Righteous Felon Rides Meat Stick ‘Rocket Ship’ To New Heights

Beef jerky is not declining, but Righteous Felon doesn’t consider it a crime to shift its focus toward the faster-growing format in the meat snack category.

Founded in 2011, the Pennsylvania-based brand made its name in craft jerky, but seeing a shift in consumer purchasing trends, Righteous Felon reallocated resources toward meat sticks two years ago. Since then, the brand has flipped its sales from a 70% jerky and 30% meat stick split, to the inverse, with sticks now representing about 77% of revenue.

Dollar sales for the brand were up 463.6% year-over-year, according to Circana’s MULO+C data tracking. In the same 52-week period ending June 15, Righteous Felon also increased its unit sales 235.3%.

“Jerky is still growing significantly, but sticks are just a rocket ship,” said founder and CEO Brendan Cawley. “Consumer demand has really gone that way, and luckily, we caught the wave.”

The brand established an identity using historical figures and recognizable characters as stand-ins for its flavor combinations –Nelson Mandilla Biltong, Truffle-O Bill Beef Jerky and Teriyaki Balboa, to name a few. When Righteous Felon launched into meat sticks in 2022, it didn’t adopt the same branding as the jerky but took a less playful approach, which didn’t help its shift into the subcategory.

“We realized that our sticks just really didn’t have any of that fun,” Cawley said. “They were generic – barbecue, hickory – they were kind of boring and didn’t bring through any of that character-led branding.”

Righteous Felon was also using a blended recipe of 60% pork to 40% beef, which provides a slightly better mouthfeel and cheaper input costs due to pork pricing being traditionally lower than beef.

Taking a cue from some of the faster-growing, insurgent stick brands like Chomps and Archer, Righteous Felon reformulated to single-sourced protein and rebranded its stick packaging to align with the trends, while also adding in callouts to its sourcing, ingredients and better-for-you attributes.

Yet, just as sales were “skyrocketing” and the meat stick market was “surging” last year, Cawley said, the brand’s co-packer Western Smokehouse – the primary co-packer for the premium meat stick set — informed the brand it was prioritizing line time for other clients and didn’t have capacity for Righteous Felon.

The brand’s supply issue turned into a blessing in-disguise. Righteous Felon found a new co-manufacturing partner and is now the anchor account for the producer, which has improved “quality, consistency and costing,” Cawley reported.

“It just put us in a position to make a lot more and meet the growing demand out there with an approachable-priced product,” he said.

Despite the production challenge and constraints smaller brands faced in finding line-time, producers like Western Smokehouse and others are building more capacity to meet demand; yet, the uptick in new smokehouses “could be an overcorrection” if demand falls off, Cawley cautioned.

For now, Cawley is confident that his brand is well-situated for future growth as it focuses on building a bigger presence in retail on the back of a steady inventory. When it comes to selling into new retailers, the brand has used its jerky line to build relationships over time and slowly integrate additional varieties or formats like poultry, sticks or biltong into those partnerships.

The brand used that strategy to expand its partnership with Giant Foods, which started in March 2020, to expand to 17 SKUs across the chain’s network. Cawley hopes it can do the same with Mid-Atlantic convenience chain Wawa, where Righteous Felon already sells some of its jerky but would like to expand its facings further.

As its sales have grown, Righteous Felon has split its supply chain management structure into two teams to source exclusively for jerky or sticks. The brand has also opted not to use brokers at this point. The decision comes in part from a costing perspective but also because it has always been a family-owned venture that emphasizes its hands-on approach.

“We like to figure things out,” Cawley said. “If we’re going to meet with a significant buyer or category manager, I like to be there with our sales team that I founded the company with. It comes across very clearly that these are real stakeholders or decision-makers, not just a representative of the brand making a commission.”

Most importantly, the premium and better-for-you meat snack category has shifted the momentum in the set, helping brands like Righteous Felon get a footing in more conventional, mass and convenience store chains.

“Even Bubba the truck driver or blue collar workers that shop at Tractor Supply Company don’t want to eat something high in sodium with nitrates, corn syrup or MSG,” Cawley said. “There’s a profound shift that’s happening in American consumption that benefits brands that are already offering better-for-you options.”