General Mills: Strategic Approach and Expansion Report

This report provides a strategic analysis of General Mills, a multinational food manufacturer. It begins with an executive summary and table of contents, followed by an introduction outlining the report's objectives. The company perspectives section details General Mills' history and its evolution from a mill company to a global brand. A timeline highlights key events and milestones in the company's international expansion. The report then delves into the strategic approaches of the snacks and convenience food divisions, examining their market strategies, expansion efforts, and revenue generation. Charts and figures are used to illustrate key aspects of the company's performance. The report concludes with a summary of findings and a list of references.

Running head: GENERAL MILLS
GENERAL MILLS
Name of the Student
Name of the Company
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The given report throws light on the strategic approach of the company, General Mills. General
Mills was established in the Unites States in the year 1928. Originally started as a mill company,
it made various expansions and diversifications to become a global name. Under the guidance
of various leaders the portfolio management of the company was widely successful. The report
has highlighted the timeline of the company and described the key events. The second section
has taken two segments of the company and thrown light on the strategic approach for their
expansion. Various charts have been given for highlighting the key aspects.

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Table of Contents
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................3
Company Perspectives.....................................................................................................................3
Time Line......................................................................................................................................3
Note.............................................................................................................................................4
Snacks Division of General Mills......................................................................................................5
Strategic approach and expansion..............................................................................................5
Convenient Food division of General Mills......................................................................................7
Conclusion........................................................................................................................................9
References.....................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Strategy is considered to be one of the most crucial aspects of any business enterprise.
A strategy serves as a guideline to the company and helps the company in expanding the
business operations. The chosen company for the given assignment is General Mills and the
chosen segments are Snacks and Convenience Food (Hill, Jones and Schilling 2014). The report
has given a background of the company and presented a time line of its history of international
expansion. The second part of the report discusses the different strategic approaches adopted
for the chosen segment.
Company Perspectives
The General Mills is a multinational manufacturer based in America and is also the
marketer of various branded consumer products. The headquarters of the company is based in
Minnesota. The brand is an absolute favorite in the eyes of the consumers because it offers
superior quality products as well as services (Barney 2014). The employees find General Mills a
good company to work for as it rewards innovation and appraises the performance of the
employees. The company has been growing consistently since the last few decades. The
company history and the timeline of international expansion have been given in the next
section:
Time Line
Years Significance
1850-1900 The company opened its first mill flour in
Minneapolis and Crosby entered as a partner of
Washburn. The partners increased and in the year
1980, the company won an international
competition.
1900-1950 The main highlight of the given time period was
that James Ford began the acquisition and
amalgamation of various mils in the region with

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that of General Mills (Generalmills.com. 2018).
Also, during the given period, various products like
Cheerios, Bisquick, cake and ready to eat cereals
were made.
1950- 2000 The company entered the snack food sector in
1964 by purchasing Morton Foods and went ahead
in the introduction of various products like Trix. It
was in 1961 that the new president was assigned
named Rawlings, who begins a period of wide
diversification (Generalmills.com. 2018).
It also undertook the frozen sea food and toy
sector like Parker Bros, Rainbow Crafts (Eden and
Ackermann 2013).
The following companies in different sectors were
undertaken :
Eddie Bauer
Talbot
Red Lobster
Lactose Clothing
Yo plait yogurt brand
Olive Italian Restaurant
However, in 1989, the company sold Edie Bauer
and Talbot and formed a venture with Nestle.
From that time, it has made several collaborations
with Pepsi, Unilever and Ralcorp
Note
The company is one of the biggest leading cereal companies in the globe with several
brands under its name like Cocoa Puffs, Cheerios and Trix. The company has also been able to

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expand its operations in the food line sector including desserts and cake mixes. The products of
General Mills are available in more than 90 countries and have long term collaborations with
Nestle S.A. and PepsiCo. Apart from its domain in snacks in Europe, the company also functions
outside the grocery sector in various domains like educational, healthcare, convenient stores
and vending machine operations.
The portfolio of General Mills became better and the company increased its snack
portfolio. And spread its operations to England and Belgium with the purchase of Smith Food
Group Limited. The company followed this by opening a French Biscuieria in Latin America and
Japan (Ginter, Duncan and Swayne 2018).
However, it was in 1989, that the company decided to expand its operations overseas.
General Mills partnered with Nestle which was a Switzerland based company. After its
amalgamation with PepsiCo, the company entered into Europe’s snacks market.
Post 2000 the company has shown interest in expanding its operations to Asian counties
(Martinsuo 2013). With this aim, it has opened various ventures under the company name in
Singapore, Malaysia, China and other countries in Africa as well.
Figure 1; Net sales of the company (Source: Generalmills.com. 2018).

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Snacks Division of General Mills
Strategic approach and expansion
The snack division of General Mills consists of a wide variety of brands that include brands like
Chef Mix, Natural Valley, Cascadian Farm and Bugles corn snack. The brand has also added
Annie`s which is the newest addition to the snack products line and includes a wide variety of
options. The company gets its majority of income from the snacks division. However, recently
there was a drop in the sales due to the new demand placed by the millennial who demanded a
healthy diet.
The snack segment of General Mills snack has had an enormous growth opportunity in
the United States (Bettis et al. 2014). The given segment has been growing at a tremendous
rate and which has covered more than 40% of the US market share. To capture the health
conscious segment, General mills has also invested in the better for you product range which
has bars and organic product.
Although the strategy followed by General Mills for international expansion of the
snacks division included giving out free samples at the malls in Europe, Asia and Australia the
products did not achieve international success at the expected rate because the concept of
frozen meal was not preferred by the Asian population who have a desire for hot meals
specially breakfast. Nevertheless, there exists a huge amount of potential in the snacks segment
of the company because of the improving scenario of urbanization, increase in revenue and low
base impacts in the Asian market.
According to Stead and Stead (2013), the strategic approach was simple. It wanted to
become one of the biggest food-ing and consumer goods brand in the globe and for this it
followed a policy of buying other business. General Mills believed in making small acquisitions
and take over which would automatically give the company an advantage over the rival
companies (Morschett, Schramm-Klein and Zentes 2015). Hence, under its umbrella, General
mills are associated with a large number of products which are based in different countries. In
order to attain success it has planned to enter the local market of the various countries for ease

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of competition and access to a larger crowd. This approach to international expansion had been
taken because it helps in easy functioning. Instead of formulating new recipes and products,
take over and acquisitions helped General Mill to have an easy way out.
Figure 2: The revenue generated by the company through international and national
operations (Source: Generalmills.com. 2018).
Convenient Food division of General Mills.
Convenient Food concept is a normal formula these days whereby the food is already
pre-cooked and packed in a box in order to make it easier for the consumers to just eat them
directly or by adding minimal resources in order to cook (Lasserre 2017). In today`s fast paced
environment, it is extremely difficult for family members to cook food and spend long hours in
the kitchen. Capturing these ideas, many companies started the idea of convenience food
(Wheelen et al. 2017). General Mills had also started taking advantage of the given segment
and today it has a wide base of products under its umbrella. These products are as follows:

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 Chef Mix
 Fiber One
 Nature Valley
 Annies
 Betty Crocker
 Helper
 Old El Paso
 Yoki
Over the years the company has increased and expanded the Convenience food
segment and has spread its activities into various countries like Europe, Asia, Australia and
others. It followed a similar policy like that of the snacks segment of acquisition and take over.
The following strategic approaches were undertaken by General Mills in order to expand
internationally:
 Setting Goals- It knew that it could not follow a haphazard manner and hence for this
purpose it had set well defined goals for the organization`s expansion plan. It had set
certain milestones and set out proper target companies (Rothaermel 2015). As the
eating habits of Europe are quite similar to that of the Americans and at the time of
world wars, travelers used to travel frequently to and fro, the company decided to make
Europe its primary target. Later on it set out goals for countries like Asia and Australia as
well.
 Extending strategy to Supply chain- Apart from following techniques like acquisition,
mergers and take over, the company widened its supply chain base as well and started
importing and exporting from various sources (Slack 2015). The merger with companies
like Pepsi proved to be a plus point in its case. It also tied relations with Unilever which
went a long way in strengthening the company`s base.
 Taking the advantage of e-commerce- It also took advantage of the new advent of e-
commerce and indirectly widened its market to various countries it had not tied
relations with. E-commerce accounts for 1.5 % of the company`s sales.

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Hence, over the years, it has taken various companies and tied up with other brands like
Morton Foods, Pepsi and other large enterprises to get an access to international customer
base and expand its operations worldwide.
Figure 3: A summary of the performance, segment wise (Source: Generalmills.com. 2018).
Conclusion
Therefore, the story of General Mills has been quite an impressive one and it has grown
its business to a great extent in the last 150 years. Starting as a normal mill company, it
expanded its product base widely in order to increase its revenue. The corporate portfolio
management of the company was widely headed by the company heads and the different
CEO`s who were involved. Without their guidance and help, the expansion would not have been
possible. The given report has highlighted the history of the company through a timeline and

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selected two segments; snacks and convenience food and elaborately discussed their
international strategic approach.