Ina Garten Promoted Rao's for Free. Campbell's Paid $2.7 Billion for It.

Ina Garten told Stephen Colbert she will not use bottled lime juice. "Fresh lime juice only," she said during a rapid-fire round on The Late Show. "You can't buy it anywhere." The rest of the list was forgiving: marinara sauce is fine, sourdough is fine, stuffing is fine, birthday cake from "a really good bakery" is fine.

The book she was there to promote, Simply Ina, is her 14th cookbook. Published October 20 by Penguin Random House, it formalizes something Garten has said casually for two decades: store bought is fine. What she has never discussed publicly is what that message did to the companies behind the products she recommended.

That's easy! Rao's Marinara Sauce.
Ina Garten, when asked her favorite jarred marinara, per Chowhound

Then Campbell's Paid $2.7 Billion

Garten has recommended Rao's Homemade marinara for years in recipes and on-screen. She never disclosed a brand deal because, as far as public record shows, there was not one. In August 2023, Campbell Soup agreed to acquire Sovos Brands, the parent company of Rao's Homemade, for $2.7 billion, or $23 per share. That price was nearly double Sovos's IPO valuation from 2021. Rao's accounted for about 69 percent of Sovos's $837 million in adjusted net sales.

The premium paid for Rao's was partly a premium for Rao's cultural position: a sauce that cost three times more than competing jars and held its premium because people with perceived good taste endorsed it. Celebrity chefs like Garten were among the loudest, most credible voices for that positioning. They reached that position through editorial recipe choices, not paid partnerships. Campbell's is now the company that owns what those endorsements built.

Tate's Bake Shop had a similar trajectory. Garten uses Tate's cookies in her mocha chocolate icebox cake recipe and has named them as her preferred store-bought cookie. In 2018, Mondelez International, the company that owns Oreo and Cadbury, acquired Tate's Bake Shop for approximately $500 million. The combination is not coincidental: premium packaged goods that earn unpaid celebrity credibility command higher prices, from consumers and from acquirers.

Search Hit 100 on Launch Day and Dropped Fast

Search interest for "ina garten cookbook" indexed at 100 on October 20, the day Simply Ina went on sale, per DataForSEO search volume data. By October 26, six days later, the index had fallen to 28, a 72 percent drop. This is a normal post-launch curve for a cookbook release: buyers who have been waiting make their purchase in the first 48 hours, and search volume normalizes.

The decay rate matters for the brands in the book. A reviewer for PureWow noted that some of the store-bought shortcuts Garten calls for in recipes proved difficult to find: pre-cut butternut squash was unavailable at three separate grocery stores. Garten's kitchen, stocked in the Hamptons and with access to specialty suppliers, may not map precisely to an ordinary suburban grocery run. What is "store bought is fine" when the specific store-bought item requires a specialty store?

The Lime Juice Exception

The one item Garten refused on The Late Show was bottled lime juice. Per Sporked's coverage of the segment, bottled lime juice has a "dull, metallic taste" compared to fresh. This is one of her principles with genuine category implications: the bottled citrus juice market (which includes brands like ReaLemon and Nellie & Joe's) gets no lift from the chef who lifts everything else.

Simply Ina will sell through the holiday season, when cookbooks consistently outperform year-round averages. Penguin Random House has listed it at $40 retail. The brands Garten mentions in 85 recipes will receive another cycle of the most powerful free advertising in the food industry: a trusted voice telling millions of home cooks that buying something specific is not only acceptable, it is what she does.

Ina Garten, Campbell Soup, Mondelez, and Rao's did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site with no affiliation with any party mentioned here. This piece draws on published sources listed below.

Ina Garten Promoted Rao's for Free. Campbell's Paid $2.7 Billion for It.

Then Campbell's Paid $2.7 Billion

Search Hit 100 on Launch Day and Dropped Fast

The Lime Juice Exception

Sources & further reading

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