From Grocery Aisles to Corner Stores: Low and Slow Snacks Lands 7-Eleven Test in Texas

Smoked snacks slinger Low and Slow is making its convenience channel debut through a 300-store test with 7-Eleven in Texas. As part of the partnership, the c-store chain will stock the brand’s hickory-smoked cheese puffs in Jalapeño and BBQ flavors.

In anticipation of further convenience channel penetration, Low and Slow has been developing 2 oz. bags of its cheese puffs and potato chips with a SRP of $2.69 per bag – line priced with legacy salty snack players.

“Just like every emerging salty snack brand, we’re being pretty strategic with the [retail] partners we want to invest in early, knowing it’s more expensive when you’re smaller as it relates to freight efficiencies and other things that go into running a business,” said co-founder and CEO Jared Drinkwater. “We have really cool POS merchandising and are excited to grow with small format in c-stores.”

Founded in 2019 by Drinkwater, who previously served as VP of marketing at Frito-Lay, Low and Slow produces a portfolio of potato chips and cheese puffs coated in a signature secret rub and smoked using hickory wood.

According to Drinkwater, Low and Slow was created to fill a void for authentic barbecue snacks, with many major CPG players simply focusing on capturing the flavor of barbecue sauce in their chips. The key to an authentic barbecue sauce isn’t the sauce; it’s the smoke and the process that go into it, he explained.

The cheese puffs, which launched last year, have quickly become the brand’s top-performing product. In fact, in some markets, its extruded snacks outperform its potato chips by a ratio of three to one.

“If you think about cheese puffs, there hasn’t been [category] innovation in a really long time outside of flavor,” said Drinkwater. “As it relates to disruption, I draw a lot of analogies to what Dot did with Dot’s Pretzels. They took a sleepy category that hadn’t been innovated in for a long time and made a delicious, heavily seasoned pretzel,” said Drinkwater.

Retail Strategy

Low and Slow has taken a unique approach to retail, landing home improvement chain Home Depot as its first national account roughly four months ago. The deal, which came about through a broker, targets the brand’s “foundational consumers” – barbecue enthusiasts. Low and Slow’s products are available in approximately 3,500 to 4,000 doors, including grocery stores like H-E-B and Albertsons banners and non-traditional outlets such as ACE Hardware and Homegoods.

“[ACE Hardware and Home Depot] know their customers better than anybody, and a lot of them really like barbecue. It’s been a natural progression into some of these channels like hardware stores – those types of outlets have proven to not only be an awareness driver, but places that can drive real revenue,” said Drinkwater.

From a long-term value perspective, he said Low and Slow “will be won or lost on the shelves at retail.” However, as the emerging brand has not yet established a large national footprint, ecommerce – which started off as a “distraction” – has become a “necessary evil.”

The brand recently outgrew its 220 sq. ft. ecommerce fulfillment center, and has since moved into a warehouse that is 100 sq. ft. larger. That growth has been fueled, in part, by a viral TikTok video (over 130 million views) featuring influencer Patrick Zanelli and an oversized bag of Low and Slow’s cheese puffs. Drinkwater estimates the brand has grown its ecommerce revenue 5x in the past six months as compared to all of 2024.

“From the second that video went viral, we saw ecommerce pick up. In the last two weeks, we’ve launched our TikTok Shop and we’re starting to see significant revenue from that – [it’s] a really interesting model,” said Drinkwater, adding that he views ecommerce as an approach to subsidized awareness and marketing rather than a strategic revenue play but is excited by what he’s seeing in the channel.

What’s Next?

Viewed from the top down, the potato chip category is a monolith, with three brands – Lay’s, Ruffles and Pringles – holding more than half of the category share. But they aren’t growing; according to Chicago-based market research firm Circana, potato chip sales dipped 0.6% year-over-year in the 52-week period ended June 15. Category leader Lay’s underperformed, with sales sliding 1.8%.

Below the legacy brands, smaller players like Jackson’s (+72.3%), The Good Crisp Co. (+52.3%) and Siete (+70.3%) are seeing accelerated growth and gaining significant traction with consumers.

Low and Slow is uniquely positioned for growth in the category, armed with a proprietary process that smokes chips (and puffs) at scale. After a years-long undertaking of cracking the code on its smoking process, the brand partnered with a co-packer that allowed it to add a 3,000 sq. ft. smoking facility to the facility.

Looking ahead, the Texas-based brand will spend the remainder of the year engineering its retail partnerships for success, be it at Walmart, 7-Eleven or Home Depot. Additionally, Low and Slow is working on developing partnerships in the club channel.

“It’s all stage gates. First, you get on the shelf in one store, then that earns you a region, then the region goes well and you go national. We’ve got our foot in the door and now it’s on us to make sure we drive as much heat as possible and execute those programs well,” said Drinkwater.