Mondelez International's $2.9 billion purchase of Clif Bar, announced last month, burnishes Chicago's status as the epicenter of the $20 billion global snack bar business.

It also raises the stakes for the Chicago-based food industry giant in a product category that is already crowded with both big players and emerging brands, competing for consumers who are increasingly demanding better-for-people, better-for-the-planet ingredients, even in their between-meal treats.

The arms race in snack bars started when Kellogg spent $600 million in 2017 to acquire Chicago-based RxBar. Mondelez made a smaller splash in 2019 when it acquired Perfect Bar, a refrigerated, nutrient-dense, organic bar that has experienced rapid growth since the takeover. Chicago's Mars Wrigley upped the ante significantly in 2020 with its $5 billion acquisition of Kind.

While these heavyweights duke it out, the Chicago region has also spawned several innovative contenders with specific appeals to health-and-wellness shoppers.

• GoMacro, based in southern Wisconsin with a Chicago office, has been rapidly growing its certified organic bar business.

• Jimmy! Protein Bars (Chicago) has pioneered Keto-focused bars.

• Blake's Seed Based snacks (Chicago) are primarily made from fruit and seeds.

• Made Good, producer of a line of organic granola and vegetable bars, has its U.S. headquarters in the Chicago region.

• Vital Proteins, one of Chicago's biggest natural products success stories, just launched a line of protein and collagen bars in partnership with actor Jennifer Aniston, a longtime fan who is the company's chief creative officer.

Upon Mondelez's completion of its newest purchase, its portfolio will expand to include Clif Bar and its Luna Bar brand, which targets women. These products come with strong brand assets in the fight for today's choosy consumers. (Vital Proteins CEO Tracey Halama is on Naturally Chicago's board. Brigette Wolf, Mondelez's vice president and global head of snack futures, is about to join.)

Clif grew to be a category leader by targeting athletes with higher-calorie energy bars. Most of its ingredients are organic and they have strong social values around green energy and women's issues. Clif Kids, aimed at younger eaters, is a growing segment for the company.

Bill Weiland is CEO of Barrington-based Presence Marketing, the largest natural and organic food broker in the country, and has been leading the charge to build natural food brands nationally for more than three decades. According to Weiland, Mondelez has an opportunity to grow Clif's dominance with its strong base of consumers who are passionate about their health and the ecological benefits of organic production.

"They can marry organic with higher-protein options that use lower-carbohydrate ingredients, including greatly reduced sugars, to capitalize on modern consumer preferences," says Weiland, whose company grew big by launching and helping to build companies such as Vital Proteins, Simple Mills, Clif Bar and hundreds of others.

He adds: "They should also consider creating a line of products that focus on ingredients sourced through regenerative farming operations, as these producers have minimal environmental impact and create a vibrant ecosystem replete with carbon sequestration. There is a huge segment of consumers who will go out of their way to purchase value-added products that are also climate friendly."

One way to do that would be to resurrect Kit's Organic Fruit & Nut Bar. It was lower in sugar and higher in protein than typical Clif Bars and loved by core customers, but Clif chose to discontinue it. With a brand refresh and Mondelez marketing prowess, it could be just the kind of product that consumers want.

But, as competitor Kellogg has shown, there are pitfalls to be avoided when taking over companies that have established a better-for-you image with consumers.

RxBar experienced significant growth, particularly in conventional channels, after it was absorbed into Kellogg. Yet within a year of the purchase, the entire RxBar leadership team left the company and were replaced by Kellogg insiders. The division also faced a very expensive national recall. RxBar sales have slowed significantly in recent years, and attempts to expand into other categories such as nut butters and cereal have not been home runs.

Kellogg also rankled some locals recently when it removed the RxBar logo from the facade of the River North building at Hubbard and Wells that was its home. That building is now adorned by the Kellogg's logo, and it houses the national headquarters of Kellogg's rebranded snack division, which has been spun off and moved to Chicago.

These problems, though, pale by comparison with perhaps the biggest blunder among natural products acquisitions by Big Food. It was also one of the first. In 2000 Kellogg acquired Kashi, which had developed a strong brand identity as a natural and organic cereal company. In its early days under Kellogg's wing, Kashi continued to operate in California, grew their cereal market share dramatically and quickly added other successful product lines to capitalize on the strong Kashi brand. As sales grew, Kashi became an anchor of Kellogg's natural and organic business.

But Kashi unraveled a decade ago after new corporate leadership backed off Kashi's product integrity and started using more nonorganic and GMO ingredients. It was sued by multiple states for using GMO and other non-natural ingredients in their products, and these cases were eventually settled for millions of dollars.

This controversy alienated customers, retailers and other partners. Kashi, which had been relocated from California to Battle Creek, Mich., in early 2013, lost major market share and ended up returning to California as a stand-alone company by late 2014. But not before the fiasco was summed up with a cautionary, vastly used slogan for Big Food companies wading into the natural products industry for acquisitions: Don't get Kashied!

Clif Bar itself was party to a little "my ingredients are better than yours" dust-up in 2019. Clif Bar took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to challenge Kind's owner Daniel Lubetzky to go organic, citing the ecological and health benefits of organic food. Kind shot back, citing Clif's much higher sugar/carbohydrate content, driven by organic rice syrup, and it touted the superiority of Kind's nut-based, higher-protein bars. Clif, not to be outdone, pointed out that Kind's primary sweetener, glucose syrup, is likely made from GMO corn.

Kind has seen the fastest growth in the entire category by focusing on lower-sugar alternatives that are higher in protein. After the Mars acquisition, Kind maintained its New York City office, and founder Lubetzky and most of his management team have remained in place. (Lubetzky serves as executive chairman of Kind.) Clif has announced that it plans to stay in its California headquarters for at least two years after the merger with Mondelez is consummated.

Mondelez has a great innovation team, and I believe they are too smart to get Kashied. But a company whose signature product is Oreo cookies will face a certain amount of skepticism from good-food consumers concerning its intentions for Clif Bar. At Naturally Chicago, we'll be closely watching the dynamic and growing snack bar category—and may the cleanest label win.

Jim Slama is managing director of Naturally Chicago, an association of the natural products industry in the region, and founder of Good Food Catalyst, a Chicago based nonprofit.

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