The big surprise in this article is that she was also the founder of Smartfood which she sold to Frito-Lay for $15m. This afforded her the space to develop the mac and cheese business, which she partly sold to Solera capital who developed it into a business that eventually sold to General Mills for $820m. After the deal with Solera she put her time into selling vegetables at the local farmers market.
It’s a nice profile, but I would really love to read more about how she took such a simple idea (replacing neon orange cheddar powder with white on two different product lines) and quickly developed them into massive businesses and brands. She says in the article that she didn’t like business, but one gets the impression that she was exceptionally good at it.
What's amazing about this to me is less than she had two powdered-cheese-related food product hits, and more that she was able to make such a generic product, and have the segment to herself for long enough to make a windfall.
These days, anyone who tried to make a product by purchasing the core ingredients from two major food suppliers would find their offering cloned within days of any kind of traction. Consider the hoverboard phenomenon, which is much more complex, and still didn't make it a year before there were dozens of identical products out of China.
The cloning problem is as old as consumer products is. It's not happening faster, people just don't know the history. That's why there were a billion auto makers in old Detroit, all cloning eachother rapidly. Those automobiles were more complex and difficult to manufacture than hoverboards.
If you're trying to compete in such a saturated segment, you have the same competitive targeting as has always existed since consumer goods became a mainstream thing. You can try to build a brand of some manner, which provides a self-constructed moat against competition (this is what Smartfood represented). You can lower your prices under everyone else and give up margin, in which case you compete through executing better than everyone else (being able to survive on 3%-5% profit margins). You can leverage a network you possess, human connections, to gain an advantage over your competition in one of the industry tiers (manufacturing, marketing, distribution, etc). You can cheat, bribe, get your competition put out of business (Preston Tucker was attacked that way; and it's common throughout most of the world). You can use a resource advantage, for example capital - you can out-spend the competition (economies of scale; locking up manufacturing (Apple does this); advertising, which ties to brand building), or sue them out of existence if they're far weaker (Microsoft was almost bankrupted early in its existence with this tactic).
Not much has actually changed structurally in a century about how all of these things work.
> It's not happening faster, people just don't know the history. That's why there were a billion auto makers in old Detroit, all cloning eachother rapidly. Those automobiles were more complex and difficult to manufacture than hoverboards.
Maybe. I don't know enough about the market for auto makers in old Detroit. But my suspicion is that no matter how fast they were, they were nowhere near as fast as we see microbrands pop up today. Pretty much any consumer manufactured good you care to search for on Amazon has not just one, but multiple weird micro-brands jostling for superior ranking. Brands form, rise and fall within a year or two. Maybe it has happened in the past, but it's definitely more hectic than any period in my lifetime.
I agree with everything in your second paragraph, but I think you're largely just stating the difficulty of business in a world where "making the product" is not the principal challenge. If anyone can contract manufacture a widget on spec and have it shipped from China for a few tens of thousands of dollars, then most people can do that part, and the game boils down to how efficiently you can market your product to a mass audience and poke your head above the crowd. This basically just boils down to "get attention by any means necessary" (which explains a lot about the internet and media today, and why you see so many celebrities-turned-investors achieving success. If you're already famous and rich, the job is 80% done.)
For the particular example of macaroni and cheese, I'm still amazed that this lady had enough time to build a brand via the sorts of shoe-leather techniques she used. I guarantee that if you tried this today, multiple opportunistic "hustlers" would clone your product and have equally well-developed branding before you had it in a dozen stores.
Another thing Annie really excelled at was distribution, up to and including leaving boxes lying around. Amusingly, this too has been done with scooters, but not (yet) hoverboards. But distribution is especially important for a product like macaroni and cheese which is sold everywhere, and Annie's really does have (in my experience) good market penetration, which I suspect predates the investor buyout. Cars and hoverboards on the other hand are only sold in a few places or on the Internet, which means you have to compete elsewhere.
What's amazing to me, as someone who cooks, is that "mac n' cheese" (we call it "macaroni cheese" here in UK) as a pre-prepared meal is even a thing in the US.
I consider macaroni cheese as a "comfort food" - one of those things that's a perfect ratio of carbs and fat. But it's a very easy thing to make, even for a novice, in 20 minutes when you're taking your time. I remember my mother teaching me how to make it before going to university, the very first thing I'd ever cooked - I remember thinking, "wow, is that it?!".
And it's the sort of thing that is always going to be at least 2x better if you make it yourself, because you use actual cheese (sounds so weird saying that as a Brit!), as mature as you like, and as much as you like.
I'm very obviously not the target market now, but even as a cash and time-strapped student a lifetime ago, whose mum had tought him cooking basics just few months previously, I still don't get how someone could make a fortune out of this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am not sure how you make macaroni and cheese that it only takes 20 minutes. Just getting the water boiling, adding the macaroni, cooking it, and draining it is going to take at least 15.
I am not a mac & cheese fan, much less an instant mac & cheese fan, but it's not at all surprising to me that convenience foods exist. And for what it's worth, it's much more popular in Canada than the US.
Easy. You set the water to boil on the stove. While that's going you start the roux, which is just butter and flour. That takes about two minutes to cook, then you can add your milk and salt and turn down the heat. Add your pasta to the water. Now add your cheese to the sauce. I know how much I need so I just cut off a hunk and crumble it up into pieces into the pot. Once the cheese has melted, your pasta should be done so drain it and stir it into the pot with the cheese. You are done, enjoy your mac and cheese.
The box stuff is easier because it's less steps, but doesn't take any less time to prepare.
The way my mom did it(and how I cooked it last night) does not even use a real roux: after dumping the pasta water, stir in chopped butter and then shredded cheese directly. The pasta's hot so everything melts in moments. This makes a non-creamy mac, but it's equally edible in my estimate.
If you want the creaminess with similarly low effort, then instead of just dumping the pasta water and stirring the "roux" ingredients directly into the pasta, use a slotted spoon to take the pasta out of the water instead of the other way around. Pour out some of the pasta water, but not all of it. Now add your butter and shredded cheese, along with some sodium citrate ("sour salt"; it's an emulsifier), in a ratio of about 2-3% (by weight) of the total mass of butter and cheese. Stir it up until creamy, and then add the pasta back. It adds about 2 minutes' time to making it, but I personally like the result a whole lot better, even when I'm super super short on time. Sodium citrate is really just magical stuff.
You're almost done - just add evaporated milk, raw eggs, hot sauce, mustard powder, salt - you'll have the best mac and cheese ever (and still make the 20 minute deadline, you can just mix all things things in one bowl.)
Since I didn't specify earlier when I wrote this post, if you're wondering the video he made it in - he and his wife have been live streaming on Youtube for the last year. They always make food (and mixed drinks), but its much more of an unstructured glimpse of their personal lives than a cooking show.
This is the episode where they make his mac and cheese recipe:
This sounds great. I usually Sriracha in my mac and cheese at the table, but I think I will try this. I am intrigued by the mustard powder. I bet it would go perfectly with some stir fried arugula/mustard greens and bacon.
Yup. I grew up on Kraft Dinner, but this is what I make for my kids now. It’s an easy, fast, cheap pantry meal, up there with curry lentils on rice and spinach quiche.
I think it might depend on the cheese you’re using! In my experience the roux makes a big difference. We use a blend of Gruyere, Fontina and Cheddar (in 1-2-2 proportion). The hard, soft, and middling textures mix best when they’re gently cooked together in our experience.
In the states most recipes will have you finish in a casserole dish with bread crumbs, but we find it actually tastes better if you skip that step, for whatever reason.
If anybody has suggestions on other cheeses to add/substitute in this mix I’m all ears!
> Just getting the water boiling, adding the macaroni, cooking it, and draining it is going to take at least 15.
Really depends on the heat output of your burner (for the get it boiling part); most elbow macaroni is, IIRC, 7-10 minutes cook time, draining takes seconds, and most of the sauce can be done while the noodles are cooking. 20 minutes total is perfectly reasonable.
OTOH, where the box saves you is in how busy you are, since it doesn't take multitasking, and cleanup, since it's one-pot, while sauce and noodles in parallel takes two.
> I am not sure how you make macaroni and cheese that it only takes 20 minutes. Just getting the water boiling, adding the macaroni, cooking it, and draining it is going to take at least 15.
While the noodles are draining you take some of the noodle water, some milk, and some cheese and mix it together in the still warm pot over the lowest heat setting on your stove top?
But seriously what were you doing those 15 minutes? You could have your cheese sauce ready to go and put the noodles almost directly into it.
I think to answer the op's question, the reason boxed mac & cheese is so popular is two part. American's don't have the time or energy to prepare a meal, and they don't know how to.
Making a single dish is easy, making multiple dishes for a meal is tricky when you're not familiar with the kitchen. Americans don't cook anymore.
> But seriously what were you doing those 15 minutes? You could have your cheese sauce ready to go and put the noodles almost directly into it
One thing this thread has taught me is that what I would consider mac & cheese, which involves baking the cooked macaroni with cheese and roux, is not what other people are doing.
I now see why 20 minutes for prep can work, though I’m not sure I would be much more interested in eating that.
Baked macaroni and cheese is sacrilegious, in my opinion - it's in it's most perfect form already, baking only makes it worse. People tell me that baked macaroni and cheese done right isn't bland and dry, but ever one I've ever eaten has been - even from people who think they make "the best macaroni and cheese"
I guess people have different tastes.
That being said, a lot of restaurants will cover the macaroni and cheese in breadcrumbs and place it under the broiler for couple minutes, that is great and nothing at all like baked macaroni and cheese, it creates a nice crust and still preserves the creamy, tasty qualities of the product.
> American's don't have the time or energy to prepare a meal, and they don't know how to.
As someone who occasionally ate mac 'n cheese and top ramen in college, I think it partly comes down to what tools and ingredients are available to you. I did not have access to a stove/pots/pans/colander. I had access to a shared microwave that was in the lounge in my dorm. So making my own mac 'n cheese was not possible (never mind the fact that we didn't have ready access to ingredients, and that cheese would go bad or be stolen from the fridge).
As an adult, I enjoy making mac 'n cheese for my kids, using a yogurt-based recipe and incorporating riced cauliflower to make it somewhat less unhealthy. But college-student-me didn't have access to the ingredients/tools to make that possible.
At university in London, we had a good kitchen with two stoves, two ovens, a lockable part of a huge fridge each, a lockable cupboard each, and a cleaner every day. (She would not clean up dirty dishes, but would do normal cleaning.)
I had a colander and a grater, which people probably borrowed. We bought a couple of utensils throughout the year, like a large roasting tin for Christmas Dinner. I bought scales for baking. The university gave international students a pan and other basic stuff.
There was a fancy supermarket nearby (though they had the cheapest spirits), a normal one about 15 minutes walk away, and a cheaper one 10 minutes beyond that. I usually went to the normal one.
Cooking together was great. Sharing that kitchen were people from England, Wales, Hong Kong, Jamaica, China, Italy. Friends who came by added Japan, Germany, France, Thailand.
The Welsh guy and his boyfriend were most organised, and about once a month got everyone who wanted to to help cook (or at least clean) for ~10-15. Normally, ~4 of us cooked in alternating pairs for the other 2.
Macaroni cheese would have been a bit disappointing for the lack of vegetables.
If I only had a few minutes and was eating myself, I'd prefer to use those 2 minute ramen things.
All of this seems fairly normal to me. The large group meals were only possible in 1st year with the large kitchen, but everything else continued in later years, renting houses or apartments.
> American's don't have the time or energy to prepare a meal, and they don't know how to.
Speak for yourself (or maybe there's data on this that you can cite). I personally very much enjoy cooking and prepare nearly all of my meals from scratch. I've seen friends I never would have imagined cooking pick it up as a hobby they enjoy during the pandemic. There are actually a few countries where eating out is more common: Spain and Canada, according to this data [1].
Ach! I forgot you don't have electric kettles in the US because of some crappy power supply issues! When making any kind of pasta, I boil the water in a kettle first, then pour it into a pan on the hob (aka stove) - so pasta starts cooking in 3m or so.
Anyway, without a kettle I guess it's still doable around the 20m mark, as long as you have a gas or induction hob, and while the pasta is cooking you grate the cheese and make the sauce.
And on the sauce, I make a roux, add full-fat milk, add the cheese and season - easy. If you want to get fancy, chopped onions and chunks of pre-cooked (or tinned) ham mixes things up.
Electric kettles are much less powerful on a 120v circuit (US household) than a 240v circuit (ie uk). A quick look at an online retail shop confirms british kettles are rated at 3000W, while american ones are 1500W.
I actually have a bit of a hack when I'm in a major rush - I'll put half the water I need in the electric kettle, and half on the stovetop.
Yeah, the maximum rated output for a standard US electrical outlet is 1500W. Alec Watson of the YouTube channel Technology Connections[1] did an interesting video a while back about the fact that basically all plug-in electric heaters sold in the US output 1500W.
As a Brit in the US, one of the first things I got 'straight off the boat' was an electric kettle. Surprisingly they work exactly like you'd expect. :)
Kettles are noticeably slower in the US (heating at about half the power.) Still more convenient than the hob for a cup of tea but not much faster timewise for heating a pan of water.
In the US, the same product is labeled "Kraft Macaroni & Cheese", and in the US everyone calls it "macaroni & cheese" or "mac & cheese". It's the identical product as Kraft Dinner. I wish that branding caught on in the US, because it's so much easier to say "KD".
Making mac and cheese from scratch is not at all difficult, and a lot of grocery stores even sell discount cheese ends intended to be used in mac and cheese. (I use them for other stuff more often though)
However, nothing beats the incredibly addictive, comforting taste of boxed mac and cheese - yes I crave that artificial taste, it's incredible. Plus you can make it with ingredients most people have on hand literally 24/7 - only butter and milk, you don't have to plan ahead and I only need to dirty a single pan.
Plus it's CHEAP, like, really, really cheap.
Beyond that, boxed mac and cheese is more popular in Canada (where they call it "KD" - short for "Kraft Dinner") than the US - it's not exactly "har, har, americans dumb."
I've never looked at the "Mac & Cheese" (though I think I've seen in a shop for American expats). I assumed you just poured water over it, or something.
Are you saying you still need butter and milk to make it?
In which case, the real thing only requires having cheese (which keeps a fairly long time), flour and pasta (both keep indefinitely) in addition.
I am very well aware, I've made the "real thing" at least 100 times.
I very rarely have enough cheese in my house for mac and cheese, especially the right kind of cheese. If I want to make it from scratch I have to plan ahead. However, I always, always, always have butter and (oat) milk in the house though, 24/7, so boxed mac and cheese is always an option.
I still strongly prefer the taste of boxed, it's simply amazing in an indescribable way.
I tease my wife every time she is making Annie's that it's literally simpler to make my own Mac and cheese recipe, which she absolutely loves. Boil the noodles in milk, add seasoning, stir in cheese. Still, we always have Annie's on hand. Shrug.
In my mind it's in it's own category. Yes, homemade mac and cheese is "better" but it's also very different. I don't really consider it the same thing just as I don't really compare fancy swiss dark chocolate and a Dairy Milk bar. Sometimes you want one over the other.
I have a family member that buys her products religiously.
Besides Mac & Cheese, they make everything from frozen dinners, to $3.99 soups. She is opening up restaurants too.
Her brilliance is making the public believe they are eating slightly better than the rest of us, which is probably true? It’s to bad the bar is so low.
“Natural, non-gmo, healthy, etc.”. Oh yea, the packaging is brilliant too.
If you are a vegetarian, buying her foods is an easy choice.
That said, most of the food seems slightly better than the brand names products in terms of healthy food.
The brilliance of her product is basically marketing. I was glad when my sister said, “I am eating to many of her frozen dinners. I’m beginning to think they are not good for me?”
I didn’t say anything. (Oh yea, if you live with anyone on a strict vegetarian diet, don’t say anything. Trust me.). I was thinking, the secret to her food is that mysterious cheese. You could put it on anything, and it would taste palatable, but not at her price point for myself.
> The brilliance of her product is basically marketing. I was glad when my sister said, “I am eating to many of her frozen dinners. I’m beginning to think they are not good for me?”
My food philosophy is simple: I use the most basic ingredients as is practical, buy the freshest stuff I can, and cook nearly everything at home.
I can be pretty confident about what's in my food, because odds are I put it there. We save a ton of money on eating out, and I think it builds better friendships when you can invite people over for a meal you cooked.
This comes at a time cost, but with practice, you get to the point where you can cook amazing food pretty quickly. Not as fast as an instant meal, but it'll taste ten times better, and cost a quarter as much.
Also, I've found I don't really like most processed food anymore after eating like this. Some stuff is okay -- potato chips are way easier to buy off-the-shelf -- but I honestly start to feel sick if I eat McDonalds, or drink a Coke, and I pretty much grew up on both of those.
I know this isn't accessible to everybody -- if you're working two jobs and on the weekends, there's no way you've got time to cook -- but if you have the time, I'd say it's worth it.
I too enjoyed the profile and wish there were more about her perspectives on business. Her general success and the tone of her comments [1] [2] suggest that she’s far more business savvy than she likes to admit.
[1]: “Although I don’t have any contact with the folks at General Mills, I have learned that they are committed to converting one million acres of conventional, degraded agricultural land to sustainable, no-till acreage within the next decade. I am hopeful that they will quickly learn that crop yield is greater with no-till practices (plus countless other benefits) and that their conversion timeline will be accelerated.”
[2]: “I do believe that General Mills gets it. There’s no denying that Annie’s is a special brand, and they know it would be detrimental not to keep the mission and culture intact.”
Annie’s story reminds me of Peet’s, whose founder [3] bowed out of the business after a decade or so but inspired two of the largest coffee chains in America today.
Sub-brands like this are a natural function of capitalism. Keep chipping away at the area under the demand curve with smaller and smaller rectangles (i.e. products with narrower but stronger appeal). It's not such a big deal when applied to consumer goods but thinking of the world in this simplistic way is problematic. Advertising leads people to identify with their choices as consumers and it makes it difficult for us to relate to each other as those choices become fragmented.
Sometimes a person can be really good at something they don't really care for or care about.
I can sympathize with her; "business" can mean a lot of things, including endless politicking, insincere communication, misplaced priorities, etc. And as you grow in importance you get lots more inbound attention (mostly undesirable), more decisions to make, and so on. Being a figurehead before peacing out completely was a good move.
I feel this, although on a much smaller and less financially beneficial level :)
Every.single.time I write technical documentation, everyone tells me how wonderful it is. But I always feel like it took me forever to write, and the whole thing felt like a horrible, horrible chore; a total bore-fest. Later I read it back and I'm like: "meh, this is so dry and boring!".
But of course, I wasn't writing prose - I was writing a reference document, so I suppose it's not meant to be anything but boring. And OK, while writing it I might of wished I was grating my face instead - but numerous people over a period of decades have told me how good I am at it, so I suppose I must be, even though I hate it.
It’s a nice profile, but I would really love to read more about how she took such a simple idea (replacing neon orange cheddar powder with white on two different product lines) and quickly developed them into massive businesses and brands. She says in the article that she didn’t like business, but one gets the impression that she was exceptionally good at it.