How Actress Jennifer Garner and John Foraker Built a $724M Baby Food Brand That Just IPO'd

0:00In 2017, Hollywood actress Jennifer Garner partnered with the former CEO of Annie's to skill a baby food brand called Once Upon a Farm. Earlier this year, it IPO'd at a valuation of$724 million. The man behind it is John Foraker. On today's episode of the Hot Stuff Podcast, we talk about how he and Jennifer came on board after the company was already founded, how they have been able to leverage Jennifer's platform of millions of fans to help them skill, how they have built the company as a force for good, already donating over 1.3 million meals to families in need, and of course, the recent IPO.

0:32Let's get into the conversation. John, thank you so much for coming on. Hey, nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, congrats on the recent IPO. How have the first couple of weeks been as a publicly listed company? That's great. The biggest surprise is there's really been no surprises. I've done this once before and learned a lot through that process. And we've been running Once Upon a Farm kind of like a public company for at least three years. And so there's really been no significant changes. Like we just went back to work the next day and just kept working. That's great to hear. And we definitely will get into that.

1:02But I actually want to start with the initial days of Once Upon a Farm because you actually didn't initially co-found the company. You joined a little bit later. So I'm curious, like what was the founding story behind like Once Upon a Farm? And when did you decide to join the company? Yeah, so the two original founders of Once Upon a Farm are Ari Raz and Cassandra Curtis. And they met each other both trying to start fresh baby food companies and decided to get together and do it themselves. They engaged in agency and created the brand Once Upon a Farm. And I had been working at Annie's for a long time and then sold that to General Mills.

1:35And while I was in that process working for General Mills, I was really interested in investing in a fresh baby food business because I thought that was a real huge white space. and I couldn't find anybody. It took me about a year and a half to find somebody who was actually doing it. And I had a call with Ari and invested a couple of days later and became one of their bigger outside investors and then tried to work with them a little bit to help them, obviously. But the foundation of this business is Cassandra's amazing products. She created these incredible products to really fulfill her own need.

2:04And lots of great entrepreneurs solve their own problem, which was like, I really want to give my kids better food, better baby food than she could buy in the grocery store. And so she created these products and they started selling them. In 2017 or so, Jen Garner's team was looking at doing something in the food space, had been looking for many years actually, and got in touch with Ari and Cassandra. They met and then Ari called me one day and said, hey, Jen sees you're an investor in this business. She'd like to talk to you and get to know a little bit more about what you guys are doing. And so she and I met and we hit it off and we talked about a lot of really interesting things about the food space and trying to drive impact through the work.

2:40And long story made short, we ended up both joining together at the same time in September of 2017. So we're coming up on almost nine years here. It's been an amazing journey, yeah. When you got that message from Ari, did you already know who Jennifer Gardner was or not at all? Sure, I knew who she was. We were aware of her movies. Our kids loved her. We had never met before. I had no idea who she was as a person. Obviously, I've got a chance to meet her and I've gotten to work with her very closely over all these years. She's amazing. Yeah. Whenever we invest in a brand founded by a celebrity or creator, we are kind of always looking for an authentic celebrity product market fit, as we like to call it.

3:14So what is the fit between the brand and the celebrity's persona, content, and audience? In your opinion, what made Jennifer Gardner the right co-founder for Once Upon a Bar at that time? Well, this would be a great question for her to answer, but I've heard her answer it so many times. I think you have a good interpretation of it. You know, Jen grew up in West Virginia and saw and experienced the impacts of a lot of people around her dealing with generational poverty and just lack of equity. And so when she got to a place where she had a platform, she decided she wanted to use it and really focus on kids.

3:46And so she looked really long and landed on Save the Children and the U.S. operations for that. And she had been working for them probably for over a decade by the time I met her. And really working as a kind of an artist ambassador, you know, on their board and just deeply involved in their work, helping them raise money, helping them raise awareness and work on it. And so this was a passion space for her. And she saw as she was looking with her manager, Nicole King, who's amazing, for an opportunity in food, they really centered on, hey, if we could do something around KID, that would be really interesting and lines up with her interests.

4:19So she was super interested in that. And then when we first met, we talked about how amazing these products were, how revolutionary they could be. And then also like how hard it was in the food space based on just the experience I had at Annie's trying to drive broader, equitable access to food and her experience through the lens of, say, the children of the challenges that people had getting access to not only healthy food, but education and books and just all the things that people need. we kind of connected and bonded on like, hey, what if we could build a brand around that idea of a mission driven on driving systemic improvement in childhood nutrition?

4:56And when Ari and Cassandra and I got together, literally in the very first week, we sat down and wrote this mission statement. It was to, we exist to drive systemic change in childhood nutrition for a happier, healthier, and more equitable world. And it is impossible to overstate how important that actual mission has been in literally every single decision we made since then. And so it was such a deep personal connection with her to the work, to the needs she saw that this product could have served in her life. She was just like all in, like, you know, it was like a real extension of her and that has shown up so authentically in literally every single thing we've done since then.

5:31Hey, quick one before we get back to the episode. If you love conversations like this one, you would love The Fame Game, our weekly newsletter in which we break down how celebrities and creators build billion dollar brands. Sign up for free via the link in the description. And now back to the episode. in today? I think it's so exciting because indeed, like instead of talking about the specific products, you started to talk about the mission. And there's a saying in business that says like doing good is good business. And I think that you guys really represent that well. Like Once Upon a Farm is a public benefit corporation.

6:01You're a partner of Save the Children. Your products recently received UIC approval. And you've also already provided over 1.3 million meals to the Million Mewish initiative. Why was that kind of leveraging Once Upon a Farm as kind of a platform to actually as a force to do good? Why was that so important to you and your team? Well, we know that consumers care a lot about the brands that they buy and that they bring into their household. We know that these issues around driving better equitable access for food, for driving awareness and penetration of organic and treating farm workers well, And all these things were things that we really cared about.

6:40And we thought, hey, if we could bake all of that into the articles of incorporation of our public benefit corporation, which we converted to in 2021. But we've been working on against this mission since 2017 together. We felt that that would be a really strong, you know, foundation for a brand that does all the other things you need to do to be a successful brand, too. You've got to have people become aware of you. You've got to have a great product. You've got to drive, you know, strong repeat and loyalty and all those things. But it's this next layer of like integrity, honesty and transparency in the brand and what our ambition is for it that provides this next layer down that we think is super important.

7:17And it helps guide our mission for where we want to go going forward. We have, you know, when we went public, one of the things we were super excited about is the New York Sox Exchange matched our donation to Save the Children. And we're upping our commitments to save the children as we go as a foundational partner. But it's not just them we're working with. This stuff goes like all the way through our business. We work in our supply chain. Equitable Food Initiative is a group that certifies the farm worker well-being and also their governance and involvement in the organization so they can have a better workplace for themselves and their safety, but also drive better quality product.

7:50We're doing all these things in every part of our organization that link back to that mission and also ultimately back to a product that parents think is great. They trust us as a result of that, and they hopefully will help us become a much bigger business as we continue to grow. Yeah. And Jennifer Garner obviously has millions of followers, so she has really helped accelerate the awareness part. Could you kind of like tell about how you guys have been able to leverage her platform to accelerate and scale the company? Yeah, the interesting thing about working with Jen is like she's literally involved every single day everywhere.

8:22That's not an overstatement. We've done hundreds of sales calls together. She has buyers and category managers numbers in their phone and sends them notes on their birthdays and writes emails at 11 o 'clock at night after she gets off of set following up on a call we just had. For example, we were at an important customer's top to top yesterday and met with their entire leadership team. And so she's involved deeply in all those commercial elements of the business and also on our day-to-day business. So like she's on our weekly leadership team calls, like she's taken a lot of those calls sitting in a makeup chair and just deeply involved in the culture.

8:57And those are people where remote first company were all over the U S and now also in Europe. And she's, you know, sending notes to people and connecting with people, which is really good for culture. But in terms of like how we're helping having help amplify the story, she obviously has the ability to generate a lot of our media. And we do that very strategically. She works on really creative stuff that we post pretty regularly about our products, about things that we're doing, just about the day to day life of the company. And I think it comes across as very genuine because it is like that's exactly the way we are.

9:30And the way we show up there is what this company and these products are all about. So I think people see that authenticity and they understand, they can feel it. You know, it's real. Yeah, it's always great to hear these practical examples because sometimes you also just have celebrities that show up to the photo shoots and that's it. And some people also only think that celebrities only help with the marketing and nothing else. But having a celebrity co-founder can help with retailers, it can help with building the culture, it can help with PR and so many other stuff. So, yeah, it's great to hear those practical examples.

9:58when we're talking about marketing how and when do you kind of decide to feature Jennifer in the product and the marketing and the storytelling versus letting the brand and the product speak for themselves because you see that so many celebrity brands they kind of struggle with this like take Feastables by Mr. Beast for example Mr. Beast is always front and center in the marketing and on the other hand you have like a company like the Honest Company where a lot of people actually have no idea that Jessica Alba is the co-founder so like how do you guys think about that? So from the very beginning, when we started working together, we said the one foundational thing we all agree on is we really need to build a brand that stands to itself.

10:36And fortunately, because of Cassandra's amazing products and the really good brand name we were starting with, Once Upon a Farm, we had that foundation to start with. So we've been very disciplined and thoughtful about that. Obviously, Jen gives us the ability to tell our story and amplify it, like in an incredible way, with a lot of authenticity, as we've already talked about. And we use that strategically and to build our business and awareness and drive household penetration. That's really, really critical. But we never want that to get in the way of what is this brand and what does it stand for?

11:08The number one way, even after nine years of working together, almost nine years of working together, the number one way consumers find out about our brand still is word of mouth. And that's a pretty amazing thing given the size and scale that we're at now. And so it's just like keeping the brand alive in conversation at the tip of people's tongue in their consideration set. We use Jen and her ability to penetrate into that world very strategically. But we want the brand to stand for itself. Yeah, no, I think that's great because like you see always that the best celebrity brands are always product first and ever celebrity first.

11:38And it has to do with a celebrity might help you sell the first product. But to your point, the quality of the product is going to determine if people are going to buy it the second, third and fourth time and actually share it with their friends. and that's where real business is being built. When we're talking about products, like over the years, you guys have expanded from like cold press pouches for babies to now a whole range of products for babies and kids of all ages. So how do you guys actually approach like product development and thinking about expansion to new categories? Well, the thing that we're doing differently than anybody has done in kid or baby before is build a brand that spans both of those.

12:14So our strategy is to get consumers aware of the brand, usually even before the baby comes, because parents start doing research way before that about our brand as an option for when their kids start eating solid foods. We want to get them aware of the brand, into the brand, you know, hopefully loving the brand because it's doing such a good job for them. And then they'll want to have that brand stay with us, stay with them as their family ages and the kids get older. So we've been really focused on baby's first foods all the way up through about age 12 and just building the pieces of that strategy out, starting with, you know, obviously we have a direct to consumer business online.

12:50That's how Arne Cassandra started selling first in the very, very beginning. We went to retail and that's the biggest part of our business, but baby coolers in baby aisles with an assortment there meeting consumers with like dry baby snacking and things in that aisle, then over to the kids set in dairy where we're sitting next to kid yogurts and things like that. And then ultimately we'll move the brand through a lots of other places in the store, really trying to become that power brand that can really deliver for retailers and our consumers. Yeah. And like, what are some of the categories if you can share like that are you guys are looking to expand next?

13:23Well, we're already in the categories I just mentioned. We'll continue to develop that. That's our number one objective is to always continue to improve, stay ahead of competition and just continue to evolve and drive growth in these categories. And when we do things like what, one thing that's interesting about this brand is it's extremely incremental to the categories going to in a surprising way. So we want to continue to do that so we can deliver great results for our retailers and the categories and grow the kids we're in. So you'll see the number one thing is like continuing to innovate in those places where we are.

13:53But that includes now obviously kid bars and we'll be moving into lunchbox areas and things like that. Just envision what are category and product forms and types that are relevant to a household that has an infant all the way up to a kid that's age 12. Like any of that space is stuff we're looking at and considering. And over time, about every 12 to 18 months, we'll expand into a new category. That's the way to think about it. Yeah, that's very interesting. And at the beginning, we already talked a little bit about the recent IPO. And this is not the first time that you have taken a company public.

14:27You did the same in 2012 with Annie's, which was then later also taking private again through an acquisition. Having seen both actually going through the whole IPO process and going public as well as actually being acquired privately, Did those two experiences also kind of help you think about what you wanted to do with Once Upon a Farm? Sure, they did. You know, when I first joined R &C Cassandra and Jen here in 2017, I certainly wasn't thinking IPO was something we were, wasn't top of mind for me. But as the business really started to grow and as we started to carve out a pretty unique position, and as I saw the like the market potential of this business, over time, it became clear and clear to me that that was something we should definitely consider.

15:06And really, about four years ago, we really leaned into that in terms of being prepared. Like, you know, it's little but not insignificant things like deciding which auditor you're going to use. You know, you need to make that decision like three years ahead and it costs a lot more. And so we started positioning ourselves. I said that I want to I don't know if that's what we'll end up doing, but I want to make sure that we have that option, because if we do have that option, it may be a place we want to go and it might be the best thing. And then over that four-year period, it just became clearer and clearer to me that for a brand like ours with the growth potential ahead of it and a really, really high-quality team, I mean, the talent here is amazing.

15:44And I really came to the conclusion over that timeframe that the best opportunity for us to grow this brand and turn it into its true potential up against that mission that I outlined earlier was to have us just continue to stay independent and do it ourselves. And I mentioned there's been a lot of strategic interest in this business from the beginning, including when we were the size of a lemonade stand, practically, which was kind of hilarious. But I always also believe that, like, you have to think about what if you really are in this and Jen and I got in this around this mission. We decided to do this not because we were trying to build something and flip it in three years.

16:17I'm not sure we would have guessed at that time that we'd still be involved nine years later. But we wanted to build something special that would be lasting. And we feel like with this opportunity ahead of us to really transform the baby aisle and kids snacking in the U.S. and then ultimately in Europe or launching there now, we wanted to just stay independent and do it ourselves. And so an IPO was the best way for us to do that. And it's allowed us to position the company for its next leg of leadership and growth and with a really strong balance sheet and a lot of awareness and a lot of momentum behind us.

16:48So I'm glad we've done it. We just got to execute now. Yeah. And like you mentioned that you guys have been thinking about it for the last four years and you've also been quite open about it on LinkedIn that you guys were actually planning to do an IPO in late 2025, but that was actually postponed because of a government shutdown. So what was that whole process like over the last couple of months where you guys were like fully ready to go, but you basically couldn't go because of circumstances that weren't in your control? It was very frustrating. We had circled a date. I can't remember. I think the exact date.

17:18I can't remember. October 23rd, I think. We had circled that date on the calendar over a year before and said, this is the day we're going to go public. And we were completely ready to go on that day. And then the government shutdown happened right ahead of that. And the SEC couldn't declare anything effective. So it was very disruptive and super disappointing. But we were a resilient group and we just regrouped and we made good use of that extra time. We continued to really focus on some things that we wanted to make sure that were in a really good place for when we went public. And we also want to make sure we knew the government shutdown wouldn't last forever.

17:48We knew that the markets may or may not be there. We'll be ready when they are. And we decided to do that in early February and we accomplished it. But it was frustrating for sure. Yeah. But then obviously kind of to contradict the frustrating, like if you then look at the first numbers that were being published, they were obviously super positive for you guys. So like a 44 % sales jump. What was the responses from the market based on those numbers? Yeah, so it's been interesting. You know, the company is on the radar of a lot of people. It's understood as a significant growth opportunity feature and everything.

18:24Like I said earlier, we're going to be really successful here if we just continue to execute well. And this company is focused on execution over almost anything else for years. And I feel like we're really well positioned to do that. We expect to continue growing strongly. We raised our guidance after our last first quarter, which you alluded to, which was 44 % sales growth. We raised our guidance for the year to$313,$323 million. Hopefully, we'll continue to grow beyond that and continue to excite the markets. But I think the most important thing is we're playing against a very big white space here.

18:55And if we just are very disciplined, take advantage of the first mover advantage that we have to continue executing and build this brand. I think people are going to be really excited about this business in the future. I am very confident that most people don't have an idea how big this business will be or how profitable it will be. And so it's up to us to just execute and show. And then all that other stuff will take care of itself, you know. Right. I want to talk a little bit about the broader kind of landscape of celebrity and creative founder brands. Because what you kind of see is that Jennifer Gardner, alongside people like Kim Kardashian with Skims, Hailey Bieber with Rode, and Mr.

19:29Beast with Feastables, they've kind of inspired the whole generation of other celebrities and creators to then also launch their own brands. What do you make of that trend? I think it's very exciting. You know, I think a lot of them won't work and that's nothing against them. Actually, CPG is a very competitive space. Almost lots of stuff that's new doesn't work, irrespective of whether it has celebrity involved in it or not. But I think it's very exciting because, you know, the way consumers are finding out about brands, engaging and the way brands are developing, audiences changing with, you know, all of the things that you talk about and all of the things you write about consistently.

20:02And it's exciting for consumers to have choices and to see new things. And it's vibrant for the retail space. It's vibrant for the emerging brand space. I love it. Like, and I think there will always be brands that are created coming out of things like that, that are just going to be massively successful in the future, way beyond what anyone could possibly imagine. and then there'll be ones that people think are like obviously going to be winners that won't work. But that's what makes it fun. You know, it's about not just awareness, it's about product, it's about execution, it's about all that stuff.

20:32But I think more choice for consumers, you know, advancing nutrition and health consciousness and awareness and accessibility are just awesome things for consumers. I love that. It keeps the space fun and exciting, you know. Yeah, I'm obviously very biased, so I'm also really excited about the space. But at the same time, we also see that for every once upon a farm, skims or road, there's also hundreds of failures. So what do you think are some of the common mistakes that these celebrity founder brands make? Well, I think one of the more common mistakes, which is been written about a lot, but again, it's not just a celebrity brand thing.

21:04This is true across CPG. They just don't get the product right. You know, like getting a product market fit, but also a product that really is uniquely serving consumers in a way where they see the value in it and they really turn it into an item that they repeat on is very hard to do. And lots of times I think the, you know, people that come in to the business think, well, the product's good enough and this is like software. I'm just going to iterate. I'm going to do 20 versions of it over time and make it better. And of course they probably will. But you can get almost anybody to try a product once.

21:36But in food, man, if it doesn't taste great or it doesn't deliver for you, you're not going to repeat. And once that cycle starts, it's just brutal and hard to reach. And so I think that's one of the biggest ones. And then just relying on the air cover of awareness building from a celebrity is also very short-term thinking because there's so much else that comes with building a great CPG consumer packaged goods business. It's the execution, the operation, sourcing, you name it. There's a lot of complexity and lots of times they don't get the teams in place, I think, at the level of depth necessary to do what they really want to do, which is to go big fast.