Olyra’s Refresh Marries Greek Heritage With Mass Market ‘Appetite Appeal’

Breakfast snack brand Olyra today unveiled a new identity that seeks to better connect U.S. consumers with “vibrant, playful visuals,” food photography and a strategic hierarchy of the elements on-pack in order to “drive appetite appeal on-shelf” for its Greek-inspired products, said Olyra CMO Andy Godish.

The brand’s new look comes seven years after the products first debuted stateside and removes the visual front-of-pack separation between its heritage icons and the products inside the package, merging these two elements for a cohesive look and feel that prominently displays the brand name, product type and key nutritional information. According to Godish, the initial packaging design was “stark” with a “borderline-medicinal aesthetic.”

“It was a visual identity primarily designed to communicate functional benefits,” he emphasized. “At that point, brands were competing on how quickly they could signal ‘health’ to a pool of clean-label shoppers. Consumer appetites for clean eating have ballooned since then. Sodas now have pre- and probiotics. Cookies have protein and fiber. Market share isn’t earned by how hard a brand can lean into ‘health,’ but by how turnkey it is for a consumer to make a product swap.”

Olyra aims to reshape the $4 billion breakfast bar set, a market that is majority held by Big CPG-backed brands like belVita, Nutrigrain and Nature’s Bakery. But Olyra is gaining ground, currently sold in 6,000 natural channel doors nationwide with nearly 16,000 retail facings, the company claims.

Earlier this year, the company unveiled two new products alongside a nationwide Whole Foods rollout. Those gains came two years after the business raised a $4 million Series A to grow its marketing team and expand distribution. Now, Olyra believes it now has the right positioning and placements to capture share in the mass market breakfast set, bringing the brand beyond natural and into conventional, club and convenience.

The products are sold at key retailers including Whole Foods, Sprouts and Amazon as well as via ecommerce platforms. Alongside the new packaging, Olyra’s direct-to-consumer platform has also undergone a complete overhaul and today it unveiled its “brand-spankin-new website,” Godish highlighted.

“Not only is it designed to bring the brand world to life, but it was also an opportunity to design UX from scratch,” he explained. “Olyra started retail-first. Our e-commerce channel was something that was tacked on. As of today, we’re optimized for omnichannel. Fewer clicks to navigate, less friction for trial.”

The brand refresh was executed alongside design agency Interact Brands. While Olyra began working with the Interact team back in November, Godish said the roots of this refresh began long before then and is a culmination of Olyra’s continuous evolution to meet the needs of its customers.

“[The refresh] started inside the box,” he said. “We launched our first products in 2018 with niche flavors like Hazelnut Carob, Fig Anise, and Blueberry Greek Yogurt. Our latest SKU in the Crème Breakfast Biscuits line is Vanilla. That’s intentional. We’re continuing to tune our product assortment to the American palate, while staying true to our Greek roots.”

Godish continued, emphasizing that the company has continuously evolved “what’s found inside an Olyra box” as well. Earlier this year founder and CEO Yannis Varellas Ouzounopoulos told Nosh the company has iterated each of its product formulations nearly nine times. The new look is “a culmination of these years of evolution. It marks our next chapter of growth,” Godish added.

“This rebrand is about owning who we are and where we come from,” said Varellas Ouzounopoulos. “Interact helped us translate our five generations of Greek grain expertise into a modern brand expression that American consumers can immediately connect with. It’s still Olyra, but now our outside matches our inside.”