By Jesse Newman
It is a brutal time for America's food companies. Spice giant McCormick is making a multibillion-dollar bet that seasoning food -- rather than making it -- is the winning recipe.
"While others compete for calories, we flavor them," McCormick Chief Executive Officer Brendan Foley said in an interview.
More than 130 years since its birth in a Baltimore cellar, McCormick owns the spice aisle and sells core condiments such as hot sauce and mustard. The company's deal with Hellmann's mayonnaise maker Unilever is set to expand its sway over the ways we flavor food.
One problem: Rivals have gotten the memo, too. Legacy food makers and buzzy upstarts are infiltrating households with many new condiments. Any restaurant chain worth its salt now sells a bottled version of its signature sauce.
Spices in particular have been a standout performer in supermarkets' center aisles that are replete with packaged items like cereal, rice and soup. Overall, sales in center aisles have slumped after food manufacturers sharply increased prices in recent years. Big brands have suffered as consumers turn to cheaper store brands or premium goods they deem healthier.
Sales of extracts, herbs, spices and seasonings rose 10% by volume over the past year versus the same period four years ago, according to data from market-research firm NIQ.
That has been a boon for McCormick: Sales rose nearly 2% to $6.8 billion in its latest fiscal year.
Calorie competition
Spices and condiments have bucked the broader packaged-food malaise in large part because consumers are chasing health and affordability. They are cooking more at home, shopping grocery stores for more protein and produce, and turning to seasonings to zhuzh up DIY meals, said TD Cowen analyst Rob Moskow.
"Spices and seasonings and hot sauce are the perfect compliment to that kind of behavior," Moskow said.
Nestlé too has taken note. The Swiss food giant later this month is set to launch its first condiments for home cooks in the U.S., bringing what it calls "restaurant-quality sauces" to Amazon.com. Sauces like Lemon Garlic Aioli and Spicy Chili Truffle will roll out under a new Minor's Kitchen brand, inspired by an existing one for professional chefs, Nestlé said.
Kraft Heinz calls itself the world's No. 1 player in sauce and plans to devote significant investment to Heinz condiments as part of a new corporate strategy.
The company launched a new line of dipping sauces last month and said it plans to introduce mayonnaise-style varieties next month. In 2022, Kraft Heinz also took an 85% stake in Just Spices, a German spice blends business.
Restaurant chains from Chick-fil-A to Buffalo Wild Wings are amping up the condiments rush, recently introducing new items such as Zesty Buffalo Sauce and Habanero Hot Sauce at retail. And emerging brands like Truff, Fly By Jing and Bachan's are working to woo consumers with premium ingredients or international flavors.
McCormick has said the deal with Unilever's food business, slated to close in mid-2027, creates a global flavor powerhouse. The combined company will have annual revenue of about $20 billion.
Some investors have been skeptical about the combination. McCormick will morph from a narrowly focused spices and condiments company into a much larger global foods conglomerate, and take on significant debt to do so. The poor track record for big food mergers also concerns some investors, Moskow said.
Hot sauce generation
McCormick's Foley ran H.J. Heinz's North America business before the ketchup giant merged with Kraft Foods in 2015. Foley, who joined McCormick in 2014 and took over as CEO in 2023, said growing competition in flavor is no surprise but that the company is ready.
Foley can rattle off trivia about McCormick's vanilla beans (produced from hand-pollinated orchid blossoms in Madagascar) and cinnamon (made from the bark of Indonesian trees identified by drone).
He said McCormick benefits from deep scientific expertise, a sprawling network of global suppliers and a singular focus on flavor. Through its business developing custom flavors for other food and beverage companies, McCormick gets a sneak peek at what the rest of the industry is doing.
"We have a front-row seat to what's happening in the marketplace," Foley said.
What is happening in the marketplace is heat. Foley said Gen Z and millennials in the U.S. now spend more on hot sauce than on ketchup, and that they use more hot sauce than any other generation.
McCormick upped its hot sauce bona fides with a $800 million deal for Cholula in 2020. Before McCormick and Unilever announced a deal in March, Kraft Heinz and Unilever also held talks about a possible food deal, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Foley fancies himself something of a hot sauce aficionado, saying he adds Frank's RedHot on everything from leftover beef stew to chicken chili. When he cooks, Foley said he often reaches for McCormick's recipe mixes, made for easy addition to tacos, gyros or Korean BBQ.
The mixes offer flavor hacks for less skilled home cooks, Foley said. "It's pretty foolproof," he said.
Write to Jesse Newman at jesse.newman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 17, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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