Goodles bet adults buy mac and cheese. Annie's bet kids
Two boxed pasta brands made opposite calls about who eats the stuff. Inc. reports Goodles is heading for $1bn in revenue and says Annie's may never close the gap.
Mac and cheese has spent decades on the children's shelf. Annie's built a brand there, on parents buying an organic version of a lunchbox staple.
Goodles went the other way. It positioned the same category at adults, and on Inc.'s account that bet is now the difference between the two companies.
Inc. reports that Goodles is on course for $1bn in revenue and that Annie's may never catch up. The trade publication frames the outcome as the result of opposite decisions about who the customer is.
The underlying figures behind that trajectory have not been published, and neither has a breakdown of category share between the two brands.
The positioning argument is the transferable part. A category defined by its buyer, rather than by its product, can be re-entered by anyone willing to sell the same thing to a different person at a different price.
That is a cheaper move than inventing a product. It is also a harder one to defend, because the incumbent already owns the shelf, the distribution and the parent's habit.
For founders in packaged goods, the question the comparison poses is direct: is the category you are in defined by what it is, or by who currently buys it? The second kind is the one with room in it.
Goodles' own pricing and revenue disclosures are the place any of this would be confirmed.
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