16 Sep 2018 US: Putting the premium into egg snacking
With the launch of Peckish, a fresh snacking platform centred around eggs, food incubator and investor Sonoma Brands is aiming to bring the same attention to the humble egg as founder, Jon Sebastiani, did for meat snacks at his previous company, KRAVE Jerky.
The first products under Peckish will be five “peck packs” consisting of two fully cooked, organic, free-range eggs along with a crispy topper to dip each egg into.
Each peck pack, which comes in flavours like salt and pepitas, everything, maple waffle, fried rice, and rancheros, will retail for $3.99.
The flavours, the Sonoma Brands team said, are intended to work for breakfast and mini-meals throughout the day.
The snackable formats will be supported by the launch of a multipack of four individually wrapped cooked eggs that will retail for $4.99.
All products will launch in January 2019 on Peckish’s website, as well as in select, to-be-announced, retailers.
Peckish Co-founder, Chelsea Bialla, who also serves as Sonoma Brands’ chief brand officer, said she was inspired to launch the brand after finding lack of convenient, higher quality products in retail that used eggs as a focal point.
“We started to peel back the layers and look at the egg space as a whole, which is a $5-billion category and growing.
“We saw beautiful brands being built in the shelled egg space, but no one really owning ready-to-eat and hard cooked eggs kind of sitting here as a sub $200-million category,” Bialla said.
“We had to ask is this due to a lack of consumer interest in this space and this food or is it because no one has paid attention to it?”
Bialla said unlike current hard boiled eggs, Peckish eggs will be creamier with a medium boil centre. Although it’s not a proprietary process, Peckish has an agreement with the nation’s largest producer of hard cooked eggs to use the technology for the near future.
The brand also has a strategic agreement in place with a smaller, organic egg supplier to ensure steady inventory.
Disrupting a commoditised category is a play Bialla saw firsthand during her time as director of marketing for KRAVE. At the time, then-CEO Sebastiani brought new life to the jerky category by offering a higher quality product in innovative flavours.
“We’re actually changing the conversation on the baseline product that consumers know,” Bialla said. “Just like when old jerky was hard and crumbly and Krave offered a tender solution, we at the most basic format are elevating the hard cooked egg into a perfect boil and we’re bringing to life these fun flavours.”
But Sebastiani (left) and Bialla aren’t just taking lessons from KRAVE: The team will also draw from their experience launching snacking marshmallow brand, Smashmallow, as well as drinkable soup line Zupa Noma.
“The vision for Peckish goes beyond the hard boiled egg,” Sebastiani said. “We’ll see other innovative products like egg salad and egg dips and all kinds of beautiful products that feature the protein and clean nature of the egg.
“This is a platform play and one that we feel can be a very big opening.”
FoodDive.com insights:
This new snack concept could be a savvy development, combining millennials’ love for healthy, protein-packed food and convenience.
And while a dollar or two seems pricey for a hard-boiled egg, young shoppers have proven they’re willing to pay a premium for specialty and on-the-go products.
And as Bialla noted, people in the US are consuming more eggs than they have in the past 40 years — about 279 per year.
The product also seems versatile. Sonoma could sell Peck Packs at coffee shops, grocery store egg departments or delis and foodservice providers.
It would make sense to promote the items as a flavourful, protein-rich snack alongside other options in spaces young buyers, who already prefer to buy ready-made meal or snack options, will find them.
The free-range eggs should further appeal to socially-conscious young shoppers…. read more here
Source: Nosh.com; FoodDive.com; FoodBusinessNews.net
Related reading:
US: Jerky undergoes a makeover and renaissance as a healthy snack