Keto Krisp Adds CEO, Rolls Out CanDo Umbrella Brand

Los Angeles-based keto-friendly protein bar brand Keto Krisp is gearing up for growth as it aims to bring keto products to the “underserved” supermarket channel. The company, which added Barnana co-founder Matt Clifford as CEO earlier this year, is rolling out an umbrella brand, CanDo, to connect with consumers through a message of empowerment with a focus on founder Adam Bremen’s personal journey with the keto diet.

Launched in 2019, Keto Krisp offers a four-SKU line of keto-friendly whey protein-based bars. Bremen, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair for mobility, said he was inspired to launch the brand when he switched to the keto diet several years ago and lost over 65 pounds. With Keto Krisp, Bremen’s goal was to create “an enjoyable experience for everyone,” through a great tasting and nutritional bar, while also “inspiring and empowering people to live healthier lifestyles.”

“We want to be their cheerleaders,” Bremen said. “Throughout my whole life, everybody’s been cheering for me and not putting me in a corner and I want to bring these stories to the forefront and celebrate them and encourage them.”

This message of empowerment is paramount for the CanDo umbrella brand, and to roll out the CanDo brand and ultimately take Keto Krisp “to the next level,” Bremen brought on Clifford in May, after he stepped down from day-to-day duties as Barnana COO in June 2019. Clifford is aiding the brand as it introduces consumers to the CanDo platform, which was created to encapsulate both Keto Krisp and future innovations and will hopefully better introduce consumers to a more clear brand mission focused on Bremen’s personal journey.

“[CanDo] is really about overcoming adversity and having this attitude that it’s about what you can do and not what you can’t do,” Clifford said. “Me joining the team a bit back is connecting those dots with Adam and the team and saying, ‘hey, there’s a bigger thing here than the product Keto Krisp.’”

Though the brand will continue to focus on keto bars in the near future, the CanDo brand also offers optionality to expand into additional categories — even as the keto trend itself may wane in popularity and consumers ultimately focus more on low sugar and low carb products, Clifford said.

Though the company has incorporated the name into their logo on their website, there are no plans to rebrand Keto Krisp’s packaging to include it. Future products, however, may sport the moniker. For now, the roll out of the CanDo brand platform will be focused on education and highlighting customers’ health journeys, with the ultimate goal to connect with consumers on a level beyond its products. Clifford explained the reason for this strategy was to keep the product attribute of being keto front and center.

“The nuance is that we have not introduced the consumer to the CanDo mission, because they’re buying Keto Krisp the product,” Clifford said. “In my experience, it’s a lot harder to have somebody buy a brand as their first purchasing decision, because there’s a lot of education in that, whereas products sell and brands last.”

Soon after Clifford joined the brand, Keto Krisp closed a $1.5 million funding round, with investors including Enlightened Access LLC, led by The Giannuzzi Group. The funds were allocated mostly to the company’s production and R&D pipeline, Clifford said.

Clifford noted that the brand has not needed to budget much for marketing, as its brand name and packaging — with “keto” in the name of the product and featured prominently on the package — have proven to drive trial. While he said the company plans to raise additional capital in the first quarter of 2021, the financial strategy for the brand going forward will be “one of efficiency and not of size.”

“We’re going to keep it really lean and we’re not going to measure our success off of the amount of money we raised,” he said. “We’re going to let the sales do the talking.”

While 2020 has been a challenging year for the bar category as grab-and-go sales decreased and field marketing efforts have been halted amid the pandemic, Keto Krisp has remained focused on its brick and mortar sales, a channel Clifford said has been “underserved” by keto products thus far, many of whom have first built success in the direct-to-consumer channel. The brand is currently available at Whole Foods SoPac, Wegmans, H-E-B and Publix, and today launched at Sprouts nationwide. Clifford said despite the pandemic, it has become the number one selling keto bar in Whole Foods SoPac, Wegmans and Publix. Keto Krisp will also be expanding to the club channel with a launch at Costco in the first quarter of 2020 as it works to reach an even wider breadth of consumers.

The state of the bar category may be uncertain going into 2021, but Clifford has significant plans and goals set for next year. The brand will launch four new Keto Krisp bars next year, which will include the brand’s first bar to use plant-based protein, with Clifford’s ultimate goal being to grow the brand five-fold next year, he said.

While consumers may be slow to return to pre-COVID grab-and-go purchasing habits, Clifford said he’s seen that consumers have integrated the product into their everyday diet, rather than as a product tied only to an on-the-go lifestyle, as evidenced by a steady increase in online subscription purchases. Furthermore, Clifford said Keto Krisp has “three pillars” that drew him to the brand that he believes will be a driving force in its long-term success.

“Doing this for a long time, you realize that there are three pillars that are successful in the consumer space,” he said. “It’s having a real authentic story, having a good product and then having the operation expertise to scale it. And when I met Adam, I was like, this is amazing, right? This whole package is here.”