Foraker began his presentation with a slide with logos of Annie’s, General Mills, and Once Upon a Farm, which he said summed up his career. It started in 1989 when he and other investors backed Annie Withey, whose Connecticut-based startup had found a local audience with its organic boxed macaroni-and-cheese kits.
“Specialty, Natural, Organic was vastly different then,” Foraker recalled. “Back then it was Natural Foods sections at the back of the store by the mop closet.” He said the vision was to build a brand that could mainstream organic, which was achieved along with other pioneering brands.
Yet Foraker added, with a touch of humility, that brand-builders should always strive to do even better. After stating that he is very proud of the work he and his “amazing” team did at Annie’s, he said, “What's amazing about this business is you can work out for a long time and you can learn from your mistakes. We could have done so much better.”
Foraker spent a constructive three years running the Annie’s brand from General Mills, a company of which he speaks highly.
But the entrepreneur urge took over after he met San Diego entrepreneurs Ari Raz and Cassandra Curtis, who in 2017 were seeking financing for a better-for-babies food company originally called Mother’s Garden and just recently re-branded as Once Upon a Farm.
Joined by Garner, they discussed “how screwed up our food system is” and pondered, “What if we could get everyone to join together on something brand new, trying to change the game for kids’ nutrition.”
Using the high-pressure pasteurization process, or HPP, they developed a variety of refrigerated products, packed with healthy fruits and vegetables, that met the ultimate test: Both babies and their parents loved the taste, and parents were gratified with the products’ nutritional value.
Then, in 2018, came the revelation that boosted Once Upon a Farm from healthy to spectacular growth. Market research determined that it wasn’t just for babies: 80 percent of their products were consumed by children ages 1 through 10. “We took ‘baby’ off the package, we made the packaging a lot bolder, a lot more playful,” Foraker said.
The impact: Sales velocities (the rates at which products move off store shelves) are 10 to 15 times higher than they were at that time. In a message to business start-up owners, Foraker added, “That's great, that's successful, and I think we have a bright future. But I want you to know that that work that happened in 2018, 2019, 2020 is the hard work of being entrepreneurs. That's where you make it work.”