People’s Choice Beef Jerky (peopleschoicebeefjerky.com), a fourth-generation family business in Los Angeles, is a relatively small player in the world of dried meat snacks. But for the past four years at the holidays, the company gets a nice bump in sales when they resume production of their limited-time only (LTO) Maple Brown Sugar Beef Jerky.
“We’ve been very intentional with our decision to limit the run to just the holiday season,” says Brian Bianchetti, CEO and great grandson of the founder. “The reason that we've done that is to build that anticipation, that excitement.”
Limited-time holiday products can be logistically challenging and risky in several ways, but for food manufacturers, they are often worth the effort.
“Based on the success that we’ve had with this product, there’s a big opportunity and there’s definitely demand out there from a consumer standpoint to have these seasonal, limited run fun flavors,” Bianchetti says.
Tapping the season
The holidays are closely associated with food and drink – big family dinners, endless sweets, celebratory cocktails – so it stands to reason that food manufacturers seek to profit from the season.
When People’s Choice Beef Jerky dreamed up their holiday offering in 2021, they found a like-minded partner in Crown Maple Syrup (www.crownmaple.com).
“When we developed this flavor, we reached out to a handful of different maple syrup producers and pitched the idea, explaining that we wanted to tell the story about two businesses partnering to make a seasonal flavor. And Crown Maple Syrup immediately got the idea, they loved it,” Bianchetti explains.
The quality of Crown’s products matched the quality of People’s Choice jerky, he adds, and the cross-marketing opportunities were an important bonus.
“They have a great brand, they have a great presence, so being able to tap into their audience, introducing our product to their customers and vice versa, was valuable,” Bianchetti says. “They may be in New York and we’re in California, but there’s definitely a fun sort of partnership across the coasts there.”
Bianchetti says he believes the holiday product has brought in new customers who otherwise may not have tried People’s Choice. And if they enjoy it, presumably they will try other varieties of the company’s jerky and become regular customers throughout the year.
Another small food processor benefiting from the holiday season is Ann Clark Ltd. (www.annclark.com), best known for making cookie cutters. The company opened a food processing facility in 2021 and launched Ann Clark Premium Gingerbread Cookie Mix earlier this year.
CEO Ben Clark says the gingerbread cookie mix (PHOTO AT TOP) will be available year-round, but the holiday season is definitely when it will see the majority of its sales.
“When we look at a new product we say, ‘Why is somebody buying this?’ ” Clark explains. “In the case of the gingerbread cookie mix, they’re sitting down as a family making cookies for Christmas. Or they’re making cookies that they’re then going to put in tins and they’re using those as gifts or they're bringing them to work for a Christmas party. Those are sort of the use cases. So we market to those use cases.”
Oatly North America (www.oatly.com) – significantly larger than the two companies mentioned above -- launched a seasonal LTO this year for the first time and similarly hopes to excite consumers. Its new Hot Cocoa Oatmilk became available in retailers in September and will be on shelves through February.
“The idea came about in a brainstorm session with our team,” says Priscilla Garcia, vice president of portfolio strategy at Oatly North America. “We presented the idea to our customers during the spring and early summer months, and the supply chain was involved from the very beginning. It was a quick turn-around.”
Garcia says the holiday LTO brings several advantages. “This type of product gives us a chance to engage with our consumers in a special way by launching something that is a little bit outside of the everyday that will bring a smile to their faces.
“Food trends nowadays are very ephemeral, and the only way to be ahead of the curve is by being agile and dropping new offerings more often,” she continues. “It’s also an opportunity to test a concept, and if it’s successful, it could eventually become part of our permanent lineup.”
Logistics challenges
When People’s Choice makes its year-round beef jerky varieties, they benefit from decades of data and production and logistics experience. But when they start working on the Maple Brown Sugar Beef Jerky, there is somewhat less certainty.
“It definitely introduces some complexity to our procurement, to our supply and to the production scheduling,” Bianchetti says. “Limiting the run to a specific period requires our planning team and our marketing and sales to figure out, okay, what’s our anticipation this year for how much that we’re going to sell? Then getting closely aligned with production and having them work backwards on what they need to source and how much packaging they need to hold.”
Oatley’s Garcia reports similar challenges with their LTO. “It is definitely more complex, which is why this is a test and learn situation. The production runs are much smaller, while the level of effort for the whole team is the same if not higher than a standard product launch.
“We are also launching something outside of the standard range review that we have for everyday products, so there are some commercial and logistical challenges there. However, the team has done a fantastic job in making this happen and we are all excited to see the product on shelves.”
Close work with retailers
Naturally, the success of a limited time product depends greatly on good relations with the retailers selling it.
Clark says his company is leaning into its decades of cookie cutter manufacturing experience to improve the just-in-time deliverability of Premium Gingerbread Cookie Mix and the other baking mixes they make.
“If it’s late September and you’re a store and you’re out of holiday cookie cutters, you can’t call a Chinese distributor because it’s already too late,” he says. “But we’re like, ‘Sure, and if we’re out of it, we’ll make it this afternoon.’ Now we’re looking at the mixes the same way. [If we’re out of a mix that a store needs], just give me a couple of days and I’ll make it.”
Because this is the first holiday season that the gingerbread cookie mix is available, he’s telling his retail customers to buy cautiously.
“The temptation is to get as big of an order as you can, but we’re like, ‘No, get an order that sells through,’” Clark explains. “The kiss of death with a retailer is if they get to Dec. 27 and your Christmas product is still sitting there. The retailer doesn’t say, ‘Geez, you know, he told me not to order four cases but I did.’ They don’t say that. They say, ‘Ann Clark sucks.’ ”
When it comes to Maple Brown Sugar Beef Jerky, Bianchetti says it’s not a terrible thing when a retailer sells out of before the holiday season ends.
“For new customers, there’s a bit of education and partnership that goes into this,” Bianchetti says. “We explain to them that this is a limited edition run, we make a fixed amount. But that actually works to the retailer’s advantage because they’re able to leverage that to get their customers excited. It’s not the worst thing in the world to sell out of this product a little bit earlier than anticipated, because it gets customers coming back the next year.”
Dodging cannibalization
For all of the marketing value in a holiday-related product, there is a risk: Will customers simply buy a manufacturer’s holiday product instead of the regular product, resulting in overall flat sales?
“When it comes to unique products or a new flavor of an existing product, a huge issue here that often goes overlooked is cannibalization,” says Stephen Dombroski, director of consumer markets at supply chain company QAD Inc. (www.qad.com). “That’s when the new product steals demand from an existing product – total demand remains about the same but changes with product mix. This can seriously impact the manufacturer. It can also lead to obsolete inventories of not just finished product, but ingredients and packaging materials.”
One mitigating factor regarding cannibalization is profitability, Dombroski says. If the holiday product has a greater margin than the regular product, flat sales would equate to more profit.
Bianchetti says his company’s experience with the limited-run Maple Brown Sugar Beef Jerky has been that it’s not stealing sales from their regular beef jerky varieties.
“We don’t see a lot of cannibalization and in fact, these flavors are a great way to get people into the door,” he asserts. “So for example, on our online business, our advertising really taps into that seasonal look and feel. People say, ‘Oh, a limited edition Maple Brown Sugar Beef Jerky, interesting. I wanna check that out.’ They come to our website, and then that really gets them introduced to the brand. And they’ll try other flavors as well.
“It’s similar [in stores],” he says. “It’s kind of getting people’s attention and opening up the brand to people that may otherwise have never tried us.”
The end of the season
When the holidays are over, invariably some retailers still have holiday products on the shelves. What happens to that? It depends on the product and the retailer.
Garcia says Oatly can help retailers who have too much Hot Cocoa Oatmilk on the shelves when warmer weather is on the horizon. “At the discretion of the retailer, they can choose to keep products on shelves as long as they’re respecting the use-by date,” she explains. “If needed, we’ll help retailers sell through inventory by way of markdown.”
People’s Choice also helps retailers with overstock of the holiday jerky variety, Bianchetti says. “We had one instance where one of our retail partners just completely miscalculated their expectations for sales, and we were able to take that product back from them just to help them out on it,” he says. “Then we were able to quickly move it through some of our online channels, because that demand was there. We know that there’s a little bit more uncertainty and risk there, so we’re flexible in terms of bringing that product back.”
Despite the potential challenges and risks, holiday products are generally a positive endeavor for food processors.
“Holiday grocery products are an extremely huge business,” Dombroski says. “For many retailers and food manufacturers, holiday seasonal items can make or break their fiscal budgets.”