US Sweet Snacking Update – Indulgence Here to Stay – 1
June 2021
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Specialist:
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Chad Lusk (CL)
Former SVP & CMO at Hostess Brands Inc (Gores Holdings Inc)
Agenda:
1. Consumer trends along sweet-snack diversification
2. Channel and distribution dynamics
3. Private label and branded manufacturer competitive landscape
4. Better-for-you innovation
Contents
Q: Could you give an overview of the sweet snacking industry, including the top players and drivers and how
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it compares to other snacking categories?
Q: Why are health and wellness and indulgence growing in comparison to other categories? Do people have
more occasions to snack? How is the increase in snacking impacting other categories such as breakfast?
Q: What structural impacts has coronavirus had on the industry?
Q: Could you elaborate on the health and wellness trend and what it really means to consume a healthy
snack? Some snacking companies like to label their products as “better for you” by reducing an ingredient
and remarketing them. What are your thoughts on that type of strategy? How might health and wellness
impact the sweet snacking industry?
Q: How would you grapple with a new allergy designation? The FDA says sesame is a new allergy. What are
your thoughts on things of that nature? Is it not taken seriously by big players in indulgence?
Q: How do you think consumers are striking a balance between indulgence and health?
Q: How is market share distributed across the sweet snacking industry? Would you say the majority of
market share goes to supermarket and grocery? There has been a large shift from convenience.
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Q: Could you talk about the fragmentation within convenience, given the higher margin profile? Do you
think this is an area where CPGs have lacked focus and penetration? What are the suppliers’ challenges of
expanding into convenience?
Q: How has the retailer-supplier relationship evolved over the years? Many CPGs are facing pressure from
retailers in the form of higher costs. How is sweet snacking coping with this trend?
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Q: Could you elaborate on brand affinity? How can large CPG companies maintain brand loyalty and what is
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the importance of brand affinity? What do consumers want in a brand?
Q: Which segment among candy, confections, cookies and sweet baked goods do you think has the highest
growth opportunity and why? What does innovation involve in that particular segment?
Q: What are the challenges of launching new products and getting them in front of customers, given the
intense retailer pressure?
Q: Could you talk about the fragmentation of US sweet snacking, given the intense capital investment
required? What are your thoughts on the M&A landscape and the threat or lack of insurgent brands?
Q: What is your outlook for the US sweet snacking industry? Where should investors focus? Is there
anything you think is overlooked?
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US Sweet Snacking Update – Indulgence Here to Stay
Transcription begins at 00:00:00 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview, entitled US Sweet Snacking Update – Indulgence Here to
Stay. I am Nyree Hinton, and I will be facilitating today’s Interview with Mr Chad Lusk, former SVP and CMO
at Hostess Brands Inc.
Chad, before we get started with today’s Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following statement:
You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such
information or any other information which is confidential during this Interview.
CL: I agree.
NH: Could you give the audience an overview of your background and the various roles you’ve held in the
industry?
CL: Three roles that are relevant to the topic at hand, here, first, on the retailer side. I was Chief Strategy
Officer for a multi-billion-dollar convenience store retail chain that was private equity owned, called, Mid-
Atlantic Convenience Stores, that was sold to Sunoco Brands. I was the Chief Strategy Officer and SVP of
marketing for our candy company, and I was the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for
Hostess Brands.
[00:01:21]
Q: Could you give an overview of the sweet snacking industry, including the top players and drivers and how it
compares to other snacking categories?
CL: Sweet snacking makes up roughly one-third of the broader USD 150m [sic] US snacking market. About
USD 50bn or so in total, made up of a number of sub-categories, but the three largest that really steer the ship
would be, first, the candy and confection space. Chocolate candy, roughly a USD 20bn or so category, non-
chocolate confection, about somewhere around USD 8bn to USD 10bn. Then, you have cookies, which are
about a USD 10-12bn category, and then you have sweet baked goods, so, snack cakes and whatnot, in about
USD 7bn-plus. It roughly makes up about USD 50bn or so. I think you said, who the top players in this space
are. If you look across each of those categories, the candy and confection business, there are a ton of sub-
brands that make it up, obviously. From a pure manufacturing standpoint, you have Hershey, Mars, Ferrara
Candy and then it starts to drop off from there, especially based in some of the M&A activity that has
transpired over the past couple of years, for instance, Nestlé USA selling their confection portfolio over
Ferrara, as an example. In the cookie space, by far, the leading manufacturer there would be Mondelez, of
course, with the Oreo brand and then the entire Nabisco portfolio as well, under that. Similarly, you have the
Kellogg’s cookie business that sold over to Ferrara Candy within the past couple of years as well. Then,
Campbell’s, based predominantly on the Pepperidge Farm Brand, would be the three largest manufacturers.
Then, in the sweet baked goods space, the three largest players there, from a brand standpoint, would be
Hostess, Little Debbie and Entenmann’s, Little Debbie, of course, being owned by owned by McKee Foods and
Entenmann’s by Bimbo Bakeries.
If I look at some of the predominant trends that have been existing there, and then of course COVID provides
a very different spin in terms of things that have been happening, but if I look at the growth in consumer
trends in the space prior to COVID, three things, really, come out of the as the most poignant, based on my
experience. The number one is that the majority of the growth is actually coming from smaller, I’ll call them,
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more insurgent-type brands. Those large manufacturers that I said, in each one of those sweet snacking sub-
categories, certainly make up the disproportionate amount of sales and shelf space at retail, but actually,
growth is happening more in the smaller brands, even more premium-type categories. Somewhere 3-5x the
growth rates of some of those large mainstream brands, for sure. I’m sure we’ll get into COVID effects and can
talk a little bit about what happened during COVID. That was certainly one of the things coming up. A number
of new entry brands taking a large amount of shelf space and sales. Second element is I guess what I could call
basket diversification. Continually seeing consumers look for more variety in their overall sweet snacking
basket, so looking for new flavours, more variety in terms of textural combination through a lot of the
innovation that went into the marketplace and really showing a desire to break out for new products and
experiment a little bit more with their food.
Third, is really a co-existence between health consciousness and indulgence. What we continue to see is that
snacking occasions continue to rise. More and more consumers are, again, this is pre-COVID, doing more
meal substitutions with snacking, sweet playing a large portion of that as well. At the same time, consumers
looking to also make healthier choices. If you look at the overall US diet, they actually find that as health and
wellness continues to grow at quite an accelerated clip, so does sweet and indulgence. We’re actually getting
this barbell effect of both growing at steady clips as people are looking to make healthier choices but also
looking for more reward and satisfaction in their days as well, in terms of being able to bring the, just, those
moments of joy, comfort, peace, stress relief or connection with others. Health and wellness has not come at
the expense of indulgence.
[00:07:31]
Q: Why are health and wellness and indulgence growing in comparison to other categories? Do people have
more occasions to snack? How is the increase in snacking impacting other categories such as breakfast?
CL: Definitively. The macro studies that I’ve seen in the past have shown that the number of snack occasions
during a day does increase, and so, what we’ve been seeing are meal substitutions, and that can come at any
occasion during the day. My hypothesis is, yes, it probably is more in the breakfast and lunch occasions
because that tends to be when people have, again, pre-COVID, historically, here, been the most on-the-go.
When schedules are tight, then people might be be reaching for snack-type items instead of having a
traditional breakfast or lunch, if you will. What’s happening there is that we are seeing a lot of entrants in that
space playing a healthier, better-for-you alternative, maybe relative to snacking. It might not be healthier or
better for you than a full-balanced breakfast, if you will, but if you’re running out the door or popping into a
convenience store on your way to work or something like that, that you want to be able to create the right
energy boost or whatever it is. I think in addition to just the number of snacking occasions increasing, there
has been more delineation around the actual need states and the eating occasions that consumers have had as
well. Sometimes, it really is you need physical satiety in order to be able to get you from meal to meal. Other
times, it’s more of an emotional lift. Sometimes consumers are definitively looking at healthy-type options and
then snacking can also be very social, as well.
The dynamics of each one of those need states and when consumers are in the moment, they’re looking for
different choices. As a result, there’s been some acceleration and momentum towards these occasions that
have been on each side of the barbell, so to speak, which is those moments of wanting to be emotionally
satisfied, which might go toward more indulgence and sweet, vs on the other side of the spectrum which is, “I
might be short on time. I’m looking for quick physical energy and a boost but want to put something in my
body that I feel okay about.”
[00:11:06]
Q: What structural impacts has coronavirus had on the industry?
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CL: The first thing will be the counter-point to the pre-COVID point that I made before on just brands and
what’s driving the growth. What some of the data has suggested is that while smaller brands were growing
faster than these larger brands pre-pandemic, one of the immediate things that happened right out of the gates
was that consumers were looking to spend less time in the store, and that shifted them toward buying larger
brands, which is really a proxy based on a couple of things. What was available in store, because the supply
chains of the larger brands were probably a little bit more secure, and even if they weren’t able to fulfil at
100%, so many shelf space options, that the prevalence of product on shelves just had higher availability, less
out-of-stocks. The other thing was that consumers were driven back to the brands they knew, the brands they
trusted, and as they were in-store, trying to limit their time from an overall safety and security standpoint
because of COVID, they were going back and purchasing the brands that they had the most familiarity with. As
a result, we saw a shift back to these larger mainstream incumbent brands taking the majority of the growth
back, which was an interesting kind of structural element, and it will be interesting post-COVID to see how
that plays out. The second thing was that there were definitively, so first in the brick-and-mortar side, channel
shifts. More stockpiling, fewer visits, less on the go, and that meant significant changes to the foot traffic of,
say, the convenience channel vs grocery and mass.
Convenience channel took a large decline in overall foot traffic as people were working from home or staying
home, looking to limit exposure. You had far fewer of the immediate-consumption-, impulsive-type decisions
within those channels vs more large-box formats, more grocery, more mass club-type elements. There was also
a major drive over to the value channel. Dollar stores saw large increases as customers were doing a little bit
more of a flight to value. Based just on the broader macroeconomic picture and issues there, definitively, saw a
large increase in the more value-based channels like dollar for people’s shopping needs. Then, obviously the
online piece, so, in sweet snacking in particular, the e-commerce growth trends, pre-COVID, were there, were
growing at a pretty decent rate but still represented a relatively small portion of total sales, maybe mid-single
digits or so. Obviously, COVID and the rise of online growth raised all tides. Online grocery, in general,
increased significantly over that period of time. I think the final number was something over 50% or so, in
terms of online US grocery sales in 2020. It also provided a sort of stickiness factor. It’s not that it changed
behaviour. It accelerated behaviour. You had a lot of new grocery e-commerce shoppers that hadn’t ever made
an online order for whatever reason, kind of did it the first time out of necessity and realised that they liked it
and would continue shopping online in the future in the future. Saw a stat recently that nearly 70% of new
grocery e-comm shoppers said they’d continue the future.
The other thing, in particular, on sweet snacking, which has really made a difference, is really the rise of these
last-mile providers. Instacart and DoorDash, but even more than that, the Gopuffs of the world and others that
are able to create last-mile delivery in much shorter windows than was historically prevalent in the past. If you
think around how e-commerce orders used to be fulfilled, in the past, maybe someone would go to Amazon to
go buy a candy bag or cookies or whatever. Maybe you get one- or two-day Prime delivery. You take it down to
Instacart, maybe you can schedule your delivery for some number of hours in the future. Instacart just
recently announced that they’re coming out with, now, 30-minute delivery windows. Gopuff is that or less,
down to even 15-minute windows. Anything in sweet snacking which can compress the overall lead time, from
the time that you have a craving to when it ends up in your mouth, is inherently good for a category that is
more immediate consumption, indulgent and more impulsive. That is where sweet snacking over-indexes, and
so that is going to serve the industry well.
[00:17:40]
Q: Could you elaborate on the health and wellness trend and what it really means to consume a healthy snack?
Some snacking companies like to label their products as “better for you” by reducing an ingredient and
remarketing them. What are your thoughts on that type of strategy? How might health and wellness impact
the sweet snacking industry?
CL: It depends on where you are in the journey and what you’re trying to accomplish in terms of my thoughts
on doing it. Ultimately, yes, if we can make our snacks healthier and better for people, those are no-regret
moves, which should absolutely happen. If a company thinks that changing out an ingredient or two is going to
lead to a significantly higher conversion rate for consumers, that’s when you have to really start looking at the
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logic of that. Ultimately, in the snacking space, consumers are still driven based on taste. There’s no doubt, it’s
a taste-first orientation. That said, what consumers have consistently, and I’ve done some independent
research on this but there’s publicly available research as well on this, which would indicate that what people
are really looking for and what their preferred better-for-you options would be, would be first, that things are
made with real ingredients. The opportunity to swap out artificial colours and flavours with real. To take, I
don’t know, if your product has fruit in, to have it made with actual, real fruit, or even real cocoa or real
vanilla, those kinds of things. Consumers are drawn to things that have legitimate, made with real ingredient
components. Secondly, it kind of follows the same line, but it’s really the absence of the bad stuff. It’s not
about putting stuff in necessarily that spikes the appeal but eliminating those bad ingredients from a
consumer stigma standpoint, like high-fructose corn syrup.
You see a lot more of that out in the market with products that are not made with high-fructose corn syrup.
Again, is it going to change purchase decisions? In my opinion, not particularly, but probably, just greater-
good stuff in order to be able to do. Ultimately, consumers are going to be driven based on taste. They can see
through. They’re smarter than perhaps we give them credit for, can see through some of the nominal-type
changes and, ultimately, these provide, perhaps, better halo effects to brands than on specific-type items. The
ones that really have the opportunity to win in this space are the new nascent brands who come onto the scene
with a better-for-you-type profile. It would be really hard, when I was at Hostess, to decide to come out with a
low-calorie Twinkie and have people decide to buy it at enough scale to matter because people become
accustomed to the taste. They become to the eating occasion. A Twinkie is a Twinkie, an Oreo is an Oreo, and
when people decide to do it, it’s for a particular reason. Companies that have come out, like the BelVitas of the
world and the Lenny and Larry’s, who come on with a specific value proposition around what they are trying to
accomplish in this space, those have been the ones who have grown. Those have been the ones who have been
able to carve out a really unique niche of great-tasting product that has that better-for-you halo. If you go
ingredient panel to ingredient panel, is it that significantly different? Maybe, maybe not. There’s a
fundamental brand proposition there that perception is king.
[00:22:31]
Q: How would you grapple with a new allergy designation? The FDA says sesame is a new allergy. What are
your thoughts on things of that nature? Is it not taken seriously by big players in indulgence?
CL: Allergens in particular, it’s tricky business because in the end, whether you are a non-allergen product or
an allergen product, the key is around transparency for the consumer, so that’s really tricky business. You can’t
try to hide behind aspects, and I fundamentally believe in terms of being very transparent around what is in or
not in the product, just because of the whole safety factor there. I’ve always subscribed to whether it’s
traditional, nut-based allergens or some of the new ones that have come out, that again, the decision making
around that is going to be a smaller portion of the population. You have to make your own fundamental
internal capital decision in terms of whether it is worth reaching a larger portion of the market in terms of
being able to have a non-allergen because of the hoops you have to jump through in terms of being able to get
that certification with everything from manufacturing, cleaning, to separate allergen rooms, depending on the
product, whatever you have to do. I don’t think it’s a mandate for CPG companies, in terms of being able to go
meet a particular allergen certification standard. There were going to be other options on the marketplace,
which you would effectively be directing your customers to. It really becomes an ROI-based decision on what
is the cost in terms of being able to make the non-allergen product. The absolute table stakes is making sure
that you have proper label transparency on your product so consumers know exactly what they are or are not
getting.
[00:25:05]
Q: How do you think consumers are striking a balance between indulgence and health?
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CL: I think, kind of what I was talking about before, there’s becoming more and more bifurcation in terms of
the actual eating occasion and a need state that a consumer is in. You are finding that the same consumer can
eat very indulgent in one moment and eat very healthy in another moment, because those snacks and those
occasions are serving completely different needs. So, for instance, you might be in this one moment at one of
the day where you are trying to create this, I’ll call it, “treat-me moment”, where it is, “I’m looking for this
temporary feeling of joy and satisfaction. I’m giving myself a reward, whatever it is. I’m looking to celebrate.”
You can reach for something very rich and indulgent at that moment, something fun, something you want to
savour. Then, two hours later, you can be looking for something that is maybe looking for more physical
restoration, to satisfy hunger, but you want to feel good about that choice, and you’re reaching for something
more light and nutritious, maybe protein-packed, maybe low calorie, depending on what you’re looking for
there, maybe more portion control, that is more of the better-for-you.
My point is that I don’t think consumers are on side of the spectrum or another. Like, “Hey, I’m a healthy
eater, I’m indulgent eater,” right? There are some like that, obviously. There are always consumer segments
that fit that, but I think that what we’re seeing, based on my view, is that we’re finding that consumers are
spanning across five or six different need states and eating occasions of which the may hit all five or six of
those in a single day. It’s the frequency of those need states which are creating the growth elements on both
health and indulgence.
[00:27:32]
Q: How is market share distributed across the sweet snacking industry? Would you say the majority of market
share goes to supermarket and grocery? There has been a large shift from convenience.
CL: It’s often hard to get down to specific percentages because different channels are tracked very differently
in syndicated data. For instance, convenience based on the large fragmentation based on the large
fragmentation in the industry in not tracked as well, so it’s a little bit harder to get down to specific numbers.
If I were to rank them and then give maybe order-of-magnitude-type percentages, so, grocery, I would say, is
the largest. It probably accounts for somewhere between 30% to 40% of total, obviously dominated by, from a
national perspective, Kroger and Safeway, Albertsons and then made up of a ton of regional grocers after that
in their own market territory. I’ll lump mass and club together. Walmart, Target, as well as Costco, Sam’s
Club, BJ’s, that probably makes up another, roughly, third of the market or so, between those. Obviously,
Walmart driving the ship there in terms of overall size. Then, third would be C-store, so, in the convenience
channel. I think that would even hold probably post-COVID trends. I did see a double-digit decline through
COVID. I think that’s going to really start to bounce back, and it already has to some extent, really, in H2 of
this year, as vaccination roll-outs and restrictions and everything like that are being lifted. C-store is probably,
what am I up to, 10-15% or so of total sales.
Typically, the highest margin, from a CPG perspective, so sweet snack companies selling into these channels,
C-store tends to be the most profitable channel. Then, after that, you have your dollar stores, you have your
drug, so Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid. Then, at this point, sweet snacking, because it’s doubled, it might be up
to 10% or so in terms of e-comm.
[00:30:57]
Q: Could you talk about the fragmentation within convenience, given the higher margin profile? Do you think
this is an area where CPGs have lacked focus and penetration? What are the suppliers’ challenges of expanding
into convenience?
CL: Let me clarify. My fragmentation point on the convenience channel is more from the actual retail chains
than it is the CPG brands that are in it. The convenience store chain in the US, there are about 150,000
convenience stores of which the vast majority of them are single-site operators. The largest chain, so, 7-Eleven,
I don’t think they’re up to 20,000 stores yet, but you just look at the largest player in a huge profitable market
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still has less than 15% of total, maybe 10% of total stores. Convenience store is a very difficult channel to reach
as a CPG provider, especially for larger, I shouldn’t say larger brands, but the ones that have a direct store
delivery business model. Meaning their employees, their trucks, driving to the stores, doing the delivery,
setting the shelves, much easier to accomplish in the Walmarts and the grocery stores of the world vs when
you’re trying to reach 150,000 independent stores, not that they’re all independent, but through much smaller
chains. A large chain and C-store can be 1,000 stores. The model to reach it is much harder, so that’s why,
typically, a lot of brands go through distributors in terms of being able to reach C-store. Depending on the size
of your brand and company, you might not have as many direct relationships with the actual C-store retailers,
or at the very least, not a direct delivery model.
The impact of that is that things like your in-store shelf presence can be very spotty. These are low labour,
meaning number of employees in the store. You may have one or two employees, depending on the size of the
store, covering the entire convenience store. You can imagine not a lot of time and attention to making sure
that my brand with its two or three facings is always in stock, well-ordered, good inventory position. Out-of-
stocks are often a big concern, as well as just the consistency of the planograms across these networks.
Because everything is so managed at the store-level, you might sell into, let’s say, a Circle K franchise with a
particular item, and you could have as low as 60%, maybe even lower, compliance across the network in terms
of which stores are actually carrying your items. It’s attractive, it’s just it’s a harder channel to ultimately serve.
[00:34:53]
Q: How has the retailer-supplier relationship evolved over the years? Many CPGs are facing pressure from
retailers in the form of higher costs. How is sweet snacking coping with this trend?
CL: I would say the nature of the relationship has gotten, certainly, more challenging, but I’ll call it more
sophisticated over time, to put a positive spin on it. It is harder and harder to justify the space allocation on
shelf and more and more retailers, so, for instance, Kroger, Walmart, they’ve always been there on the deep
analytics in terms of understanding their sales or profit per linear foot, sometimes per linear inch. More and
more retailers are developing that analytical sophistication in terms of justifying shelf space. It really comes
down to how is your product turning. How many units, how many dollars are you flowing through each day,
week, month, measurement period? What kind of margin are you delivering to the retailer? That’s where a lot
of the cost pressure comes in as well. Retailers, in my experience, dealing with these guys, have been pushing
really hard around cost improvement, increasing the retailer margin and pushing back on price increases for
anything other than measurable commodity-based increases. Show me the price of sugar, show me the price of
cocoa, show me the price of corn syrup, and it’s very formulaic to then driving that down to that justifies this X
percent price increase based on how commodities have moved. The fact of the matter is that CPGs continue to
invest more in their business, as they should, whether it’s against innovation, whether it’s against marketing,
whether it’s against sustainability.
Better-for-you ingredients cost more. These kinds of cost pressures have been largely rebuffed by retailers as
justifiable price increase territory. Everyone’s margins are tight here, and so that’s a big focus. The last piece
which I really think has been coming to light more and more over the past couple of years, is, again, proving
the value of an item on the shelf relative to other items on the shelf. What I mean by that is not just what are
you going to sell, what’s the margin on it, but how incremental is it to the rest of my merchandising portfolio if
I’m a retailer. What I have been seeing a lot and what retailers have, and the conversations that I’ve heard, are
looking to actually compress the number of similar like items that they have on shelf. They may have four
different brands of a chocolate cupcake. Get that down to one, maybe two, allowing for some regional
flexibility, but getting more items on shelf from CPGs that provide different eating occasions, different pack
types, different case profiles, things that will drive more incremental consumers to the set, so that, basically, at
the end of the day, they’re maximising the total gross-profit dollar contribution from their set.
It is more complicated. It is more challenging. There is no set-it and forget-it. “Hey, here’s our items. Here’s
our promotional cadence and pricing for the year and just let them ride.” It is a continual competition to earn
and justify that space, but, like I said, that’s based on a higher level of analytical precision and sophistication,
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which, at the end of the day, is and should be consumer-driven.
NH: How does that play into the fact that CPGs have pushed back against some of that retailer pressure, given
that retailers are reducing SKUs for certain products but also pushing their own private labels?
CL: Private label is a tricky one. To over-generalise, and then we can dive in, I don’t see private label
infringing too much on the sweet snacking space, certainly as much as some other categories, for a couple of
different reasons. The taste profile, and this is a heavily taste-dominated category. The taste profile is often not
there. For a lot of reasons, that’s either because the companies that are making this private label product don’t
have access to, or in some cases they are the same companies making the branded products. They’re giving
lower formulas to the retailers for their private label products in order to avoid the direct head-to-head
competition. There’s just a taste profile that’s not there. This is a heavily emotional category. People, brand
really matters in this space. We talked about that a little bit earlier in the context of COVID in terms of trust
and reliance. Also, when it’s sweet snacking, consumers will, they believe their snacking choices express
something about themselves and the personality, the brands, match the personality of the individual. I saw
this a lot in both my confection and sweet baked goods experience. So, obviously, you don’t get that from a
private label. Also, there’s some research that I’ve been privy to din the past which actually shows that there is
not as high of a cross-shopping element of brand to private label in some of these sweet categories.
It’s not like, “Hey, I’m looking to buy this bag of,” I don’t know, pick something, “gummy bears. I’m looking at
this brand. I’m looking at this private label, typically not sitting side-by-side with each other. The price
comparisons are not top-of-mind.” Consumers are typically bifurcated in terms of whether they go reach for it
or not. From a CPG standpoint, it’s always concerning if retailers are pushing and going down the private label
path, just because it’s hard to know, ultimately, what they will do from a merchandising standpoint, more than
anything else, but generally hasn’t infringed too much so far in the space. In fact, I think the latest numbers
that I looked at at private label were that it was actually contracting in some of some of these categories.
[00:43:20]
Q: Could you elaborate on brand affinity? How can large CPG companies maintain brand loyalty and what is
the importance of brand affinity? What do consumers want in a brand?
CL: It can vary so wildly. I would say there’s not any one single thing, but the key to developing and
maintaining that consumer brand loyalty is just really understanding what consumer market segments you
want and are after and just maniacally go after them. Mass appeal can kind of go from there. Ultimately, the
brands that I have seen succeed over time, and whether that’s new brands coming onto the scene, so take an
example like Lenny and Larry’s in the cookie space. They had a core segment of consumers and everything was
oriented towards them. It was for consumers who wanted to indulge but with a better panel, particularly in
comparison, not with other cookies, but against protein bars. That was actually their thing, is that for people
who are tired of the same old energy bar. They developed a great-tasting cookie that was high in protein, low
in sugar. They understood this value, the value that the customer segment is going after and focused on it and
always spoke through that lens, or take my own personal example of Hostess. Hostess has been around for 100
years and there is a deep emotional connection that people have to the brand, very often stemming out of
nostalgia and childhood-like experiences.
Consumers there are looking for something that is unique, perhaps a little quirky, whether it’s in the products
or the names or just overall brand campaign itself, and expressing a degree of individualism through the
product because they want to express individualism in themselves. There are tons of different examples across
all of sweet snacking that do that, from the uber-serious to the completely irreverent. There’s space for all of
these types of brands. It’s just about understanding what the brand identity is, what consumer segment or
segments it resonates with. Then, like I said, being maniacally focused against that and not straying. It’s the
brands that try to be all things to all consumers that lose their way a little bit.
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[00:46:58]
Q: Which segment among candy, confections, cookies and sweet baked goods do you think has the highest
growth opportunity and why? What does innovation involve in that particular segment?
CL: Let me see what I have the ability to talk to here. I could probably go across all three segments. I’ll start
with sweet baked goods. One of the areas that is a big white space opportunity there from an innovation
standpoint is textural variety. If you look at the predominant sweet baked goods set, it is either fairly
traditional breakfast-oriented-type items, like doughnuts and honey buns and very doughy, fried-type things,
to more of then your snacking profile, which is a lot of cakes and creams, so, cream-filled, cream-topped,
whatever, cake-type items. The lines can blur a little bit across these categories, or at least they should, where,
for instance, starting to see wafer-oriented products show up in the sweet baked good aisle, or, and I’ll extend
this to candy as well because there are opportunities here. For instance, Ferrara just came out with a product
recently called, it’s like a Nerds Gummy Clusters or something. It combines a crunchy exterior of a traditional
Nerds-based small candy item on a little gummy bite. That is one of the things that I actually think across all
three categories, now that I say it, that there’s great opportunity there from an innovation standpoint to have
these kinds of multi-textural, multi-flavour, what consumers, it goes a little bit to my diversification point at
the very beginning. Any time, in this space, where you can get a, “Wow, I didn’t expect that,” or the industry
term, call it mouth confusion, where it’s sort of like, “Oh, in one bite I’m getting this, but then it’s followed by
this.” Those are the white-space opportunities in these categories from an innovation standpoint.
[00:49:55]
Q: What are the challenges of launching new products and getting them in front of customers, given the
intense retailer pressure?
CL: It is challenging. You have to be willing to make the bet, and so that can come in a number of forms.
Retailers will very often charge what’s called a slotting fee, which is basically paying for the privilege to put a
new item on shelf and what that means in terms of having all of their systems adjusted and everything there,
creating space for it. Inherently, that is an up-front investment cost, depending on the retailer. Kroger is
notorious for it, pay not as much in convenience stores. That’s why some brands like, actually, to launch in
that channel. Then, also depending on what the merchandising situation is and what space retailers are willing
to give, they may come back with a, “Sure, we can get this one in. Which one of your items do you want out? I
can’t allocate any more space to your brand, overall, but I’m happy to put in this product.” That goes back to
understanding and having belief in the sales margin and incrementality in terms of, “Alright. Am I better with
this item on the shelf vs what comes off?” A one in, one out. Those kinds of scenarios are challenging as well.
How are you going to price it? How are you going to promote it? Are you going to go deeper discounts in terms
of being able to drive trial? Are you going to be able to secure any kind of secondary display at retail, whether
that’s an end cap or some other merchandising corrugate display or something like that, which, very often, you
have to pay for as well?
Then, there is the whole, how do I drive awareness to the actual consumer? Depending on the nature and size
of your overall budgets, are you adding to your overall marketing spend or are you pulling away for other
priorities, other brand building or other items in terms of driving that item? How are you deciding to do that?
Are you doing that through more shopper-marketing-type things which are digitally oriented, digital coupons,
things like that? Are you doing it with brand campaigns? How big are you going with it? You’ve got to get the
trial and repeat up. It’s an expensive venture to launch new products, which is just why the pressure on CPG
needs to be more thoughtful in terms of how and where they allocate everything from their R&D dollars, up
front, to the support mechanisms on the back end. It’s a competitive game out there.
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[00:53:19]
Q: Could you talk about the fragmentation of US sweet snacking, given the intense capital investment
required? What are your thoughts on the M&A landscape and the threat or lack of insurgent brands?
CL: I would say from a numbers standpoint, these industries actually appear relatively concentrated. If you
add up the share of the top couple of providers, I think the top 25 brands or so across both chocolate and
cookies make up about 75% of the market or something like that, but they’re large enough that there is still
space within it. The macro numbers might look concentrated, but there are 25 brands or so in the chocolate
candy space between USD 50m and USD 250m in sales. There are opportunities for insurgent brands to insert
and grow and become pretty meaningful-scale businesses. I think what you are seeing is exactly as you laid
out, where the larger CPG brands which are maybe having more challenges getting their own personal profile
to grow, are looking at the upstart folks who developed strength and good sales within their consumer
segment and whatever channel they launched, buy them, provide access, then, to their marketing and
advertising engine and their distribution network to be able to then drive even more outsize growth. Hershey
has done that a number of occasions. Mondelez has done that on a number of occasions. A lot of the role
model brands that I would probably point to in terms of, “Yes, look at how they’ve entered the category,
developed and a niche and grown significantly,” were aided, ultimately bought and driven probably by one of
the top two or three manufacturers in each of these spaces.
I don’t know, one way or another, whether the ROI on that is panning out vs developing oneself. It is becoming
a very hot M&A category, and valuations move accordingly, in terms of basically buying your innovation based
on products in the market. The consolidation continues, and I think it will continue. Since the insurgent
brands, pre-COVID, were driving the growth, I personally expect that as shopping behaviours go back, I
shouldn’t say shopping behaviours, but as COVID reaches a degree of stability in the country. We will return to
insurgent brands driving the growth and then, therefore, as a result, the largest CPG is continuing to acquire
them.
[00:57:10]
Q: What is your outlook for the US sweet snacking industry? Where should investors focus? Is there anything
you think is overlooked?
CL: Outlook and where people should spend their time. Ultimately, the brands that are going to continue to
do well. I think, overall, the category is going to continue to do well. I think we will actually find that for what
has historically been a kind of low, stable, generally recession-proof growth profile, so you’re talking candy,
cookies, sweet baked, they’re all 2-2.5%-growth industries over time. I actually think we’ll find that those
growth rates will be a notch higher in the coming years and probably as early as, things have been all kinds of
aided in the past 12-18 months, but I think actually H2 of this year is going to be a strong growth profile. I
think we’re going to see things normalise a little bit more in terms of channels, so more reliance or traffic
being driven back through the convenience channels. That might be largely incremental, too, as people have
established their shopping patterns and now are hitting the road more. The nice thing about convenience and
its immediacy is that it can be largely incremental. I think that’s a great prospect for the industry. I think we’re
going to continue to see this growth and the bifurcation of both health and wellness and in the indulgence side.
I wouldn’t, as an investor, shy away from either one.
Looking in places that brands know their proposition, know their consumer segment and understand the
target but have a great fit against that product. Distinctive qualities that provide reasons for consumers to
switch or to start trying them. That can be functionally oriented, that can be case-oriented, that can be some of
the things that we talked about just in terms of form and variety and stuff like that. Ultimately, who are they
competing with and why are they better? Those are the brands that will ultimately win and have the
operational and marketing backdrop in terms of being able to support the products over time.
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[01:00:19]
NH: Let me close by saying thank you, Chad, for your input. Clients, if you would like to speak to Chad in a
private call or meeting, please let your relationship manager know. Thank you again for joining Third Bridge
Forum's Interview today, this now concludes our meeting. Goodbye.
Transcription ends at 01:00:27 of the recorded material
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