Children’s nutrition brand Once Upon a Farm, which went public in February, is pursuing an aggressive growth strategy centered on innovation, distribution expansion, household penetration gains and continued category expansion, according to the CEO during its first appearance at the Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Conference.
The company’s strategy remains anchored around its core refrigerated pouch business, which serves as a foundation to build what CEO John Foraker calls a broader “modern childhood nutrition brand” serving children from infancy through age 12.
“The opportunity is there for this to be a billion-dollar brand,” Foraker said.
Since Foraker, CFO Larry Waldman and actress and co-founder Jennifer Garner joined the company in late 2017, Once Upon a Farm has grown from less than $1 million in revenue to more than $300 million this year.
“It was really an idea to go disrupt fresh baby food,” Foraker said.
The company’s growth began with fresh, refrigerated baby food pouches made using high-pressure processing (HPP) rather than heat. The process allows fruits and vegetables to maintain their taste and nutritional quality while extending shelf life.
Foraker explained, “The product tastes like a smoothie you made in your blender 10 minutes ago, four months later.”
Today, the portfolio includes fresh baby food, baby snacks and kids’ snack pouches. The expansion beyond infants has helped drive the company’s growth. According to Foraker, the company is “extremely incremental to every category we go into, 60 to 80% incremental.”
Household penetration continues to climb
Household penetration has increased to 6.2% from roughly 5% in a relatively short period, while independent awareness has nearly doubled year over year to approximately 11%, according to Foraker and CFO Larry Waldman.
Foraker said strong repeat purchases have helped the company avoid the typical tradeoff where rapid household acquisition weakens engagement.
“We have very high repeat rates. We’re over 50% with households with kids, and new families are significantly higher than that,” he said.
He added that the company’s strategy of serving kids across multiple ages is strengthening loyalty and increasing basket size.
“We know that when consumers come in and buy more than one category that we’re in, their basket is significantly bigger,” Foraker said.
He points to “unaided awareness,” which nearly doubled from last year as an early signal of an expanding household penetration.
Foraker and Waldman outlined four primary growth drivers: increasing household penetration, expanding distribution, growing assortment within existing stores and increasing cooler placement.
Expanding distribution and assortment in existing stores
Waldman said household penetration remains the company’s largest long-term growth opportunity. Beyond that, Once Upon a Farm continues to expand distribution.
The company currently has approximately 70% All Commodity Volume distribution, which, measures the percentage of retail sales represented by stores carrying a product. Once Upon a Farm added nearly 100,000 points of distribution in the most recent quarter.
However, Waldman emphasized that the next growth phase will come from expanding assortments within existing stores.
“We’re currently at about a little under 30 SKUs per door that we’re in,” he said.
Some retailers already stock between 60 and more than 100 SKUs, opening up the pathway to increase assortment in existing doors.
Coolers drive the next wave of growth
Fresh baby food coolers serve as one of the company’s biggest opportunities to drive revenue and household penetration.
Once Upon a Farm currently has about 4,100 coolers in stores and expects to reach approximately 5,000 by year-end. Each cooler adds roughly 50 SKUs to a store while increasing visibility for fresh baby food, Waldman explained.
The company previously estimated an opportunity for 15,000 coolers and now believes that figure may be conservative.
Foraker believes coolers can fundamentally reshape the baby food aisle.
“There should be a fresh baby food cooler in almost every baby aisle,” he said.
The company estimates the current fresh baby food market exceeds $50 million at retail. A network of 15,000 coolers generating an average of $20,000 in annual sales per cooler would create a roughly $300 million market opportunity.
According to Foraker, the most productive coolers have three attributes: the right assortment, strong retailer execution and increasing consumer awareness over time.
“What separates the best performing coolers are coolers where we’ve got the exact right assortment,” he said.
Innovation: Protect the core business first
While expanding the business, Foraker stressed that innovation within existing categories remains the top priority.
“The biggest mistake we could make would be to get focused on the flashy new thing and not continue to just drive our current categories,” he said.
Recent innovation includes meat-based products, legume-protein offerings, Belly Blends and packaging improvements across both kid and baby pouch lines.
Entering new categories every 12 to 18 months
Alongside strengthening innovation in existing businesses, Once Upon a Farm plans to enter a new category approximately every 12 to 18 months.
The company looks for categories that appeal to the same family demographic, are sizeable and often lack meaningful innovation.
“We like to look at categories that are big, sometimes slow growing, sometimes even negative growing, because the modern consumers’ needs are not being met,” he said.
The next category expansion, which was not announced during the conference, is already planned for 2027.
