50 Years in the Baking: Killer Brownie Plots National Breakthrough Backed by IFG

The bakery set is typically stocked by local, regional and retailer-produced products and the latter led to family-run Killer Brownie’s inception back in the 1970s.

The Ohio-based baked goods operation quickly became the go-to supplier for other regional, family-run independents nationwide and, some 50 years later, helped support its acquisition by another family-owned and operated food group.

“My dad always wanted [Dorothy Lane Market] to be a destination, and so they started developing products that became part of that destination experience – one of those was Killer Brownie,” explained Chimene Ross, Killer Brownie CEO and daughter of Norman Mayne, the second-generation owner of Dorothy Lane Market who first debuted the baked goods brand.

Last year, Killer Brownie sold a majority stake to Irresistible Foods Group (IFG), which owns brands such as King’s Hawaiian, Grillo’s Pickles and now-defunct Shaka Tea. Ross’s family retained a significant stake in the business, she said, and maintains full control of the brand’s voice and “how it shows up.” But it’s now supported by IFG’s sales team, allowing it to make a dash for national prominence.

The brand has placement in about 10,000 retail and c-store locations across the country and an even broader reach via its white label business, Ross said. Killer Brownie recently rolled out to Publix stores and is readying for an expansion into Target. Now with IFG’s backing, Killer Brownie is aiming to become a “known brand in all the major metro markets in the U.S. within five years.”

The grocery retail and c-store channels are growing particularly fast, Ross emphasized, but the brand will be growing its footprint across the club as well as fast casual foodservice accounts in the coming months as well.

“We’re becoming a brand that’s a destination which brings more people to [the] bakery,” explained Ross. “Bakery is traditionally in a retail store, the smallest of the departments… we’re giving people another reason to go to the bakery to find us – [that] makes us a good partner for our retailers as well.”

Behind The Brownie

Killer Brownie currently produces five varieties of gourmet brownies in Chocolatier, Brookie, Kitchen Sink, Triple Chocolate With Caramel and Cookie Dough with Caramel flavors. The company also sells mixed boxes and a range of giftable products via its ecommerce platform.

While the brownies have been around for over half a century, the Killer Brownie brand has undergone some major upgrades in the past 15 years, beginning when Ross took the helm back in 2013. In 2019, Ross made the decision to focus to its hero product – brownies – discontinuing other lines such as coffee cakes and bars.

She also began ramping up the brand’s sales and marketing team and worked to execute a brand refresh that would begin to build the brand around its new tagline “The Brownie Specialists.” Between 2019 and 2024, she said the business grew nearly four-fold, leading to its initial conversation with, and eventual acquisition by, IFG.

“We didn’t want to sell the company – the company had been in my family for years, [but] we wanted to grow,” Ross said. “We started feeling that if we had a partner that was a specialist in the CPG space, that would make sense for the brand’s health and growth. We weren’t trying to get away from it. We had no other investors. We’re 100% family-owned. But what Irresistible Foods Group was building appealed to us.”

Road To Wholesale

Mayne founded Killer Brownie alongside a handful of other brands to help support Dorothy Lane Market’s efforts to become a destination for its customers. But soon, the rest of the industry caught on to what they were baking, including other independent family-run retailers like Wegmans.

“The thing about retailers like that across the country at that time is they would often share ideas that were working for them, and what’s setting them apart,” Ross explained. “And so [my dad] started sharing the story of the Killer Brownie, and his friends in the industry were like, ‘we want to make that brownie,’ or, ‘we want to carry that brownie.”

That kicked off the brand’s evolution into a wholesale business. It set up a manufacturing facility and split the brand off from the retail company. From there, Killer Brownie began building up its customer list, which still included Dorothy Lane, and started shipping brownies to other family-run independents around the country.

Today, Killer Brownie continues to self-manufacture its products in Ohio, employing a team of over 140 individuals. Ross said the company is actively working on growth operations plans to keep up with its distribution gains.

“There was such a following for Killer Brownie in Dayton, Ohio, and we always wondered, ‘Is it tied to Dorothy Lane? Is that the experience? Or could this brand live on its own?’” Ross said, noting that in recent years, the company has proven it can live on its own.

“Now you’ll see the sales team is doing a lot more in-store positioning the product, a lot more point of sale [efforts], even the way the label shows up on shelf. It’s really loud, really cool – you can’t miss us.”