Food spin-offs history summary
- Spin-offs are dominating the food and beverage landscape in 2025
- Past spin-offs include Mondelēz International, originally Kraft Foods’ snacking business
- PepsiCo also spun off three restaurants into Tricon Global Restaurants, which became Yum! Brands
- Nestlé’s North American waters business became BlueTriton Brands after being sold in 2021
- Conagra Foods spun off its potatoes business to become Lamb Weston in 2016
With Unilever preparing to spin-off its ice-cream division, Nestlé separating its waters brand, Kraft Heinz demerging, and even rumours that Coca-Cola could part ways with Costa Coffee, spin-offs are all anyone in food and beverage can talk about.
But how successful have previous spin-offs been? What can we learn from history?
PepsiCo and Yum! Brands
During a period of growth and diversification in the 1970s, PepsiCo acquired three fast-food restaurants: Pizza Hut Inc. in 1977, Taco Bell Inc. in 1978, and the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corp (now KFC) in 1986.
In 1997, little more than a decade afterwards, PepsiCo decided to spin these restaurants off into a seperate company named Tricon Global Restaurants, which in 2002 became Yum! Brands.
Yum! Brands is still seeing growth, particularly from Taco Bell. However, the company slightly missed estimates on earnings-per-share and revenue in its most recent earnings report.
Yum! Brands currently has a market cap of $41.49bn, compared to PepsiCo’s $196.5bn.
Mondelēz International and Kraft Foods Group
One of the largest food companies in the world is the result of a spin-off.
In 2012, Kraft Foods split in two. Its global snacking business became Mondelēz International, while its North American grocery arm became Kraft Foods Group.
Thirteen years later, Mondelēz International is still going strong. Its latest earnings report saw solid revenue growth driven by pricing, and it remains a key player in the snacking space.
Kraft Foods Group did not remain independent for long after the demerger, instead combining with H J Heinz just three years later, in 2015, to form Kraft Heinz.
That is now, of course, demerging once again, to form two separate companies.
Conagra Brands and Lamb Weston
Lamb Weston is now one of the world’s largest producers of potato products, and a key provider of chips (fries) to foodservice. Its origin was as a spin-off.
In 2016, Conagra Foods spun off its potato business into Lamb Weston, itself subsequently becoming Conagra Brands.
While Conagra Brands contained the company’s retail-focused brands, Lamb Weston kept its foodservice potato products.
Since the split, Lamb Weston has been performing well. In its most recent earnings report, it saw a 4% year-on-year increase in net sales, and an 8% rise in volumes.
Its current market cap is $7.86bn, compared to Conagra Brands’ $9.18bn.
Nestlé and BlueTriton Brands
Nestlé‘s current plans to sell its waters division is not the first time it’s offloaded water brands.
In 2021, the Swiss CPG giant sold its North American waters division to One Rock Capital Partners for $4.3bn.
As an independent company, the division was subsequently renamed BlueTriton Brands, after Triton, a Greek god of the sea and son of Poseidon.
BlueTriton didn’t remain on its own for long, and in 2024 it merged with Primo Water, to create Primo Brands.
In 2025, a year after its creation, Primo Brands has been suffering. Hit in recent times by poor weather impacting its production facilities and with a slight decline in sales, it had a quarterly earnings report that some investors found disappointing.
