Justin’s strives to maintain identity, expand innovation after Hormel acquisition

BOULDER — It’s been more than three years since food-industry giant Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE: HRL) bought Justin’s LLC for $286 million, and while that cash infusion changed the trajectory of the nut butter snack pioneer forever, the firm is striving to stay true to its organic Boulder roots. 

“Hormel has been a really great partner,” Justin’s founder Justin Gold told BizWest. “They’ve kept true to their promise and they’ve let Justin’s keep being Justin’s. They’ve kept us in Colorado, kept us in Boulder and have made sure we continue to drive innovation and sustainability through our products.”

When Gold founded the company in 2004, he “didn’t build the company just so I could sell it,” Gold said. “I built the company so I could do something special.”

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While the company was doing special things, it was also attracting investors.

“One of the consequences of bringing on investors is that at some point you have to start thinking about how you’re going to pay them back,” Gold said. “The most logical way to do that was to continue to grow our mission and gain resources from Hormel.”

Hormel’s resources have allowed Justin’s to beef up its innovation and data analysis capabilities.

“We’ve really become sophisticated, thanks to the help of Hormel, on identifying trends” in the natural and organic food space,” he said. “… You start being able to better see which flavor profiles people like, what ingredients they want to see in their products. So as we create new products, we’re now able really to crunch the data and do a lot of panel research, which we’d never done before.”

Since the Hormel acquisition, Justin’s has greatly expanded its product line. New products, which can take as long as a decade to make it through the innovation pipeline and onto shelves, include Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups, Dark Chocolate Cashew Butter Cups, Nut Butter Covered Nuts (both Cashew and Almond varieties) and Maple Cashew Butter.

Justin’s isn’t just focused on expanding its market share within the snack aisle or peanut butter aisle.

“We’re looking at all parts of the grocery store: center store, refrigerated, frozen, the register,” Gold said. “That’s where data can be really useful in terms of analyzing what parts of the store are growing and where we think we can have an impact.”

While consumer data has been helpful in developing new products, Gold will often still go with his gut.

“Real innovation comes when you create something that the consumer doesn’t yet know they need,” he said. “No one has ever come to us and said, ‘You guys ever think of taking an almond and covering it with almond butter?’”

Whether it be through consumer data analysis or simply giving something crazy a shot, Justin’s intends to continue innovating, Gold said.

“Boulder is such a dynamic atmosphere with so many creative people driving industries and creating great concepts,” he said. “The outdoor industry, technology, food — we all play off of each other. We’ve got such a large collective of people challenging each other in a really small area and it’s phenomenal for us to be able to plug into that.”