A new brand of macaroni and cheese is winning market share and taking over shelves with its colorful boxes, cheeky names and focus on young adults who previously may have seen packaged powder and noodles as a meal choice to hide.
Goodles macaroni and cheese has made inroads in a mature category partly by positioning its product for adults.
Goodles markets its products as “Noodles, Gooder” by virtue of being nutrient-dense, and containing more protein and fiber than competitors. Since its introduction online in 2021, the brand has inspired countless TikTok videos ranking grown-up flavors like “Smokey Dokey” and “Here Comes Truffle,” added distribution at big retailers including Target and Whole Foods, and opened a sign-up list for its new microwavable cups after its website sold out of the first run in one night.
“I have never in my life seen a wait list for mac and cheese until now,” one Instagram user commented on the product announcement.
It is the kind of overnight ubiquity that has only recently seemed possible in the crowded business of consumer packaged goods as consumers became less loyal to incumbent brands.
“What we were seeing during this time period is new brands popping up seemingly out of nowhere and taking share from big incumbents, which would have been unthinkable even 15 years ago,” said Goodles co-founder Paul Earle, an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s Kellogg business school, citing examples like Olly vitamins. “There are a lot of things that these upstarts had in common: beautiful design in an ugly space, appeal to younger consumers, improved products, new energy, new language, breaking convention.”
Earle and fellow co-founder Jen Zeszut, the former chief executive at baby food marketer Cerebelly and a former intern at packaged-goods giant Procter & Gamble, decided they could freshen up mac and cheese with a new brand that would eschew the bunny tails and cartoon character crossovers of the big players’ packaging.
“Kraft and Annie’s are duking it out over moms that are feeding it to their little kids,” said Zeszut, chief executive at Goodles. “We can get the families with kids, but we might be able to massively grow this category and not duke it out with them.”
The brand’s website to that end says its Cheddy Mac flavor “tastes like your childhood, but eats like a balanced meal.” Shella Good promises “silky-delicious mouthfeel.”
Zeszut said Goodles research has shown many young adults are eating mac and cheese in secret, seeing it as something embarrassing they should have left behind in childhood.
“This feels like a huge unlock in terms of growing the category,” she said.
Goodles has raised nearly $28 million to chase that opportunity from firms such as L Catterton and celebrity backers including Gal Gadot, a “founding partner” in the company, and Christina Aguilera.
Mac and cheese is big business, each year generating an estimated $1.8 billion to $2 billion in sales of shelf-stable products in the U.S., according to Consumer Edge, a firm that analyzes purchase data from credit and debit transactions, receipts and point-of-sale systems. But category leader Kraft Mac & Cheese has been under pressure for about two years, losing ground to Goodles because of the newcomer’s health-forward appeal, said Michael Gunther, vice president and head of insights at Consumer Edge.
Goodles won 4% of U.S. spending on shelf-stable macaroni and cheese last year, up from 0.6% in 2023, according to consumer data firm Numerator. Kraft Heinz’s Kraft Mac & Cheese saw its market share in that same period decline to 38.3% from 42.9%, while sibling brand Velveeta slipped to 20.2% from 22.1%. Annie’s was the only mainstream brand to grow, to 10.4% from 9.4%.
The figures, derived from an app where consumers share their shopping data, cover all channels and retailers except direct-to-consumer sales.
Goodles maker Gooder Foods began turning a profit in 2024, its founders said.
Jen Zeszut, co-founder and chief executive at Goodles, poses with the product line.
Kraft last year introduced a “flavor-focused expansion strategy” for its namesake Mac & Cheese line as the growth of flavored products outpaced the total category, according to the company. New varieties have included Jalapeño, Ranch, Everything Bagel and Smoky BBQ.
Kraft has also tried to target adults with some campaigns, including through a promotion in 2020 with the theme “#SendNoods.”
Goodles has helped invigorate the category by tapping into adult desires for better ingredients, more protein and nostalgia, said Nate Rosen, who writes about consumer packaged goods for his newsletter Express Checkout.
“When Goodles came onto the scene, it felt fresh, it felt like upgraded nostalgia, which I think is something that has been working across CPG in general,” Rosen said.
The brand has also projected healthiness without hammering the point, making it accessible for consumers who might be wary of sacrificing taste or texture, said Melanie Bartelme, an associate director of food and drink at research firm Mintel.
The lines between natural foods and specialty fun foods and junk foods were much sharper when Goodles’ adult shoppers were still children.
“Even before the pandemic, it was starting to really converge and be this place where you would have a product that was being advertised as clean-label, natural, but it also had super fun box colors, and had really interesting flavors,” Bartelme said. “There’s so much more overlap right now.”
Earle said Goodles has benefited from staying weird. It has a cheese waterfall made of wood in its office, keeps up pen-pal relationships with doting fans and sells holographic roller skates on its website for $165.
The company’s marketing strategy so far has relied primarily on posts in social media, giving away samples in venues like college campuses and Airbnbs, and gifting influencers.
It has dabbled in digital ads but hasn’t done television, print, radio or out-of-home advertising.
“We can’t outspend” competitors, Zeszut said.
Goodles’ older rivals also have the capital and cachet to keep punching back.
“The competitors have one big advantage, which is, obviously, they’ve been around for a while,” said Rosen, the Express Checkout writer. “They have the capital to invest in the air-quotes innovation, and they have the distribution already set and the brand equity.”
But consumers go for new packaged food products because they prefer the branding, the brand story or the taste, Rosen said.
“Just because a legacy brand pumps out a dupe of the new brand or competitor to the new brand, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to do well with that product,” he said.
Goodles Thinks Mac and Cheese Shouldn’t Be Adults’ Secret Meal Anymore
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