The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Taking stock of an expanded snack drawer
Addition of Snyder’s-Lance brings iconic brands under one roof
While traveling far from his Westport home on Pepperidge Farm business, Carlos AbramsRivera said he hears hotel staff reminisce from time to time about the cookies and crackers on which they grew up.
With Pepperidge Farm’s parent adopting a major new snack giant late last month, there is plenty more fodder for Abrams-Rivera to hear.
Campbell Soup spent $6.1 billion in March to acquire Snyder’s-Lance, whose snack brands include Snyder’s of Hanover pretzels, Cape Cod and Kettle Brand potato chips, Emerald nuts and Pop-Secret popcorn, among others. As president of the Campbell Snacks division of Camden, N.J.-based Campbell’s, Abrams-Rivera now oversees both Pepperidge Farm and Snyder’s- Lance, which maintain their respective corporate offices in Norwalk and Charlotte, N.C.
Last year, Pepperidge Farm marked its 80th anniversary as a Connecticut-based brand, employing about 250 people today at its Norwalk offices and food research center. Margaret Rudkin created the company in her Fairfield kitchen after coming up with a bread recipe for a child who suffered food allergies, and opened her first bakery in Norwalk in 1947.
Campbell’s acquired Pepperidge Farm in 1961. Goldfish crackers debuted the following year after Rudkin drew inspiration from a snack she tried while on vacation in Switzerland. According to revenue estimates published by Statista, Goldfish sales alone totaled more than $500 million last year, making it the second-best selling cracker after the CheezIt brand owned by Kellogg’s.
All packaged food brands are confronted today with a new generation of moms and dads who bring a different perspective on food shopping from their own parents, as pointed out in February by Campbell’s CEO Denise Morrison in comments at a Florida conference sponsored by the nonprofit Consumer Analyst Group of New York.
“Millennials sit somewhere between resistant and impervious to advertising,” Morrison said. “One of the only things that attracts their attention and connects them to your brand is if you can forge a common and meaningful bond with them — one that is based on purpose and values.”
From the home of the Oreo
Abrams-Rivera has led Pepperidge Farm since 2015, joining the company from food giant Mondelez International, which has a huge share of the cookie and cracker market with names such as Nabisco and Oreo — both billion-dollar brands in their own right, according to Mondelez — and Ritz, third in cracker sales after Goldfish, according to the Statista study.
Growing up in Puerto Rico, Abrams-Rivera joined Kraft Foods, starting at Oscar Mayer’s former headquarters in Wisconsin, and spent more than 20 years in a range of positions with Kraft. That included stateside assignments such as with Nabisco in New Jersey, as well as overseas posts including in China. After Kraft split to form Mondelez, Abrams-Rivera ran Mondelez operations in Mexico and then candy for all of Latin America before joining Pepperidge Farm.
Abrams-Rivera obviously had been familiar with Pepperidge Farm and said he had admired them from afar, making it an easy choice to join.
‘Real food’ and real stories
Pepperidge Farm of late has invoked both its founder’s Connecticut heritage and the “real food” vow of its corporate parent with its Pepperidge Farmhouse Thin & Crispy Cookies, “a new cookie straight from 1937,” with each variety baked from no more than a dozen ingredients.
If Abrams-Rivera were forced to subsist on just one Pepperidge Farm cookie variety for the rest of his life, he said he might go with Chessmen, hearkening to the butter cookies he loved growing up, with Abrams-Rivera also partial to the Royal Dansk brand owned by Campbell’s.
But everyone has their own favorite.
“It’s always a happy memory associated with it,” he said. “People see I am with Pepperidge Farm and they want to tell you stories.”