The bunny vs. the blue box
Annie's Homegrown Macaroni & Cheese is the pantry staple of harried, organo-hipster parents everywhere. But is it any healthier than the day-glo noodles of our white-bread childhoods?
By Anastacia Marx de Salcedo
Read more: Marketing, Children, Nutrition, Cooking, Life, Eat and Drink, Food and Travel
Jan. 30, 2007 | In the pantheon of brands that have infiltrated our children's hearts and minds, one is particularly dastardly. No, not McDonald's, with its high-fat, high-salt finger foods, its inescapable bribe-vertising campaigns (free Teenie Beanie Baby!) and the economic biceps to reupholster whole swaths of the globe in russet potatoes. Not Coca-Cola, with its negative-nutritional-value product and supersize sugar delivery system for a world already a-waddle. No, I refer to the organo-hipster mama and papa's most faithful friend and constant kitchen companion, Annie's Homegrown.
Not the Annie's that is a leader of the natural foods movement, a supporter of environmental causes and a parent's painless answer to the question, "What's for dinner?" The Annie's that partners with the PBS program "Arthur" to promote literacy and reading and distributes free hippie-dippy bumper stickers that say "Be Green" and "Stand for Peace"? The Annie's whose founder lives on a 100-acre organic farm with her two daughters, her farmer husband and a bunch of bunnies, for God's sake?
Yes, that Annie's.
Annie's Homegrown Macaroni & Cheese has pretty much achieved world domination -- at least if your world is populated by the chronologically challenged. Refueling Gabriel, Rebekka, Isaac and Yazmin after a grueling toddler networking session? The well-stocked mom breaks out the Annie's. Three-course dinner with (mucho) wine for the grown-ups? A batch of Annie's keeps the little dears quiet. Rustling up some grub after a round of African drumming and lacrosse practices? Boil water. Grab Annie's. But while there's nothing wrong with food that appeals to kids and is easy to prepare, do we parents really have the right to feel so damn smug every time we open the little purple box?
No, no, no, a thousand times no.
For starters, just who are Annie Withey and the company behind her, Annie's Homegrown? When she posed for the (now-defunct) magazine Organic Style, she looked nice enough in her jeans, T-shirt and thick braid with a neo-feminist gray forelock. But it may interest you to know that she is the bona fide evil marketing genius, inventor and chief branding officer of not one, but two, packaged-food superstars: our beloved Annie's Homegrown and Smartfood popcorn, that breakaway snack hit of the 1980s.
The Smartfood creation myth revolves around a newlywed brandishing a spoon, a little slip of a thing who has a eureka! moment at the kitchen stove and invents her very own white cheddar cheese powder. In less capable hands, that probably would have been the beginning and end of the story. But in addition to her ingenuity with edibles, Annie has marketing mojo -- in spades. The Smartfood bag -- a sleek black number sporting that ubiquitous Yuppie superlative "premium" -- channeled Reagan-era zeitgeist, yet stood out from the crowd. A handful of early adopters moved so many packets of the cheesy tidbits that stores couldn't keep them in stock. Short story short: In 1989, six years after its founding, Smartfood was sold to Frito-Lay for $15 million.
Annie Withey's share of the loot is estimated to have been about $1 million. Quite enough to retire early to a Vermont subsistence farm or start an eco-tourism camp in Costa Rica or just live modestly in Ithaca, N.Y., for a decade or two, if you go in for that kind of thing, which Annie obviously didn't. Instead, she strode right back into the ring with the cap'ns of industry. Reinvesting her earnings, she exploited existing assets, developing a value-added product that, had she still been part of the Smartfood management team, would have been considered a brilliant line extension. Yep, that's right, she found a new use for her white cheddar powder: instant mac 'n' cheese. Other entrepreneurs might have trembled at the thought of going mano a mano with King Kraft. But not our Annie.
With a daintily moistened forefinger, Annie tested the direction of popular culture and felt the gentle wind of organics blowing. Her new pasta convenience meal would be labeled "totally natural" (mind you, this slippery '70s term has never had an official definition) and banish all ingredients ending in -ate, -yl and -one (at least those that aren't a constituent of another ingredient, which, as long as they are Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS), are not required by the FDA to be listed on the label). The goods would be wrapped in an eye-assaulting purple box adorned by one nauseatingly cute rabbit, aka Bernie the bunny -- cuddly design courtesy of Thomas J. Paul Inc., whose other accounts include such counterculture icons as M&M's, Ritz and -- wouldn't you know it? -- Kraft. The launch was studiously aw-shucks: Annie and cohorts tossed packages at ravenous skiers in resort parking lots. "If you like the product," they said coyly, "don't tell us. Ask for it at your grocer's." Up, up and away it went! By 2005, Annie's Homegrown was selling over $34 million a year; still a gnat in the eye of King Kraft, but a gnat that rules the organic convenience-meal category.
Next page: What's in those little hare-festooned envelopes anyway?