Laoban, Whole Foods Innovate ‘Crunchy Bites’ For Incremental Category Growth

Asian frozen food brand Laoban is readying to launch its third line next week, known as Crunchy Bites, just four years after it first expanded beyond restaurants into retail. New innovations were innovated with insights from Whole Foods and include Scallion Pancakes, Crab Rangoons and, in August, Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken.

The new products bring the Washington, D.C.-based brand’s total SKU count to 11, spanning potstickers dumplings, soup dumplings and bao buns, the latter of which was also innovated alongside the brand’s Whole Foods buyers, according to CEO Patrick Coyne. As the frozen food category has worked to shed its heavily-processed and artificially-preserved perception, Coyne believes Whole Foods is helping lead the charge.

“They’re really keyed in on – and it’s something we tend to be aligned with – growing the category [and] bringing new people into frozen food who weren’t necessarily buying it before,” Coyne said. “The [bao] buns have been a great example of that – it’s not cannibalizing something else from the existing frozen set. It’s just adding purely incremental households and [options] into the frozen category.”

Coyne and the retailer reapplied that same lens as it looked to decide on what new innovations to bring to market. The guiding mindset has remained rooted in cleaning up popular product types that may be available in lower-quality iterations outside of the natural channel. Coyne said Laoban has “unintentionally taken products that have done well at Trader Joe’s and then done them a lot better our own way.”

Curating ‘Crunchy Bites’

The new line will debut exclusively at Whole Foods for two months and later expand to a handful of other retail partners, Coyne said. The Scallion Pancakes will retail for $6.99, while the Crab Rangoon will be on shelf for $7.99 and the Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken for $8.99.

While Coyne said vegetarian options typically tend to the slowest movers, the new Scallion Pancake has been the quickest among the new line to win over accounts beyond the natural grocer: “Anything naturally veg, like scallion pancakes, tends to hold its own because there isn’t an animal protein to cannibalize it,” he said.

Laoban’s 11-SKU assortment is now available across more than 8,000 doors nationwide. According to the company, sales have tripled over the past two years and the team expects to double sales in 2025 alone. Per SPINS data cited by Coyne, two out of three of the brand’s bao bun SKUs are in the top-five performing products across the frozen snacks and appetizers category.

With Whole Foods’ strict ingredient standards and natural preference for clean label items, Coyne emphasized that having the grocer’s insight anchoring the brand’s innovation strategy has also given it a leg up once those products eventually expand beyond the natural set. The brand tries to keep its ingredient decks around a maximum of five inputs, Coyne said, adding an extra challenge to adapting restaurant recipes for retail-ready frozen rollouts. That execution primarily comes down to the production partner, however, Coyne said.

“We’re not adding a bunch of weird chemicals or stabilizers or whatever a lot of [other] frozen food has,” Coyne said. “We want to stick to the same recipes that we use [in the restaurants], and try to just adapt the process to scale. We do a lot of legwork up front to find the right partner who’s on board with that way we do things because there’s a lot of places that aren’t.”

Convenience has also become a key consideration with its new innovations. Unlike its original dumpling product, which requires a pan and or steamer to prepare, the bao buns come individually-packed in vented film for “dishes-free preparation,” Coyne said. All of the brand’s newer products are “air fryer-friendly,” he added, and Whole Foods suggested that preparation method be called out on the front-of-pack.

“Everyone’s using air fryers now – it’s not a passing fad. People are incorporating air fryers into their routine…so we are meeting people where they are [in terms of] accessibility, approachability and convenience.”

Growing Outside Natural

The brand’s approach to innovation is resonating well beyond the natural channel. This month, Laoban will expand its soup dumplings, including Pork and Beef Pho varieties, as well as its Pork bao bun to Bay Area Costco stores; the Beef Pho item was innovated specifically for the club retailer in 2024. The brand is also rolling out additional SKUs to Costco stores in the Northeast; Coyne said it will be adding two or three new regions this year as it continues to test and refine its assortment.

But Laoban has growth ambitions spanning all classes of trade. In August, it rolled out to 1,000 Walmart stores, followed by Kroger in September and Target in October. The brand has plenty of room to grow both its assortment and door count within those accounts, Coyne said, and it has already received a vote of confidence from Target, which expanded the brand’s reach from an initial 200 stores to over 2,000 and brought on a second bao bun SKU.

As it has moved beyond the natural channel, Laoban has tweaked its pack size and price strategy in order to drive trial, such as shifting its typical dumpling pack from an 8 oz. to a 6.4 oz. format for Walmart, enabling it to sit on shelf at a “lower overall dollar amount… it’s an easier hurdle,” Coyne emphasized.

The brand intends to continue learning and refining the approach per retailer and “saturating” the accounts it is already on shelf at during the year ahead. Later this year, Laoban will also debut a new item created in collaboration with another emerging brand, marking a first in its innovation strategy.

“It’s really about making sure everything’s dialed in, it’s the right assortment, the right price point, the right promotion,” Coyne said. “The plan this year is continuing to refine execution in each channel and per retailer rather than continuing to add new retail accounts.”