Stellar Snacks Surge: Emerging Pretzel Brand Plots Second Production Facility

Nevada-based Stellar Snacks is heading East.

The pretzel brand and manufacturer announced this week it is readying a new 434,000 sq. ft. manufacturing space in West Louisville, Kentucky in order to meet growing pretzel production demands, bring better quality manufacturing jobs to the region and streamline logistics for its East Coast business.

“Shipping has been a brutal piece of [our East Coast] business and it’s just very common sense that moving that way would be better,” said Gina Galvin, co-founder of Stellar Snacks. “But Kentucky also has this nifty thing where you’re actually within a day’s drive of [about] 65% of the U.S. population from Louisville.”

With manufacturing currently based solely at Stellar’s Carson City, Nevada facility, a second hub will unlock both operational and logistical efficiencies to support the business as it continues to scale, Galvin said. The company will begin the build out process in March and aims to be baking by early September.

While Stellar’s Nevada plant also roasts nuts for private label and other contract manufacturing partners, the new facility will focus solely on pretzel production.

Founded by mother-daughter duo Elisabeth and Gina Galvin in 2019, Stellar sells a four SKU line of vegan and non-GMO braided pretzel sticks in Simply Stellar, Maui Monk, Bold & Herby and Sweet & Sparky flavors. The products are available in over 6,000 doors nationwide including Sprouts, Whole Foods (Florida region), Bristol Farms and Central Market, among others, and come in a range of sizes from 1.5 oz. single-serves (SRP: $1.49) to 16 oz. bags ($7.99).

In addition to the new facility’s advantageous geographic location, its physical blueprint – shaped like a shotgun-style house, Galvin noted – will also drive increased efficiencies in the production process.

The new facility can accommodate rows of equipment that can be moved and modified as needed, Galvin explained, which is essential to scale Stellar’s “bake-in-line” system. That process essentially means that pretzels go right from ovens to the seasoning stage and eliminates the need for product to be carted around on totes, which brings the risk of stale pretzels and a lower quality end product.

“Our current facility is an L shape for reference – we’re able to season in line [right now] but we wouldn’t be able to continue to expand into more ovens because of the shape,” Galvin explained. “This narrow, but long shape is going to be really advantageous and also create efficiencies for our flow and for our team.”

Stellar estimates it will invest over $137 million during a ten year span to bring the facility to maximum productivity – that figure includes facility lease costs, employee salaries, equipment, among other metrics. The company raised private funds prior to its launch and when asked about whether the company brought in new investment for the project Gina said, they have a group of ongoing private investors backing the company.

The new production plant is expected to bring 350 jobs to West Louisville over the next decade and Stellar aims to have a team of 290 employees within five-years. Gina Galvin noted that the company has committed to an average wage of $30.20 per hour for its factory workers, including benefits – nearly double the $17.06 average hourly wage for all U.S. production workers.

How Can An Emerging Brand Manage This Growth?

Manufacturing has been Stellar bread and butter long before the brand took shape. Co-founder Elisabeth Galvin has owned and operated Delyse Inc, a healthy snack manufacturing and distribution business, since 1992. Originally, Delyse produced airline snack packs, private label snack products and distributed a range of items including Belgian Boys’ stroopwafel and Hardbite vegetable chips.

But Delyse’s core business was white label snack packs – typically a combination of nuts and pretzels – and sourced its pretzel ingredients from Treehouse Foods’ Visalia, Calif.-based plant. When Treehouse shuttered that facility in 2018, Delyse was left at a crossroads and Galvin said there were no other West Coast-based pretzel manufacturers to buy from.

“It was completely whitespace,” Gina Galvin explained. “We could get pretzels from the East Coast shipped to us and repack them into our nut mixes and airline snack goodies. But my mom… [didn’t] think [she could] keep prices competitive… she [felt] completely at the mercy of her pretzel manufacturer.”

Elisabeth Galvin recognized this as an opportunity to start a new venture and began to wind down Delyse’s Reno, Nevada-based manufacturing and reposition the business’ solely on distribution, explained Gina Galvin. From there, Elisabeth Galvin enlisted Bill Eggers, an engineer at Syntegon (formerly Bosch Packaging Technology) to plan the pretzel production process, applied for a Small Business Administration (SBA) loan, and raised an undisclosed sum of private funding to open its current facility in Carson City. Eggers now serves as Stellar’s EVP of operations.

Stellar Snacks’ began manufacturing in 2019; it started by producing pretzels for external partners and supplied Feeding America programs during the pandemic. The brand launched in its current form in 2021 and the company has since focused on building brand awareness and distribution footprint in the natural and specialty channels in addition to CVS Health Hubs, where it is on-shelf in 1,700 locations nationwide.

“One of the benefits of being a manufacturer is we can use our extra capacity to buy the brand time to grow with discipline and to grow according to a strategy,” explained Aidan McAuley, Stellar Snacks’ Director of Sales. “We really are focused on finding our tribe in [our existing] retail outlets and growing our velocities… we have time to grow smartly and with discipline, and really let our brand be pulled into conventional retailers in time.”

What’s Next For Stellar Snacks?

The company is targeting over 300% retail dollar sales growth next year in grocery alone, McAuley said. Over the past 52-weeks, Stellar’s sales have grown 162%, according to recent SPINS data; in the Natural Enhanced category, Stellar’s dollar sales velocity recently surpassed that of Frito-Lay’s flagship Rold Gold pretzels.

In December, Stellar will expand to select Hy-Vee stores and McAuley said in 2024, the brand will shift its sales strategy focus to begin looking toward on-premise foodservice, including college/university campuses, the K-12 market and hospitality sector, and convenience accounts. That means by the time the second facility is expected to come online, Stellar should have an ample pretzel supply to service new distribution partners.

“There’s opportunities and there’s blessings that come from us having such large scale to unlock things for our brand,” said Galvin. “However, the time, the effort, the things that just go wrong here and there.. [make it] hard on the entire team to recuperate. I wouldn’t say that my message in a bottle to emerging brands is to do it in the order that we have [but] I definitely think it’s something that makes us incredibly special and unique.”

Note: This article has been updated to reflect the company’s investment history and financing for the new facility.