Last month the natural health community was aflutter over the announcement that Siete Foods will be selling to PepsiCo for 1.2 Billion dollars.
If you are gluten-free, or eat low carb and prefer no additives, chances are you are familiar with Siete foods for their grain free chips, almond flour tortillas, and more recently, wicked tasty Buñuelos and Mexican Wedding Cookies. They’ve created the first gluten-free, natural flour tortilla that did not tear apart when you tried to fold it, and I will be forever grateful to them for this.
So, this decision was met with a lot of hate amongst the natural foods community, with many saying they will no longer support the product, and there was a lot of fear around the quality of Siete foods going to shit since Pepsi of all godforsaken companies was buying them out.
Siete is not anywhere close to being the first natural foods company to sell to big food. Most of the brands we are familiar with and love actually are owned by bigger food conglomerations.
General Mills actually owns Annie’s Homegrown Mac and Cheese, Lara Bars, Cascadia Farm, Muir Glen, Rhythm Superfoods, and Food Should Taste Good.
The candy company Mars/M+Ms owns Seeds of Change
Applegate Farms was bought out by Hormel and Tyson is actually the owner of Aidell’s sausages as well as Van’s Natural foods.
Kelloggs owns RxBars, Bear Naked Brand and Kashi Cereals.
Tom’s of Maine, the toothpaste company, is now part of Colgate and Burt’s Bees sold out to Clorox in 2007.
Dave’s Killer Bread and Canyon Bakehouse Gluten-Free Breads was bought out by the company that owns Wonder Bread and Tastykakes. For your reference, the company is a perfectly innocent-sounding “Flower Foods”.
These are just a couple. Chances are, a brand you love that is available nationwide that is not a newcomer to the scene is probably owned by someone much bigger with somewhat questionable proclivities. This is true of supplements as well, with well known and loved brands such as Metagenics, Pure, and New Chapter being owned now by Amway, Nestlé, and Proctor + Gamble, respectively.
Do I think all the hand-wringing and cries of protest are warranted? Not exactly. But I also do not trust these big companies either, so while I think they know, and we know, that it is in their best interest not to dilute these products with ingredients the customer base avoid, I also think it is justifiable to be concerned about quality of the product long-term.
When large companies with a record of poor humanitarian and quality business practices buys out a loved natural foods company, it is reasonable to be wary of the future of that product. These companies are only about the bottom line, and they know that natural foods is a legit money-maker. That’s why they are buying up these small companies.
It’s easy to now think of the Garza family, who created Siete Foods, as sell-outs and assholes and greedy people who ultimately care about money over quality, but the reality is we do not know the truth behind this sale.
Very, very few of us know how hard it is to make a quality, product-based business successful in the first place, let alone begin to scale it so it is a nationally recognized brand in a niche market. The Garza family should be celebrated for this accomplishment. None of us have any idea what it cost them in terms of health, family life, relationships, and sanity. None of us know if, at the end of the day, the speed with which they scaled put them in financial trouble that threatened the very survival of their business. None of us are privy to the accountant’s records. I, for one, would rather still be able to buy Siete Buñelos this Christmas and the next than see the company disappear forever because they could not sustain their success. Given how much food costs have risen since the pandemic, I would not at all be surprised if this played a part in their decision to sell.
What PepsiCo can do, that Siete was probably struggling with, was maintain this level of scale in a more cost-effective way to stabilize or even lower prices in a time when food prices are exploding. PepsiCo also has the level of distribution that makes it very possible for Siete Foods to end up in gas station convenience stores and other places in a food desert where people have not had the access to this kind of quality. In our outrage, it is easy to forget that behind the company we love is a family, and behind the nasty-ass behemoth that purchased them is the ability to improve access and affordability for all.
Will PepsiCo taint the ingredients and dilute the quality of the brand? My guess is that they will avoid doing this for as long as possible because it erodes the loyal customer base and threatens their investment. Shoppers are smarter than ever, and when it comes to natural foods shoppers, we are more savvy at label-reading than most. They know this, and they will not go hacking away at quality unless they need to because this will actually decrease their bottom line. They will do other things to improve the bottom line first.
What is more likely to happen is that employees of Siete will begin being treated like easily replaceable hardware and the workplace quality will erode quickly. Long-time employees will likely leave and be replaced by random people who have less of their soul invested in the product or business. This can all be done without decreasing the quality of the product and it can also improve the profit margin of the product as well.
I say this without knowing what it is like to work for PepsiCo. I only speak from the experience of being part of a small successful business that was purchased out by a company too big to fail, and what I hear from clients who also work for large, publicly traded companies. Maybe I’m wrong. But it’s more likely that I am correct in this regard than it is likely that PepsiCo will begin sneaking GMO cornstarch into my cassava chips.
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