How Jennifer Garner’s kids’ food brand Once Upon a Farm became a $100 million business that’s now eyeing an IPO

Jennifer Garner joined the brand Once Upon a Farm in 2017. Cassandra Curtis had founded the nutritious baby food brand two years earlier, but the actress came onboard alongside former Annie’s CEO John Foraker to take it to the next level.

At the time, Once Upon a Farm was earning less than $1 million in annual revenue; today its yearly haul is “well over $100 million,” Foraker says. That growth has been accelerated by more than $100 million in funding, according to PitchBook, most recently a $52 million Series D round led by CAVU Venture Partners.

The brand is best known for its fruit and vegetable blend refrigerated pouches and in recent months has expanded into new categories, including oat bars and dairy products. That expansion takes Once Upon a Farm outside baby food to the kids’ food category, which Foraker says is 10 to 15 times bigger than baby food (excluding formula).

Courtesy of Once Upon a Farm

“It’s a lot harder than what I thought it would be,” Garner says of growing a consumer-packaged-goods business. Part of that challenge was realizing the opportunity that would lie ahead in pivoting from baby to kids’ food. “We realized, ‘Wow, we’re actually a kids’ brand, even though we talk about ourselves as baby,'” she says.

Foraker brought to Once Upon a Farm expertise from his time leading Annie’s, which he took public in 2012 and then sold to General Mills. “This business has grown faster than Annie’s ever did,” he says. About 10% of its sales are direct-to-consumer and the rest comes from retailers like Whole Foods and Kroger.

While Garner was always passionate about nutritious kids’ foods (she’s spent more than a decade as an ambassador for Save the Children), Once Upon a Farm’s recent category expansion has shown her more about the challenges of the industry.

“It was a big deal for us to leave the pouch and go to a bar—bars are huge. There’s just an enormous market. But there’s such huge competition in the kids’ bar space. It’s really insane,” she says. To move into dairy, with pouches that resemble kids’ yogurt products, the brand relied on retailer data that said that 95% of people who bought its products also had dairy in their shopping carts.

Foraker’s plan for Once Upon a Farm is to prepare for a possible IPO. Even if it doesn’t end up happening—the other outcome is selling to a CPG giant—he wants the brand to have the option. “We’re getting this business ready to be public, if that market ever comes around,” he says.

Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe

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