Watch: An Inside Look at the RXBAR and Kellogg Deal

Whenever a big CPG brand acquires a new company, the industry often asks why: Why this purchaser? Why this company? Why now? And, in the case of the Kellogg Company’s purchase of RXBAR, why this price?

At NOSH Live Summer 2018 participants received insight into this particular deal when Jeff Klineman, Project NOSH editor-in-chief, sat down with Peter Rahal, RXBAR CEO and co-founder; Janica Lane, Piper Jaffray managing director; and Jared Rosenbaum, Kellogg’s senior director of corporate development and strategy, to discuss the $600 million deal.

The panel started with an exploration of when Rahal knew he wanted to sell the company to a large strategic, despite the fact he had built the business without that expectation.

“The question was for us, ‘What do we want to do with the business?’ Something Jared [my co-founder] and I have always done really well is separating ourselves as shareholders, as owners and then as employees,” Rahal said. “So we asked ourselves the question, ‘as owners what do we want to do?’”

Rahal also spoke about how the company’s “no B.S.” tagline shaped how he approached the deal and how he told the team about the sale.

The discussion also explored Kellogg’s point of view with Rosenbaum, who discussed the impact of RXBAR’s explosive growth had on the CPG giant’s interest in the brand.

“This was very unique growth. You had to believe that it had more trajectory and this wasn’t some kind of fluke anomaly for a year,” Rosenbaum said “At the end of the day, we don’t make an acquisition to see a company go from $50 to $60 million or $100 to $120 million.”

To hear more about Kellogg’s interest in RXBAR and find out how the companies decided they were the right match, watch the video above.