Dive Brief:
- Snack subscription services are growing in number and popularity, and business models for them vary in both strategy and success.
- They aim to differentiate themselves from the competition by offering themed snacks each month, such as Treats, which ships snacks from a different country each month.
- While many of these services gather snacks from other manufacturers, services like Graze use their own proprietary products for monthly subscriptions and then sell the best-liked products in stores, thanks to insights gleaned from consumers' feedback from the subscriptions.
Dive Insight:
Still, subscription snack services haven't always succeeded. General Mills launched Nibblr in 2014 but shut it down earlier this year. Wal-Mart also had its own food subscription service, Goodies.co, which it too shut down after about a year.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Kellogg may be considering starting its own subscription snacks service.
Snacking is a growing trend in the food industry, so it's no surprise that snack boxes are gaining popularity among consumers. Snack boxes offer major food companies a new way to get their products in front of consumers as sales for processed foods continue to lag. They also offer a way for both large and up-and-coming companies to test out their products before producing them on a mass scale for retail.