FFUPs Eyes C-stores With New Single Serve Offering

New York-based startup FFUPs is looking to bring its “bombastic branding” to a wider audience – by getting smaller.

The flavored corn puff maker is downsizing its flagship 4 oz. product to a 1 oz. single-serve bag, a move founder and CEO Sam Tichnor said will allow FFUPs to better cater to convenience consumers, encourage trial at deli counters and make for easier, inexpensive free sampling opportunities. The 4 oz. size will still be sold online and in grocery.

“You can’t take a grocery product and put it in c-stores and think it’ll work because we tried that, and it doesn’t,” Tichnor affirmed.

The brand, whose name translates to “puffs backwards, but wrong,” debuted in 2022. Each one of the pastel colored bags featured the callout “Not Healthy” and flavor names like Grocery Store Cheddar, Professional Salt & Vinegar, Semi Historic Sour Cream and Onion, Instant Hot Chocolate and Unambiguous French Toast.

Since its launch that packaging and its front-of-pack claims have been tweaked, with the latest version rolling out this year alongside the new single serve bags. Its original anti-health callout has been softened to “No Health Claims Here, Just Delicious Puffy Goodness” and the position of its format callout “Tasty Tubes,” as well as the flavor descriptors, has been elevated.

FFUPs also has plans to significantly expand its lineup this year with two new flavors coming this quarter, Tichnor said, with plans to add a further eight to 10 new varieties by the end of the year. The goal is to build a brand that owns the mainstream extruded snack set on the basis of taste, he said.

“What makes us unique in the market is different flavors on puffs, which is not rocket science, but hopefully that’s how we’ll make our mark on the category,” Tichnor said.

But why FFUPs?

After working to help build personal care startup Harry’s for nearly six years, first on the finance team and later building the brand’s commercialization strategy, Tichnor caught the entrepreneurial bug and felt he had developed a solid skillset to handle building a business of his own.

“I would always joke it was my job to make [Harry’s] not a startup anymore,” Tichnor said. “I spent a lot of time really learning the ropes – how does the business work and all that stuff… [At a junior level], I wasn’t making the decisions but I was in the room when decisions were being made.”

While still working at Harry’s, the pandemic hit; suddenly, the supermarket became a reason to get out of the house, then a source of excitement, and then finally the venue for product inspiration.

He explained that the idea for FFUPs came to him as the response to two questions he had while strolling the aisles of Stop & Shop: “Who’s meeting the needs of the mainstream consumer that actively [thinks] ‘oh, this is a healthy thing, I’m not gonna buy it,” and later “I had Cape Cod salt and vinegar chips and Cheetos in my cart… ‘Why can’t this be one thing?’

Tichnor felt with the answer to those two questions he had identified whitespace in the market for an innovative, flavorful and simple snack product that met the needs of mainstream consumers. A 2021 study conducted by OnePoll found that almost half of Americans are skeptical of the health claims on food labels and believe they are misleading which led FFUPs to push in the opposite direction.

Working with RodeoCPG on the brand’s commercialization strategy and hiring DayJob Studios to take on the brand development, Tichnor now believes that FFUPs has the potential to eventually own up to 20% market share of the puff snack market. While the brand eventually found a partner, he said the biggest challenge to bring FFUPs to market was finding a co-packer with most manufacturers not interested in producing flavored puffs with anything other than cheese because of the downtime needed to clean machines.

The company now sells through Rainforest Distributors, and has secured shelf space at a range of independent retailers in the Northeast and Mid-atlantic with plans to onboard two more local distributors this year to execute its c-store growth strategy. For now, FFUPs intends to focus on local and own its backyard region, with Tichnor noting that he doesn’t feel the company would be able to support distribution through a national partner like KeHE or UNFI at this stage.

While originally, Tichnor believed FFUPs would be able to scale online before shifting into brick and mortar retail, he quickly learned most consumers wanted to be able to purchase one bag at a time, rather than multi or variety packs. That which prompted the strategy shift to c-stores and single serves.

FFUPs will continue to operate its online store and use it as a testing platform for new flavors, and create limited time offerings, but Tichnor assured that every product FFUPs creates will focus on bringing flavor, and slightly better ingredients to the extruded snack space.

“I’m tired of Cheetos… they’re filled with a bunch of crap,” Tichnor said. “I’m not saying FFUPs are healthy because there’s no nutritional benefit from eating it. But at least our ingredient stack is a little bit better – it has fewer words that I don’t understand. There’s a couple that I don’t really know what it is, but the food scientists say it’s fine.”

So far, the business has been financed by personal investment and a friends and family round; last year Tichnor began a pre-see raise with the intention of bringing in $500,000 and will also launch a crowdfunding campaign later this year. He believes the brand can cross the seven figures mark by the end of the year and can target profitability in the near term.