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Who’s Your Daddy? Guess 8 Surprising Ownerships in the Food Industry

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Can you guess which megacorp on the right owns each of the young brands on the left?

Solution after the jump.

Click to enlarge

In many cases, these baby brands don’t prominently display their parent company logo on their packaging or website because they want to retain an innocent, healthy image, one that is long gone in the multi-billion dollar conglomerates.

Here’s the list:

  1. Stoneyfield Farm, a producer of organic dairy products led by visionary entrepreneur Gary Hirshberg, is owned by French Danone Group, manufacturers of conventional Dannon Yogurt. It’s not full ownership, rather a majority stake.
  2. Horizon Organic is part-owned by Dean Foods, one of the largest conventional dairy and soy companies in the world.
  3. Cascadian Farm, purveyor of organic cereals, is owned of  General Mills. The brand is part of Small Planet Foods, whose portfolio includes Larabar and Muir Glen. General Mills acquired Small Planet  in 2000, to the dismay of some fans of Cascadian Farm.
  4. Not to be outdone, Kashi is owned by Kellogg’s since 2000.
  5. Ben and Jerry’s, eco-loving cows and all, is owned by Dutch food conglomerate Unilever.
  6. Honest Tea, Odwalla, Dasani water, and Sokenbicha Japanese tea are all owned by Coca Cola.
  7. Naked Juice is owned by PepsiCo.
  8. Jenny Craig, the fitness empire, is owned by Swiss Nestle. They now have an entire line of foods for weight loss…

What you need to know:

Many of the companies started out as small regional players. But getting shelf space in supermarkets is incredibly difficult. As are the distribution logistics when you want to grow from one metro area to several, or to expand nationally.

Becoming part of a big food corporation solves these two issues nicely. It usually brings in a tidy amount of cash to the founding team as well.

Sounds like a win-win. But what can be the downsides?

  • Degradation of product quality. This can happen because corporate HQ now demands cost cutting measures every quarter. It can also happen as a result of opting to work with cheap (i.e. Chinese) ingredients rather than more expensive locally sourced inputs.
  • Reformulation of products. Example: Cascadian Farm customer noticed a funny new taste one day. it turns out the cereal tripled its sugar count!

This doesn’t always happen. But it happens enough.

What to do at the supermarket:

Next time you pick up a cool and healthy looking brand thinking it must be from a small family run business, think again…

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  • Elsa

    Can you say more about which brands have been affected by their change in ownership? I remember reading an article about how Honest Tea refused to change their label when Coca Cola asked…

    • Bruce

      Coke only owns a 40% stake of Honest Tea. The founders still retain majority ownership and decision making authority. The article’s headline is a little misleading as Coke just made an investment in Honest Tea rather than taking a majority ownership.

  • Charlotte

    Yupp yupp, I discovered that Ben & Jerry’s icecream (some flavours at least) now contain High Fructose Corn Syrup, rather than sugar.

  • Diane

    I also noticed that Ben & Jerry’s went downhill fast after it sold out. I rarely eat ice cream anyway, so it was no big loss to me. But the comapny built such a huge brand image of wholesomeness and righteousness that people are SHOCKED when I point out the HFCS and other junk in their so-called “natural” ice cream.

    Similarly, the Kashi brand has an undeserved halo around it. Check out the sugar content in some of their newer cereals – Island Vanilla in particular is a dessert, not a breakfast. The original Kashi foods are still OK. Read those labels!

  • http://recipecan.com/blog Katy @ RecipeCan

    Very interesting – I did not know about Ben & Jerry’s!

  • Marissa

    @Charlotte
    Yep, I think they were recently asked to remove “natural” from there cartons because of this.

  • Bill M

    I have heard the Stonyfield is still staying true to their roots. Has anyone else heard otherwise? It is my favorite yogurt and the only one I can find locally with a short and edible ingredient list.

    I wonder how many small, family run businesses are even in the super market these days? The food business is so competitive and has such low margins that the small guys have a hard time competing. Even if the average consumer put quality above price, the big guys can easily switch. Unfortunately, in a global market the big succeed and the small die

  • http://lifewithnature.com Veronica (lifewithnature)

    There’s another downside of local organic brands being purchased by big corporations. Thos corporations end-up owning both organic and non-organic brands. It makes it easier for them to lobby to get organic legislation less strict, not to mention the higher risk of cross-contamination and non-observance of organic process.

    It also leads to higher risk of seeing “natural” products become more processed. Organic and local natural brands were created by people who beleived in health and enviromnent as core values. Big corporations that owns both “regular” and “natural” brands clearly only has profit as interests.

    While we don’t have a gret impact on how small brands can access grocery stores shelves, we can have a dramatic impact by choosing where to buy. By visiting local farms and farmer markets rather than shopping at big supermarket chains, we can help local brands to grow whithout having to sell their soul to big corporations.

  • Holzp

    Same thing with other “natural” products, Tom’s of Maine is owned by Colgate. Sometimes I feel like a sucker, supporting these companies while they are small and local then they use that support as leverage for a million dollar buyout.

  • http://foodtrainers.blogspot.com Lauren Slayton

    This makes me crazed particularly what Veronica explained about companies with organic and non organic sides. I hear this is the problem with Horizon’s quality and reason for its poor cornucopia rating. What brands are there for whom we know their “daddy” and haven’t been sold or refused selling?

  • http://www.foodieformerlyfat.com Foodie, Formerly Fat

    I often find that when I read an ingredient list of a product and find it to be acceptable and buy it I have to go back and check it again periodically (every few months or so) to see if things have changed, which happens sometimes when companies get purchased.

    I recently learned that the Back to Nature brand, which I’ve used for certain processed products like crackers, is owned by Kraft foods. I don’t know if it always was or if it’s a recent development. It’s made me wary, and I’m back to reading the ingredient lists just to make sure nothing has changed.

    Unfortunately, making sure the food you eat and feed your family is wholesome is one that required constant vigilance.

  • http://www.thefrugaldietitian.com Nancy-The Frugal Dietitian

    @Charlotte
    But Ben and Jerry’s has always been a “poor” food in health. They laud their non-hormone milk but have some of the highest saturated fat and high calorie ice cream around.

  • http://parisbreakfasts.blogspot.com/ parisbreakfast

    Re:Stonyfield – they’re trying to hustle their products in France now + sticking cows all over it. But next to French straightforward very tart yogurt, their stuff sucks in my opinion. The French don’t use all those extra additives to gelatinize their products.

  • azure

    Springfield Creamery, which makes Nancy’s yogurt, cottage cheese, kefir, creamcheese and sour cream (not sure if it makes any other dairy product) is still family owned. Sells both organic & non-organic dairy products–very short ingredient list for yogurt, etc. The creamery is in Springfield, OR, as far as I know the family buys local milk. I’ve seen Nancy’s yogurt for sale as far away as NY, and from what I’ve read it’s available nationally. In OR, it’s available in health food stores, food co-ops, and many of the supermarkets.

    I knew about General Mills purchasing Muir Glen, et al, also Dean Foods & Horizon. I thought the Mars family (the candy corporation) had bought some organic food maker as well, although I can’t remember what they bought–or maybe the family bought a seed company. Here’s a link to an old (dating from 2005) list of corporate ownership of organics: http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/orgjune05.pdf

    Definitely gotta read the labels. Sometimes buying food at co-ops can make it easier to get food w/short lists of ingredients (or form a food buying club with friends/family, people w/similar food wants) and farmers’ markets if you can afford it. The two food co-ops I’ve been a member of (and volunteered with), you could work off your membership fee(s) if you couldn’t afford it, or you could just shop there, without whatever discount or other benefit the co-op offered. Good co-ops offer the ability to special order, which often means purchasing in quantity w/less than the usual markup; and the ability to buy in bulk–for example, I buy a kind of organic salsa in bulk–it’s about $1.60 something less per pound than buying it in the standard container. It is particularly useful to be able to buy only as much of a spice or dried culinary herb/seed as I need, instead of an entire container, ditto for loose tea. Ditto for honey, nuts, olive oil, other oils, etc. Sometimes I would not be able to buy organically grown (which I prefer to do), if I could not. The co-op I currently belong to also emphasizes purchasing from local growers when possible and has been doing origin labeling of produce for at least 4-5 years (also meat).

    The first co-op I belonged to started as a food-buying club and a friend got together last year w/some neighbors & others to start a feed (for animals) buying club–she lives in a rural part of the county. It’s not just something out of or belonging to the ’70′s.

  • http://www.mealplanningmagic.com Meal Plan Mom (Brenda)

    Wow! I had no idea about some of those (seemingly smaller) companies being owned by the big guys. Just brings home the case to buy local when possible. But that can be pricy sometimes. What’s your take on store brands? I have heard that sometimes they are really make by big name-brand companies but then read an article that said many food products are made by manufacturers that specifically make store-brands. How do we find out about them? At the grocery store I primarily shop at I have found most of the store brand items to be of good quality and definitely a better price. Thanks!

    • http://www.fooducate.com/blog Editorial Staff

      @Brenda – good question re:store brand vs national brands. Worthy of its own blog post sometime in the near future…

  • Bruce

    Coke only owns a 40% stake of Honest Tea. The founders still retain majority ownership and decision making authority. The article’s headline is a little misleading as Coke just made an investment in Honest Tea rather than taking a majority ownership.

  • Juice Lover

    Anyone out there who’s looking for juices from a high quality brand that is still independent might like the “It Tastes” Raaw” line from Raaw Foods International.  The brand is carried by Whole Foods and the varieties include Pineapple-Cucumber Juice, Cranberry–Ginger Juice, Carrot – Lemonade Juice, Better Beets Juice, Passion Fruit–Wheatgrass Juice, Raspberry–Lemongrass Juice. Look them up at http://www.raawfoods.com

  • guest

    Nestlé are the devil of food and water, they gave free samples of fomula milk to new mums in undeveloped countries, people with no access to clean water, they did this with the cynical intention of selling them bottled water, no matter that these people don’t have money to feed themselves, selling them water is a good idea,  thousands of babies died as a result.  Rowntrees were a British confectionary company with no instance of illegal colourings in over 100yrs, Nestlé bought them out, with in 6mths the company was charged with using illegal colouring.  For more current stuff, google Nestlé + water +  Brazil.