As we approach soup season, the Campbell Soup Company is dropping the soup.
On Sept. 10, the Campbell Soup Company held its Investor Day in New York City and, in addition to discussing its progress up to this point, the company’s management team spoke about its next era — which includes a new name.
The Campbell Soup Company, which has sold everything from vegetables, snacks, salsa, soup and much more in its 155 years in grocery, has decided to drop the word “Soup” from its corporate name, rebranding as The Campbell’s Company.
Mark Clouse, Campbell’s president and chief executive officer, said the company has “been on a transformative journey” to redefine itself in the past five years with a “new strategy, new mission and new name.”
“This subtle yet important change retains the company’s iconic name recognition, reputation and equity built over 155 years while better reflecting the full breadth of the company’s portfolio,” said Clouse in a statement.
The name change is subject to shareholder approval at its annual meeting of shareholders in November.
A Campbell’s representative tells TODAY.com that, if approved, its current web address — which still contains the word “soup” — will also change, but that doesn’t mean it’s forgetting the source of Andy Warhol’s inspiration.
“What better way to mark this next chapter than with a subtle, but meaningful change in the name of our company,” Clouse said at the shareholder meeting. “One that respects our heritage, but also reflects who we are today.”
“We will always love soup and will never take our eye off this critical business,” he added. “But today we are so much more than soup.”
The representative also confirms that, despite the proposed name change, the company will still be known as “Campbell’s.”
Interestingly, the Campbell Soup Company is not the original name of the company. According to Campbell’s, the entity started back in 1869 when Abraham Anderson, commercial canner and packer, and Joseph Campbell, a wholesale fruit and vegetable vendor, established the firm of Anderson & Campbell.
Cans of the company’s wares — like soup — had already been labeled with just Campbell’s last name, but it wasn’t until 1922 that the company adopted “Soup” as its middle name, officially becoming the Campbell Soup Company.
Nowadays, the company has many non-soup food and beverage brands under its umbrella, including Prego, Pace, Noosa, V8, Goldfish, Pepperidge Farm and Cape Cod Chips. In August 2023, the company also bought the maker of Rao’s Homemade, Sovos Brands, for $2.7 billion, causing concern among Rao’s customers that the quality of the pasta sauce would decline.
“I’ve seen the speculation that we’re going to change the recipe—even some of my friends texted me,” Clouse wrote on LinkedIn at the time. “I’ll tell you what I told them: There’s no way we’re changing the sauce!”
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