The Hershey Company & ONE Brands | 3 Years of Nothing!

After three years of basically nothing…can I get 'Things that Baffle Me' for $1000 Alex? I know any event before 2020 feels like a generation ago so maybe you forget that The Hershey Company acquired ONE Brands (maker of the ONE bar) in August 2019 for $397 million. To get yourself back in that late-summer of 2019 blissful mindset even deeper, just a week earlier than the Hershey and ONE Brands news, it was also announced that The Simply Good Foods Company acquired Quest Nutrition for one billion dollars. So, in that extremely short stretch of time, two of the most buzzworthy bar brands, positioned inside the high protein, low sugar world, were acquired. Being a protein bar company in the summer of 2019 was one of the most valuable things you could be in the growing functional food space...that is until it wasn’t! So, why would Hershey’s want to buy ONE Brands? Well…it’s part reinvention of its public perception but mostly an internal hedging process. Despite Hershey’s having no intention of completely diverging from its core business of indulgent sweets, the ONE Brands acquisition folded in quite nicely because its core product the ONE bar was an indulgent-yet-healthy-food. I'll run through why I give Hershey's (and the Amplify Snack Brands division) a pass on not meeting the ONE Brands platform brand strategy ambition level, but also explain why I'm frustrated they're letting Quest Nutrition absolutely crush them in product formats (e.g. peanut butter cups) that are core competencies with the ownership of iconic candy brands like Reese's. FOLLOW ME ON MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS LINKEDIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaschallmba TWITTER - https://www.twitter.com/joshua_schall INSTAGRAM - https://www.instagram.com/joshua_schall FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/jschallconsulting MEDIUM - https://www.medium.com/@joshuaschall