Jennifer Garner’s Once Upon a Farm IPO jumps 40% as the company raises $198 million

On Friday afternoon, Jennifer Garner was at the New York Stock Exchange. Alongside her cofounders Cassandra Curtis and John Foraker, she’d just taken her company, Once Upon a Farm, public. Employees and their children celebrated nearby.

“We probably slept an hour each,” Garner told Fortune hours after the company started trading as OFRM.

Curtis founded Once Upon a Farm as a nutritional baby food brand more than a decade ago. More than eight years ago, Garner and Foraker joined her to scale up the business into a new phase, with all three taking on the title of cofounder. (Foraker, the former CEO of Annie’s, is the company’s CEO.) Today, Once Upon a Farm does $200 million in annual sales, according to its S-1 filing, and is sold in 19,000 stores. While the brand started with baby food, it’s expanded into food for kids, including popular yogurt pouches.

Once Upon a Farm’s IPO raised $198 million for the company, with a $724 million valuation. Its share price is up almost 40% from its $18 listing price, trading at $25.10 today. The S-1 includes details about Garner’s compensation structure with Once Upon a Farm; she will serve on the new public company’s board of directors and continue to hold her role as cofounder and spokesperson, or “Farmer ...