- Kraft is dropping the "roni" from the name of its macaroni and cheese product, the company announced Wednesday.
- The box will now say "Kraft Mac & Cheese," and it will have a more streamlined look.
- Americans have been buying the product, especially during hard times, since 1937.
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is getting a new look—and a shorter moniker.
While looking for a Friday night no-energy meal — or simply a cheap one — the box you're looking for will be a bit more streamlined later this summer, according to a Wednesday press release from Kraft.
The new name is changing from "Kraft Macaroni & Cheese" to "Kraft Mac & Cheese."
The name shortening "is meant to reflect the way fans organically talk about the brand," the release added.
As The Hill reported, this is the latest in a series of box and branding changes for "America's original and favorite comfort food," as Kraft called the product in the release.
Originally, according to KRON-4, a cable news station in San Francisco, the box was mostly yellow.
The latest version is almost all blue, except for a prominent noodle-smile, which the company called "the brand's most recognizable asset." The company says it sells over 1 million of these mac and cheese products a day.
Kraft was first to sell boxed mac and cheese, Insider previously reported. The product came out in 1937 and sold 50 million boxes during WW II, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The company also said it saw increased sales after the pandemic hit and that more parents fed the mac and cheese to kids for breakfast, part of a broader retreat into comfort food and likely an economic crunch.
As inflation roars and gas prices cut into Americans' budgets, cheap and cheesy comfort might look even more appetizing.
"We know that when things get tough, people aren't turning to comfort food as a guilty pleasure, they are positively embracing comfort, saying yes to feeling good, saying yes to caring for themselves," Victoria Lee, Kraft Mac & Cheese Brand Manager, said in the release.
It's unclear if the new box will accompany a price change. The company did not respond to a request for comment. In 2021, companies passed on price increases to consumers at a record-breaking clip.
Here are other photos of the new box and branding.
Here's the new logo.
It has a new font, as the release noted.
Other flavors in the new box.
Finally, here's a close-up of the cheesy smiley.
