Top 10 power brands

As actor Robert Redford put it so succinctly: “Health food may be good for the conscience, but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.”

Stouffer's: Nothing comes closer to home

Nothing comes closer to home than the frozen meals prepared by Nestlé’s Stouffer’s brand, headquartered in Solon, Ohio. In fact, they often taste better than what consumers can cook at home. Stouffer’s frozen entrées strike just the right balance among great taste, good nutrition and variety — with more than 60 contemporary choices from restaurant-inspired Cafe Classics to Everyday Favorites to Lean Cuisine. Those are some of the sub-brands, but the Stouffer’s name is atop each one.

Stouffer’s is masterful at focusing on its brand’s attributes. If one ingredient has been the key to Stouffer's success, it’s the brand’s intuition about the American family — its appetites, its eating likes and dislikes, and how to serve them. It’s helped Stouffer’s grow from a family of four to a family of millions.

It was back in 1922 when Abraham and Mahala Stouffer opened a small coffee shop in Cleveland. Featuring delicious homemade food, the modest enterprise was an immediate success, prompting the couple's sons, Vernon and Gordon, to join the business and develop what became a national chain of restaurants. Vernon, a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, emphasized the idea of good taste and friendly service. Customers began asking for take-home versions of their favorite meals, so the Stouffers froze popular menu items and sold them at an adjacent retail outlet.

In 1954, the family founded the frozen food operation and introduced Stouffer’s brand entrees. As lifestyles changed and demand grew for high-quality convenience foods, Stouffer's built a state-of-the-art production facility in the Cleveland suburb of Solon in 1968. By 1973, the company had attracted the attention of Nestlé SA, which acquired and infused the operation with its own resources.

The Stouffer’s brand is synonymous with good taste, so when it decided to enter the low-calorie food category with Lean Cuisine in 1981, it immediately set the taste standard for healthy entrées. Lean Cuisine gained instant credibility with consumers, and the Lean Cuisine line has expanded to include: One Dish Favorites — simple, one-dish meals like ravioli; Café Classics — contemporary, restaurant-inspired meals like sesame chicken; Comfort Classics — homestyle American favorites like herb roasted chicken and meatloaf; Spa Cuisine Classics — spa-chef inspired meals like salmon with basil with 100 percent whole grains; Casual Eating — classic, casual fare like deep dish and French bread pizzas; Dinnertime Selects — larger-sized portions with interesting side dishes; and Skillets — skillet meals like chicken alfredo and beef teriyaki.

Lean Cuisine flaunts the slogan, “It’s not just lean, it’s cuisine,” and checking out the number of its SKUs in major supermarkets proves that consumers agree.