Chocolate Fix: Little Secrets to Expand Offerings
Confection brand Little Secrets is ready to give consumers their chocolate fix — while also fixing conventional candy offerings. The brand launches today a line of Cookie Bars (a Twix Bar alternative), a new almond butter flavor of its Crispy Wafers (which are similar to Kit Kats) and multipack bags of mini Crispy Wafers.
The brand started in 2014 with a line of Chocolate Pieces (similar to M&Ms) but really began to gain traction — and double sales — when it launched the Crispy Wafers line last spring. That success, and retailer Whole Foods Market’s support, encouraged the brand to launch new SKUs this year, and enter a new subcategory.
According to founder Chris Mears the confection shopper craves novelty and variation. The Cookie Bars allow the brand to reach new shoppers while mini Crispy Wafers will help it target a new usage occasion. Both the Crispy Wafers (which previously were sold only in single serve packages) and Cookie Bars also feel more like a snack then just simply a piece of candy, as the Chocolate Pieces sometimes do, Mears said.
“People want a variety of experiences, textures, flavors and occasions. So we knew that if we could bring the unique, differentiated product to the market, we could go from six to 18 products and it would all be incremental,” President and COO Jeremy Vandervoet added. “In another category, if you sell 18 SKUs it’s all going to cannibalize each other.”
To get to this point, Little Secrets has also invested heavily in refining its positioning, ultimately deciding on being a “better” or “elevated” version of classic candy bars, Mears said. These efforts were supported, in part, by a second round of funding by venture firm Sunrise Strategic in the first half of 2019.
It’s also become less shy about comparing its products to conventional favorites, sending out sample kits that offer buyers, media, and influencers a conventional product next to a Little Secrets alternative with the question “is it a knock off if its better than the original?” The goal, Vandervoet said, is to solidify Little Secrets as a “challenger brand.”
The brand does shy away from referring to its products as “natural” or “better-for-you,” finding that an emphasis on taste and quality resonated stronger with shoppers and resulted in increased trial.
“Consumers only give you a couple seconds,” Vandervoet said. “We have a ton of respect for the big brands…but as in every category, there’s a new consumer and there’s a new set of values and we’re just getting right to the point that we have a better tasting, higher quality product that reminds you of the classics.”
The new products will launch into 1,500 stores including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, Natural Grocers, Fresh Market, Earth Fare, Fresh Thyme and Central Market. Little Secrets originally made the mistake of going wide with its Chocolate Pieces, Mears said, but subsequently realized that focusing on the natural channel is most effective. The natural chocolate confection category is worth $550 million, he added, with roughly a third of those sales coming from Whole Foods (at approximately 500 stores), another third from specialty and natural retailers and the final third from conventional retailers — where Little Secrets would have to compete with the likes of Hershey’s and Ferrero.
“Seventy percent of our business is across 2,000 doors of the pie. Otherwise you’re chasing 25,000 doors for the other thirty percent of the pie,” Mears explained “In the natural channel, you can get front register placement and on display. This is a category where 70% of purchases are driven by impulse.”
