People online are losing it over Campbell changing the recipe for Rao's pasta sauces after a buyout. The backlash even forced Campbell CEO to say they won't 'touch the sauce.'

• Campbell Soup is acquiring the parent company of Rao's pasta sauce for $2.7 billion.
• Fans of the product are going on social media to mourn the end of Rao's saucy goodness.
• The social media backlash has driven the company's CEO to say they won't "touch the sauce."

Campbell Soup is doling out $2.7 billion to acquire the parent company of Rao's world-famous pasta sauce. 

But within hours of the announcement on Tuesday, social media was rife with fans concerned about the fate of their beloved sauce.

"Only decent jarred sauce about to get worse," user @fritolaysia posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. Another user, @treggify, said, "Buying all the raos before it's ruined."

 

X user @leadpacer posted a prediction that the sauce's recipe could change in a few years, writing, "the MBA types that dominate corporate America struggle to create value, but they can certainly extract it."

"That means they're gonna start adding sugar to it. This is why we can't eat nice things," a Reddit user commented on a thread about the acquisition that has 1,200 comments at the time of publishing. Another user posted in the same thread, "What's coming: Some more high fructose corn syrup with a touch of shrinkflation at a bigger price."

Responses to the media outlets tweeting about the acquisition were also mostly negative, including posts like "Please don't ruin Raos" and "Welp now it'll be ruined."

Backlash for the acquisition got so much traction that even Campbell's CEO stepped up to clarify they won't be changing the recipe.

"We will not touch the sauce. We just spent a pretty significant amount of money to buy something that we believe is really really special," Mark Clouse, the CEO of Campbell Soup told Yahoo Finance in an interview.

"I appreciate all the encouragement on social media, but we are not going to change it," he said, referring to the pasta sauce. Pointing to Campbell's chicken soup recipe, Clouse said: "We've been pretty consistent for 125 years with a pretty darn good chicken noodle soup that we guard with our lives to make sure that that quality stays the same."

Rao's, originally one of New Yorks' most exclusive Italian-American restaurants, evolved into a beloved sauce brand when its owner and "Goodfellas" actor Frank Pellegrino Sr. began selling its pasta sauce in 1991. It was acquired by Sovos in 2017, which reported Rao's brand sales of $580 million in 2022.

Campbell's last big acquisition was the parent company of Snyder's Pretzels in 2018, Insider reported. The pretzels still consistently score glowing reviews on Amazon.

Campbell and Sovos did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, sent outside regular business hours.