Self-Manufacturing, Shelf-Stable Snacks Drive JonnyPops’ Expansion

JonnyPops has spent over a decade investing in its manufacturing capabilities to carve out white-space in better-for-you frozen treats.

With a consistent pipeline of innovation, the Minnesota-based business has stepped into relatively new terrain by offering shelf-stable options while it focuses on pulling share from category incumbents in conventional grocery.

“We’re still very much a growth brand,” CFO and co-founder Connor Wray told Nosh. “We’re growing at a very healthy pace and have taken that leadership spot in the natural frozen novelties category. But when you compare us to some of the behemoths in conventional grocery, there are some really huge entrenched businesses out there.”

Innovation has been at the forefront of JonnyPops’ strategy, with 20 patents and trademarks behind the brand. Its R&D team recently launched two new products that position the brand to not only expand its offerings behind freezer doors, but also meet consumers in a different part of the store.

Along with its newest frozen variety, Unicorn Twist, JonnyPops launched into the trend toward freeze-dried sweet treats with its Minis product line. Freeze Dried Minis – available in Strawberries & Cream; Raspberries, Blueberries & Cream and Mangos & Cream flavors – bring the brand into a shelf-stable format.

“It’s taking some of our smoothie pops and making them available as a camping, on-the-go or lunchbox option,” Wray said.

JonnyPops is already sold in over 30,000 stores, but the Freeze Dried Minis expand it into a new category and store-part. It also aligns with its ethos of creating value for consumers without relying on preservatives and other additives to extend shelf life.

This type of innovation would not be possible with the scale and institutional knowledge that JonnyPops has built since it was founded 13 years ago.

Scaling Through Self-Manufacturing

Self-manufacturing has always been key to JonnyPops’ long-term goals as it needed to control its production to create the formats and capabilities the founding team envisioned, Wray said.

“It’s not a perfect analogy, but if you’re working with a co-manufacturer, you’re taking the Legos that everyone else has access to, and you’re just putting them together in the way that suits your brand or business and then putting a label on it,” he said. “That’s a fine business model that works for a lot of companies, but it doesn’t necessarily deliver the ability to invent things off the cuff that haven’t existed before.”

This is why JonnyPops chose to take the incrementally harder approach of building its own manufacturing capabilities slowly and reinvesting in its production to maintain a degree of control.

In 2022, JonnyPops moved into a custom-retrofitted, 80,000 sq. ft. production facility in Elk River, northwest of the Twin Cities. The former juice-box production facility was redesigned to house multiple production and packaging lines, frozen and dry storage, cold dock shipping areas, and the company’s offices.

Having secured a new base of operations and room to expand, JonnyPops is eyeing growth in the conventional grocery channel, where it only has about 45% ACV (all-commodity volume). By comparison, frozen novelties have about 94% household penetration, according to Wray, leaving a lot of opportunity for the brand to spread even further.

From other privately-owned popsicle makers like GoodPop or DeeBees Organics to high-protein ice cream brands, JonnyPops is part of a trend toward better-for-you frozen novelties that use lower-sugar formulations and organic ingredients to compete with the larger strategics that dominate the set.

“There are huge tracks of the market that are completely untapped, where you can walk into a store and there isn’t a single JonnyPops item on shelf,” he said. “So there are gaps between where our consumers’ knowledge of us, our brand and our products are, compared to where it could be.”