Join Hannah and Alex for a little snak. chat as they discuss where snak. started and where and how snak. is heading in a big direction!
Snak. started at a farmers market and grew to 20 stores in Fredericton before Hannah and Alex realized they were really onto something great. Today they still provide wholesome, snacks with minimal ingredients and a great taste and are continuing to grow, now available in stores across the Maritimes! Stay tuned, we can’t wait to take you on this exciting journey!
Transcript below.
Hannah
I’m Hannah.
Alex
I’m Alex.
Hannah
And were the snak team. Snak came from
Alex
farmers market stand
Hannah
farmers market stand,
Alex
we opened a farmers market stand because I’m a very particular eater. And Hannah snacks were the only snacks that I would actually eat.
Hannah
And why is that?
Alex
they are clean. As far as ingredients goes.
Hannah
They were really raw ingredients, super simple. And we realized with the success of the farmers market, that there was definitely something running here with this product that people were really interested in really intrigued that the taste profile was so great. And the ingredients list was so minimal. So we enrolled in a business accelerator program, which took us through 12 weeks of essentially building what that business would look like, what products are you going to sell? What’s your target market? How big do you want this thing to get? And learning the basics really on how to get there? We completed that program. And our first major hurdle was kind of commercial space and what that looked like how were we going to make the products. So we built our first commercial kitchen in December (2020), we had our first few stores put in their orders, they were all in the Fredericton area at the time, two or three started, which led to six or seven. And I think we kind of got to like the 20 store marker before we kind of started to realize that our products were doing really well. And we were getting really repeat orders. And people were interested in learning more about the products themselves, but also why they were they were being loved so much products cover a lot of bases. Yeah, plant base, so that so anybody that is plant based or looking to eat more plant based can consume them, anybody that’s vegan can consume them. They’re gluten friendly. So anybody that is gluten intolerant, or is just cutting back on gluten, which is a huge thing now or keto keto is a big thing right now. So they kind of covered all these different bases where products at that time we’re not covering you kind of had to choose one or the other. And to be quite fair, the the like we are, we tend to choose more plant based options, we’re not vegans, but we do, we do tend to choose the plant based side of packaged food at the very least. You always sacrifice taste. So I think the vegan side of what we were doing was really booming because the feedback from the vegan community was that they finally had products that tasted like other people’s products, which was a huge, huge heartwarming thing for us to hear, because we felt the same way. So the feedback from everybody was super positive. And again, the repetition in orders kind of proved to us that people were willing to go out and purchase the products and love them. And people always love to give feedback in Fredericton and will be forever grateful for the community of Fredericton is amazing to launch a business. So once we had a few stores that were repeatedly ordering from us, kind of within the Fredericton area, we were also directly smack dab in the middle of a pandemic, which became very difficult to start to outreach outside of our local area. A lot of stores are suffering from shutdowns, lockouts. To be fair, everybody was really crappy for the last couple of years. So it was it was a difficult thing to launch a brand new product when people were not ready to take a risk on it. And also people didn’t have foot traffic going in and out of stores like they normally do. But we did have some really solid stores pull through for us and take the product regardless and loved that it was local. Yeah, we hit the Fredericton area, we hit the Moncton area, and we hit the St. John area. And that was kind of when we started to fan out from there. So we realized very quickly that we were going to need to leave New Brunswick and start to enter into the markets in Nova Scotia and Pei and kind of cover the Atlantic bases, which is where we are right now.
Alex
Which is why we’re here.
Hannah
So we’re in the middle right now of ramping up production so that we can not only cater to New Brunswick, but also cater to the other maritime provinces, which is a lot of efficiency upgrades is what we’re going through right now. How can we make the product faster and the quality still be the same at the end.
As amazing as the feedback and consistent basis we’ve been getting from the independent health food stores and from market settings and, and all those processes that have helped us grow to this point. There’s a huge chunk of people that don’t really have the time to be able to go into these independents on a regular basis. So for us, the next step is to make our products available in the grocery stores. They’re a great fit for a grocery store. There’s tons of people that use them for work, snacks, lunchbox, snacks, snacks on the go snacks, and we think there’s a huge access point there in the marketplace for a product like this for one that’s super clean has a great ingredients label and it can kind of fit all the dietary basis. We’re very excited that there’s such a huge local movement moving into the grocery store, it’s a great time for us to enter into that market. People who do love to shop local are realizing that they can do so now in their own grocery chains, which is amazing. And we can’t wait to be a part of it.
We have so many things coming up in the next few months, things that are exciting and scary and nerve wracking and awesome. And we are going to show every little bit of it to you guys. We think that that’s super important and also kind of fun for you to see the process of us getting to this point, you’re gonna see a lot more of Alex much to his delight. And we’re just really excited to be able to take you away on the journey.