Fredericton ‘Snak.’ Company To Distribute Through Nova Scotia And Prince Edward Island
FREDERICTON— Snak. Bakery Limited, a locally-sourced, vegan, dairy and gluten-free snack company, is expanding into Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
Hannah Watson, Snak.’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said after receiving licensing to sell interprovincially, the snack company had to decide if they wanted to continue with in-house production or partner with a company that has the capacity to do the production work faster.
“When you open that door to other provinces, you’re not just opening it a little, tiny bit, you really are kicking it wide open,” said Watson.
She said a company’s capacity to produce and distribute have to be ready before an influx of sales start. To help ramp up, Snak. partnered with Kitchen Door Catering, located in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
They just finished moving into Kitchen Door and are in the middle of doing some testing because the recipes and ingredients differ when they start producing at a larger scale.
Their next step is to solidify their distribution partnership with Maritime Natural Food Co., a local distribution company that services the Maritime provinces and solely distributes local Maritime products.
“Maritime [Natural] is a great network to be able to access some of the stores that we would not have been able to do by ourselves and it also opens the door when we’re ready for Sobeys.”
Watson said making Snak.’s products available through Sobeys Inc. is part of the company’s long-term goal of going nationwide.
Partnering with Maritime Natural allows Snak. to start distributing their food products throughout Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The partnership will also allow the company to send products to stores in rural areas of New Brunswick.
“Shipping is a huge problem and shipping cost is a huge problem, so if they can order Snak. products but also be able to order six or seven of their favourite local brands at the same time, that’s a win-win for everyone.”
By doing this, those rural New Brunswick areas and Snak. will both save on shipping.
Watson is currently in the middle of building a distribution plan for Nova Scotia.
“The Halifax, Dartmouth outreach is phenomenal. [There are] so many health forward, health-conscious markets.”
Watson said distributing their products in Nova Scotia means a more populated area where a lot of “forward thinking” about food is happening and people are more in the know over some of their rural locations so far.
“We love that we’ve grown in New Brunswick and we love that even if people don’t really care as much about the product being healthy or about it being an alternative, the taste has driven it to this point.”
She said being able to expand the company is tremendous.
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“We go from selling to a handful of stores here in our own province to selling to hundreds of stores throughout the Maritimes, maybe even thousands of stores.”
Snak. Bakery Limited was founded in 2019 after completing The Summer Institute program at the University of New Brunswick. Watson created the natural ingredient snack company with Alex Mollegaard, right before the pandemic.
“We started the company with the idea [of] trying to put kitchen quality snack foods that actually have taste back on the shelf,” said Watson.
She said while different health food trends are exciting and new, they are often “quite tasteless and boring,” which also feeds into the stereotype about healthy food.
When customers are searching for food products that have a clean label and are nutritional, Watson said a lot of the time, the taste of the product is sacrificed to get the product as clean as possible.
This is where the idea for Snak. came from.
Watson and co-founder Mollegaard wanted to make products with “a little bit of love and a little bit of extra intention.”
“That way taste is at the forefront and the clean label and the exciting part of the product being good for you.”
When the pandemic hit, Watson said like many other companies, getting their CPG brand into stores was not easy. Stores were either not looking to take on new brands or suffering their own shutdowns.
Snak. continued to persevere and had stores in the Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John region that “took a leap of faith” with their brand, which has now created the building blocks of their expansion goals throughout the Maritimes currently happening.
Jessica Saulnier is an intern with Huddle in Fredericton. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].