Jesse Newman

Jesse, did you grow up eating mac and cheese?

I did grow up eating mac and cheese.

I loved mac and cheese, Kraft mac and cheese specifically as a kid.

The thing I remember most is that I may or may not have at different points eaten entire boxes of it myself.

You know, you walk down that aisle and there is the Kraft mac and cheese section.

There is that section that has the blue and orange boxes that is just, you know, the core of the grocery store.

It's like the nonpolitical big blue wall.

There are a lot more brands than there used to be.

And now you've got Annie's mac and cheese.

That's sort of a lavender color.

You've got a new rival, Goodall's.

They've got all kinds of different colors.

They've got a teal.

They've got a red.

So it's a much more diverse grocery aisle.

So Kraft was just king of mac and cheese for decades.

And recently, they have lost their grip on mac and cheese.

This story is really sort of the rise and fall of one of the world's biggest food companies and how a company lost its way, tending to some of America's most iconic pantry staples like Kraft mac and cheese.

So if you go way back, the mac and cheese story starts with a gentleman by the name of James L. Kraft.

Naturally.