Every March, a celebrity or two makes the drive south from Hollywood or thereabouts to appear at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, Calif. Over the years, Fabio (remember him?), Marilu Henner, Jessica Alba and Channing Tatum drew crowds as they lent their support to certain food brands.
Celebrity endorsements and promotions are nothing new in the food or marketing worlds – witness football’s Kelce brothers currently hawking a handful of products -- but some celebrities start or sincerely embed themselves in food and beverage companies, often to promote some cause near to their hearts.
Paul Newman was the granddaddy of this trend. After a long and successful movie career, he started Newman’s Own in 1982 with author A. E. Hotchner. Over the years, the friends had concocted an Italian salad dressing they bottled and gave as holidays gifts, and that became the initial product in a portfolio that now contains 21 product categories, many of them organic, including pasta sauce, pizza and popcorn. Dog treats were recently added. The original olive oil and vinegar salad dressing remains.
Newman and Hotchner were somewhat surprised when their little company turned a $300,000 profit in its first year. What to do with that windfall? “Let’s give it all away,” Newman is quoted as saying. And they have. Since 1982, Newman’s Own Foundation has donated more than $600 million, most of it toward its own mission “To nourish and transform the lives of children who face adversity.”
Charities and children are two of the biggest motivators for celebrities to start food companies, but not all the stars follow that path. For some, it’s creating a better version of a product they themselves use. Others just like food and cooking it.
Harry Hamlin: ‘People like my cooking’
Some mild contempt of the processed food industry is one of the prime motivators for actor Harry Hamlin to join his niece in starting The Open Food Company.
“Food Processing?” he asked over the phone when I introduced myself. For a moment, it sounded like he would call off the interview. “We’re kind of the opposite of that.” But after a slight pause, he went on.
“I never wanted to start a food company. I never wanted to do a cooking show, either,” says Hamlin, who has a long resume of movie and TV roles and currently is the uncle of the main character in AMC network’s “Mayfair Witches.”
“I’m no chef, but I cook for my family and friends, and people seem to like what I make. Everybody asks about the pasta sauce. I kind of had no choice but to bring the sauce out.”
The dish he’s most famous for within that circle of family and friends is a marinara sauce with red wine and rosemary as the key ingredients. He started cooking it when he lived in Italy in the 1980s. He’s refined it over the years and once made it on “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” a TV show his wife Lisa Rinna was in.
Hamlin’s niece Renee Guilbault is a chef, author and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the food industry. When AMC asked Hamlin to do a cooking show in 2023, he insisted Guilbault be his partner. So, together they starred in the AMC series “In the Kitchen with Harry Hamlin.”
Red wine and rosemary are among only eight ingredients in Harry’s Famous Rosemary Red Wine Sauce. And although Hamlin wouldn’t tell us the other ingredients just yet, he said all will be revealed when The Open Food Company launches this fall.
As the name implies, The Open Food Company will be very open. Not only will the jarred sauce have few ingredients, all of them natural, but the recipe will be available for cooks to make at home. “Customers will be able to scan a QR code to learn about the recipe and cooking method,” Guilbault says.
“We believe that access to nutritious and delicious food is a human right, that people should know what’s in their food,” she continues. “Harry and I agree that food should be made with simple ingredients found in your own kitchen, and never [with] synthetic flavoring, preservatives, stabilizers or chemicals.”
Despite that criticism – Hamlin critically used the term “ultraprocessed” a few times in our talk – he said he learned a lot about the food industry and the process of scaling up the recipe from what he made in his kitchen to commercial quantities.
The pair was directed to a contract manufacturer in Texas, experienced in making sauces. Expecting a drawn-out effort, Hamlin says he allocated several days to spend with their R&D people, “but within five hours, they had it. It was as good if not better than the original. I was blown away by their R&D people.
“Then I did a blind taste-testing with some of my neighbors, and almost all of them picked the manufactured sauce over what I made in my kitchen.” He feigned being hurt.
As part of their mission, they’ve already donated to The Food Bank for NYC, LA Regional Food Bank, The Open Door Food Pantry in Gloucester, Mass., and Project Angel Food in West Hollywood. Those donations will continue as The Open Food Company gets off the ground, and there may be more.
“Charity-partner support is baked into The Open Food Company’s business model to ensure we can spotlight and meaningfully support different social impact missions with every product we release,” says Guilbault.
Lionel Messi: Better hydration
“No one understands the importance of proper hydration quite like the global soccer icon, Lionel Messi,” starts out a media release about his startup. “He searched for a hydration beverage and found drinks that had healthy ingredients but lacked flavor. Others tasted great but had lots of sugar and calories. He didn't want to choose between the two. … So, Messi went to work on a drink of his own.”
Más+ by Messi (mas means more in Spanish), unveiled in June, is “a next-generation hydration drink created for everyone in every moment that calls for hydration. Because everyone deserves to feel like a champion in every part of their life.”
The drink delivers a balanced blend of electrolytes with natural flavors, no artificial sweeteners or colors, plus vitamins and more — and is available in four flavors named after inspirational milestones in Leo Messi’s life:
- Miami Punch is named for the city where Messi and his family currently live and he plays soccer.
- Orange d'Or was inspired by Messi's record eight wins of the Ballon d'Or ("Golden Ball" in French) trophy.
- Berry Copa Crush harkens to Messi's seven Copa del Rey titles with the Barcelona team and his Copa America win with Argentina.
- Limón Lime League honors the time Messi spent playing in the UEFA Champions League, a cup he won three times.
Más+ by Messi is still ramping up to national distribution. The 16.9-oz. bottles have 10 calories and 1g of cane sugar each, and the 12-oz. cans have 7 calories and less than 1g of cane sugar.
More than a name on the label, Messi is a founder of Más+ by Messi and The Más+ Next Generation Beverage Co., along with flavor innovators from The Mark Anthony Group – who are largely credited with starting the hard seltzer craze with White Claw.
"Hydration is essential to overall wellbeing. I believe everyone deserves a drink with amazing ingredients and taste," Messi says. "Más+ is a drink I'm proud to share with family and friends. Because everyone deserves to feel like a champion in every part of their life."
"People know the importance of hydration and are seeking better products that help them achieve their goals," says Rishi Daing, executive vice president of Más+ Next Generation Beverage Co. “Our beverage and flavor innovation combined with Messi's expertise as an elite athlete have resulted in a drink unlike anything on the market."
Jennifer Garner: Childhood nutrition
Cassandra Curtis started Once Upon a Farm in 2015 along with co-founder Ari Raz to create more nutritious, convenient and delicious baby food options for her daughter that weren’t available in her local supermarket. After selling her first cold-pressed baby food at retail, in 2017 she brought on Annie’s former CEO John Foraker and actress Jennifer Garner.
In promotional materials, Garner is called a co-founder, and it’s clear she’s been intimately and passionately involved in the development of the company.
“As John, Cassandra and I, along with the entire Once Upon a Farm team, have built this company, we’ve always had big ambitions, chief among them to bring healthy, nutritious food to kids everywhere,” Garner says.
In addition to being an actress, Garner is a philanthropist and mother of three, and she shares Curtis’ commitment to better childhood nutrition – in both the formulation of kids’ foods and in funding charities with a goal of ending childhood hunger.
As part of that latter goal, Once Upon a Farm has committed to funding one million meals for children in food-insecure communities in America by 2025, via charity Save the Children. According to a counter on Once Upon a Farm’s website in mid-September, they had funded 682,382 meals so far.
Once Upon a Farm makes foods for babies, toddlers and young children in formats such as puffs, pouches, bars and dried fruits and vegetables. While profits from all contribute toward the company’s charities, every Overnight Oats pouch purchased means 25 cents will be donated to Save the Children, with a goal of raising at least $50,000.
Garner still maintains her century-old family farm in Locust Grove, Okla., which grows pumpkins, blueberries, field peas, rye, wildflowers and honeybees, as well as some animals. Garner’s farm supplies the pumpkins for Once Upon a Farm’s “Farmer Jen’s Pumpkins Oatmeal Cookies.”
"Once I started working for Once Upon a Farm, I loved the idea of connecting kids to the farm early on,” says Garner. “And so here we are, connecting kids to the farm and it gets to be my family’s farm that’s been with us since 1936.”
