Green Mountain Coffee is in a pot of trouble. And that's even before Starbucks introduces Verismo, its own single-serve brewing system for consumers that's rolling out in October (and already available on Verismo.com), to challenge the iconic K-Cup system by Green Mountain that features its Keurig pods. 

The brand has been a darling of consumers for several years, on a continued growth tear as K-Cups led a revolution in how Americans consume much of their coffee by making the single-serve system de rigeur in homes and offices. The company fed strong double-digit sales growth by continuing to proliferate the types of pods, to include "iced" drinks and juices as well as coffees and teas.

Green Mountain also had been a darling of investors seeking to cash in on a boom that, for the six years after the Vermont-based company acquired Keurig, managed to thrive without attracting the competitive interest of Starbucks.Continue reading...

Time to hide the children and batten down the hatches. Kraft Foods is “ready to unleash a global snacking powerhouse,” chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld told investors and analysts in the company's presentation at the Barclays Back to School conference in Boston on Thursday.

The snacks behemoth will officially launch the Mondelez brand for the global marketplace on Oct. 3 and is hoping that consumers in China, India, and Brazil start chowing down more and more on such products as Oreo cookies (a $2 billion brand thanks to glocal versions in China), Cadbury chocolates, and Trident gum. Kraft will maintain another division under the Kraft name that will focus solely on the North American marketplace and features such grocery staples as Velveeta and Oscar Mayer.

While the CPG giant is predicting to have a 2013 profit of $2.60 per share, according to the AP, it is also expecting Mondelez to not come zooming out of the gate.Continue reading...

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EPrize acquired by private-equity firm.

Fazoli's pivots toward more premium positioning. Continue reading...

Scoff all you want. Kraft Foods is going for it. The company is splitting into two public entities and one half of it — its global snacks business — will be known as Mondelēz International. 

The shareholder vote at the company's May 23rd annual general meeting on the name change wasn’t even close, either. More than 90 percent of those who voted gave the new name the OK, according to a press release.

The word Mondelēz, selected from an internal employee competition, is a "portmanteau" combination of the Latin word for world (“monde”) and “delez,” which is supposed to suggest deliciousness. Sticking "International" on at the tail end gives it that global feel the company is in search of.Continue reading...

When Kraft Foods announced in March that it would name its new global snack business “Mondelēz” as part of its upcoming corporate split, the world basically snorted in disdain. Say what? The pronunciation isn’t even exactly clear. Kraft says it's supposed to be pronounced "Mohn-dah-LEEZ," please.

Some crafty exec came up with the idea of combining the Latin words for “world” and “delicious.” It was a high-faluting idea that got dragged down through the gutter pretty quickly.

Shareholders in the company will get their chance to give their opinion on the name at the company's annual general meeting on Wednesday that will decide whether the maker of Oreos and Fig Newtons (sorry: Newtons) should be housed under the proposed Mondelēz name or not, according to the Associated Press.

A new name is necessary because Kraft is separating into two entities, one that needs a new name for the half that will house its global snacking brands, while the Kraft name will be used for the half housing its North American CPG/grocery brands. So the new name, whether it ends up being Mondelēz or not, must work for a worldwide audience.Continue reading...

Trident gum, as we reported yesterday, is changing its tune and leaving its old positioning. For years, as seen in the above video, Trident's positioning emphasized that Trident gum has oral health and even vitamin benefits. Now, the Kraft Foods brand is targeting gum-chewers in the 20-39 age range in its first global campaign: “It’s like a smile for your brain that starts in your mouth” and the tagline “Trident, See What Unfolds.”

In giving up Trident's position emphasizing cosmetic and health benefits, Kraft is leaving a lot of history behind. The Trident brand was the first national brand of sugar-free chewing gum, and derives its name from three enzymes believed to soften dental tartar, leveraging artificial sweeteners instead of sugar. 

Sugar-Free Trident was introduced in 1964 with the slogan "The Great Taste that Is Good for Your Teeth," which changed mid-60s to "4 out of 5 dentists surveyed would recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum." Continue reading...

Remember all that stuffy marketing from Kraft brands like Oreo, Trident and Tang? Well, once the newly named Mondelēz unit gets its freedom from Kraft in a spinoff of the company's fast-growing, internationally oriented snacks business, expect the marketing chiefs to push the envelope.

The brands to be deposited into Mondelēz — including the aforementioned Oreo, Trident and Tang — "tend to have a younger, vibrant appeal that allow us to push the edge of the marketing much further than some of the classic, traditional, more Midwestern-focused brands," said Mary Beth West, Kraft's chief marketing officer, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. "That's not a value judgment," she insisted.

But West herself does plan to leave "Midwest" parent company Kraft Foods — based in Northfield, Ill. — to join Mondelēz. And she will be taking Dana Anderson, Kraft Foods SVP of marketing strategy and communications to join Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld, who is also decamping to Mondelēz.Continue reading...

What's in a name? Kraft Foods is about to find out, after announcing today that Mondelēz International is the moniker of the corporate global snack-foods unit that it will spin off by the end of this year, as announced last August.

"Mondelay," you say? Nay, nay! No need to dust off your high school French. The new name — pronounced "Mohn-dah-LEEZ" — is a Kraft-coined word that, the company explained in a press release, is intended to evoke the idea of "delicious world."

"Monde" derives from the Latin (and French) word for "world," the company explained, and "dēlez" is a "fanciful expression of 'delicious.'" And, of course, "International" captures "the global nature of the business."

Even though it won't be consumer-facing, pronunciation will be a challenge ("mon-de-lay," "mon-de-less," or "mon-de-leez"?) for the new name which was, as it turns out, employee-sourced.

Last fall, Kraft invited staffers around the world to suggest names and received suggestions from more than 1,000 employees. The winner was inspired by separate suggestions from two employees, one in North America and one in Europe.Continue reading...