MINNEAPOLIS — General Mills sold Green Giant, the vegetable business that began in farms in south central Minnesota and became a symbol of the growing convenience of food delivery in the mid-20th century, to B &G Foods Inc., a food processor best known for Cream of Wheat and Pirate brands.
B &G will pay about $765 million in cash for Green Giant as well as the Le Sueur brand product line, which is chiefly sold in Canada.
The businesses, largely canned and frozen vegetables, accounted for $585 million of General Mills’ $17.6 billion in sales in its fiscal year that ended in May. Though well-known, they have come under some pressure as consumers preferences shifted to fresh vegetables in recent years.
General Mills, based in suburban Minneapolis, said it will use proceeds from the sale for share repurchases and to pay down debt.
A company spokeswoman said it was unclear how many Minnesota employees would be affected by the sale. She said the firm is working to minimize the number who would lose their jobs. “We expect that number to be small,” she said.
General Mills owns a factory in Irapuato, Mexico, for Green Giant’s frozen vegetable products. That plant and its approximately 1,000 workers will become part of B&G. The company contracts with Seneca Foods, which has four plants in Minnesota and 16 more in seven other states, to produce Green Giant’s canned products.
B &G, based in Parsippany, N. J., was one of at least four firms to express interest in the Green Giant business, which General Mills put on the block earlier this year. Private equity firms Cerberus Capital Management LP and Platinum Equity LLC, as well as French food group Bonduelle SCA, also made offers, Reuters reported last week.
Green Giant’s roots trace to the Minnesota Valley Canning Co., which started in Le Sueur, Minn., in 1903. The firm was an innovator in the vacuum packing of vegetables in cans in the 1920s.
It first put a giant on the label of its cans in 1928 and, not long after, gave the giant green skin. In 1935, Leo Burnett, a Chicago advertising executive, began calling him the Jolly Green Giant and, in 1950, the company took the name Green Giant Co.
The company’s advertising jingle, “Good things from the garden, garden in the valley, valley of the Jolly Green Giant,” was punctuated by the giant’s “Ho ho ho.”
Green Giant was such a fixture in popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s that the Kingsmen, best known for “Louie Louie,” had a Top 10 hit in 1965 with a novelty tune about the giant’s dating woes. The company initially objected to the band’s use of the giant, according to post on General Mills’ history blog. Later, either the company or contract distributors gave the band a plastic prop of the Green Giant to use on stage.
A 55-foot-tall fiberglass statute of the Jolly Green Giant stands in Blue Earth, Minn., home to one of the canning factories that once belonged to Green Giant Co. and is now part of Seneca Foods, which is based in Marion, N.Y.
Pillsbury Co. of Minneapolis purchased Green Giant Co. in 1979. General Mills acquired Green Giant products when it purchased Pillsbury in 2001.
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