Yale classmates and a just-add-water idea.

Birch Benders was started by Yale graduates in Colorado. FoodNavigator-USA reported in August 2016 that the brand was founded in 2011 by Matt LaCasse and his Yale classmate Naomi Honig McCormick, and that another classmate, Lizzi Ackerman — by then married to LaCasse — joined soon after, followed in 2014 by a friend, Brandon Sharp. The Yale Alumni Magazine, profiling Ackerman and LaCasse, both of the class of 2010, in its September/October 2017 issue, said the idea came one morning at their home in Boulder, when they wanted pancakes but not the standard, highly refined mixes, and did not have the ingredients for anything better to hand. “Pancakes were stuck in the Dark Ages,” Ackerman told the magazine. What they wanted, she said, was organic, natural ingredients with just-add-water convenience.

The two divided the work along their own lines. LaCasse was working at a local restaurant and skiing in the winter, and already wanted a business of his own; Ackerman, who was studying chemistry, brought a scientific approach to the recipes, the magazine said, and described double-blind taste tests of every ingredient. LaCasse told the magazine that they started in 2012 by selling to a few local stores, including a local Whole Foods, and doing cooking demonstrations around Denver, spending many months gathering feedback and refining recipes. They ran the business from home and outsourced work to keep costs down. The brand launched nationally in 2014, according to the magazine, which said in 2017 that Ackerman did much of the marketing and LaCasse handled the finances.

The name comes from a New England pastime. The Yale Alumni Magazine described it as climbing a young birch until the treetop gradually bends to the ground, and called it a favourite of LaCasse’s. FoodNavigator-USA said LaCasse grew up in Maine and spent his summers bending birches, a pastime chronicled by Robert Frost in his poem “Birches.”

The early range grew from requests and testing. Ackerman told the magazine that a grain-free mix had been created at the request of Whole Foods and took many test versions to get right; FoodNavigator-USA said that mix was made with cassava, coconut and almond flours, and that the company had replaced the powdered egg in its classic mix with potato and cassava starch. LaCasse’s own favourite, he told the magazine, was the chocolate chip mix.

Boulder Food Group, Sovos Brands and Hometown Food Co.

Outside money came early. LaCasse told FoodNavigator-USA in 2016 that he had funded the company with contributions from friends and family and then sold an equity stake to Boulder Food Group in 2014. BFG Partners, the Boulder venture firm whose September 2020 release described Birch Benders as backed by Boulder Food Group, said in that release that it had partnered with the brand in early 2015. That release described Birch Benders as Denver-based and said its founders had started it as an easy breakfast for their camping trips.

The founders sold in 2020. Food Dive reported on 27 August 2020 that Sovos Brands, a food company backed by the private equity firm Advent International, was buying Birch Benders, a Colorado-based brand founded in 2011 that by then sold paleo and protein mixes, microwaveable cups for muffins and pancakes, and frozen waffles introduced that June. BFG Partners’ release, published on 3 September 2020, said it had completed the sale and named Matt LaCasse as chief executive and Lizzi Ackerman as co-founder and chief marketing officer. Sovos’s other brands at the time were Rao’s, noosa yoghurt and Michael Angelo’s, the release said.

Sovos kept the brand for a little over two years. On 9 January 2023 The Shelby Report reported that Chicago-based Hometown Food Co. had completed its acquisition of Birch Benders from Sovos Brands, without disclosing terms. Food Business News, reporting on 10 January 2023, said Hometown was part of the portfolio of the investment firm Brynwood Partners and that Sovos had owned Denver-based Birch Benders since the fall of 2020. Henk Hartong, Brynwood’s chairman and chief executive, said the brand complemented Hometown’s existing pancake and baking brand Arrowhead Mills; Tom Polke, Hometown’s president and chief executive, said it widened the company’s place in breakfast and baking.

By then the range went well beyond pancakes. The Shelby Report listed pancake and waffle mixes, toaster waffles, pancake and baking cups, baking mixes and frostings, cookies and syrups, and named Hometown’s other brands, including Pillsbury Baking, Funfetti, Hungry Jack and Martha White. Hometown Food Co. has owned Birch Benders since January 2023; the brand’s website carries a 2026 Hometown Food Company copyright line and links to Hometown’s privacy notice.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group sit on three different shelves of the grocery aisle: olive oil, pancake and baking mix, and the salty snacks of pretzels and potato chips. Each category has its own packaging habits, and a brand’s identity is often carried less by the food itself than by the tin, bottle, box or bag that holds it, and by the name printed across the front.

An olive-oil tin or bottle tends to lean on a family name, a place and a sense of origin. A pancake-mix box is built around a front panel that has to be read at a glance, with a picture of the finished stack and instructions on the side or back. A pretzel or chip bag has to work as a flat, printed surface that is folded, sealed and stacked, so colour, a wordmark and a window or photograph of the contents do much of the work.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the business, who owns it now, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A pack that had to explain itself.

Birch Benders’ packaging changed early. LaCasse told FoodNavigator-USA in 2016 that the mixes had originally been sold in jars: the idea was to add water to the jar, shake it and pour the batter onto the griddle. The jars stood out on the shelf, he said, but confused shoppers, who picked them up, saw a jar that looked half-empty and did not realise it was designed to be filled with water — and the young company did not have the marketing money to explain it. The jars were also expensive. So the company moved to a re-sealable pouch, which, LaCasse said, gave a better price per ounce and also stood out among all the boxes on the shelf.

The pitch on the pack has stayed with convenience. In the same interview LaCasse argued that the brands and packaging in the pancake aisle had largely not changed since the 1970s or 1980s, and said the company was “doing our darndest to mix things up.” The brand’s website still leads with its flagship “just-add-water pancake & waffle mixes,” and says its frozen toaster waffles are inspired by recipes passed down by Belgian waffle makers.

The name gives the brand its imagery: a young birch bent to the ground by a climber, which FoodNavigator-USA tied to LaCasse’s Maine summers and to Frost’s poem. The founders’ own story, as the Yale Alumni Magazine told it in 2017, is one of tasting and testing — the magazine said the pair shared the part of the business they enjoyed together: creating, testing and tasting new kinds of pancakes.

For a design guide, Birch Benders shows how a pack format can carry a brand’s promise, and how a format that stands out can still need explaining. Compare Hungry Jack, a pancake brand The Shelby Report listed among Hometown’s brands in 2023, and Kodiak Cakes, another mix brand from the Mountain West. For this guide we use birch white, bark grey and maple amber with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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