Ferrero is acquiring Purely Elizabeth

Ferrero has agreed to acquire Purely Elizabeth, the Boulder-based granola and breakfast brand founded by Elizabeth Stein in 2009, for an undisclosed sum. The deal adds one of the fastest-growing names in better-for-you breakfast to a U.S. portfolio the confectionery group has been assembling for years.

Purely Elizabeth has more than doubled its sales over the past two years, reaching roughly $200 million in 2025 and targeting $300 million in 2026, across granola, oatmeal, cereals and protein products. Stein stays on as founder and CEO, with the brand continuing to operate standalone; the deal is expected to close in the coming months, subject to regulatory approval.

Why it matters

Ferrero’s push beyond candy is now a pattern, not a one-off. The group that built its U.S. presence on Nutella and Ferrero Rocher has spent the last several years buying across the store: Power Crunch in protein, Eat Natural and FULFIL in better-for-you snacking, and most recently the $3.1 billion WK Kellogg cereal business. A premium better-for-you breakfast brand slots into exactly the white space that portfolio still had.

For founders, the deal is another data point on the question that matters most in this category: who buys the brands that get to real scale. Purely Elizabeth grew for seventeen years, from the natural channel into conventional retail, before a strategic stepped in. That is the long arc, and it ended in a sale to one of the few acquirers with the distribution muscle to take the brand everywhere.

What to watch

Integration. Better-for-you brands acquired by global strategics tend to live or die on whether the acquirer preserves the team and the formulation standards that built the following. Watch whether Purely Elizabeth keeps its own innovation cadence, and how quickly Ferrero’s sales organization pushes it into doors it never had.

Originally reported on Instagram: see the post