Target for giving us the opportunity to do the best job possible for your guests as we work together to improve the quality of childhood nutrition for everyone. In 2010 Annie's Inc. earned the same honor, and I vividly remember what a catalyst it was for our brand and business here and everywhere. Strap in team, let's go!

In 2010, Annie's Inc. almost extended our brand into pouched shelf-stable baby food, as part of a broader idea in the baby aisle. We decided not to do it. We were already in 10 distinct categories with HH pen of just 2.3% & just over $100MM in revenues. Too many categories at our size, LOL (topic for another post). But baby was VERY interesting and it was a tough call. Whether we'd have been successful or not is debatable. But for me what is most memorable about this episode is the lesson I learned about category expansion assessment. At the time, organic was just 10% of the category and pouches were a just emerging format at <1%. We figured we'd play there first & with these #'s our takeaway was that the category opportunity was too small. This was the major factor in our deciding to pass. What we missed was where the consumer/category puck was going and why. Today organic is >45% of the puree category & is dominated by pouch format. We missed a MAJOR category disruption wave that led to very lucrative 2013 M&A transactions for #emergingbrands friends Shazi Visram at Happy Family Brands (Nurture Inc), Neil Grimmer at Plum Organics, and Paul Lindley OBE at Ella's Kitchen. When evaluating category expansion, spend the most time on where the category is going and why it should go there for consumers, more than on the current category state. What disruption will your brand bring to that needed wave of growth and why? When I was assessing investing with Ari Raz & Cassandra Curtis in Once Upon a Farm in 2015, and then joining it in 2017, it was clear that refrigerated format baby food should be a huge category but it was basically zero. Up to half of potential buyers were actually opting out of the baby food category almost entirely & making their own fresh/refrigerated product at home. The signs were certainly there, if you looked FORWARD rather than at today. Didn't make the same mistake twice. PS historical fun fact, I wanted to buy Happy into public Annie's but Danone beat me to it, had much admiration for what the Happy team had done and the future potential of it.

I'm a believer in Manifesting - "to make something happen by imagining it and consciously thinking that it will happen" (Cambridge Dictionary) Seven years ago, as Jennifer Garner & I agreed to join Once Upon a Farm as co-founders with Ari Raz & Cassandra Curtis, I sent Jen this late night email, manifesting what we were going to do here. "Building great and enduring things is hard. I think this is one of those and it is now on us to bring the dream to reality. Not often does a group of people have opportunity to create a new company that has the potential to change the landscape of food nutrition in any country, nor to create a company from near scratch with a culture that will be widely admired almost from day one. We have those opportunities and more. I am so excited by that potential to create something truly new, genuine, and cherished. I know that there will be challenges, curve balls, and things we all do not expect and will have to react to, it goes with any start up experience. Expect that. But we have a ton of experience, and we will adapt and learn and grow to beat every challenge. And the opportunity here is large. I was just talking to a senior person at Target responsible for all their healthy food marketing and strategy and this space we are looking to occupy is wide-open. Amazing opportunity. Our consumers will be our heroes, the moms and dads that struggle every day to deal with the challenges and distractions of life to build their families and to raise the most incredible people that they can. We are going to be there for them in a way that few brands have ever been in the consumer space. Total consumer obsession and love and respect. This will breed brand love and trust. We will also look to drive positive social impact with everything we do, every choice, every action. We want to follow in the footsteps of leaders like Annie's Inc., Patagonia, Clif Bar, and others to raise the bar on social and environmental impact and transparency. There is so much opportunity!" Manifest the future you want to create for your #emergingbrand in #cpg. The culture you want, consumers you will honor, impact you want to have, and the place you want to occupy in the space. Then go make it happen. Good luck.

A guest on a pod I listen to referred to me and implied that I know everything there is to know about #emergingcpg. While I appreciate the gesture, there's nothing that could be further from the truth. First, the #cpg game changes in real time, with markets, technology, human capital, social, science, regulatory, and competitive balances shifting so fast, it's near impossible to keep up. Second, I've always assumed there are people smarter then me on every subject, and I've always been right about that through my career. I try to surround myself with those people as often as I can. There's no room for #entrepreneurial hubris in my company Once Upon a Farm, on any of our teams or from anyone we partner with. When that shows up even a little bit, like a light under a door, things end badly. I learn every day, and hope everyone else here does too. Be curious. It's the key to winning in this very competitive game. Ok, there's one thing I do know :)

In my experience at Annie's Inc. & Once Upon a Farm, it's the trial, failure, learning, tweaks, bets, and hard work in the early product market fit stage that are the most important for an #emergingbrand. For us it was the "yellow years" where we certainly grew but in many ways struggled to nail it and generate real sustained momentum & velocity. Super hard when trying to create something new to the market. For us it was improving product taste & consistency, tweaking our marketing messaging, multiple iterations of stronger packaging & branding evolution. Then it clicked. Sometimes emerging brands click immediately, but 99% of the time they don't, it takes work, and sometimes a little luck too. The retailers (fortunately most of them) who were patient in the beginning as we built it have been rewarded greatly. There's a lesson here for them as well.