Outstanding Expands Snack Portfolio With Stuffins Launch

Continuing its strategic pivot towards reinventing familiar snack categories, Outstanding Foods announced today the launch of Stuffins, a vegan-friendly take on a Combo with an enhanced nutritional profile.

The product line is the first launch conceptualized from start to finish under president Bobbie Turco, who was promoted to the role in January.

“We’re going into categories that are typically void of nutrients and we’re bringing plant based protein, and we’re bringing vitamins and minerals,” Turco said of the company’s product innovation plan.

Available in Pizza Partay, Nacho Cheese, and Chedda flavors, Stuffins retail for $5.99-$6.49 per 5 oz bag. At launch, the snack line will be available on Outstanding’s website and Sprouts, with more retail distribution to follow.

Made with a base of lentils, oats, rice protein and pea protein, Stuffins are gluten-free, vegan, soy-free and contain a vegetable blend of broccoli, spinach, kale, mushrooms, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, cranberries, and chlorella.

In conjunction with Stuffins’ debut, Outstanding is also relaunching its cookies, now reformulated to improve flavor and texture, as well as new packaging and a co-branded Chamberlain Coffee variety. No UPC change was required and the cookies had only limited distribution in independent retailers.

Turco has a deep bench of knowledge of the category having held executive sales roles at both Simple Mills and Enjoy Life, but told NOSH jokingly, “I thought I was never going to launch cookies again.”

Both products represent the ongoing evolution of Outstanding away from its initial product concept of novel, new snacks. The first step in this direction was rebranding the company’s first two products, Pigless Pork Rinds and TakeOut Meal in a Bag, to Crunchies and Puffs, respectively.

Butlast year’s debut of vegan cheese balls helped the company realize consumers simply want better-for-you versions of classic snacks.

“We’re an emerging brand, we’re going to learn as we go, and we’re going to make changes. — that’s the beauty of emerging brands,” Turco said. “We really went through the exercise of trying to streamline the brand and making everything easy to understand for consumers. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

Though the products have an indulgent, craveable focus, the company still plans to go after natural as its first channel of business, Turco said. Outstanding previously has “dabbled” with launches in mass and conventional, she added, but “we’re tightening it up a little bit.” Currently the brand is sold in 16,000 doors, with 95 percent of its sales from brick and mortar retail. Outstanding is also in the process of evaluation its online sales strategy, she added.

While the pace of innovation may appear to be quick, Turco said the company has actually slowed down on new product releases, emphasizing a test and learn philosophy before moving ahead. The focus is also squarely on snacking, with most products in salty snacks versus sweet, in order to build out a solid brand block. Some innovation may come from within the company, but Outstanding would also “be open” to acquiring other brands.

“One of the things that’s really important to us at this stage is building the best retail presence,” Turco said. ”With one line, you’re kind of entering [the category], with the second line we started to get that distribution out… and now we started to become a true player in healthy snacks.”