Create a Crisp

Idea

Introduction

We believe we are experts in the snack industry and what we are offering is an investment opportunity in not just one, not two, not even three, but FOUR incredible snack brands. Each of which enables us to target a different sector of the >£2bn UK snack market.

Whilst our number one priority is to grow our existing brands, we are constantly on the look out for new trends and thinking about new ideas; an investment in this company is not only an investment in our existing brand portfolio but also in our future brands and NPD. Since our first Seedrs round, we have added 2 new brands and when appropriate we intend to add more to supplement our portfolio and support our goal to become a major player in the savoury snack market.

Our diversified portfolio of four distinct brands not only allows us to attack multiple areas of the FMCG market, but also means the business is not reliant on simply one brand or product. Whilst helping to shield us from rapidly changing consumer buying habits and trends, this simultaneously means we are better placed, we believe, than other businesses in our sector to capitalise on them.

Intended impact

Our first three brands were Awfully Posh, The London Crisp Co. and The London Popcorn Co., however the detail in this campaign is focused on our newest brand - Create a Crisp.

We believe Create a Crisp is the most innovative new product to hit the savoury snack sector for many years.

The product is a multipack; with 5 bags of unseasoned, reduced fat, crinkle cut crisps. What makes it special, is that we also include 10 different seasoning sachets, allowing the consumer to not only to control the amount of flavouring they apply to their bag of crisps, but also to - quite literally - create their own flavour of crisps by combining sachets. There are hundreds of different flavour combinations!

Unsalted crisps with little blue sachets of salt which the consumer can sprinkle over their crisps have been around for decades. Create a Crisp takes the concept of seasoning your own crisps to another level.

You can watch the video from our previous round here:

Substantial accomplishments to date

Create a Crisp:

◆ Despite only launching in Q4 2017, the brand has already secured listings in both Waitrose and Tesco. It launched into 200 Waitrose stores, and into Tesco in early 2018.

◆ A further launch on Ocado is planned for March 2018, and we are in conversations with other major supermarkets.

◆ Create a Crisp is not only a concept that we believe is completely unique and innovative - and has rapidly achieved listings in two major supermarkets - but one that also taps into consumers' increasing demand for personalisation and the ability to control the amount of seasoning applied to their snacks.

The London Crisp Co.:

◆ Now an established crisp brand with major listings and significant distribution across the UK, Europe and Middle East.

The London Popcorn Co.:

◆ Despite only launching last year, this brand - a sister brand to The London Crisp Co. - has already secured distribution, especially in the Contract Catering market.

Awfully Posh:

◆ Now a popular and well-known pork snack on the market with national distribution in major supermarkets, farm shops and online.

Monetisation strategy

We aim to implement a very simple, low overhead, and lean capital business model. Rather than needlessly hire administrative and accounting staff, we have partnered with an experienced third party to handle our 'back office' in its entirety.

This third party holds our stock, processes the orders, and does the invoicing and cash collection.

This cost-effective solution saves us the overheads of hiring staff, the worries and cash flow difficulties that come with running a complex debtor book, and most importantly allows the team to concentrate on growing our brands rapidly and generating a brilliant pipeline of new products.

Use of proceeds

To date, we have maintained a small, close-knit team concentrated on rapidly growing our brands. Having just added our fourth brand - Create a Crisp - to our already well diversified portfolio of savoury snacks, we now feel the time is right to grow our sales team in order to continue to drive the business forward and to continue to generate new business and listings.

As such, we intend to use some of the investment proceeds to hire a new National Account Manager to look after the Food Service and Independent Sector.

The remainder of the proceeds will be used to create a £50k marketing pot with the intention of driving awareness - and trial - of our entire range of products, with emphasis on our new Create a Crisp brand; as an exciting new concept, we need to educate the consumer on the benefits and USPs to encourage them to pick the product off the shelf.