My previous blog posts and newsletters have often stressed the importance of building on strengths. Building on strengths is a crucial reason why success is more likely when companies strive to grow. And, we know that taking smaller evolutionary steps is more likely to bring success than making big revolutionary bets. That’s why recent news about McCormick, the company known for its spices, is interesting.
A Wall Street Journal article on March 30, 2026 in the paper’s “Heard on the Street” section was titled “McCormick’s Megamerger Has a Chance”. The article is about McCormick’s plans to acquire Unilever’s food business, which includes Hellmann’s mayonnaise, French’s mustard and Knorr bullion.
Regarding McCormick’s plans, the article is saying “this is a huge bet.” Referring to McCormick, the article says that “the company that avoided its peers’ mistakes for years could make its biggest error yet.” But, the article, which points out that previous food industry megamergers have not always done very well, adds that “with disciplined execution, it” (the McCormick/Unilever deal) “could become a rare success story in the world of food mergers.”
Based upon my decades researching business success and failure patterns, big bets are far more likely to fail, while smaller bets tend to be more successful. Nonetheless, I’m not going to predict how this McCormick merger will do. But. I will say that there are definitely elements of strengths that could help propel McCormick’s success.
This planned McCormick acquisition is described as a food industry merger. But, McCormick whose product line includes not only spices, but also items like Cholula hot sauce, seems to have a specialty within the food industry. Essentially, McCormick offers food products that are generally used as add-ons to other foods. And, the planned acquisition would give McCormick additional add-on products with well-known brand names. This builds on McCormick’s prior strengths as a vendor of add-ons. And, it enables the company to build on whatever market research and other knowledge McCormick has about consumer needs and wants regarding food add-ons. Furthermore, McCormick does have past experience with acquisitions, though none of those acquisitions were as large as its planned Unilever deal.
So, what can we say about the success potential of this planned merger? It really depends on whether McCormick’s strong expertise with food add-ons, combined with its prior acquisitions experience, is enough to offset the fact that this merger is far more massive than McCormick’s previous deals.
