Chicago Food Corps Buying, Selling

By Laura Oppenheimer in Food on Jan 24, 2007 7:00PM

Yesterday was a busy day for three of Chicagoland's most prominent food corporations: Wrigley's jumped into the chocolate market, Sara Lee announced a new research and development plan and Kraft sold the Cream of Wheat brand to B&G Foods Inc.

Wrigley's moved yesterday to acquire an 80 percent stake in premium Russian chocolate brand A. Korkunov, for a cool $300 million. Four years ago, Wrigley's tried — and failed — to acquire Hershey's chocolate. A. Korkunov is only one fiftieth the size of Hershey's, so there is still plenty of room for additional acquisitions in the future.

Our friends at Kraft meanwhile, have said adieu to Cream of Wheat, selling it for $200 million, in order to focus its resources on sexier products; cheese, snacks and drinks. It might not be cool, but we sort of have a soft spot in our heart for Cream of Wheat. It's one of those classic comfort foods.

Anyway, out with the old stuff, and in with the new, right? At least that is what Sara Lee is doing. Yesterday, the announced that they are increasing their research and development staff by 50 percent and building a multi-billion dollar facility to aid them in developing new versions of their trademark frozen pound cake. Not quite actually; the move is part of a company-wide restructuring which saw them "shed clothing, retail, coffee and European foods units to focus on U.S. food divisions and products."

Kraft and Wrigley have both opened similar research and development facilities in the past year. And guess what came out of Wrigley's facility? Those damn Chocolate Altoids. We hope Sara Lee's newer products lean more to the pound cake side of the delicious meter than the Chocolate Altoid side.