Hu Co-founder Takes on Frozen Aisle with New Launch

Having tackled confection, Jason Karp is setting his sights on the frozen aisle. Backed by a team of industry veterans, the co-founder of Hu Products, which sold to Mondelez in January, launched today frozen food brand Snow Days under his holding company, HumanCo.

Karp said the name of the brand stems from his time growing up in New England and the “feeling of complete freedom and euphoria” he would have when school was cancelled for a snow day. The goal, he said, is to evoke a similar emotional sentiment but from the comfort food Americans love. Previously an avid junk food consumer, after a health scare, Karp dramatically altered his diet. With Snow Days, he hopes to offer consumers the freedom to consume favorite foods without worry.

The brand will launch with cheese pizza “bites” on a direct-to-consumer basis. At $31.49 for a 2-pack and $58.49 (with free shipping) for a 4- pack each package is 12 ounces, at least double the size of most competitor’s products, according to the founder. The organic, grain-free, gluten-free bites have a crust made from cassava, use grass-fed dairy in their mozzarella and contain seven fruits and vegetables.

To manage the day-to-day business of the brand, the company has brought on Brian Evangelista, former CMO of Farmhouse Culture, as General Manager and COO.

“The more educated you get about the modern food supply and what’s in food, the more you feel the need to be paranoid, vigilant and stressed… it becomes harder to eat it without guilt, without regret,” Karp said. “Our tagline is ‘let nature set you free’ because we’re taking an ultra comfort food that everybody wishes they could eat, a pizza bite, and made it delicious with all real ingredients.”

Shaped like an empanada, the idea is to offer a product that is larger than other pizza snacks, so it can work as a meal or party offering, and as something that can appeal to parents as well as children, HumanCo chief commercial officer Will Lisman said.

While the line will launch with pizza bites, and other pizza products are “a natural extension,” Snow Days will also look to other frozen food categories in the future. The current offering was selected as the brand’s entry point because although pizza bites command over $1 billion in sales annually there’s been little innovation in the subcategory, Karp said.

Though Snow Days will launch online, the goal is to move into retail in the near future with smaller pack sizes. While some brands stay away from shipping frozen items to consumers due to the high cost of packaging, Lisman said the company believes it has made the costs work.

Frozen foods have also seen strong sales growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, with many consumers expected to continue to shop the aisle once they’re assured there’s no drop in quality. According to a November 2020 report by Encore Consumer Capital, Harris Williams and SPINS, the frozen department has “experienced the greatest growth relative to other departments as consumers continue to consume a larger portion of meals at-home.”

While the product is premium-priced, efficiencies of scale should help that drop over time, Lisman said. Karp compared Snow Days to organic produce instead of lower priced conventional options.

“We’re going after a mass market…we’re not just only going after the Erewhon crowd,” Karp said. “Our consumer sees what we’re doing and how we source our ingredients, and values that and how the farms we work with treat their animals and crops.”

Snow Days also marks the first new innovation to be launched under HumanCo, which was founded in 2019. Previously the company acquired plant-based ice cream producer Coconut Bliss and non-dairy cheese brand Monty’s. When it came to Snow Days, rather than acquire a company, the company felt it had to innovate from within.

“In pizza as an entire category – whether whole or bites – there wasn’t a brand on the market to acquire that fit our standards,” Lisman said. “Today, there are too many healthy products that don’t taste great or live up to demanding consumer expectations. Therefore, we believed that HumanCo was the company to bring this product to life.”