Amplify Snack Brands, the recently-formed US snack business, is to launch its Paqui “better-for-you” tortilla chips across the US next month.
The company snapped up Paqui last April and is embarking on a nationwide roll-out in February, Tom Ennis, Amplify Snack Brands’ president and CEO, told the ICR investment conference in Florida.
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By GlobalData“We are launching 21 new SKUs into the marketplace in February,” Ennis said.
Kroger is one of the retailers to be listing Paqui and Ennis said Amplify Snack Brands would look to promote the brand alongside its second product, SkinnyPop popcorn. “We’re able to leverage the distribution we have on SkinnyPop and once we have distribution we’ll do a lot of co-promotions.”
Ennis cited products like Snyder’s-Lance’s Late July and Hain Celestial’s Garden of Eden as rival better-for-you tortillas but said Amplify Snack Brands also had a larger brand in its sights.
“The way to think about Paqui is it’s a better-for-you Dorito. It’s clean, simple, transparent ingredients with really solid better-for-you claims and it tastes great. Even though we’re better-for-you, Doritos is a competitor. That’s who we want to steal share from,” Ennis said. “Doritos is a multi-billion dollar business. That’s why we purposely created a better-for-you Dorito. We know mom is that gate-keeper for buying that. We think we can get her to try the product when she purchases SkinnyPop. We look at them as our primary competitor.”
He added: “In that better-for-you space, we are also competing with Snyder’s-Lance [and] Late July and then Hain on the Garden of Eatin’, [which] are the primary, better-for-you, flavoured tortilla chips.”
Amplify Snack Brands listed in the US last summer. Private-equity firm TA Associates, which invested in SkinnyPop in 2014, remains the largest shareholder in the business.