The British Snack Co.

Idea

Introduction

At The British Snack Co. we do things a little differently. Our award-winning flavours and unique ranges of craft popcorn, crisps and pork snacks have sold over 8 million bags to date.

The UK snacks market is massive with people spending £3.2bn a year on tasty treats. Yet, we are also in the midst of a ‘craft’ revolution. People want something natural, healthy(ish) and a little different.

The British Snacks Co. is in the ideal position to capitalise on this market trend with three ‘craft’ snack brands. We are already stocked by some of the UK’s largest pubs, bars and supermarkets, and have rapidly grown our direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales via our website and Amazon.

This funding round will allow us to continue growing our sales channels, gain new customers and emerge from lockdown stronger than ever. We intend to roll out our new easily compostable packaging this year and continue our journey to become a certified B-Corp, demonstrating our commitment to people and the planet.

Substantial accomplishments to date

All of our snacks are free from allergens and all of our crisps and popcorn are vegan, capitalising on these lifestyle trends.

Awfully Posh (our craft pork scratching) was the first pork snack ever to win a Great Taste Award!

Strong Retail sales, even during lockdown, recently launching a sharing bag of our Awfully Posh Pork Crackling which was immediately listed by Waitrose.

We have sold more than eight million bags to-date and have also grown our direct-to-consumer sales, earning consistent monthly revenue since the start of 2020.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have been working with buyers in the hospitality industry to create joint marketing plans for after lockdown. We believe that this has the potential to put us in a great position to rapidly grow our Out of Home (OOH) sales channel following lockdown while helping pubs, bars and cafes recover with a tasty new range of snacks.

We aim to complete our transition to completely compostable packaging this year and continue our progress to become a registered B-Corp, demonstrating our commitment to people and the planet.

Monetisation strategy

We believe that the way out of the current crisis is through innovation. That’s why we are creating joint OOH marketing plans for after lockdown that we believe will see this key sales channel rebound, despite dropping significantly in 2020.

As people cut back on visiting supermarkets, the FMCG market continues to thrive, with online ordering increasing and people eating and drinking more at home. There is also a trend of consumers looking to recreate a special evening or ‘pub’ nights out (the virtual pub).

As a result, crisps sales are up 28% to £94.6m (The Grocer - source: Kantar 4 w/e 17 May 2020). We have capitalised on this by growing an entirely new D2C sales channel from scratch since the start of the 2020 and revenue from this channel has grown and we expect it to continue. Even after the OOH channel reopens, we think it will represent around 10% of total sales!

Our target customer split is as follows:

• Retail 40%
• OOH 40%
• D2C 10%
• Export 10%

Use of proceeds

This round will provide the top-up funds required to accelerate the growth of these sales channels and acquire new customers so we are perfectly positioned to capture a large chunk of the market over the next year or two.

The pandemic has hit our sales hard, but instead of pulling back from new business acquisition during lockdown - we doubled down. We continued to reach out to new and existing clients with renewed vigour with fantastic results. Although we don't believe well see the benefits of this work until Q2 next year at the earliest, we will need to grow our team to manage all of the new contracts we have won.

We’ll also need to increase our marketing spend to ensure that we generate the pull-through required to make the most of the new customers we have won during the lockdown.