Big brands busy driving snacking growth

With sales already heavily inflated during lockdown, the remainder of the summer offers great opportunities to grow crisps and snack sales, and there’s plenty going on to get consumers excited about.

With convenience retailing enjoying arguably the longest purple patch in living memory, albeit driven by a national crisis, the remainder of this summer offers huge opportunities for retailers to further grow their sales and profits in the vital crisps and snacks category. The major manufacturers have all been busy ensuring retailers have plenty of news to share with their shoppers so everything is in place for a bumper couple of months.

Bagged snacks remain a big driver of growth within convenience, playing a key role in driving footfall. The CSN (crisps, snacks and nuts) category is worth an enormous £3.3bn [Nielsen, Jun 2020].

One of the key players in the category is KP Snacks, which has delivered £142m of growth to the category in the last five years: almost one-third of overall category growth and the biggest growth contribution of any single supplier [Nielsen 2014-2019]. In 2019 the company delivered £50m of the  category’s £96m growth. The KP Snacks portfolio is currently growing in value at +5.9%, ahead of the overall category at +3% [Nielsen, Jun 2020].

Matt Collins, Trading Director at KP Snacks, says: “In recent months there has been a marked increase in savoury snacking occasions, with CSN being the fastest growing snack and showing up in 70% more convenience baskets during lockdown [Kantar, 2020]. Using the strength of our brand portfolio, and our ‘Local Legends’ campaign, we hope to help our retail partners adjust to new norms, reward them for their resilience and help them retain the new shoppers that they have won and bigger baskets that have been gained.

“We are really proud of how our industry has responded to this crisis and in this era of uncertainty, our partnership approach is more important than ever.”

The Local Legends campaign Collins refers to is a fantastic initiative that is set to both reward retail heroes of the pandemic as well as help grow the category further.

It sees KP snacks offer a significant retailer incentive programme to recognise partners as ‘Local Legends’ themselves, by providing 40 separate prizes worth £1,000 each. Winners will each receive £250 worth of KP Snacks product, £250 of Love2Shop vouchers for staff and a £500 donation on their behalf to a registered charity of their choice.

To enter, retailers simply need to purchase KP Snacks’ ‘Super Seven’ singles range of McCoy’s, Hula Hoops, Butterkist, KP Nuts, Skips, Space Raiders and Nik Naks via select wholesalers and distributors to be entered into a free prize draw. The prize draw will run throughout August to October with specific dates for participating customers.

As part of the campaign, KP Snacks is raising awareness of GroceryAid and the support available to wholesale and convenience retailers at a time when they need it most. The KP-sponsored trade advertising and customer communications plan looks to help link retailers and their staff with the emotional and financial support available to them via the retail industry charity.

Commenting on the partnership, GroceryAid President Charles Wilson said: “We at GroceryAid are delighted to partner with KP Snacks to support our key workers who in turn are so wonderfully supporting their communities.”

Collins adds: “At KP Snacks we stand firmly together with our trade partners in what has been an extremely challenging time. We want to do our bit to support this vital community both commercially and emotionally. Our job now is to help our customers to continue to thrive and prosper in the category through these ever-changing times.”

As part of the campaign, KP also intends to help the beleaguered hospitality sector through a new on-pack promo that will see 5p donated to charity for every promo pack of Tyrrells crisps sold.

One million limited edition packs have been produced and KP has committed to donating £50,000 to the Licensed Trade Charity to help pubs, bar and brewery staff at a very difficult time for the hospitality industry.

The nationwide initiative will run from 31 August to the end of November, while stocks last, across three of the most popular Tyrrells 40g singles format flavours: Lightly Sea Salted, Mature Cheddar & Chive and Sea Salt & Cider Vinegar.

Meanwhile, fellow snacking giant PepsiCo has unveiled its biggest ever summer campaign to encourage shoppers to upgrade their staycations to YAYcations. For the first time in a lifetime, families across the nation may be deprived of a summer holiday, so PepsiCo has decided to do something about that with the new campaign.

It will run until the end of August and aims to inspire people to find creative ways to make every moment of enjoyment count. The campaign is featured on PepsiCo £1 price-marked packs and the company is partnering with Bestway to run a national promotion across 60 depots giving retailers the chance to win a Ford Transit Courier Leader 1.5L van, plus some great runner-up items, all part of a prize pool worth £20,000. Retailers simply need to purchase one case from the company’s Hero20 line-up [see panel] to be automatically entered into the prize draw.

With so much great activity going on, there’s plenty for retailers and customers to get excited about over the next few months.