Most people know her from Alias, 13 Going on 30 or Juno. For close to ten years, Jennifer Garner has also had a second career away from film sets. As co-founder and chief brand officer of Once Upon a Farm, an organic children’s food company, she saw the business list on the New York Stock Exchange in February 2026.
A closely watched listing
On 6 February 2026, shares in Once Upon a Farm began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker OFRM. The IPO priced at $18, the middle of the $17 to $19 range, valuing the company at about $724 million. The shares closed their first day up around 17%.
The $1 billion figure that circulates on social media needs a caveat. Some outlets floated that estimate before the deal, and the market value came close to it in the weeks after the debut. But the company listed below $800 million, and it was worth around $685 million in early October 2026. It is still a remarkable story: few baby food brands born out of a parent’s frustration make it as far as Wall Street.
The deal was also a test for a whole sector. Consumer brand IPOs had become rare, and analysts treated this one as a signal of how much appetite investors still had for the category.
Fresh pouches, not shelf-stable jars
Once Upon a Farm was founded in 2015 by Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz. The idea came from something missing: Curtis could not find baby food at her supermarket that was as nutritious and convenient as what she wanted for her daughter. The brand bet on a product that was still unusual at the time: organic, cold-pressed fruit and vegetable pouches sold in the chiller cabinet instead of being sterilised for the ambient shelf.
In 2017 two new co-founders joined and invested. John Foraker, former head of Annie’s, the organic brand bought by General Mills, became chief executive. Jennifer Garner became chief brand officer. This was more than an endorsement: Garner, a mother of three, became a shareholder, fronts the brand day to day and sits on the board.
From pouches to snacks
For several years the company focused on chilled purées for babies and toddlers. From 2023 it broadened the range: refrigerated oat bars, then baby snacks and puffs in 2024, soft-baked bars, and chilled protein bars in 2025. By June 2025 pouches made up 68% of sales, down from 94% two years earlier.
Growth has been strong. According to the filings published before the IPO, annual sales rose from about $8 million in 2018 to more than $200 million in the twelve months to the end of June 2025. Around 2,800 branded coolers sit in American shops. The company, a certified B Corp and a public benefit corporation, is not yet profitable, though: it reported a net loss of about $48 million over the same period.
A celebrity who does the work
Garner’s exact contribution is hard to measure, but it is real. According to company data, a third of customers hear about the brand through word of mouth, and her standing with American parents helps. For years she has posted low-key cooking videos on Instagram, filmed in her own kitchen, and she talks about Once Upon a Farm in the same unfussy way.
What sets her apart from many celebrity founders is staying power. She joined an unknown start-up nearly a decade ago and stuck with it through the lean years and the slow work of building distribution, without turning it into a constant sales pitch. Her interest in children’s welfare goes back further too: she has long supported Save the Children and serves as a trustee of the organisation in the United States.
What comes next
As a listed company, Once Upon a Farm now has to win investors over every quarter. It remains exposed to the cost of fruit and vegetables, some of which come from Mexico and South America, and to tariffs. The money raised is earmarked for paying down loans and investing in production. For Garner the stakes are different: showing that an actress can be taken seriously as a business leader in an industry where nobody expects to see a Hollywood star.
© Photo: Gage Skidmore - CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
