Chef Branding: B&G Foods Exposes Emeril?

By JULIETTE ROSSANT The most important question facing super chefs and celebrity chefs today is: how much is a chef's brand worth? How much does a chef's brand improve sales of food products? How much does it bring to the bottom line of companies producing those products? (See Super Chef, pp. 207-211.) Most super chef products are produced by private companies. In rare cases they are produced by publicly traded ones -- like Wolfgang Puck's line of frozen pizza now owned by ConAgra (see Super Chef, p. 35). ConAgra does not make public what that particular line is worth, or even how well the product is selling. As early as today, however, followers of Emeril Lagasse may be able to find out how much his name and brand is worth when B&G Foods, Inc. goes public in an IPO, as reported by Greg Satz of the Star-Ledger. The anticipated share price range as filed by B&G is $15.50 - $17. B&G Foods has 16 brands including Polaner jam, Ortega Mexican foods, B&M beans -- and Emeril's Original. The initial offering is complicated, a combination of common equity shares and debt notes, and the company itself is heavily loaded with debt, but if the IPO suceeds the information coming out of the company's financials will be a gold mine for chefs considering the climb to superchefdom or weighing whether to pursue a product line versus some other vehicle for growth. Bottom line is that a bottom line may be emerging for valuing a chef's brand, so watch this company.