Barilla buys Goodles, a mac and cheese brand six years old

Barilla buys Goodles, an American brand of boxed mac and cheese. The Italian food group announced the deal on 3 September 2026. It did not give a price, and the sale still needs the usual regulatory sign-off.

Goodles holds 7.8 percent of US mac and cheese spending

Goodles started in Santa Cruz, California, in October 2020. In the twelve months to June 2026 it took 7.8 percent of the money Americans spent on shelf-stable mac and cheese, Fast Company reported. Kraft held 42.2 percent and Velveeta 18.9 percent. The whole category is worth roughly 2.1 to 2.3 billion dollars a year. A funding round in 2023 valued Goodles at 88 million dollars.

Barilla keeps Jen Zeszut and the 73 people in Santa Cruz

Barilla says Goodles will keep running as its own brand. The team of 73 stays, the office in Santa Cruz stays, and co-founder Jen Zeszut stays as chief executive. Barilla was founded in 1877, sells in more than 100 countries and reported about 5.7 billion dollars of revenue in 2025. Chairman Guido Barilla said the group was “impressed by the strength of the organization”, The Shelby Report noted.

Kraft still takes four in every ten dollars in the category

Goodles never matched Kraft on media money. Zeszut told Fast Company the brand “couldn’t outspend them”, so it had to win on something else: the packaging, the name and the recipe. That is the part worth reading twice. A small brand can take a slice of a shelf one company has owned for decades, and then a large group pays for what it built.

Big food groups keep choosing between growing a name and dropping one. Volkswagen showed the other side of that choice when it planned to end the Seat brand by 2029. And when a large owner wants growth without buying anything, it usually changes how it spends: PepsiCo moved its global media account after 25 years with the same agency. Barilla picked a third route and bought the audience someone else had already gathered.