Kodiak Co-Founder Brings Protein To Pretzels With Kindling Snacks

Protein-packed products are Cameron Smith’s strong suit.

This month, the Kodiak Cakes co-founder jumped back into the CPG game, supported by a handful of his former colleagues, with the launch of protein pretzel brand Kindling Snacks. Co-founded alongside former Kodiak VP of marketing Brandon Porras, now Kindling’s CMO, the brand aims to iterate on the snack category with high-protein, nutrient-dense offerings.

“Look at what beverages have done over the last 20 years, and I think with all of the different iterations, it would have been easy to say, who can innovate beverages anymore,” Smith said. “They’ve been disrupted and innovated so many times over. But every new innovation, you’re like, actually that’s a great idea… I say that because there’s a lot we can do in snacks. There’s also a ton that we can do in pretzels.”

For the time being, Smith said Kindling will focus on the pretzel set where it now sells a 4-SKU line of whole grain wheat-based knots, fortified with wheat protein isolate and chickpea protein to produce 9 grams of protein per serving and between 1 to 2 grams of sugar, depending on the variety.

With flavors including Sea Salt, Garlic Parmesan, Honey Mustard and Dill Pickle, the co-founder duo is looking to build a snack platform that appeals equally to kids as it does their parents. That strategy began first with the brand development, a process that was spearheaded by Porras, Smith noted.

“While I love this for kids, and I love this for school lunches as a snack, this is also a snack for me – a snack for adults,” Smith said. “We wanted adults to see this as ‘this is my brand,’ and I resonate with this. But then the fox and the animals [on the bag] help bring in the kids. [They] see it, they’re like, ‘I want the fox pretzels,’ and that’s how the kids connect to it.”

The name Kindling aims to invoke a sense of starting a “personal fire” whether that be an adventure, activity or nutrition goal, Smith explained: “if you’re going to start a campfire, you need the right material – it has to be dry material to get it started. If it’s not right, that fire doesn’t get going.” It also aims to put the consumer first, regardless of their age demographic.

“At the end of the day, this is about doing something better for them in their life, and them being the hero, not our brand being the hero,” he said.

Igniting The Innovation Process

After stepping away from his 13-year-long stint at Kodiak in 2022, Smith was out of the CPG business for only a brief moment but got his fix by advising a handful of other emerging brands. That was until he said he felt an itch to get back in the game himself.

In early 2023, he sampled a pretzel at a food show and began to look inward at his own day-to-day for product inspiration, taking note of his children’s affinity for nutrient-void lunchtime snacks and remembering why he never reached for the “empty-calorie” item himself.

While a few brands have tried their hand at protein pretzels including snack platform Lenny & Larry’s, there isn’t a clear leader and most newcomers have positioned around other attributes including FitJoy’s grain-free iteration, Stellar Snacks’ monk fruit-sweetened braids and Pop Daddy’s flavor-first pretzels. Given the proliferation of high-protein products across grocery categories, Smith said he was skeptical that he could innovate inside this whitespace.

“There were a couple times that we tried to innovate at Kodiak and we couldn’t get the product right, either from a texture or flavor standpoint, with meaningful protein and nutrition – it just didn’t work and so that was my hunch [about this gap in the market],” said Smith.

The formulation process began in March 2023, and he was soon surprised when the team produced a base product that met his taste standards and carried the macros he was aiming for. The true test, however, came when he took them home for his kids to try.

“I honestly don’t know if I’ve felt more vulnerable in that moment than at any other time of my life,” Smith said. “I handed them to my kids… [but] I didn’t say, ‘by the way, kids, I spent a lot of time and energy on these and I really hope you like them and if you don’t I’m going to be devastated.’ They ate them, and then ran off. I didn’t get any feedback. But then they came back, and they’re like, ‘Dad, can I have more of those yummy pretzels?’”

Fueling The Fire

By February 2024, Smith took the leap with the brand’s first official production run, and the new business was off, this time cushioned by a bit of cash he set aside from Kodiak’s sale to private equity firm L Catterton in 2018. Smith remains invested in Kodiak but no longer is involved in the company’s day-to-day operations.

Kindling’s team, in addition to Smith and Porras, also includes a few former Kodiak sales personnel such as its director of sales Morgan Maltby and a former designer that departed the brand prior to joining Kindling. Smith’s co-founder at Kodiak, Joel Clarke, remains a close advisor and sits on Kindling’s board.

“What we believe is the way Kodiak grew, and the way we grew it, is not going to be the same way that this business is going to grow; we know that it’s going to need to be slightly different because the times are different and what consumers are looking for and needing are different,” Smith said.

He emphasized he does not want it to be “Kodiak 2.0,” highlighting it is also supported by a few non-Kodiak folks, including fractional operations lead Andrew Moreno, who hails from SC Johnson, and recent grad Tate Stedman, who is assisting with event and field marketing activations. At this stage the brand has five full-time employees as well as three fractional team members including its finance, operations and design leads.

“We want a culture that has a similar type of feeling and vibe as Kodiak: A positive environment where you can grow, you can develop, and you really feel like you can contribute and start to see your full potential,” Smith said. “We don’t want to say, ‘all right, how many Kodiak people can we get?’”

That slight iteration from his former playbook is also reflected in how he is growing the company’s bank account. While he self-funded the initial start and the company does not yet have any formal, institutional investment, it is working to bring some outside cash into the mix with eight influencer-investors on board including wellness creator ​​Claire Hodgins, fitness-focused Lindsey Bomgren, mom-fluencer Britnee Kent and Green Bay Packers wide receiver Randall Cobb.

These individuals were selected because they have high engagement with loyal social media followings. Rather than seeking “transactional” paid partnerships, Smith believes this influencer-investor cohort will become long-term business partners: “If you have a paid partnership, it doesn’t feel the same as ‘I’m an investor in the business; I believe in this product.’”

Distribution in physical stores will also be a key piece of the growth plan. The products are currently available on Amazon, but Smith is focusing on retail with launches at Hy-Vee stores and plans for a few Costco roadshows as well as in-line placement in a handful of the club chain’s regions in January.

Although the products will be available online, the channel won’t be a major focus with Smith citing that the majority of consumers still shop for their snacks in physical stores. He believes that presence, coupled with a robust sampling program, will be essential to winning over an initial cohort of consumers and pulling some share from the $2 billion pretzel category.

As for future growth, he highlighted the potential for the brand to extend with different pretzel shapes as well as indulgent, coated iterations. While he does believe Kindling can become a broader snack platform, he emphasized that it first has to win consumers over on the concept of a perfectly palatable protein pretzel.

“The name Kindling can mean snacks in a lot of ways, and I think there’s a lot of spaces, overall, where snacks can continue to be disrupted… but I think we really got to get pretzels right, and establish the brand here, and then consumers will allow us to go into other spaces.”