Oreo-owner Mondelez is taking a majority stake in Perfect Snacks, the owner of refrigerated protein bar Perfect Bar, the companies announced on Wednesday.
The deal gives Mondelez a further foothold into snacking as more people eat on-the-go. It comes on the heels of its roughly $500 million acquisition of premium cookie brand, Tate's Bake Shop, in 2018 and the innovation hub it launched for new snacking brands, SnackFutures, the same year.
Perfect Snacks has roughly $70 million in sales and is posting double-digit growth year-over-year. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
For the Keith family, the deal is an achievement. Bill Keith, along with six of his 13 siblings, founded the company in 2005, when their father was diagnosed with cancer and they needed a way to support themselves. The Perfect Bar recipe is based on a treat their dad, who has since passed, made the family to try to get the kids to swallow their vitamin supplements.
"We started the company to save our family," Keith explained.
Since then, Perfect Snacks has expanded beyond their "Original Refrigerated Protein Bar," an organic, non-GMO nut-butter-based protein bar into a kids' line and bite-sized Perfect Bites.
As bars and snacking have exploded in popularity, Perfect Snacks continues to distinguish itself by the refrigeration its products require, which the Keith family says helps offer a fresher product.
As a whole, refrigerated snacks like soup, hummus and yogurt, generate roughly $20 billion in annual sales, according to Mintel. Mondelez sees an opportunity to further expand in the segment, said Glen Walter, executive vice president of Mondelez and president of North America.
"There is still a lot of runway in building overall category leadership in refrigerated snacking," he said.
Mondelez, which also owns BelVita and Toblerone, has spoken openly about its intent to push further into snacking through its own products, as well as through dealmaking, should the opportunity arise.
"We want to take a very disciplined approach. We've studied the market and we're looking at different targets. We think we have a great deal of opportunity in our business ... and we will continue to take a disciplined approach to explore opportunities that make sense to exploit the advantages we have," said Walter.
After the sale, Bill, Leigh and Charisse Keith, as well as the rest of the company's leadership team, will continue to run the business out of its San Diego, California headquarters. The company's manufacturing operations will also stay in place.