Mavericks Cookies Focuses On Branding to Land Target Store Partnership

Better-for-you kids snacks brand Mavericks is now in Target stores, after a turbulent pandemic launch forced the company to refresh its packaging and streamline its products.

Green Park Brands, the CPG holding company started by entrepreneur Livio Bisterzo, first launched Mavericks as a better-for-you, kids snacking brand featuring cookies and crackers. Yet, timing was not on the brand’s side and the nationwide launch in Whole Foods in April 2020 coincided with the early days of the COVID-pandemic.

“It was not a great time to launch and people were not discovering new brands,” said Brendan Schaefer, newly hired President and General Manager for Mavericks. “This is in many ways year one for us, and we’re thinking about it as a relaunch of the brand because our hands really were tied behind our backs.”

After nearly two years in the natural grocery chain, Mavericks decided to discontinue the crackers in Q1 2022 and focus exclusively on the product that was resonating most with consumers – its lightning bolt cookies.

The brand has initially rolled out its Birthday Cake flavor in a multipack at 1,250 Target stores with hopes to expand to other SKUs in the future. Each box contains eight single-serve pouches retailing for $6.49.

Schaefer – a father of two young kids – said he understands the struggle of finding a nutritious snack that is appealing to children. Mavericks is positioned as a school-safe, peanut-free vegan cookie with 40% less sugar than most other natural competitors.

For now, the focus for Mavericks will remain on expanding its reach in Target along with its national distribution with Whole Food and on Amazon. Although Mavericks does offer the cookies for sale through its website, a channel it had previously discontinued, the company’s focus is largely on brick and mortar distribution, Schaefer insists.

Consumers have leaned further into the snacking category during the pandemic. According to Technavio, the snack market has the potential to grow by $260.88 billion during 2021-2025,

and retailers have noticed. Target has invested in snacking and indulgences with its 2021 launch of private label brand, Favorite Day, to pair with its better-for-you foods brand, Good & Gather.

The snacking category continues to evolve around products that offer a healthier, cleaner option for children but the paradox is that 90 to 95% of products in the space target adults, Schaefer said.

“What inevitably happens is that we as parents end up giving our kids the snacks we’re buying for ourselves.”

The cookies were not only a hit with kids but the Green Park team also found that parents were eating them too, which offered a key insight into targeting a broader consumer base. Mavericks focused its consumer appeal by revamping the packaging to shift the line’s name from Maverick Kids to Maverick Cookies. The new packaging also has dropped a vegan call out for “plant-based,” adding callouts for “school safe” and “nothing artificial.” In addition to the copy, the design now has more of a fun personality, Schaefer said, with more flavor cues and larger product shots.

“Packaging is media” for a brand trying to drive trial and disrupt an established category segment, Schaefer said. He attributes the unveiling of the new packaging at Expo West this year as a big reason that Mavericks was able to land the Target distribution partnership.

Although the brand doesn’t rule out the possibility of restarting its cracker options, Schaefer did say that the plan from day one was to become a better-for-you mainstream product available anywhere a “Millennial Mom is shopping across all retail chains.”

A key part of his focus is helping to introduce the brand to a wider audience — both in terms of demographics as well as retail channels. The launch in Target speaks to the brand’s desire to move into the mainstream rather than focus on just the natural and specialty channels, as many emerging brands are apt to do. The success of the brand in Whole Foods stores and the “relaunch” of the brand now is part of what Schaefer describes as expanding the “concentric circles of consumerism” for Mavericks.

“My approach to building businesses is to create durable businesses and durable brands,” he said. Schaefer said this will entail demonstrating strong velocity performance and gross margins to retail partners while delivering a product that addresses not only a whitespace in the market but resonates with consumers.

Schaefer started his career working at Pepsico where he spent his nine years filling a variety of roles that included marketing for Propel, Naked Juice, Izze and O.N.E Coconut Water. He left the CPG giant in 2016 to launch his refrigerated snack bar company, Bright Foods, which he sold to Genius Juice in 2021. The result, he said, is experience building brands in a large corporate structure as well as working with emerging brands.

Schaefer took over the role from former GM Christian Quie, who left the company in July 2021. In the interim, VP of Marketing Tina Pate was running the day-to-day operations of the business.

Mavericks is expecting to open a new funding round in 2023 and is currently operating on its own capital as well as funding provided by Green Park.

Attracted by the company’s purpose-driven approach to positively impact global health, Schaefer joined the Green Park Brands team in March 2022 to run Mavericks, as well as to launch a “new food brand in a different space.” The emphasis on Mavericks by Green Park comes after the holding company shuttered its Buddy Nutrition, paused the launch of CO Chocolate and sold the majority of its flagship brand Hippeas to PE firm The Craftory. At the time of the Hippeas sale, Bisterzo said the brand would have a more “disciplined approach to growth.”

“At this early stage it all comes back to focus and how do we do one thing really, really well? In this case, we’ve got a hit product with the cookies,” Schaefer said of Mavericks. “Now we have to go execute and build the cookie business before we really think about doing anything outside of that.”