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The basics:

• Hain Celestial shifts focus to high-potential categories like snacks and tea
• New Innovation Center is a space for the company to discover, design, develop and advance ideas
• Also looking at product portfolio “through the lens of a GLP-1 diet” and what consumers are looking for

Hain Celestial is spilling the tea on how its portfolio of snacks, drinks and meal prep solutions are evolving to meet the changing needs of increasingly health-conscious consumers.

After relocating from Long Island, N.Y., to Hudson County during the fall of 2023, the $1.7 billion global health and wellness company is doubling down on its mission to inspire healthier living for people, communities and the planet through better-for-you brands.

Founded in 1993, Hain Celestial is focused on crafting natural foods and beverages as well as botanically based personal care products. Its 31 brands – which are marketed and sold in more than 75 countries – include Celestial Seasonings tea, Garden of Eatin’ snacks, Terra chips, Garden Veggies Snacks, Earth’s Best baby foods, Joya plant-based beverages, Greek Gods yogurt, Covent Garden soups, Live Clean personal care products and Alba Botanica natural sun care.

Once a leader in the better-for-you space, Hain has begun to face competition in recent years from larger consumer packaged goods companies, as well as headwinds like inflation, supply chain disruptions and the pandemic.

That finds it in the midst of a multiyear transformation effort designed to get the business headed in the right direction.

Unveiled shortly after Hain moved into its new digs at Waterfront Corporate Center, the plan aims to unlock synergies and scale by redesigning the company’s operating model to drive growth in five core platforms – snacks, baby & kids, beverages, meal preparation and personal care – across five key regions, the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland and Western Europe.

Wendy Davidson, who became Hain’s chief executive officer and president two years ago, has said she expects the business to deliver sustained revenue and profit growth by 2027 thanks to a “reimagined end-to-end supply chain, modern digital infrastructure and performance driven culture” that will enable its brands “to expand and grow share.”

The company has reported “meaningful progress” in several aspects of its “Hain Reimagined” initiative, including digital e-commerce, brand building, channel expansion and innovation. Hain has said it is now focused on “fueling these investments through a robust focus on working capital management, operational efficiency and disciplined revenue growth management.”

As part of the effort to strengthen its balance sheet, Hain has made moves to shed non-core assets. In September 2024, the company sold its ParmCrisps snack brand to Our Home, a Boonton-based wholesome snack maker, for an undisclosed sum. Hain also divested its Thinsters cookie business to Mount Laurel-headquartered J&J Snack Foods Corp. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The company’s personal care business may be next. In a Feb. 10 press release accompanying the latest earnings report, Davidson said Hain is “exploring strategic options” for the category so it can concentrate further on its portfolio of food and beverages.

During the most recent quarter ending Dec. 31, 2024, the bulk of Hain’s business came from the categories of snacks, beverages and meal prep. Its personal care portfolio, which includes Live Clean and Alba Botanica, generated about 3% of Hain’s $411.5 million in net sales for the period.

To help deliver Hain’s strategic transformation, the company brought in CPG veteran Chad Marquardt as its North America president.

Marquardt arrived in March 2024 from Glanbia Performance Nutrition, an Illinois sports nutrition company where he served as chief customer officer for the Americas region. There, he was responsible for overseeing commercial delivery across the company’s portfolio of snacks, beverages and supplement brands in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

Prior to Glanbia, Marquardt spent four years at Parsippany-headquartered health, hygiene and nutrition company Reckitt Benckiser. During his tenure, he held various executive roles and was responsible for driving growth of its portfolio of brands, including Enfamil baby formula, Clearasil personal care and Lysol disinfectant, among others.

Before Reckitt, Marquardt spent seven years at Mead Johnson Nutrition focused on customer development and retail sales in the U.S. and Canada. He began his career at Englewood Cliffs-based Unilever where he held a variety of roles across integrated marketing, customer planning & strategy, category management, shopper marketing and brand management.

‘A bit sleepy’

After Davidson worked with Marquardt at Glanbia, she reached out to him about a year ago asking, “How would you like to do another transformation?” he recalled. Davidson, whose two decades of experience includes roles with Tyson Foods, McCormick & Co. and Kellogg’s, was tapped in January 2023 to help turn Hain around.

Marquardt said, “I’ve had the pleasure of always working for places and brands that you love. And so, coming here was an amazing opportunity for these powerhouse brands that I’d like to say were a bit sleepy.”

“So, we built the marketing capability, and we’ve built the customer capability. We were a heavily brokered business before and now we’ve brought that all in-house. We have built a new customer organization over the last year to really build relationships with our key retailers. So, 90% of our customer volume now is actually led by Hain and then only the remaining 10% is still third-party. Prior to that, it was opposite — Hain was 10% and 90% was third-party,” he said.

Flipping the script to have a direct relationship with customers is giving Hain the ability to “really talk about insights and innovation,” Marquardt said. “And you’re building multiple years of plans versus a single year. Part of the reason we built the Innovation Experience Center was so we’d be able to bring our top customers in and have those meetings,” he said.

Launched in December 2024 at Hain’s headquarters, the Innovation Experience Center is a space for the company to discover, design, develop and advance ideas that will take its brands to the next level.

The 2,200-square-foot facility includes a working kitchen for cross-functional product development, ingredient testing, quality reviews, category assessments, and evaluating the functionality and sustainability of product packaging. In addition to hands-on product development, the IEC is designed to engage Hain customers and partners in the process of identifying new innovation opportunities.

Marquardt said Hain is starting to welcome visitors to the IEC this month.

“What’s exciting for them is that oftentimes in many companies, the innovation, kitchen and lab space is either a second location or a different location. Having it all together allows you to go truly from insights to ideas to having the marketing teams here that you can think about how you activate that from a social and digital perspective,” he said.

“We’ve been able to shape the agendas with them. It can be broad and cover the total portfolio. Or it can be tighter … We can do tastings of our products, competitive products and global products and look at flavor and experiences that are queuing around other categories in the world that might be applicable. It’s given us a really unique roadmap. And what’s nice is we can build the customizable agenda where we can ideate and innovate with them ahead of time and really build the storyline of how we want to use the center that during that experience unique to them,” he said.

Marquardt said, “In the next couple months, we’re doing a multiyear view of the innovation funnel, starting with consumer insights and demand landscapes, and looking at product propositions. And what’s really important is that we hear their direct feedback. These customers are engaged and they know their shoppers as well as anything. And so, it allows us to look at where there are opportunities to be unique in certain customers or channels. If we were in the old model, we’d be a layer removed from that. Our partner would hear that – but it was very transactional. This allows you to be strategic.”

More options

As consumers become more informed and discerning about their food choices, they are increasingly seeking options that avoid – or limit – artificial ingredients, additives, preservatives and added sugars. They’re also looking for foods that target specific health benefits, like immunity, weight management or gut health, as well as transparency in ingredients.

According to market research company Euromonitor International, the global market for healthy snacks will soon hit $98 billion, with North America ranked as the largest consumer of these products.

In response to the demand for healthy, on-the-go, affordable snacking options that also appeal to taste buds, CPG companies are racing to launch unique items made from natural and plant-based ingredients. Over the past several years, players like Kraft Heinz, General Mills, PepsiCo, Unilever and Mondelez have introduced snacks with vegan ingredients, high/added proteins, zero fats, reduced/zero sugar, whole grains, zero gluten or no oil/baked.

Marquardt believes Hain’s portfolio of “leading, purpose driven brands and its unique focus on better-for-you” gives it a competitive edge “in partnering with customers and helping consumers more easily embrace a healthier lifestyle.”

To ensure its products are made with quality ingredients, use only flavors and colors from natural sources, and are prepared thoughtfully, Hain has been collaborating with nutrition experts, pediatricians and R&D experts for more than 30 years.

Marquardt said, “We’ve been in this trend forever. So, we’re happy the world is getting more educated where we’ve been on the forefront … Our opportunity is how do we keep innovating? I always view it as it’s great to have competitors because they always force you to stay on the front end. So, we’re actually very excited about the broader world getting more knowledgeable and more educated on what’s happening,” Marquardt said.

“For us, it’s about how do we make sure we’re marketing in the most meaningful way? How do we make sure that, from a development perspective, we’re creating products and offerings that don’t just meet the needs of our consumers – but exceed their expectations,” he said. “I like to joke to my team that we want to put the ‘better’ in better-for-you, meaning better tasting, better ingredients and better benefits.”

“That’s the unlock that we’re trying to drive here. And this space [IEC] is unlocking that. It’s not just to engage our customers, but also where the team can live and play,” said Marquardt. He added that Hain has already vetted dozens of concepts for new products.

Marquardt agreed it’s not easy to develop a product that is healthy, tasty and beloved by consumers.

“I think some of it comes down to your purpose as a company and what you were started as. Hain really started and has always been a company that acquired better-for-you brands and built brands that have always lived in that space,” he said.

“When you’re a company that started in conventional and that’s your anchor point and then you try to play over here, it’s a harder challenge, right? It’s your secondary perspective,” Marquardt said. “It’s primary for us. Everything we do is grounded in better-for-you.”

The trend of healthier eating has helped better-for-you products shed some of the stigma that they aren’t as tasty as conventional items, Marquardt said.  With more consumers embracing the idea, he said Hain is focused on making sure they can still have a fun snacking experience and don’t feel like they have to compromise.

Everything we do is grounded in better-for-you.
– Chad Marquardt, Hain Celestial, North America president

One of its most recent innovations is the first-ever better-for-you flavored tortilla chip. Sold under the Garden Veggie Snacks banner, Flavor Burst tortilla chips are certified gluten-free and combine the goodness of five vegetables (spinach, beet, red bell pepper, carrot and tomato) with other wholesome ingredients, like non-GMO corn. Flavor Burst comes in four varieties (Nacho Cheese, Zesty Ranch, Smoky BBQ and Sweet Tangy Chili) and have no artificial flavors and no artificial preservatives.

In addition to being a top-selling, better-for-you salty snack product in 2024, Garden Veggie Flavor Burst was recently named as the best new product in the tortilla chips category by Newsweek.

Success in the bag

With more than 50 years of expertise in the specialty bagged tea category, Celestial Seasonings is the leading herbal tea brand. Its product lineup features more than 100 varieties of herbal, green, black and wellness blends, all of which are expertly crafted from the finest herbs, teas, spices and botanicals, and presented in packaging adorned with artwork and inspiring quotes.

Founded in Colorado, Celestial Seasonings began when Mo Siegel and Wyck Hay handpicked wild herbs from the Rocky Mountains and used them to make the first tea. The tea was then packaged and sold to local health food stores.

From there, the brand continued to introduce new products, including a green tea line in 1995 that was the first to launch in mainstream stores across the U.S. In 2000, Celestial Seasonings merged with the Hain Food Group to form the Hain Celestial Group as part of a deal valued at $390 million.

A free tour at the Boulder headquarters of Celestial Seasonings continues to be a big tourism draw, with more than 100,000 visitors annually. Named as one of the top free travel destinations in America by USA Today, attendees learn about the journey of tea from raw ingredients to finished product, stop by the Celestial Seasonings Tea Shop and indulge in complementary samples at a tea bar in the tour center.

Discovering how popular the attraction is with the public was an “aha moment” for Marquardt.

“We have a huge population of consumers that come through every day to take this tour and visit the tea shop,” said Marquardt. “It just shows you the passion that the audiences have. And so, what’s really fun for us is how do we keep driving that energy around it?”

Some of Celestial Seasonings’ recent successes include an award-winning campaign featuring the Sleepytime Bear. In an effort to engage a new generation and refresh an older brand, Hain launched a social-first program centered upon Sleepytime’s longtime mascot after seeing the bear become a meme during the pandemic.

There are also online communities where fans trade ideas for mocktails and other drinks using Celestial Seasonings teas. Marquardt said, “That was the other ‘aha moment’ for me – when I learned that there’s an entire group of people that share how you blend teas together to create something really unique. And it’s all consumer led.”

Marquardt said, “Tea has been a really exciting growth category for consumers. We have a lot of opportunity with the brand to drive that.”

In October 2024, Hain added two new non-GMO Project verified products with functional benefits to Celestial Seasonings’ expansive line of teas:

• Lemon Honey Drop: a caffeine-free herbal tea that combines lemon and honey with 10% daily value of Vitamin C in every cup;
• Sleepytime Biotin Beauty Rest: a caffeine-free herbal tea with added biotin (Vitamin B7)

“We’re looking at where we can bring added benefits into the occasions you’re already consuming. I think you’ll see that happening across other parts of our portfolio as well going forward,” Marquardt said.

The GLP-1 impact

As GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy, Mounjaro and Ozempic become more popular, the widespread use of these appetite-suppressing medications is having an effect on supermarket spending, a recent study found.

By 2035, 9% of the U.S. population could be taking anti-obesity drugs, according to an analysis from Morgan Stanley. Since individuals on GLP-1 medication consume an average of 20% fewer calories, the trend will likely have an impact on demand for high-fat and sugary foods.

According to recent data, approximately 15 million Americans currently take a GLP-1 for weight loss or diabetes.

Though questions remain over long-term impacts of these drugs on a person’s health – or how long someone will remain on the medication – companies are responding to the changing consumer behavior with new products and services. That’s included several entities in New Jersey, including fellow Hoboken-based Nestlé Health Science.

During a Feb. 10 earnings call, Davidson said Hain is developing criteria to define what is GLP-1 friendly based on available science and has “identified a number of products in the U.S. that are a good fit for these consumers across our beverage, soups and yogurt brands.” The company has also been conducting consumer research for nearly a year to try and understand what the public wants in the better-for-you category, according to Davidson.

“Because we continue to say that we’re a leader in better-for-you, we believe in healthier living, but we wanted to make sure that we had real science and real consumer insight to back that up,” Davidson said. “We learned … very clear attributes the consumer was looking for. They don’t want to sacrifice taste. They don’t want to sacrifice convenience. They don’t want to sacrifice availability and affordability. They don’t want pure health, but they do want healthy nudges. So, it is a presence of positive and a little bit of a nudge down of the negatives.”

She also compared the emerging trend to other diets that the food and beverage market has adapted to, such as keto, high protein, gluten free and dairy free.

“Consumers have particular needs, and we want to make sure that it is easier to shop our portfolio to make it easier for them to eat without sacrifice for whatever diet they’re on,” Davidson said. “As we’ve worked with our experts to look at our portfolio through the lens of a GLP-1 diet, what products do we have that are ideal for that first three months of GLP-1, what are products we have that are really good for in the middle and then what are those products that are ideal for maintaining and we will message openly to the marketplace to make it, again, easier for consumers to be able to be on whatever diet they’re on, and Hain will be there to help support their healthier living.”

With continuing consumer interest in bolder, spicier, more fiery flavors, food companies have been punching up their offerings in recent years. The trend of more adventurous eating is being driven by younger generations, as well as the growing familiarity with unique cultural flavors from around the world.

Over the past year, Hain’s Garden of Eatin’ tortilla chips rolled out a fully organic product by enhancing the recipe with U.S. Department of Agriculture -certified organic oil. As part of the change, Hain reformulated its Garden of Eatin’ Organic Red Hot Blues to make them even hotter even longer. As a result, they have become one of the best-selling spicy, better-for-you tortilla chips at retailers that carry the brand, like Whole Foods Market and Amazon.com, according to Hain.

Marquardt said, “Flavors, spice — those are things you’ll see come across in a number of products as we go forward. We’ve got more flavors coming that are second to none.”

On the waterfront

When Hain moved from New York to New Jersey, it adopted a flexible work model to deliver even greater value as a globally integrated enterprise of nearly 2,800 employees.

Citing the shift to remote work over the past three years, the company told The Real Deal in April 2023 that it is leaving Nassau County because the current office was too big, and it wanted to find a “HQ space that is right-sized for our needs.”

With Hoboken as the hub of its global operations, Hain offices and manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Canada, Europe and other international locations serve as “spokes” for employees to come together and collaborate, the company said. Hain also continues to leverage research & development labs at its manufacturing facilities for more comprehensive product development and scale.

The new 40,000-square-foot space and its floor-to-ceiling glass windows with sweeping New York City views has energized the team, Marquardt said.

At SJP Properties’ Waterfront Corporate Center, Hain’s neighbors include several high-caliber corporations, such as Walmart, Thomson Reuters, Ernst & Young, Pearson Education, Regus, Jet.com, Nestlé Health Science and Marsh & McLennan.

Situated along the Hudson River, the property is surrounded by acclaimed restaurants and shops. It’s also steps away from Hoboken Terminal’s NJ Transit, PATH, New York Waterway and Light Rail connections.

“What we’ve loved here is easy access. From a transportation perspective, we’re close to multiple access points … It’s easy to get to – you can fly into Newark or any of the area airports. Also, when customers see an image of our office and that the backdrop is Manhattan, they naturally get excited to come,” Marquardt said.

Though Hain has a flexible work model, Marquardt said employees are amped for the times they do spend at the Hoboken office

“There’s an energy and a vibe in the area. The access to restaurants and shopping around here is amazing. And, it helps energize the team,” he said. “They’re able to go have lunch, grab food or take a run along the river … What I definitely feel from the team is that excitement when people are together … I just think it’s been a really great experience and highly recommend it for other companies to experience it, as well.”