Couple become billionaires in energy bar deal with Mondelez

A HUSBAND and wife duo who created energy bars using family recipes are in line for multibillion-dollar fortunes, after Cadbury owner Mondelez convinced them to cash out following decades of steadfastly remaining private.

Gary Erickson and his wife Kit Crawford are expected to land payouts of as much as $2.3bn (£1.9bn) when the sale of their business, Clif Bar, completes later this year.

The pair are understood to own 80pc of the company, which they launched in 1992 after Mr Erickson had an “epiphany” during a 175-mile bike ride. The former mountain guide “realised he just couldn’t eat another unappetising, sticky, hard-to-digest bar”.

He later developed recipes together with his mother and named the company after his father, Clifford.

Mondelez, which also owns the Toblerone and Oreo brands, is paying $2.9bn for the energy bar maker.

Employees were effectively handed 20pc of the business in 2010 as part of a worker ownership scheme, putting them in line to together make $580m. In its annual report last summer, Clif Bar said it had 1,050 employee owners.

It comes after Mr Erickson and Ms Crawford – who also own a vineyard in Napa Valley, with one wine named “The Climber” – had previously batted away takeover bids. In an interview in 2018, Mr Erickson said the Clif Bar chief financial officer and assistants “know not even to tell us” when there was an approach. “We aren’t interested.”

The pair turned down a $120m takeover offer in 2000. Mr Erickson has said the decision was made as he felt “this is not the time; this is not right”.

Both he and Ms Crawford, who are Canadian but now based in California, stepped back as co-chief executives in 2013 to become chief visionary officers.

Sally Grimes, chief executive of Clif Bar, said: “Mondelez International is the right partner at the right time to support Clif in our next chapter of growth.”