Created by Livio Bisterzo, founder of snacking success story Hippeas and its CPG holding company Green Park Brands, Mavericks Cookies had its work cut out for it when it launched the snacking brand aimed at kids aged 4- 11-years-old in 2020, a time when grocery shopping was a tunnel vision exercise for most consumers looking to pantry load and get in and out stores as quickly as possible.
“Launching during the pandemic was less than ideal, and we did the best that we could with very limited tools to learn about the consumer, learn what we had gotten right out of the gate, and what we needed to refine,” Schaefer, who previously started the chilled bar company Bright Foods before joining Green Park Brands, told FoodNavigator-USA.
“Being a small company focus is one of the biggest assets that we have.”
Prioritizing cookies
The company made a couple of critical decisions starting with putting its cracker products on pause to focus on its higher-turning lightening-bolt-shaped cookies line available in three flavors: birthday cake (it’s No. 1 selling flavor), non-stop choc, and double trouble choc.
“What we found was that the cookies had a really high repeat whereas the crackers were getting some love, but people weren’t as fanatical about them. We very well may bring crackers back in the future because we still see a need for them, but we need to establish our foothold with cookies first,” said Schaefer.
The other decision the company made was to revamp the packaging on its multi-serve box (available at Whole Foods) and new multi-pack product of 8 single-serve pouches (now sold at Target) by placing an image of the cookie directly on the front of the package to make it abundantly clear to consumers what the brand was selling.
