Once Upon a Farm Rings the Bell on a New Chapter

Today, I had the privilege of standing alongside our portfolio company Once Upon a Farm in New York as they rang the bell on their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. This milestone reflects nearly a decade of hard work and a shared mission to transform childhood nutrition. The journey has been defined by vision, persistence, and a belief that purpose-driven businesses can be built at scale.

The IPO comes at a moment when consumer demand for fresh, better-for-you food is accelerating. With revenues surpassing $200 million, Once Upon a Farm enters the public markets with scale, growth, and a well-established business model. The market conditions were right, but as important, the company was ready.

A Bold Vision to Redefine Kids’ Nutrition

Once Upon a Farm was founded with a simple yet powerful idea: to give parents convenient, fresh, organic options that babies, toddlers, and kids would enjoy eating. At the time, most baby and toddler foods were shelf-stable, often with added sugars, preservatives, or other tradeoffs. Parents faced a choice between making food themselves at home or settling for highly processed, sugary options.

The company’s co-founders, John Foraker, Jennifer Garner, Cassandra Curtis, and Ari Raz, set out to fill this opportunity. Their breakthrough came in applying high-pressure processing (HPP) to baby food. By using cold water and pressure instead of heat, HPP could kill pathogens while preserving nutrition, taste, and texture. The result was a pouch that tasted like homemade food and met the on-the-go needs of modern families.

This innovation created a new category: fresh baby, toddler, and kids’ food, which needed to be refrigerated to preserve its nutritional value. Doing so presented significant challenges, from flavor to sourcing to supply chain to retail placement. Supermarkets were not designed for pouches that needed refrigeration in the baby aisle, which is usually in the center of the store. But the Once Upon a Farm team leaned into these challenges, working with retailers to pioneer in-aisle coolers while also competing for space in the dairy case and in the produce section. In the process, they changed how and where fresh options for kids could be found.

The company’s vision extended beyond the food itself and aimed to reshape how a company meets the needs of its customers and their children, and considers the wellness of the broader community. Today, Once Upon a Farm is a certified B Corporation and Public Benefit Corporation, sourcing from Equitable Food Initiative farms, reducing plastic use in packaging, and securing WIC authorization in 18 states. 

Why We Invested and How We Partnered

S2G first invested in Once Upon a Farm in 2016, which is when I joined the board. From the outset, we saw an alignment with our thesis that food businesses can drive long-term value and systemic impact. Parents were looking for better-for-you options for kids, and no one had cracked the code at scale.

But product and mission alone were not the reason S2G invested. It was also the team. John Foraker was an early investor who worked closely with the team, helping to grow the business from idea to execution. When he joined as co-founder and CEO in 2017, the company gained a leader with deep experience in building purpose-driven food businesses. John Foraker had led Annie’s from a small organic brand to a public company and then through its acquisition by General Mills. His reputation for transparency, operational excellence, and culture-building brought the company to another level. He sends weekly (yes, weekly) detailed operational emails, monthly business overviews, and quarterly deep dives.  His candor and detail built trust. He never shies away from admitting mistakes, and he consistently holds the team accountable to its mission and metrics.

Jennifer Garner joined as co-founder at the same time. Her involvement is far more than a celebrity endorsement. From the start, she actively worked with Casandra in her home to develop recipes and formulations, deeply participated in sales calls and board meetings, putting her stamp on the vision and mission of the business, and used her platform to tell the brand’s story with authenticity. She brought unbridled energy, exceptional creativity, and her passion for children’s nutrition to the team, challenging them to expand access and think bigger about their mission. Her work with Save the Children showed her firsthand how empowering it can be for a child to have access to healthy food. Together, John and Jen built a leadership duo that balanced operational rigor with brand-building power.

Just as important was their commitment to building a world-class leadership team to turn that vision into a scalable business. They brought in Larry Waldman, whose deep experience in operations and finance added rigor, discipline, and clarity to the company’s growth plan. Larry helped professionalize the organization, strengthen unit economics, and build the operational backbone required to scale nationally. They also recruited Katie Marston to lead marketing, shaping a brand and go-to-market strategy that balanced authenticity with performance, and Cheryl Reyes to build a structured, repeatable sales engine capable of expanding distribution while protecting margins. Together with a broader group of exceptional team members, this leadership bench brought the operational excellence, marketing strength, and sales discipline needed to build velocity, expand access, and steadily bring price points down. It was a true team effort, anchored by strong leadership, clear vision, and the execution required to scale impact alongside the business.

Our role at S2G was to act as a partner, not an overseer. We helped shape fundraising rounds, evaluate valuations, and make decisions about capital structure and debt. We collaborated with Cassandra and the team on product development and consumer insights, and brought in advisors, such as industry veterans Seth Goldman and Doug Rauch, to provide perspective during early phases. We helped with D2C insights as they were growing their online sales. During board meetings and even in everyday discussions, I valued John’s consistency and candor, which fostered transparency and alignment as the company grew. In every interaction, our goal was to support the team’s vision, execution, and mission. 

Lessons From the Journey

The path to IPO was shaped by pivotal moments that also hold lessons for how S2G and other companies can build for the long term. 

The Product Reset

The early formulations and packaging were solid, but they fell short of the standard the team ultimately wanted to set. Parents did not immediately recognize the pouches as baby food, and flavor consistency varied across batches. John Foraker chose to step back. The team refined the formulations, tightened quality control, clarified the positioning, and redesigned the packaging to communicate purpose more clearly. The relaunch brought focus and cohesion to the brand, demonstrating that slowing down at the right moment can ultimately accelerate growth.

Lesson: Excellence starts with fundamentals, and investing in product-market fit early pays off in resilience later.

Assortment Discipline

Initially, the temptation was to rapidly expand the number of SKUs to fill available shelf space. Instead, the team learned to rightsize the set of core products so they could move faster and earn stronger retailer support. Obviously, like adults, toddlers and kids appreciate variety, so they need to have enough different SKUs, but not so many that they include unprofitable ones. That discipline of focusing on the right amount of faster SKUs compounded into a durable growth engine, especially with a perishable product set.

Lesson: Highly contributing, faster-moving SKUs outperform sprawling assortments, helping to ensure efficiency and stronger unit economics.

Strong Operating Fundamentals

Behind every breakthrough was a culture of disciplined execution. The team was familiar with the weekly numbers, pressure-tested the capacity, and mapped the category with rigor. A culture of candor meant that issues surfaced early and improvements followed, fueling steady gains in penetration and repeat business. And they didn’t wait for scale to work on the margins. They took advantage of opportunities to ask for win-wins from their suppliers along the way. 

Lesson: Great companies do the boring work well, turning ambition into repeatable economic results and building operating resilience.

Velocity Over Distribution

Many young brands chase door counts as a sign of progress. Once Upon a Farm instead doubled down on existing stores, expanding facings and increasing units per week in each location. This decision built credibility with retailers and created sustainable growth economics. Not only do retailers want to see this, but it is also the only way to determine if your current customers will become future customers. If they don’t, you don’t have a scalable offering. 

Lesson: Velocity builds credibility with retailers and creates a healthier foundation than chasing distribution too quickly.

Cooler Strategy

Securing space for in-aisle coolers in the baby section was a breakthrough. It gave parents immediate access to fresh options while reinforcing the company’s presence in dairy. Together, these placements drove visibility, volume, and trust. It’s audacious to believe you can change a category, but that is what they are doing. 

Lesson: Placement and packaging are strategic levers that can transform category performance.

Mission in Action

Securing WIC authorization in 18 states required persistence and alignment across product design, advocacy, and operations. The payoff was not only expanded access but also a clear signal of commitment to underserved families. It reinforced the idea that purpose and growth are mutually reinforcing.

Lesson: When mission is tied directly to business strategy, it builds trust with consumers, retailers, and investors alike.

Leadership Transparency 

John Foraker’s relentless updates to the board, investor base, and, more importantly, his team set a high standard for candor and execution. By sharing both progress and challenges, they fostered a culture of openness that permeated the company. This steady communication strengthened trust and helped align stakeholders during key decisions.

Lesson: Transparent communication builds alignment, accelerates decision-making, and strengthens culture.

Looking Ahead

For Once Upon a Farm, I believe the IPO is the beginning of a new stage of growth that will bring nutritious, crave-worthy food to more children and families. I believe the visibility and liquidity of being a public company will enable the team to accelerate innovation, expand distribution, and explore new ways to make nutritious food accessible to families worldwide.

For me, the IPO is a reminder of why we invest in mission-driven businesses. Once Upon a Farm demonstrates that companies can bring strong values, win in the marketplace, and inspire industry change. As public investors and consumers alike watch the next stage unfold, I am confident this team will continue to raise the bar for what it means to build a business with purpose.

I deeply admire what this team has accomplished and feel energized by the opportunity to carry lessons from their journey into S2G’s work with other companies. The story of Once Upon a Farm is far from finished, and I believe that the company’s best chapters are still to come.