Beanfields Takes Aim at Puffs Category, Plans to Push into New Channels

Salty Snack brand Beanfields debuted this week a new line of “rings,” its second SKU to go after the puffs subcategory. The company is now in a position where it can look to enter new channels, invest more heavily in marketing and push the brand’s perception, according to CEO Arnulfo Ventura.

What is Beanfields?

Founded in 2010, Beanfields was acquired by private equity firm Powerplant Ventures in 2017 at a time when the brand was struggling to remain relevant and fill orders on time.

For the first year, firm partner Mark Rampolla also served as Beanfield’s CEO; Ventura came aboard following its rebrand in 2018. The company’s salty snacks are now sold in 6,500 stores, largely natural and independent retailers. Under Ventura’s leadership, the brand has also changed up the chip’s recipe, launched five new “bolder” flavors and, in 2020, introduced a line of vegan cracklings.

The company currently has revenue in the eight-figure range, Ventura said, and for 2022 is planning on a $20 million run rate that will take it into profitability. Last year, Beanfields’ sales grew by double-digits, despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects, with the brand breaking into the top 20 salty snack brands in the natural channel, Ventura said.

What Are they Launching?

This month sees the debut of three new rings, a snack with the shape of a Funyun but the crunch of a puff. Available in Fiery Hot, Sweet Onion, Zesty Dill, each SKU uses the brand’s signature base of chickpeas and white beans and contains four grams of protein and four grams of fiber per serving. Each 3.5 oz. bag will retail for $3.89, a lower MSRP than Beanfields Cracklins ($3.99) and chips ($4.29).

The rings will launch online and at Harmons, Whole Foods Market, Sprouts and in other independent retailers. Ventura said he is holding back on going wide with the rings initially in order to make sure the company can maintain its 99% fill rate. More major retailers are expected to come online in January

“We thought that the demand could exceed our expectations, given how well the cracklins did, and that this was a bigger addressable market and a more intuitive concept,” Ventura said. “We decided to start slowly, in a way that we knew we could support.”

Beanfields also debuted two new chip flavors this month: Vegan Sour Cream and Onion and Fiery Hot.

Why These Launches Now?

With the success of Cheetos Flamin’ Hot, “fiery hot” has become a classic flavor in salty snacks, and puffs — including ring-shaped puffs — are widely available. Based on attributes alone, Beanfields three main competitors would be Peatos (which makes a pea-based Funyun-like snack), Hippeas chickpea puffs and chips and Beanitos (which also has a line of bean chips). However, even larger players like Frito-Lay are trying to expand their portfolios to offer more protein-forward, better-for-you salty snacks.

But Ventura said his philosophy is less about being the first to market with new products or flavors and more about investing in taste and capitalizing on existing category momentum. Though perhaps a more niche concept when compared to the rings, Ventura cited the example of Beanfields prioritizing the launch of its cracklins first, in part to ride the wave of consumer enthusiasm for meat snacks.

“It felt like there was this escaping moment in time,” Ventura said. “I looked at this meat based pork rind category, and its evolution, and it was a category that nobody knew about before…it was a sleepy meat-based category that was ripe for plant-based disruption, and it felt like the time to go on that was at that time.”

Ventura also said he feels more confident now that he can push the consumer with bolder flavors. When Beanfields was acquired, its portfolio consisted of more traditional flavors such as sea salt, BBQ and nacho. Over the past several years, Ventura said he has gradually been ramping up the intensity of the flavors with each subsequent new launch, adding more acid and heat and experimenting with vegan dairy options. The rings and new chips are perhaps the most intense and bold flavors to date, he said.

“In 2018 I was a new CEO hired by a private equity-backed company, to change the direction of the brand,” Ventura said. “I first needed to develop a breadth of vision for the brand and try to understand where we had permission from the consumer to go and not go.”

What Else Is a Focus?

Ventura said distribution will also be a focus for Beanfields this year. Currently, its salty snacks are largely sold in the natural channel, with a 1% ACV in MULO. Once the rings have been in the market for a few months, the company plans to take top performers across the entire portfolio and bring them into mass, club, convenience and drugstore chains.

In terms of marketing spend, Beanfields has largely limited its efforts to ecommerce, a cost-savings strategy that Ventura said has allowed the company to shore up its base of consumers, reestablish partnerships with retailers and focus on taste.

“I had a brand that was going in the wrong direction and was hemorrhaging losses,” Ventura said. “I needed to stabilize it first — stabilize the spend, change this trajectory, take the profits and reinvest into the growth, and then get it to a point where it could get to a sustaining growth trajectory.”