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.<p>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.
"She boiled elbow pasta from Kraft, measured an identical amount of white cheddar cheese as was in the Kraft packet, added butter and milk, and then... “Whoa!” was the summation of her first bites."<p>I've done that too, with cheese powder from Amazon. It does seem incrementally better. If there's a "secret ingredient" to macaroni & cheese, it's just the cheese powder which you can readily buy by the pound, and then use for other things. Like putting it on your popcorn (add onion powder to really round it out).<p>The nice thing is that you end up with a lot more versatility when your cheese powder isn't confined to a Mac&Cheese container. I also like to use it as part of cheese sauces for broccoli and such. It's not a staple in my kitchen, but I probably manage to go through a pound in about 6-9 months, and it still generally tastes good even at the end.
I went on Semester at Sea with her - when I was only 3! My dad was a professor on the ship. Apparently she was super nice, although, I don’t remember, since I was 3.
I’ve bought a couple diffferent flavors of Annie’s Mac and cheese and me and my wife did not especially like it. We prefer Kraft, Velveeta, or Cracker Barrel boxed macaroni and cheese (the last one is great, you should try it). Even the store brand with the liquid cheese pouch is good.<p>Maybe it’s organic or something which makes people like it. Kind of the same with with Amy’s frozen meals. They are all so bland. I’ve never found one I liked more than the “regular” frozen brands, which says a lot as none of those are really very good.
> <i>There’s been much debate and reporting about the ethical dilemmas that arise when an enormous company like General Mills acquires an ostensibly environmentally conscious, organic brand like Annie’s, whose mission is upholding “sustainable agriculture, organic ingredients, no artificial ingredients [and] support for farmers and communities.”</i><p>This was an important point in this article for me. Trademarks (as well as copyrights) are abstractions that were arbitrarily invented (and then enforced via law) that few seem to question. This is just the way things are done.<p>The idea that Annie can start a brand called Annie's, following Annie's (in the traditional sense, not Annie's(r)) principles and procedures, and then sell that brand to some other organization that has nothing to do with Annie, that is still sold and marketed as "Annie's(r)", seems a little bit crazy and perhaps wrong to me.<p>If you remove the "(r)", putting the term "Annie's" on the box is now factually incorrect: it's not Annie doing it, and it's not Annie's. It's General Mills'. It is, in effect, a lie, even though under trademark and corporate law, everything is A-OK.<p>There is a bug in this system somewhere.
To be honest, I didn't know there was a real Annie. I've seen, and even purchased, the product at Whole Foods, but figured that was just a corporate brand.<p>She seems quite nice and business savvy -- built a good brand, then stepped away when it got bigger than she wanted to manage so she can focus on the things she really wants to do. And she's smart enough to not bad-mouth the new owners, when asked about how she thinks about General Mills.
Super interesting - I really was waiting for the twist in the story about how they recently made a pledge to remove Phlates from their product lines. Was also curious if the article was going to ask Annie about that.<p>That was such an incredibly disappointing thing (how they have dangerous compounds for children in Annies) that I learned as I have been feeding both my 1&3 year old Annies mac and cheese. I had such high expectations on Annie given its origins and stand against toxicity. (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/business/annies-mac-cheese-plastic-phthalates.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/business/annies-mac-chees...</a>)
That's a great story. She sounds like a cool woman.<p>I get tired of the tales of the rapacious and deplorable behavior of so many people in business, so it's refreshing to hear stories like this.
This is a really great success story for Annie! She's an incredibly successful founder in my eyes.<p>We have a subscription to a 12-pack of mac n cheese; it is a reliable meal for our kid, who would subsist soley on them if we let him.<p>I think there's an entirely different story to be written about how many of the organic companies from a different era have become simply <i>brands</i> of a few mega food corps; how one coop / organic food store looks like another one in its homogeneity. That worries me a lot. The food system is disturbingly opaque: having worked in it, it's opaque in ways that are slightly variant from the conventional organic stores' narrative, but I find <i>equally</i>, if not perhaps <i>more</i> disturbing.
Some similarities between Annie and Burt of Burt's Bees: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Shavitz" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Shavitz</a>
If you're a fan of the classic shells and cheddar, try stir frying some diced shishito peppers and adding them in next time.<p>As I age I find straight mac and cheese a bit too heavy these days. The peppers compliment and add to the flavour, while lightening the carb/fat hit a bit.
I loved the Mexican flavored mac & cheese growing up. Sadly I think they've discontinued it as I haven't seen it on store shelves in more than a decade, and don't see it in their product lineup on their web site either.
I've never had the regular Annie's mac and cheese, but both the rice and quinoa versions are pretty bomb. They're better than regular macaroni IMO.
I don't understand why Americans buy these kind of (expensive) processed and branded food products. Why not just buy pasta, the cheese (grate it if you want) and some other seasoning, as the raw individual ingredients?<p>From there you can add chicken and fresh herbs.<p>If you have a modern electric pressure cooker these kind of things are super simple to make, and with glass tupperware you can store and eat it over the next several days.<p>Or am I missing something - are these branded products somehow cheaper than these recipes?<p>Note: I am from Ukraine.