Expanding Beyond Snacks, This Saves Lives Balances Social Impact With “Food First” Focus

Social mission is a core tenet of many food brands — but is it enough to support a company platform? For This Saves Lives, social impact has now become just one part of its recipe for success as a food brand. With an expanded suite of offerings aimed at kids and refreshed messaging focusing on nutrition, the brand is now working to raise consumer awareness about the products themselves and establish itself as a “food first” company.

Initially launched in 2013 as This Bar Saves Lives with the support of celebrity co-founder Kristen Bell, the company first went after the snack bar space, competing against the likes of KIND with its “buy a bar, feed a child” mission. In 2019, after dropping “bar” from its name, the brand expanded to kids products with the launch of its kids bar line. At the time, CEO Jensen Thome said, it was an easy leap: the message of “kids helping kids” resonated with parents who were looking for new snack options. The brand further grew its kids offerings last year with a Krispy Treats line.

This month, it’s making its jumping farther afield, moving into different aisles of the store with two new lines: heat-and-eat Oatmeal and a granola line called GranolaPop.

“It was just almost a natural evolution for us to go a little bit deeper and stretch into more of a food company versus just a bar and treat company,” Thome said. “I think it’s important for us to look at other areas of opportunity, and kids happens to be something that we’ve evolved to naturally behave well in.”

The product lines are both offered in five flavors — Rainbow Sprinkles, Chocolate, Strawberry, Blueberry and Cinnamon Sugar — with under five grams of sugar and the equivalent of one serving of fruit and vegetables. The products are now available for sale to those in its subscription service, with a nationwide ecommerce launch and eventual retail rollout to follow.

While This Saves Lives has always worked to establish “a really nice package with a cohesive brand name and messaging,” small design changes now speak to product attributes, with call outs about the products’ taste and nutrition. Thome said the brand has found that products aimed at kids “get a little bit more time with messaging,” on shelf, presenting the brand with an opportunity to go beyond just communicating about its social impact. For example, the packaging for its two new lines has front of pack messaging about fruit, vegetable and whole grain content, as well as amounts of protein and sugar.

The brand will employ this nutrition-forward marketing strategy across all products, Thome said, as it’s currently working on a larger refresh across its portfolio set to debut in the fourth quarter of 2021 that will place more emphasis on taste and health attributes.

“Sometimes I think the old way of thinking about impact, or the old way of thinking about social brands, is that it wasn’t always synonymous with really great taste,” he said. “And that’s not the case anymore, so we need to do a better job of making sure people understand that.”

This new messaging could further help the brand with customer acquisition as it continues to build out its retail and foodservice distribution, Thome said. The brand is currently sold in over 40,000 points of distribution, including in Target, Walmart, Starbucks and, starting this month, 1,200 Kroger stores. Thome said the brand is also aiming to deepen its footprint in the natural channel, where it’s sold at Whole Foods and National Co-op Grocers.

While its Classic Bar line will continue to be important for the brand, kids products across different categories represent a clear space for growth for the brand going forward, Thome said, and will be a focus of sales and marketing efforts.

As the company pushes for a focus on the food itself, it is also working to balance that focus with its ongoing social mission backbone. To-date, the company has donated nearly 28 million food packets to malnourished children. Aiming for a “more cultivated experience” than a typical subscription model, This Saves Lives launched its membership program The Table in May. The program provides consumers with personalized impact reports, allowing them to “watch their impact grow” as they purchase products, and also offers consumers early access to new launches and exclusive content from its celebrity founders and investors, Thome said.

“In food and beverage, you have to work really hard to create a spot for yourself… and to actually have a real impact in the world, that’s not an easy model,” Thome said. “We want to be able to show that if you really want to do more, you can, if you’re a business. And if you’re a consumer looking for brands doing those kinds of things, then you don’t have to look any further than our brand.”