BelliWelli Moves Beyond Its Backyard With D2C Intel

Gut-friendly snackbar brand BelliWelli is making its first major foray into retail with a national rollout at Sprouts this week. The brand launched exclusively direct-to-consumer in March 2021 with a selection of probiotic, low FODMAP-certified snack bars and is now aiming to take its mission for gut-supporting snacks to store shelves nationwide.

“This was always the plan,” said Katie Wilson, co-founder and CEO of BelliWelli. “For once, things are going according to plan in startup life, and our plan was always to operate a direct-to-consumer business year one and make all the mistakes – like more mistakes the better – and get, say 20 to 30% smarter before we launch our first-ever retail account.”

The brand began establishing a presence in brick-and-mortar earlier this year with regional stores in California like Harmons, Earth Fare, Gelson’s, Central Market, and Mother’s Market & Kitchen. However, Wilson said now that enough mistakes have been made, her team believes it’s time for a new chapter of learning. Although she joked about her using the “millennial phrase,” she said the brand plans to “crush it at Sprouts.” She believes by continuing to invest in the Sprouts account it will then be able to use that relationship to earn votes of confidence when pitching new retailers.

“I think Sprouts is a perfect consumer for BelliWelli [so] it’s a great test for us – if we don’t work at Sprouts, we have a problem,” stated Wilson. “It couldn’t be a better match, that consumer should need and want BelliWelli and so that’s our job and what we’ve got to sell for.”

Sprouts will stock four of the brand’s eight SKUs including Chocolate Chip, Strawberry Shortcake, Cinnamon Swirl and Birthday Cake. The bars are made with ingredients including almond flour, oat flour, sorghum, probiotics and numerous other gut-friendly ingredients. Additionally the products are low-FODMAP certified by Monash University, the institution that created the low-FODMAP diet which uses food-elimination to help individuals suffering from IBS and other digestive issues narrow in on trigger foods.

To help execute its omni-channel growth strategy, BelliWelli brought on Rachel Forillere as its new VP of Sales in September. Forillere has previously served as a regional category buyer for Whole Foods as well as senior business development director at Harmless Harvest. Most recently, she held two executive positions at KOR Shots, beginning as chief sales officer before moving to chief operating officer.

“She fixed a lot of mistakes I had already made, within her first week, so that’s how you know you made a good hire,” said Wilson. “We invested early into someone really incredible and I hope that sends a signal that retail is where we’re investing… We’ve taken dollars away from digital and poured them into people and resources to support retail [growth].”

To further support the rollout, the brand is rolling out fully hot pink packaging which Wilson believes will make it the first to “own hot pink on retail shelves.” BelliWelli is also expanding its “Hot Girls Have IBS” billboard campaign with approximately 10 new boards featuring the Sprouts logo across the country to help drive consumers to points of purchase.

She acknowledged that for an originally D2C-first brand, a billboard campaign is not the most obvious marketing strategy. However, after some curiosity about whether or not billboards actually sell in today’s world, she decided to test it out herself. Wilson said her approach was to modernize the highway side banners with its Tik Tok-trend inspired motto with the goal of helping de-stigmatize gut health conversations among consumers.

“IBS is a polarizing word, [but] putting hot girls and IBS in the same sentence just had an impact,” said Wilson. “I thought ‘what if someone just changed the game on billboards and put up a neon pink billboard in the middle of a city that said hot girls have IBS, what would happen?’ I went home and Googled ‘billboard people’ and literally called the first link. These two guys [listened to me] and laughed and said you can do that, but we don’t recommend it.”

But the results were immediate and within a day of it being up, those passing by had to wait in line to snap a picture, she said. For the next round, billboards have been slotted in close proximity to Sprouts stores across the country, spanning beyond the original Los Angeles, Portland and New York locations.

Wilson said BelliWelli originally “fell into the trap” of thinking that as a California-based, woman and millennial-led brand that its own profile matched its primary consumer. However, consumer data gathered by the brand from D2C sales showed that while 80% of its consumers are women, they age up to 85 years old and are spread across the country. That data not only informed its billboard-placement approach but also its retail strategy moving forward.

Long term, Wilson said she aims to build a brand with product formats in multiple aisles of the store that are all gut friendly and low-FODMAP certified. Despite prioritizing those attributes, while noting that nearly one hundred GI doctor offices around the country carry BelliWelli for patients to try, she said she is not looking to build a low-FODMAP food brand.

“We believe low-FODMAP is one of many things that makes the brand credibly gut friendly and it will always have a following because if you walk into a GI office and say you have gut issues, nine times out of 10 you’re gonna get the the black and white handout that says ‘try the low-FODMAP diet,’” explained Wilson. “But you won’t see BelliWelli positioned as the low-FODMAP food brand because we don’t think that’s our story. [We hope to be] the pink brand that promises women and men across the country that they can indulge without hurting their stomachs.”