Hidden Valley牧场酱因世界杯热度带动旗舰瓶月销售增长逾20%

When Spain and Argentina take the field this weekend in front of a billion people, the World Cup will go to the best team in Europe or the greatest player in history.

But no matter what happens in the World Cup final, the biggest sporting event on the planet has already produced a winner—and it’s neither European nor Messi.

It’s creamy, tangy, herby and very, very American.

Ranch dressing was pioneered in Alaska, popularized on a dude ranch in California and perfected by food scientists before it spread all over the nation and on every food imaginable. The only way it could be any more American is if it came deep-fried on a stick.

U.S. sales of bottled ranch dressing topped $1.5 billion over the past year, making ranch even bigger than ketchup. Then foreigners tasted it, lost their minds and turned a condiment into the World Cup’s unlikeliest phenomenon. And the company that dominates the business is the one that created it.

Hidden Valley Ranch invented the stuff back in the 1950s and produces more of it than anyone. But even the leading brand of America’s favorite sauce didn’t expect to be rushing advertisements onto billboards and taxis, deploying 60,000 packets to World Cup stadiums or scrambling a response to an urgent TSA warning.

“I would have never thought this,” said Nick Higgins, the brand’s general manager.

As it happens, thinking about ranch is his full-time job. It’s a role that Higgins has been preparing for since he was a boy growing up in Kentucky. “I didn’t know you could eat vegetables without ranch,” he says, “until I was a lot older than I would like to admit.”

Inside the Hidden Valley headquarters in Oakland, Calif., Higgins and his colleagues study all kinds of food and ask themselves a simple question: Will it ranch? The answer is yes. Of course it will ranch. Veggies, salads, pizza, wings, fries, caviar, pickles, cottage cheese, ice cream—they’re all eminently ranchable. And now that anything can be ranched, everything is getting ranched.

The practice of ranching can be traced back about 75 years to the man who had a brilliant idea to combine mayonnaise, buttermilk, herbs and spices.

Steve Henson grew up in small-town Nebraska, made his way to California and left for Alaska to be a plumbing contractor. While on the job, he whipped together a salad dressing to get the men on his crew to eat their greens. Then he moved back to California to open a dude ranch that he called Hidden Valley—and he brought the recipe with him.

Before long, his concoction was such a hit that guests were begging for jars to take home. For those who couldn’t visit his dude ranch, Henson began shipping packets of ranch seasoning. In the 1970s, he sold the Hidden Valley Ranch brand to Clorox.

Unlike bleach and wipes, a product made of buttermilk and mayo is not exactly designed for mass consumption. But then Clorox made one of the most delicious scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century: ranch in a bottle.

Once the product was shelf-stable, an entire world of possibilities opened up to Hidden Valley Ranch.

Or at least an entire country.

Ranch is now the No. 1 salad dressing in the U.S. and used 50% more than Caesar at No. 2, according to Circana. But the empire of ranch is much bigger than a bottle of the original sauce. There are ranch dips. There are ranch seasonings. There are also ranch-seasoned dippers.

And not even almighty ranch is protected from the political, economic and pharmaceutical forces warping the food economy. As the salad dressing category shrinks and sales decline, Clorox is experimenting with the size and shape of its products. Last year, Hidden Valley unveiled the first major redesign of its packaging in decades: an upside-down bottle engineered for optimal squeezing. The brand has since flipped back and reintroduced the classic silhouette.

But however they look and whatever they cost, ranch bottles are flying off shelves right now. Every year, ranch sales spike around pizza holidays like the Super Bowl and Halloween—and during the summer. This summer, with the U.S. hosting the World Cup and the country’s 250th extravaganza, Hidden Valley poured resources into what it calls “the flavor of America.”

“It was going to be ranch’s time to shine,” Higgins said.

The company also made a plan to spread the gospel of ranch beyond America—all the way to Europe. Hidden Valley is a domestic brand that has resisted international expansion. But this summer, it put out a call for European “ranchbassadors” and thousands of people applied for the job.

Paradies Lagardère

The diplomats from Big Ranch have spent the past few weeks traveling around the continent, slathering it on escargot, quiches, croque monsieurs, kebabs, fish and chips, pierogies and raclette—or ranchclette.

But at the exact moment Hidden Valley sent this American creation to the rest of the world, the World Cup came to America.

When visiting fans discover ranch, most love it, some hate it and others are revolted by it. But whether they found it indispensable or utterly disgusting, it was clear that ranch provokes strong opinions, which is essential for success in the attention economy.

“It was Europeans having this experience about ranch and Americans reacting to that European experience,” said Sadie Dorf, Hidden Valley’s social-media manager. “From a social-media perspective, it was very powerful.”

The unprecedented interest was so powerful that it translated to actual sales. Last month, sales of Hidden Valley’s flagship bottle of ranch were up more than 20%, according to Clorox.

And once Hidden Valley found itself at the center of this algorithmic collision, things got very weird, very quickly, in ways that executives who forecast condiments for a living couldn’t have predicted.

“Like finding out that people were literally trying to smuggle giant vats of ranch,” said Stacy Stokes, the brand’s vice president of marketing and sales.

She did not anticipate checking her phone during the World Cup to see this message:

In response, rival Kraft announced that TSA-compliant packets of ranch were coming soon. Hidden Valley saw a 7% bump in monthly sales of its own travel-friendly dry seasoning, dressing and recipe mix. Before long, there were pop-up ranch displays in airport stores that were positioned right next to the World Cup merch—and conveniently located after security.

“While ranch isn’t an official retail category for us,” a spokesman for airport retailer Paradies Lagardère said, “we’re always looking for ways to meet customer demand.”

By the time those customers are boarding flights back to the land without ranch, many of them have already stocked up. And some had edible souvenirs that came directly from Hidden Valley.

Before the knockout round, the brand dispatched teams of local ranchbassadors to multiple stadiums with one goal: pass out samples to every fan in sight.

This weekend, the delegation from Hidden Valley has been mobilized to the New York area—because anything can be ranched.

Even the World Cup.

Science of Success

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