Dive Brief:
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SnackNation, a Los Angeles-based startup that delivers healthier snack boxes to offices and homes, has raised $12 million in a Series B financing round led by 3L Capital. According to Food Business News, this pushes the company's venture funding total to $22.5 million.
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SnackNation said it will use the money to build out its network by developing new distribution channels, including in the areas of hospitality and transportation. The business publication said the company also plans to expand its direct-to-consumer home delivery business as well as the consumer insights and other data it acquires.
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Sean Kelly, SnackNation's CEO, told Food Navigator that while offices are where millennials in particular can be reached, the company wants to get better-for-you products to consumers in other places where they might want a snack but where the options are more limited than in an office.
Dive Insight:
SnackNation has developed an interesting and popular idea — delivering healthier snacks to people in offices and at home. It also has the advantage of becoming a liaison with snack brands by collecting consumer insights, data analytics and business intelligence as it delivers those products and interacts with customers.
This position could make an attractive partner for major snack companies eager to not only expand their reach in the healthy snack space but also to find out more about consumer interests and preferences. Some food giants might even look to purchase SnackNation to place its products at the forefront of its delivery platform and ensure their snacks get in front of some desirable clientele.
SnackNation claims to have a customer base of 500,000 people in offices across the country.
SnackNation CEO Sean Kelly told Food Navigator its brands can take the information and make better products targeted to the best demographic group and most profitable customer segment, which also helps the company do a better job of delivering the right brands to the right people. It's possible that SnackNation could use the information it collects to help snack makers in selling their products at grocery or c-stores or helping food manufacturers decide what products they want to develop next to the broader market.
Reaching out to the transportation and hospitality sectors makes a lot of sense if SnackNation can scale up without disrupting the office and home customer bases it already has. The company offers more than 5,000 different types of snack from 1,500 brands such as Clif Bar, Chef’s Cut, PopChips and BarkThins, which is a lot of products to track.
SnackNation has come a long way since launching in 2014. It delivers curated rotating boxes of 150 single-serve snacks to some large and influential U.S. corporations — Microsoft, Campbell Soup's Bolthouse Farms, Uber and The Huffington Post, among others. At some point, SnackNation may have to choose between being a company that delivers healthier snacks or a consumer insight and research firm. Regardless, it finds itself ideally placed in two areas that show no sign of slowing down: snacking and data analytics.