Kraft Heinz employees said the market-leading product was due for an upgrade, but with $1 billion worth of it selling every year, executives weren’t in a hurry. Deliberations stretched on for years: More protein? New flavors? More cheese? Goodles has now gobbled up 6% of the U.S. mac-and-cheese market, while Kraft Mac & Cheese is down to 39%, from 45% in 2022, according to data from market-research firm Circana.

When Kraft and Heinz, two of the biggest names in American food, merged in 2015, the combined company was supposed to breathe new life into old brands. Instead, years of cost cutting, underinvestment and corporate chaos left Kraft Heinz’s $26 billion food empire—home to bedrock brands like Heinz’s Tomato Ketchup, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Kool-Aid—vulnerable to both buzzier premium ones and cheaper supermarket knockoffs. 

Kraft Heinz sales have dropped for eight straight quarters. In September, the company said it would split in two, undoing the 2015 deal. Tensions flared in the company’s upper ranks. Many employees were uncertain who was calling the shots and which company they would end up working for, sowing further chaos. On Jan. 1, the company replaced its chief executive, Carlos Abrams-Rivera, with veteran food-company executive Steve Cahillane.

Kraft Heinz executives overseeing a sprawling portfolio of cheese, cold cuts, lunch kits and boxed dinners face a dilemma shared by other legacy food companies: Fiddle with flagship products and risk losing the loyal customers who made them category killers, or stick with old formulas that don’t interest younger shoppers.

Cahillane, the new CEO, said in mid-December that the industry “is clearly in a challenging moment,” and that Kraft Heinz “has to meet the moment.”

Bankable brand

Kraft mac and cheese, first sold in 1937 for 19 cents a box, was the creation of Chicago cheese monger James L. Kraft, who got his start selling cheese from a horse-drawn wagon. Marketed as a meal for four, it caught on during World War II, eventually finding broad success as a quick and convenient dinner for families.

For decades, it was one of the most bankable brands in food. After Warren Buffett and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G teamed up to buy ketchup heavyweight Heinz in 2013, they orchestrated a merger with Kraft, creating the world’s fifth-largest food company.

Though Kraft mac and cheese still ruled store shelves, and the company’s Velveeta Shells & Cheese also was a top seller, consumer tastes were shifting away from such processed foods toward fresher, healthier fare. Competition was mounting, with General Mills in 2014 acquiring Annie’s, which made an organic mac and cheese.

In an earnings call after the merger, Kraft Heinz executives called mac and cheese a turnaround opportunity. The company revamped the recipe in 2016, replacing artificial dyes with colors derived from natural sources.

Kraft Heinz executives, many of them from 3G, used an aggressive cost-cutting measure called zero-based budgeting, under which all expenses had to be justified anew each year. The company closed plants and laid off thousands of workers, reducing annual spending by nearly $2 billion. It said greater efficiency would free up resources to reinvest in its brands. 

Dividends to stockholders jumped to $3.6 billion in 2016, from $1.3 billion the year before. Kraft Heinz boasted the highest operating profit margin among food companies.

But former employees and Wall Street analysts said the company lost experienced leaders and marketing, research and sales prowess. “On multiple levels, they depleted the organization,” said Rob Moskow, an analyst at TD Cowen.

Kraft Heinz struggled to shift from cost-cutting to growth mode. Executives who excelled at trimming costs faltered when it came to building brands, according to former executives and other employees, often leaving junior employees to increase sales of struggling products on slim budgets. In 2019, poor sales and accounting errors prompted the company to write down the value of its assets by $17 billion. 

The company brought in a new CEO, Miguel Patricio, who pledged to reinvest in areas like marketing. Less than a year into his tenure, the pandemic hit, and homebound consumers flocked to familiar brands like Kraft mac and cheese. The company expanded manufacturing capacity to pump out more blue-and-orange containers of its signature product and other key offerings.

Kraft Heinz sales climbed by 5% in 2020, boosted by booming online orders. “We have sold nearly 90 million pounds of mac and cheese alone this year, which is equal to the weight of 41 Statues of Liberty,” said Abrams-Rivera, then Kraft Heinz’s president of its U.S. business, during a presentation to investors.

Mac and cheese challenge

A year earlier, Paul Earle had been walking the aisles of Chicago grocery stores with a notebook and pen when he stopped in front of the familiar blue wall of Kraft boxes. 

The veteran consumer-goods entrepreneur had been assistant brand manager for Kraft mac and cheese during a short stint at the food giant starting in the late 1990s. At the time, Earle recalled, he thought the product could be made more nutritious to satisfy Americans’ growing appetite for healthy fare.

Earle had left Kraft and later launched several companies, including ones selling whiskey and shampoo. At the time of his Chicago store visit, he was hunting for a new project.

He purchased several brands of mac and cheese, brought them home and cooked them. His 10-year-old son, Earle said, spat out a healthier variety from a Kraft competitor. Kraft’s classic version still tasted good and brought back fond memories, Earle said, but it didn’t appear much healthier than it was when he worked there. “I knew there was a way to do it better,” he said. 

Earle approached Jen Zeszut, who had run baby food startup Cerebelly. They agreed Kraft Heinz had left the door wide open for a mac-and-cheese challenge.

Goodles, led by Zeszut, pitched itself as a fun, healthier take on an old classic. The company infused its noodles with protein and nutrients from spinach, pumpkin and kale, and said its ingredients and flavors warrant a price that is more than twice what Kraft’s sells for.

While Kraft Heinz and General Mills tried to appeal to children with noodles shaped like SpongeBob and Disney characters, Goodles targeted a different group. Earle and Zeszut believed many young adults were secretly eating mac and cheese, and others would too if it could shed its dorm-food vibe. 

The pair sought help from Wonder Woman. Several years earlier, Zeszut had discussed a different business venture with Gal Gadot, an Israeli movie star who has played the superheroine on screen. The actress had passed on the earlier investment, but signed on when Zeszut pitched Goodles. 

Gadot became a Goodles ambassador, posting videos of herself cooking and tasting the product for her more than 100 million Instagram followers. She said mac and cheese was her favorite comfort food in childhood, but that established brands weren’t healthy enough for her own four children. 

Goodles caught on with consumers. Zeszut said retailers earned a higher profit on Goodles, turning them into fans, too. “It’s a higher-income consumer, it’s a younger demographic,” she said. “It’s exactly who they are trying to lure back to the center store.”

Slow reaction

Goodles hit store shelves during Kraft Heinz’s pandemic boom, when its sales grew for many consecutive quarters. Kraft Heinz executives weren’t overly concerned about the new competition at first, former employees said. Kraft mac and cheese was the category’s leading brand by far, selling more than a million boxes a day. 

There were other problems demanding attention. Mac and cheese was losing shoppers to other quick foods such as ramen, and many Kraft mac and cheese buyers were turning to less expensive store brands like Walmart’s Great Value.

In 2022, a Kraft Heinz team proposed grabbing shoppers’ attention with more promotions, new flavors and a high-protein variety. Employees put together a proposal for new mac-and-cheese products, including ones using premium cheeses like Gruyere, Gouda and Parmesan, and herbs and spices.

Under a “design to value” approach the company had adopted, those employees needed to find corresponding cost cuts. They experimented internally with reducing the amount of cheese, mac and cheese’s costliest component, checking the effect on taste, texture, mouthfeel, cheesiness and “cling”—how the cheese sauce stuck to the noodles.

A year later, another team made similar recommendations to executives, presenting sales data and retailer intelligence about Gen Z and millennial shoppers, many of whom were springing for premium versions. Health-focused options and new flavors like truffle and cacio e pepe, they said, could help coax back younger shoppers.

Executives faced other big troubles. Frequent restructuring and churn among employees led to shifting priorities, stalled projects and frustration among retailers. Brands such as Oscar Mayer and Maxwell House posed even bigger challenges than macaroni and cheese.

Kraft Heinz sales started dropping in late 2023. Consumers were fed up with inflation and hunting for deals. Patricio stepped down as CEO, turning over the job to Abrams-Rivera.

Executives were frustrated with Kraft mac and cheese, which continued to lose market share. Unhappy retailers wanted a growth strategy from Kraft, their biggest mac-and-cheese supplier. Costco wanted healthier products. Kraft Heinz’s sales employees were frustrated too, believing their suggestions had fallen on deaf ears. 

Abrams-Rivera acknowledged the mac-and-cheese challenges in an October 2024 earning call. “We have quite a bit of work to do, and meaningful improvement will take some time,” he told investors about several struggling brands.

Employees drew up plans for new flavors, box sizes and store promotions. Internally, they declared 2025 the “year of mac and cheese.” 

The company launched limited-edition flavors such as pizza, garlic Parmesan and, recently, apple pie, and jalapeño and ranch as permanent additions.

As part of a major initiative to boost its brands, Kraft Heinz ran more mac-and-cheese taste tests with consumers. Some results were disappointing, and executives told employees to fix it, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Diana Frost, the company’s global chief growth officer, said one conclusion was that the product billed in the 1990s as “the cheesiest” could use more cheese. 

The company dialed up the cheese. It also introduced a bigger box that it says can feed a family of five for $2, and it updated its packaging to note the product doesn’t contain artificial flavors, preservatives or dyes.

In the 40 weeks ended Nov. 2, though, Kraft mac and cheese sales declined 4% from the year-earlier period, according to Circana data shared by industry analysts.

Abrams-Rivera said in October that mac and cheese was partly to blame for a 4% sales decline in the largest division of Kraft Heinz’s North America grocery unit. More recently, the company said Kraft mac and cheese sales in the four weeks ended Nov. 16 were up 4% from the year-earlier period.

“We know our brands better than we’ve ever known them,” Frost said. “We are not happy with where results are, but we’re seeing progress.”

The company said it plans to spend more than $60 million to boost Kraft mac and cheese in 2026, including the rollout of a higher‑protein, higher‑fiber variety that it said will be more affordable than competitors’ versions. It is also working on a premium line featuring fancier cheeses and noodles and bolder flavors.

When Kraft Heinz announced its planned breakup in September, executives said the mac-and-cheese business would be part of the new company focused on sauces, spreads and seasonings, not the other one selling grocery staples such as sliced cheese and deli meat.

Wall Street analysts have questioned the plan for Kraft mac and cheese. Cahillane, the incoming CEO who is slated to lead the sauces business, has said he may reassess the plans for the brands, including mac and cheese.