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KIND Snacks history
KIND Snacks company history timeline
In 2004 the company announced Google Print, a project with several major libraries around the world that would begin to make their holdings freely available on the Internet.
In January 2005 Google launched Google Video, which enabled individuals to search the close-captioned text from television broadcasts.
In 2005 the company changed the name of the project to Google Books, and about one million books per year were scanned in its initial years of operation.
In January 2006 Google Video Store opened, featuring premium content from traditional media companies such as CBS Corporation (television shows) and Sony Corporation (movies). In June 2006 Google began offering premium content for free but with ads.
In 2006 Google again paid $102 million for another Web advertisement business, dMarc Broadcasting, and that same year it announced that it would pay $900 million over three and a half years for the right to sell ads on MySpace.com.
Unable to generate anything close to the same number of uploads and viewers, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock.
So, in December of 2008, Lubetzky made a hard choice – he sold one-third of KIND Healthy Snacks to VMG Partners and Vitaminwater for $15 million.
In 2008, Kind spent just $800 giving away samples of its bars.
In 2009 Starbucks finally saw the value of KIND bars and agreed to sell them in 7,000 of their stores.
In 2009 Google removed the beta status of Gmail, increasing its appeal to business users.
The company started a strong upswing in early 2009.
In January 2010 Google announced that it had detected a series of sophisticated hacking attacks, originating in China, that were directed at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and foreign journalists working in China.
That growth only continued: by the end of 2011 Google was handling some three billion searches per day.
The trio ran the company as a “triumvirate” until Page took on the CEO role in 2011, Schmidt became executive chairman, and Brin adopted the title of director of special projects.
In addition, its 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility put it in the position to sell hardware in the form of mobile phones.
In 2012 Google’s market capitalization made it one of the largest American companies not in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
In 2012 Google shut down Google Video and moved videos from there to YouTube.
As of 2012, Google had scanned more than 15 million books.
In 2014, with the company on firmer financial footing, Lubetzky orchestrated a deal for Kind to buy the minority stake back from VMG for a reported $220 million, issuing some debt to fund the purchase.
So in April 2015 he and his team took the train to FDA headquarters outside Washington, D.C., to make their case.
Google reorganized itself in August 2015 to become a subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc.
But in 2015 new trouble arrived in the form of a warning letter from the FDA informing Lubetzky that he had been mislabeling his fruit and nut snacks as healthy.
While Kind was on track to reach record sales, it had a cash flow problem. “Profitable companies can go out of business if they don’t manage their cash properly,” Lubetzky writes in his 2015 autobiography, Do the Kind Thing.
Between 2013 and 2015 Kind gave less than half a million dollars to nonprofits—peanuts for a company its size. It wasn’t until 2016 that it established the Kind Foundation, to foster “kinder and more empathetic communities.” According to its most recent filings, the foundation has $11 million in assets—$10 million of which was donated by Lubetzky—but has given away only $1.5 million in grants.
In August 2017, Kind put up a temporary art installation in Times Square: statues of kids made out of mock sugar, to illustrate that the average child in the United States consumes 19 teaspoons of added sugar a day in food and drinks.
The M&M's maker bought a 40% stake in the company in 2017, leaving Lubetzky with 51% stake.
In 2017 the foundation pledged $20 million over at least three years to try to connect students around the globe.
More changes followed in 2019 as both Brin and Page left their posts as president and CEO, respectively.
In 2020, KIND joined the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s project: New Plastic Economy Global Commitment.
In 2020, Mars purchased the remaining stake in KIND for $5 billion, now making Lubetzky worth an estimated $2.2 billion.
As of May, 2021 Kind has sold over 2 billion of these fruit and nut bars.
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| Homestead Miami Speedway | 1995 | $8.1M | 175 | 3 |
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| Smart Circle | 1981 | $333.9M | 279 | - |
KIND Snacks history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of KIND Snacks, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about KIND Snacks. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at KIND Snacks. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by KIND Snacks. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of KIND Snacks and its employees or that of Zippia.
KIND Snacks may also be known as or be related to KIND, KIND Snacks and Kind LLC.