Shape Shifting: How Clio Is Bulking Up The Fresh Snack Set

The fresh set is growing at retail, and Clio Snacks is aiming for placement at the forefront.

After retooling and realigning its product formats to better support an omnichannel growth strategy over the past four years, the refrigerated Greek yogurt snack bar maker is set to double its business over the next 18 months as it goes deep on an omnichannel approach that now spans 28,000 doors across grocery, club, mass, c-stores, foodservice and online.

Former Sabra sales EVP John McGuckin joined Clio as CEO back in 2021, and at the time, the product was sold in single units, retailing for between $1.19 to $1.69 in grocery stores. He quickly reassessed that approach, moving the full-size 1.76 oz. bars to a 4-pack format and 8-count boxes of 0.78 oz. minis for grocery which are priced between $4.99 to $6.99, depending on the outlet.

“The [minis and full-sized] are merchandised together, they’re promoted together and it just took off,” he said. “We ended up seeing that our unit takeaway was almost the same with the $5.99 ring, as it was with a $1.59 ring. It really saved us to a certain degree, all at the same time, getting the brand out there in a broader array.”

Once it began gaining in grocery, McGuckin began eyeing other opportunities like foodservice. He brought on Scott Thewes, Sabra’s former director of foodservice sales, who “knew where all of the bodies were buried,” McGuckin joked. Soon after Clio was onboarding with Dot Foods, as well as other integral distributors like Aramark and Compass.

Unlocking New Arenas

Those distributor relationships unlocked the college and university channel where the brand is now available on about 250 campuses across the country. The team then took that sales dataset to unlock other segments, such as airports where it is now sold at Hudson News stands around the U.S.

Clio is also going deep in the convenience channel with partnerships at Sheetz, Wawa, QuikTrip and, as of earlier this month, 7-Eleven stores nationwide. McGuckin said since the beginning of the year, Clio’s velocities have ticked up 20% across the board. “It’s like we’re throwing away the three-speed bikes and jumping on ten-speeds… we’ve hit a new gear.”

By 2026, McGuckin estimates that about 16% of Clio’s business will be driven by away-from-home consumption channels. The brand has seen strong success in mass and club, at Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club and BJs. It recently expanded internationally for the first time via all Walmart stores across Canada and into Sam’s Club locations throughout Mexico.

Clio’s current growth trajectory is similar to what McGuckin experienced at Sabra between 2006 and 2013, he said; during that time the hummus business grew from $15 million in annual sales to over $500 million. Growth back then, as it is now, was only possible due to the respective companies’ “passionate and experienced” teams, McGuckin emphasized.

“I don’t think success comes without making sure that you have that speed to trust in order to get that flywheel turning properly,” McGuckin said. “I’m so grateful for that and I’ve learned that without it, it’s a very difficult proposition to make something happen.”

Merchandising A Category Into Creation

Now, Clio is working to build momentum for the refrigerated snack set in retail at large. While Perfect Bar began establishing the fresh set for bars back in 2005, it has only recently begun to gain traction with a handful of new category entrants all aiming to bring a fresh focus to grab-and-go offerings.

“Our goal really now has been, from a merchandising standpoint, how do you create this category in the store that becomes a destination for consumers,” McGuckin said. “Initially, Clio [would] get one or two items in distribution [back about] four years ago, and they’d throw it in the yogurt set and hope something might happen.”

Upstart bars like Mid-Day Squares, Mooski and MUSH have each tackled the challenge of merchandising in unique ways with the former originally going after placement near fresh cut fruits. McGuckin believes that if these brands can collectively establish a fresh snack set across grocery channels, the addition will bring incremental sales to retailers.

“What we’re seeing now is customers are recognizing the advent of this refrigerated snack food [space] that has this permissibly indulgent license to it, and we’re beginning to see retailers shape a destination category for refrigerated snacks, sort of in between yogurt and dessert,” he added.

Clio has the added benefit of playing between numerous popular categories, McGuckin emphasized, including ambient bars (roughly $8 billion annual market share), refrigerated desserts (about $1.5 billion) and yogurt (about $10 billion): “We are right in the smack in the middle of these wonderful categories that we can draw from.”

However, before Clio could get serious about creating that destination at retail, it had to shore up its own business. About three years ago the brand introduced a Parfait line that included granola pieces inside the bars. That product was produced by a co-packer – and was the only product Clio sold not made in its 80,000 sq. ft facility in Piscataway, N.J. – but was eventually discontinued because Clio no longer felt comfortable outsourcing production.

The Piscataway facility is currently operating at about 52% capacity and produced nearly 90 million bars in 2024. McGuckin said the company has moved up plans to propose an expansion to its board due to its rapidly accelerating distribution footprint. While it has plenty of physical space, the company will likely have to add another production line to support its growth over the next three to four years.

Building Around ‘On-Trend’ Elements

Clio’s growth is coming from all channels, and it has recently utilized a handful of tools to help jumpstart that momentum. The brand recently concluded a “very aggressive” brand awareness program with HelloFresh where it shipped about 500,000 bars to the meal kit company’s users with bars arriving in the box alongside their weekly orders.

The brand is also gearing up to relaunch its direct-to-consumer site next month, shifting from an approach that had “no connection to whether or not we made any money doing it,” to a more refined program built around bulk, pre-planned purchases, McGuckin explained. He said the new ordering format takes Clio’s costs into consideration and ensures these orders are “at least a break-even proposition.”

Although spring is just rolling in, Clio already has its eye on the fall season when it plans to reintroduce a Pumpkin flavored SKU to retail endcap programs. McGuckin expects this year’s Pumpkin selling season to generate “10 times” the value as it did the past two years because consumers have become more familiar with the brand.

“What happened after the [seasonal] endcap program [in Whole Foods] was over is that our base business jumped,” he said about last year’s fall LTO. “I don’t look at these seasonal programs in a box…when I measure that result, it can’t just be a one to one on how much did the display cost and how much did we sell. I have to be able to see the base volume of the brand afterward to truly measure the return on investment.”

Currently, the brand’s top performers are Strawberry and Vanilla, followed by Salted Caramel,which was launched last year. In addition to LTOs, Clio will introduce a new Cookies and Cream flavor that includes actual cookie pieces inside the bar – its first foray back into crunchy inclusions since the discontinuation of the Parfait line. As it thinks about future innovation, McGuckin said it is thinking about a kids line and other avenues to get this on-trend snack out to the masses.

“Today’s consumer is looking for probiotics… But they’re also looking for something that [is] more portable on-the-go,” he said. “Anyone looking at scan data can see that snacking in general is just exploding. We have this product that has high protein levels, it’s probiotic, it’s grab-and-go so it hits all of those [on-trend] elements.”