“In the early startup days, like many companies, you're iterating and testing to see what works. Now we've narrowed that focus to the products that we know we can do really well and the flavors that consumers love.”

Flavor is indeed the key at Mighty Spark, flavors that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with chicken. Grounds come in tomato, basil & garlic; fajita; Southwest; Asian style and rotisserie-seasoned. Patties add spinach & feta, queso fresco & jalapeno, and “bacon bursting.”

But the star has been chicken snacks, now in sea salt & pepper, honey & jalapeno, teriyaki, maple and Nashville hot. Since January of this year, those flavors have been available in 0.5-oz. mini sticks as well as the original full-sized (1 oz.) snack sticks. The full-size snacks have 6-7g of protein and just 50-60 calories.

Chicken snack sticks now form the majority of Mighty Spark’s sales, although the company still sells ground chicken and chicken patties. “I think what makes Mighty Spark [snacks] unique is that it's not like a traditional meat snack that's dried out or rip and tear like jerky,” says Welker. “Our snack stick is more of a tender, softer bite.”

The commitment to chicken was confirmed even after Beste stopped selling in the farmers market. “We sat down with consumers and wanted to hear about their eating habits and what they were looking for, both for making healthy meals at home and for snacking,” she continues.

“And consumers told us they wanted healthy proteins. They also wanted flavor. And convenience for busy lifestyles. So with that information, we set out to make formulas that were both healthy and flavorful, and we thought chicken was the perfect protein to do that.

“It's lean and a great carrier of flavor. Chicken is the most consumed protein in the U.S. It can be a more challenging protein to work with, especially in meat snacks. But we knew we could deliver something that was lean and healthy bring flavor to it with different seasoning blends, and that seemed to resonate really quickly with consumers.”

Chicken isn’t the only lean thing at Mighty Spark. The product development team consists of just three people. In addition to Welker, there is Christine Arickx, quality assurance director, and Tyler Cronin, food safety and quality specialist. All three work in the downtown Minneapolis office so they can share ideas.

“As a team, we meet every other week. And we have regular touch points with our comans,” she says. “Because we're a small team, one of our advantages being able to pivot quickly or move quickly to bring a product to life.”

The full company numbers about 20, representing sales, marketing, finance and operations. Only a handful are remote. Several contract manufacturers are a key component of the overall team.

“I think there's a great benefit to [coming into an office],” says Welker. “Our co-man partners send us product here at our office for review, so we're doing product evaluations and taste testing as a team.

“There isn't really an R&D lab, but we've got a big, open office space with a nice kitchen. That's where we start our formulations. We do that with plain ground chicken and seasoning blends. Here we can spread product out and do product evaluations with many people.

“We also have worked with local universities, their meat science department, to test out some flavors and do some trialing before we bring some formulations to our comans for small scale trials. The University of Minnesota here has smokehouse equipment.

“We do have a stage gate process, but really our approach or philosophy is consumer first. The flavor profile, the configuration or size -- how does this meet the needs of the consumer? And for new formulas, what are the product guardrails? Can we make this concept a clean label snack?

“Last year we launched a chicken and maple stick, and we had two or three different formulations of that. So we brought them to consumers and asked for their input before we moved forward. We went to my son's soccer league and set up a table there and had parents and kids test it. It's fun to hear firsthand, especially what kids have to say about the product. We've worked with some marketing agencies and do surveys. And we've also worked with some third-party consumer insights groups.

“Our core consumer is mom, the one that's doing the shopping, and that was something else we were looking to do when we launched Mighty Spark. There really wasn't a meat snack that females were excited about, so we set Mighty Spark to be more female-friendly and all-family. But when we look at our flavor offerings, we've got a wide range that would appeal to mom, dad, millennials, kids. We launched minis this year, which are perfect for lunch boxes.”

Some of the top flavors are the original sea salt and pepper, as well as honey, jalapeno and teriyaki. A variety pack national rotation with Costco brought many new consumers that weren't aware of Mighty Spark.

Sourcing the chicken is important, and Mighty Spark over the years has developed relationships with the best suppliers. It’s all U.S.-sourced, no antibiotics ever, humanely raised.

While new flavors are always under consideration, Mighty Spark will stick with chicken, whether it’s the snack sticks or ground chicken. “Is there a gap in flavors that we think Mighty Spark could do really well in?” Welker asks. “There’s still a lot more flavor innovation we could bring to chicken.”