Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
Okay, David, how many current varieties of M&M's can you name?

**David Rosenthal** (0:04)
Oh, wow. Okay, well, plain, peanut, peanut butter. Uh-huh.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:08)
Actually, plain is technically now called milk chocolate.

**David Rosenthal** (0:11)
Oh, interesting. There's dark, right?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:14)
Yep, which I've got right here.

**David Rosenthal** (0:16)
They had mint for a while. Did they discontinue mint?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:19)
Mint is a holiday-only theme. So that's a seasonal one.

**David Rosenthal** (0:25)
Oh, what else? I mean, at the end of the day, it's kind of only plain and peanut that matter, right?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:31)
I think in sales numbers...

**David Rosenthal** (0:33)
Are there pretzel ones?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:35)
There are pretzel ones. There are also... almond.

**David Rosenthal** (0:39)
Oh, almond. See, I'm allergic to almonds, so I never think about almonds.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:43)
There's also some weird ones.

**David Rosenthal** (0:45)
Caramel? Yeah.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:47)
I don't want that at all, but they make it. Crunchy Cookie, which replaced Crispy of our youth. Do you remember the blue packaging, Crispy M&Ms?

**David Rosenthal** (0:56)
Oh, yeah. I remember the Crispies. Yeah.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:59)
And then there's some specialty ones, Dark Chocolate Peanut, which I really want, Fudge Brownie, Campfire S'mores and Caramel Cold Brew.

**David Rosenthal** (1:07)
Oh, I don't know about any of these.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:09)
And then there's these really wild limited edition ones, in addition to Holiday Mint, Birthday Cake, Chili Nut and Pumpkin Spice Latte.

**David Rosenthal** (1:17)
Oh, that sounds disgusting.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:19)
I know. But yes, I think you are right. The Milk Chocolate and the Peanut are the sales drivers.

**David Rosenthal** (1:25)
Yup.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:25)
All right. Should we do it?

**David Rosenthal** (1:26)
Let's do it.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:44)
Welcome to the fall 2024 season finale of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (1:52)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:54)
And we are your hosts. Listeners, we were thinking, what episode would be fun to do before the holidays? We picked M&Ms, thinking this will be just some nice light-hearted fare about the candies and the characters on commercials that remind us all of our childhood. But as we dug in to Mars, Incorporated, the parent company, we realized that the story is totally thrilling. It's got World War I, World War II, new technologies and inventions, and serious, serious family drama. And their corporate strategy over the years is just as clever as companies like LVMH, Walmart and Costco. I mean, you don't get to be the second wealthiest family in America without it.

**David Rosenthal** (2:34)
Yeah, seriously. Maybe it's because we just did it, but I feel like there are a lot of echoes of Ikea in this one, too.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:41)
Absolutely. And the Mars family is way more quiet and reclusive than the Comprod family, too.

**David Rosenthal** (2:48)
They're way more quiet and reclusive than anybody.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:51)
Yeah. Mars also owns way more than you think. You may know that they own the world's most popular candy, Snickers, in addition to M&M's. Or perhaps you know they're in the pet food business. But they also own everything from Ben's original rice to now kind bars, and they have one massive deal in the works that we will talk about later on this episode. David, here's one crazy stat to illustrate their sheer size. Do you know Mars now does more revenue than the Coca-Cola company?

**David Rosenthal** (3:20)
I know. Wild.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:21)
Mars crossed $50 billion in sales last year, and they're still completely privately owned by the Mars family, making it one of the top five largest private companies in America. This really is an incredible American and global story. Well, listeners, after this episode, come listen to ACQ2. We just had one of my favorite conversations ever on the show, in part because I just love talking computer architecture, with Rene Haas, who is the CEO of Arm Holdings, the chip design company that makes the designs and the instruction set architecture of everything inside your smartphone, your car, your laptop, and now even massively in the data centers.

**David Rosenthal** (4:02)
Gosh, between Synopsys and now Arm, we're going to have to rename ACQ2 into like acquired semiconductors.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:08)
Totally. It was a great computer science lesson and history lesson, sort of all rolled into one. So go subscribe to the ACQ2 feed and the podcast player of your choice to check it out. We've got a survey winner. Thank you to everyone who took our survey. It is Kurti from Boston. We will email you with details on how to claim your free Ray-Ban metas. And 10 other folks in addition to Kurti will also receive free ACQ dad hats. So keep an eye out in your email if that is you. Now, before we dive in, we want to briefly thank our presenting sponsor, JP. Morgan Payments for an incredible year.