Sahale Snacks moves beyond nut mixes with snack bars
The Washington-based nut mix specialist has rolled out a line of layered nut bars – made with a cashew butter base and whole dry-roasted nuts and chocolate. The bars come in four flavors: almond vanilla latte, cinnamon pecan, dark chocolate peanut and salted caramel apple pecan.
Elizabeth Sommer, associate brand manager at Sahale Snacks, said the roll-out marked the company’s first move into the bar segment.
“Nut blends are typically what we’re known for and for the past ten years that’s what we’ve been selling,” she told BakeryandSnacks.com at Sweets & Snacks Expo 2015 in May.
She said while flavor remained important the format was something original to the category and Sahale didn’t plan to stop there.
“We’re already working on additional innovation projects… Well, the hope actually is to develop an entire snacking platform for Sahale,” she said.
Collaboration with JM Smucker
JM Smucker acquired Sahale Snacks in September, 2014 – after making the announcement of the takeover in July.
Sommer said it was April 2015 when the two companies were fully integrated and Sahale Snacks ready to commence operations under JM Smucker.
“JM Smucker has a wealth of knowledge and information from all of their brands, so from a brand perspective it’s tremendous. Also, their sales resources are strong – we went from six sales people to over 400, so there’s a lot of energy and push and body power behind Sahale now which is incredible.”
She said the hope was that Sahale would maintain its nimbleness in terms of innovation.
“I personally think that what [JM Smucker] found in Sahale was a little bit of innovation; a bit of scrappiness and that’s probably part of what they want to maintain. You want to keep your smaller companies involved; get their innovative products to market faster,” she said.
Bar target
Asked if the layered nut bar line targeted a different set of consumers, Sommer said it would likely be regular Sahale consumers.
“We’ve done a lot of segmentation studies about who purchases Sahale, and it’s not a demographic. It’s really people that are passionate about food – people that are looking for progressive flavors, people that want to try something unique and people that are also health conscious, because there’s that sort of health halo with the cashew nut butter and dry-roasted nuts.
“…These are the people that pay more attention to what they want in their diet, as opposed to the people who are focused on what to keep out,” she said.
