Quaker and Snapple
In 1994, grocery store legend Quaker Oats purchased the new kid on the block, Snapple, for $1.7 billion. Fresh from their success with Gatorade, Quaker Oats wanted to make Snapple drinks just as popular.

Despite criticisms from Wall Street that they paid $1 billion too much for the fruity drinks, Quaker Oats dove head-first into a new marketing campaign and set out to bring Snapple to every grocery store and chain restaurant they could.

However, their efforts failed miserably. Snapple had become so successful because they marketed to small, independent stores; the brand just couldn’t hold its own in large grocery stores and other retailers nationally. Pepsi and Coca-Cola themselves began releasing Snapple-like drinks and the general public’s new-found taste for Snapple beverages was beginning to wane.

After just 27 months, Quaker Oats sold Snapple for $300 million (or, for those of you doing the math, a loss of $1.6 million for each day that the company owned Snapple). CEO William Smithsburg’s reputation was forever tarnished, and numerous executives were fired.

Rasmussen College School of Business

QUAKER OATS AND SNAPPLE
“We have an excellent sales and marketing team here at Gatorade. We believe we do know how to build brands, we do know how to advance businesses. And our expectation is that we will do the same as we take Snapple as well as Gatorade to the next level.”
-Don Uzzi, President of the Quaker Oats Beverage Company, North America.

1) SUMMARY/HISTORY
The Quaker Oats Company, founded in 1891, is one of America’s oldest food enterprises.
From its start in the domestic ready-to-eat cereal market, Quaker grew an appetite for diversification, snapping up pet food, grocery and toy businesses, and by the 1960s had expanded into Europe. While William D. Smithburg continued to diversify into the clothing and