Mondelez said Tuesday that it acquired paleo chocolate brand Hu, taking complete ownership after making a minority investment in the brand in 2019.
"I had an instant connection to him knowing that he had gone through a lot of what I had gone through in the early days of the packaged goods business," Brown said. In its early days, Brown had run Hu's retail business out of his apartment, an experience similar to Ramadan's work getting Sir Kensington's off the ground by working out of his college dorm room.Mondelez just acquired upstart chocolate maker Hu.
"Founder-CEO is a certain combination of responsibilities and roles," he said. "You don't always get straight feedback when you're doing both of those things."Under Ramadan, Hu introduced new products. It started making crackers, a choice that Brown says demonstrated to Mondelez that the brand wasn't limiting itself to a single product category.
"The general mentality 10 years ago was you started in natural [supermarkets], then, if you're lucky, you get a big break, you get into a Whole Foods store and expand to that region," Ramadan said. "At the very end of the line is Walmart."