Goodles continues to modernize mac and cheese

SANTA CRUZ, CALIF. — Rather than compete with industry giants, Goodles has looked to capture market share by growing the macaroni and cheese category to reach untapped consumer groups.

The company, founded in 2020, identified an opportunity early on with consumers seeking an elevated macaroni and cheese offering formulated with healthier ingredients.

“We started as a little tiny company going up against two of the biggest food companies on the planet, and they have hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at this,” Jen Zeszut, co-founder and chief executive officer of Goodles, said in an interview with Food Business News. “When you’re going up against them, and you know you can’t outspend them, and you know you can’t out coupon them … you have to change the game, you just do. You have to play a different game. So, we play a nutrition game, we play a clean ingredients game.”

Goodles products feature 14 grams of protein from wheat and chickpea sources, 6 grams of fiber and nutrients from organic vegetables like kale, spinach and maitake mushrooms. The company markets several product lines, including its traditional line with flavors like Mover & Shaker, Twist My Parm, Cheddy Mac, and Shella Good, a deluxe line featuring squeezable cheese, a microwavable cup line, gluten-free and vegan offerings and several varieties of dry pasta noodles.

In addition to health-conscious consumers, the company saw another area of untapped opportunity among the young adult demographic.

“Boxed mac and cheese was mostly for kids,” Zeszut explained. “We were just like, ‘I bet there’s a lot of young adults who used to eat and love mac and cheese.’ Maybe the last time they had it was in the dorms, but now they know what’s in it … They have different goals for nutrition, of what they put in their body, what they want to eat, or they eat it as little as possible, because it’s kind of a guilty pleasure.

“We heard a lot of that from young adults … and if we could bring them back to the mac aisle, then we’re not going head-to-head against the Krafts and the Annie’s of the world. We have a chance to truly grow the category and grow share, and not just steal share, but actually grow the category and get to a meaningful size by bringing people back to mac.”

With this approach, Goodles now sells more than three units of macaroni and cheese per second (or approximately 260,000 units per day), and the company’s offerings represent close to 90% of the growth in adoption in macaroni and cheese, Zeszut said.

“In one mass retailer, 84% of the people who buy Goodles are incremental to the category, so they’ve never bought another box, a box of mac and cheese before ever at that store,” she said. “Another mass retailer, 81%, another club customer, 80%, so we truly are bringing people back to the category.”

The company launched its first line of microwavable cups in June.

| Photo: Goodles

Despite the company’s emphasis on healthy formulations, taste and flavor variety remains a major focal point for the company. Zeszut said that marketing the company’s products to adult consumers allows the Goodles research and development team to explore flavors beyond the limited flavor palette children are likely to have. The company launches multiple new flavors nearly every fiscal quarter, more than 15 flavors since its debut, with an innovation ethos to create flavors that garner a “oh no you didn’t” response internally.

“You might have just broke up with your boyfriend, and you’re all about one kind of mac and cheese, but then it’s date night and you’re about a different kind of mac and cheese, or it’s Thursday night, and you’re watching with your girlfriends and you’re drinking wine, and that’s very different,” Zeszut said. “Variety becomes really important if you believe in the vision for this market that we hoped would materialize.”

Tapping into consumer interest in convenient meal formats is becoming a growing priority, with the company launching its first microwavable cups line in June of last year. Zeszut said members of the company initially were hesitant that the product, which was in development for several years, may cannibalize sales of their boxed macaroni and cheese. But consumer feedback assured them that the use cases for such formats would be different.

“We asked (consumers), ‘are you going to buy cups and you’re not going to buy the boxes?’” she said. “And they all said, ‘No, no, it’s totally different. This one is for going to the gym, it’s for taking to work, it’s for sending with my kids to school, it’s for picking them up after, it’s all of these different use cases.’”

Following a sold out online launch, the company is leaning into the format and plans to add additional flavors, including a microwavable version of its Twist My Arm boxed macaroni.

“I think you’re going to see additional innovation on this format, just given how well it’s doing,” Zeszut said. “It’s also exciting for us, because in this little form factor, this can go into college dorms. This can go into convenience stores, hotels, foodservice … and all those kinds of things. Those are places that you wouldn’t put a box, but we get these cups, so it’s actually opening a lot of distribution doors.”