NOSHscape: The Latest Food Brand News

Sir Kensington’s Launches Spice Line, Tests D2C Sales

Condiment company Sir Kensington’s is spicing things up with a new product line and sales channel. The brand, which was acquired by Unilever in April 2017 for $140 million, in December launched a spice kit that is sold direct-to-consumers via a microsite.

The kit, which retails for $20, contains three sachets of Turkish spices (cured sumac, black Urfa chili, and silk chili) along with two packets of Sir Kensington’s mayonnaise. Sir Kensington’s co-founder and CEO Mark Ramadan and director of special projects Zachary Seely told NOSH that the company plans to release a different spice kit each month.

Seely and Ramadan said that condiments – which are what put Sir Kensington’s on the map – and spices share similarities including being in “ordinary and overlooked categories” dominated by large monopolies and having nebulous supply chains.

“Everyone told us not to make ketchup because it was 70 percent market share by one monopolist,” Ramadan said. “That’s the sort of opportunity we’re attracted to, for better or for worse. It’s in our bones to compete with monopolies rather then just chase a trend.”

Unlike the condiments which started with ketchup, in developing the spice line, the company chose to start with a more exotic offering due to rising consumer interest in global flavors.

Seely and Ramadan also pointed to chocolate and coffee as categories with far-flung supply chains that have seen a growing emphasis on sustainability, storytelling and differentiation as a result of consumers’ quest for new global products and stories.

“This is a generation that has been raised on Chipotle, not McDonalds,” Seely said. Beyond simply a new category, the spices also represent a new initiative for the company: selling direct to consumers.

“[Direct sales] is an interesting channel for us, but food has been particularly challenged,” Seely said. “Things spoil. Things break. We [couldn’t] open up ketchup.com and sell our ketchup there because Amazon is going to beat us at that game, so we needed a differentiated proposition.”

That’s not to say the spices will never be sold in retail. Seely said the goal is to eventually have a spice line that appeals to all consumers and helps them learn to cook.

It’s this line of more familiar flavors that will eventually go into retail, likely in 2019. Ramadan said Sir Kensington’s plan is to develop the in-store spice line in partnership with one specific retailer. The hope is to have a “curated” release in stores, while still having online only offerings as well.

“Yes we want to keep focusing on the core,” Ramadan said, “but we also want to make sure we are meeting our fans where they are, which is not always in [retailers].”

Rhythm Looks to Fruit as ‘Kale Boom’ Slows

Rhythm Superfoods is hoping a brand redesign and portfolio expansion will bear fruit.

At the Fancy Foods Show the produce snacking company debuted a new line of fruit snacks and, later this year, will reveal refreshed branding, according to CEO Scott Jensen.

The fruit line will consist of resealable pouches retailing for $3.49. Crunchy mango bites will launch in Whole Foods in March, the crunchy mango and crunchy pineapple in HEB in May and chewy watermelon slices in Kroger in May. The new line is Rhythm’s first foray beyond vegetables – it currently sells snack packs of dehydrated beets, carrots and kale snacks.

Fruit might seem like a natural fit, and perhaps one that the eight-year-old company could have explored sooner. However, Jensen said, the company was reticent to enter the space simply because it could not keep up with the “kale boom.”

“Kale became a hero. There were four or five years of this company’s life where it was just hold on and meet demand,” Jensen said “For us it was about following up with the demand that continued to grow every year… So when the supply caught up with the demand, we could start thinking about ‘what’s the next steps.’”

Now, however, the kale category has flattened out. Jensen said Rhythm has continued to see double digit growth behind new categories such as carrots and beets. But fruit was a natural extension.

The company will also launch new vegetable snacks in the second half of the year along with single serve offerings, which will retail for $1.49 to $1.99, depending on the channel.

Those products will also sport a new look. The company, which has raised roughly $9 million from 301 Inc, The CircleUp Growth Fund and Blueberry Ventures, is also undergoing a brand refresh this year. Jensen expects the new look to debut in the second quarter.

Part of the impetus for the redesign is the expansion into fruit, he said, but also Rhythm Superfood’s increasingly millennial audience. An element of the rebranding will be the name of the company itself – Jensen is considering dropping “Superfoods” in favor of the shorter name of simply “Rhythm.”

“The research initially is that ‘Rhythm’ is what they remember and there’s a lot of confusion around the term ‘superfoods,’” Jensen said. “So that tends to guide you. If it doesn’t mean what you want it to mean to consumers, why do you have it?