Nutella's empire is making a multibillion-dollar play for America's snack market

Nutella's empire is making a multibillion-dollar play for America's snack market Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes. They are all now owned by the same Italian company.Best known for Nutella and Ferrero Rocher chocolates, Ferrero has spent much of the past decade buying established American food brands and investing in US manufacturing.The privately held company now has more than 50 brands in its US portfolio, spanning chocolate, candy, mints, cookies, and breakfast cereal.The expansion has transformed Ferrero's US business. The company says the US accounts for about 15% of its global revenue, up from about 4% a decade ago. Since 2017, its annual US revenue has grown from roughly $600 million to about $3 billion. One of Ferrero's famous products is its Ferrero Rocher. Business Insider Ferrero is still smaller than some of America's biggest snack companies, like Mars and Mondelez, but its acquisition spree has put a growing collection of familiar brands under the ownership of a company once best known in the US for imported European sweets.We visited Ferrero factories across the US to see how far its American ambitions go.Ferrero has spent billions buying American brands Business Insider Deputy Executive Producer Havovi Cooper, visiting one of Ferrero's manufacturing facilities in the US. Business Insider Ferrero's US buying spree kicked off in 2017, when it acquired Fannie May, the century-old chocolate company, for $115 million.A year later, Ferrero paid $2.8 billion for Nestlé's US confectionery business, gaining brands including Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, and Crunch.Then, in 2019, it acquired Kellogg's cookie and fruit-snack businesses, adding Keebler and Famous Amos. Ferrero's new facility in Bloomington, Illinois, for Kinder Bueno. Ferrero "Ferrero takes a very different approach, which is buy well-established, loved brands, and then turn them back around," Michael Lindsey, the president and chief business officer of Ferrero North America, told Business Insider.That strategy gives Ferrero a way to expand without building brand recognition from scratch.Its biggest US bet yet has taken it beyond the sweets aisle. Ferrero is branching out beyond the sweets industry. Business Insider In February, Ferrero completed its $3.1 billion acquisition of WK Kellogg, the North American cereal company behind Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Corn Flakes, and Rice Krispies.The deal also presents a challenge. WK Kellogg reported declining sales before the acquisition was announced.Lindsey said Ferrero has spent more than $5 billion on US investments over the past five years.Ferrero is adapting its products for American tastes Business Insider Deputy Executive Producer Havovi Cooper (right) is trying out three mystery flavors at Ferrero's test facility in Chicago. Business Insider Acquisitions are only part of Ferrero's strategy.In 2023, the company opened a 45,000-square-foot innovation and research center in Chicago, where teams work on products for brands including Keebler, Famous Amos, Mother's, and Fannie May.Lindsey said Ferrero has found some notable differences between American and European tastes."US tends to prefer milk a little bit more than dark chocolate," he said. "Americans love peanut in a way that Europe in particular doesn't really have peanut as part of the palate in the same way." Ferrero is testing out new flavors at its Chicago R&D facility. Business Insider That preference helped inspire an unusual change to one of Ferrero's best-known products.In April, the company introduced Nutella Peanut, the brand's first new flavor in more than 60 years. Ferrero spent about five years developing it and $75 million on a production line at its Franklin Park, Illinois, factory. Ferrero's latest Nutella flavor: Nutella Peanut. Business Insider The launch is part of a broader shift for Ferrero: Instead of relying solely on products developed for European consumers, it's increasingly developing and manufacturing products specifically for Americans.Ferrero is making more of its products in the USFerrero has also invested heavily in US manufacturing.In 2024, it opened its first chocolate-processing facility in North America in Bloomington, Illinois, producing chocolate for brands including Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, Butterfinger, and Crunch. It has separately invested more than $200 million to add Kinder Bueno production at the site. Kinder Bueno line in Ferrero's Bloomington facility in Illinois. Business Insider Ferrero's workforce has grown alongside that expansion. The company says it now employs more than 5,000 people across North America, compared with a few hundred roughly a decade ago.For Ferrero, the acquisitions and factory investments are part of a longer-term effort to become a much bigger player in the American food business.Lindsey compared Ferrero's position in the US with Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the 1920s, when those companies were still building the scale that would eventually make them ubiquitous.It's an ambitious comparison. Buying familiar brands doesn't guarantee consumers will keep buying them, and the WK Kellogg deal gives Ferrero a much larger presence in a cereal business where sales have been under pressure.But Ferrero is no longer simply the European company selling Nutella and Ferrero Rocher to Americans.Increasingly, it's the company behind the American brands already sitting in their pantries. Read next Havovi worked as a producer and Latin America coordinator for ReutersTV. She is from Pakistan and is fluent in Urdu & Gujarati. She's passionate about finding the best biryani and tropical travel. Sarah is a Senior Video Producer at Business Insider. She makes digital videos and character-driven documentaries on global affairs, business, and social issues. Before joining BI, Sarah worked at the Financial Times. Jessica Orwig is a senior editor at Business Insider, where she collaborates with reporters, editors, and producers across teams to shape, write, edit, and publish stories that connect with a global audience. While her roots are in science and technology journalism, her work today spans business, careers, culture, and the big ideas shaping the future.She earned her Master’s in Science & Technology Journalism from Texas A&M University and holds a Bachelor’s in Astronomy & Physics from The Ohio State University. Throughout her career, she’s helped lead coverage on everything from space exploration and climate change to innovation, the future of work, and evolving cultural trends.Career HighlightsLed coverage on scientific milestones, including:Blue Origin's inaugural New Glenn launchIntuitive Machine's groundbreaking moon landing for the USSpaceX’s Polaris Dawn historic spaceflight NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Historic FlybyJapan’s SLIM lunar landingThe first image of a black holeIndia’s historic Moon landingSpaceX’s inaugural Starship-Super Heavy launchDiscovery of gravitational wavesNASA’s Pluto flybyReported on breaking news and scientific discoveries, including:Microplastics in the human brainPeregrine Mission One’s failed flightThe Palisades firesSpaceX Starship explosionsDark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s 3D map of the universe and what it revealsA local cosmic void that shouldn’t existThe Boeing Starliner missionMexico City’s water crisisEarth’s mysterious inner core behaviorPopular stories she’s edited on science and health:What it will take to modernize the American grid and usher in the clean-energy revolutionI study toxic microplastics. 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