B&G Foods is an American branded foods holding company based in Parsippany, New Jersey. The company was formed in 1996 to acquire Bloch & Guggenheimer, a Manhattan-based producer of pickles, relish and condiments which had been founded in 1889. B&G has been publicly traded since 2007 and its primary growth strategy is to acquire "orphaned" brands, those which no longer fit with their parent company's primary business. The company made 20 acquisitions between 1997 and 2017 and held 51 brands mostly frozen and shelf-stable food. History Precursors The "B&G" name began in 1889 when two immigrants, Joseph Bloch and Julius Guggenheimer, started a pickle company, Bloch & Guggenheimer, Inc., in Manhattan. In its early days, B&G built a large pickle plant in Long Island City, Queens which the company operated until the 1970s when it moved production to Maryland. B&G produced pickles, relish, and other condiments under the B&G brand and by the 1980s they had become a significant retail and foodservice supplier in the New York City area. In the 1980s, Dutch conglomerate Artal NV bought several North American food companies including B&G and M. Polaner, Inc. Leonard S. Polaner, who had led his family's business prior to its acquisition, was appointed president overseeing both companies. Polaner hired former Johnson & Johnson executive David Wenner to manage B&G. However, starting in March 1993, Artal began to sell off its food products starting with Polaner selling it to American Home Products for . In June 1993 an investment group led by Robert Bass and Dallas leveraged buyout specialists Haas, Wheat & Partners founded Specialty Foods Corp. to buy Artal's eight remaining North American food companies for . These included B&G, Mother's Cookies, cheese producer Stella Foods of Green Bay, and Oakland-based Pacific Coast Baking Co., owner of San Francisco French Bread Co. and Gai's Seattle French Baking Co. Both Polaner and Wenner took executive positions with Specialty. However, two years later, after suffering a loss of in 1995, the heavily leveraged Specialty decided to focus on its bread and cheese businesses and began selling other holdings. Foundation and early history A group of New York investors, Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co., with assistance from Polaner and Wenner formed B Companies Holdings Corp. in 1996. The purpose of the company was to buy Bloch & Guggenheimer and snack foods producer Burns & Ricker, Inc. from Specialty. In 1997, following these successful