Purely Elizabeth Taps Surge In Snacking With New Cookie Granola Line

After 14 years growing, building and baking Purely Elizabeth’s granola and cereal portfolio, founder and CEO Elizabeth Stein believes she has created a new product type that adds incremental value to the category by opening up more granola use occasions throughout the day.

This brand’s new product – Cookie Granola, available in Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Raisin and Double Chocolate flavors – merges the stereotypical health food with one of the most popular on-the-go dessert items – cookies.

“​​So much of what we’re seeing with consumers is in snacking within granola,” Stein said. “At the same time we’re seeing this push to a more fun balance in food – people taking a different approach to what they were eating and we’ve certainly seen that in the evolution of the brand.”

Cookie Granola is made with the brand’s flagship mix of ancient grains including quinoa, amaranth, chia, sorghum and flax along with a base of coconut flour, oat flour and almond butter. That combination gives the physical product a cookie-like texture and allows it to maintain sturdy, snackable cluster shapes.

“We know that people are going to be eating Cookie Granola for breakfast, and we’ve done the market testing to [support that],” Stein explained. “It actually scores the same as our granola from a breakfast [occasion] standpoint, but where it really outpaces is in that snacking occasion – so mid-morning, mid-afternoon and late-night snacking. It really brings these additional occasions to the category.”

In recent years consumers have increasingly substituted meals with snacks, and although Cookie Granola might not replace dinner, it also taps into the permissible indulgence trend and can position itself squarely as a dessert item. Stein believes the format and position brings something truly new to a category experiencing a dearth of new innovation.

Work on Cookie Granola began in Stein’s home kitchen when she was inspired to marry the brand’s granola with her favorite cookie recipe. Over the next year and a half, the concept and product then underwent Purely Elizabeth’s first true stage-gate process.

According to Stein, the consumer validation that they garnered at every stage, from the concept’s inception through the creation of the physical product, was extremely valuable when it came time to present to retail partners. While the company has done consumer testing around new products in the past, Stein characterized this as the “most disciplined innovation process” the brand has executed thus far.

“Several years ago [the process] was literally I would have an idea, we would throw it in a Ziploc bag, I would send it to Whole Foods, and literally a week later they would accept it for a national launch,” she said. “Sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn’t. There were certainly good things and bad things [about that process], and we learned there is a point to having consumer testing and rigor behind [a new product].”

This time around the team tested the concept, flavors and use occasions with consumers, making slight changes along the way as they worked toward the launch. Armed with that data, demand from retail partners quickly followed, Stein said. The product will be merchandised right alongside the brand’s existing granolas, which Stein believes will help consumers distinguish it on-shelf as something totally new, rather than just a new flavor.

As for its retail partners, Cookie Granola will launch on a six-month exclusive with Purely Elizabeth’s top partners across its three main retail channels – Whole Foods, Walmart and Publix. The product will be available at these retailers only through July 1 for $7.99 for an 11-oz bag.

Beyond permissibly indulgent granola snacks, Purely Elizabeth is also adding two new SKUs to its Superfood Cereal line, which debuted in 2022 with two flavors. The varieties – Chocolate Almond and Cinnamon Raisin Almond – are key to the brand’s efforts to build out a “family of flavors” within the cereal set and already includes Vanilla Blueberry Almond and Honey Peanut Butter.

“From the start, we had always wanted to expand beyond the two,” Stein said. “It was really a phased approach to say: let’s get it in, see how it does, and then follow it up and build a greater presence.”

In support of the new launches, as well as its growing distribution footprint, the company will launch its first big media campaign later this year. According to Stein the campaign will help to continue exposing new consumers to Purely Elizabeth and grow its following.

“Now that we’ve gained the distribution that we have and have been on this really wonderful growth trajectory – how do we continue the momentum and continue to build the brand affinity?”