The new regime that Fortune writer Jennifer Reingold described in 2013 at H.J. Heinz Co., was starkly austere: In the months after the 144-year-old food company had sold itself to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the Brazilian-owned private equity firm 3G Capital for $29 billion, workers had seen a purge of top leadership; the elimination of individual offices for executives; limits on printer use and business cards; and deep cuts to areas that didn’t directly contribute revenue, including human resources, legal, and quality assurance.
It was all part of what Reingold called “the 3G way”—“a particularly unadulterated form of the private equity philosophy…that prizes efficiency above all.”
“People are relevant, yes, but explicitly as a function of what they contribute to the bottom line,” she explained. “Everything is measured; the leanest, meanest operation is the winner.”
3G had seen smashing results with this approach at other companies, Reingold wrote, citing dramatic increases in Ebitda margins at AB InBev and a 33% increase in profits at Burger King. “Everyone talks the talk [about efficient management], but 3G really does it,” Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management told her. “These guys are the best.”
Be that as it may, 12 years later, the answer to the central question of the story—“Will it work?”—is clear: It did not work.
On Tuesday, Kraft Heinz—the entity formed in a 2015 merger and touted at the time by 3G and Berkshire Hathaway as a cost-cutting and growth-boosting move—announced that it will break into two companies. “The separation comes after a decade of underperformance,” wrote Fortune’s Eva Roytburg. “Since Kraft and Heinz merged in 2015, the stock has lost more than $57 billion in market capitalization, been battered by $15 billion in write-downs, and weathered waves of consumer rejection as shoppers turn away from processed staples.”
The breakup is one of several recently in Big Food, including the 2023 split of Kellogg and the planned spinoff of Keurig Dr Pepper’s coffee brands. Creating two companies out of Kraft Heinz may offer some efficiencies, but it doesn’t solve the larger problem, a cultural shift away from ultraprocessed foods, Roytburg wrote.
And, she added: “For Buffett, the split is a symbolic closing chapter on a rare investing miscalculation. As the Oracle of Omaha prepares to hand over the reins to Greg Abel at year’s end, Kraft Heinz will stand as a cautionary tale: Even the most iconic brands can’t outrun shifting consumer tastes.”
