This founder went from waiting tables to selling his peanut butter company for $281 million: It 'blew my mind'

In 2006, Justin Gold was mountain biking when something struck him that changed his life: a business idea that helped make his nut butter brand, Justin’s, a household name.

“I’m on a mountain bike ride right here in Boulder, [Colorado], and I’m eating an energy gel [packet],” Gold told CNBC in a recent interview. “And I was curious why you couldn’t put peanut butter or almond butter in that same type of squeeze pack and have an on-the-go, plant-based protein experience like an energy bar.”

Gold had been selling nut butters at a popular farmer’s market in Boulder for two years by that point. He’d landed a coveted placement in the local Whole Foods Market, too.

But at the time, consumers still gravitated toward a handful of traditional peanut butter brands. Almond butter wasn’t particularly popular yet, much less the flavor combinations Justin’s was selling, like maple almond or chocolate hazelnut.

So, despite positive feedback from customers, Justin’s had yet to turn a profit — and Gold was still waiting tables and working a retail job to make ends meet, he said.

Within two years of introducing nut butters in tiny pouches, Justin’s was profitable and Gold soon quit his day jobs, he told Entrepreneur in 2012. The business was acquired by Hormel Foods in 2016 for $280.9 million, according to an SEC filing from that year.

Here’s how a simple packaging strategy changed the company’s fortunes.

Bringing in new customers with a new design

Gold made nut butters for himself in a food processor, experimenting with different types of nuts and flavors like cinnamon and honey, after graduating from college in 2000.

The results were tasty enough for his roommates to sneak samples, leading Gold to write “Justin’s” on his jars as a reminder. The name stuck, and he raised roughly $50,000 to turn his hobby into an actual business, a Justin’s spokesperson tells CNBC Make It.

When he tried packaging the nut butters in pouches, he ran into a quick roadblock. Every manufacturer he talked to refused to package nut butters, because they didn’t want to risk the allergens cross-contaminating other products, Gold told The Kitchn in 2019.

Instead, Gold tracked down an old commercial machine — borrowing $75,000 from his roommate’s parents to buy it, according to the Justin’s spokesperson — and used it to make his own squeeze packs.

The portable products helped pull in new customers. “For the consumer who never tried almond butter before, they could try it for 99 cents,” Gold told Entrepreneur. “And then they would come back and buy a $10 jar. They ended up spending more money.”

Getting attention from a food giant

In 2009, Gold reportedly landed nearly $1 million in funding from angel investors to expand nationally and develop additional products. After two years, Justin’s launched its now-popular chocolate nut butter cups. By 2015, it was a national brand with more than $50 million in annual revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal.

With success came attention, including from bigger companies hoping to acquire the brand. Wary at first of selling off his creations, Gold turned down an offer from Hormel Foods, the packaged food giant behind brands like Planters nuts and Skippy peanut butter.

A year later, in 2016, he accepted a new offer from Hormel to acquire Justin’s — on one condition. “The business has to stay in Boulder. It’s the people that make businesses extraordinary so no one can lose their job,” Gold told CNBC.

Gold stayed on at the company under Hormel until 2021 and now serves as chief innovation and strategy officer for Rudi’s Rocky Mountain Bakery. Hormel’s enthusiasm for his brand “blew my mind,” he said, adding that the parent company was fully bought “into what we were doing here in Boulder.”

That made selling his company an easier decision, he said.

“There’s a big difference to a founder between a company being sold and a company being acquired,” said Gold. “They reached out to us and said, ‘We have to have this.’ You never want to build something that you want to sell. You want to build something that somebody wants to buy.”

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