Page 34 - Food&Drink September 2019

FOOD EXPORT
Chippy serendipity
What started as a trip to the US looking for products to import ended up as a hugely successful export business. Doris Prodanovic talks with Ron Rodda from The Good Crisp Company.
IT all started with an invitation to Los Angeles for the Natural Products Expo West in 2014. For Ron Rodda, director at ABC Sales & Marketing, the trip was meant to be for having “a look for products we could bring back to Australia”.
But at Expo West, Rodda and business partner Matt Parry realised they could do the reverse and export products into the US instead.
For 30 years, Rodda and four partners have been in the importing business, supplying products to Woolworths, Coles and independent food stores in Australia.
“In 2015 we went back with all the products we had from our manufacturer, just to get a feel for what people thought,” Rodda told Food & Drink Business.
“We took a lot of extruded snacks and things like that, but they just went nuts over the fact we had a gluten-free stacked
chip. The feedback was, if we did it right, it could take on Pringles.”
This gluten-free stacked chip turned into its own brand – The Good Crisp Company – and is now the “fastest growing potato chip in the natural food channel” in the US, says Rodda.
During their 2015 visit to
rundown on where The Good Crisp Co could fit on US store shelves, they decided the west coast was the place to start.
“California is an economy of its own. It’s one of the largest in the world. It’s got more people than Australia, and we figured if we just did California and sold some stock, we could double our business,” he says.
“We launched in sixty stores in Northern California – all of the Whole Foods and some other independent stores, nothing major. The Good Crisp Co was still in its infancy at that point in 2016.
“Since the start of this year, we’re in around 8000 stores in the US. We were put into Walmart in February and as of August, we are in Whole Foods nationally.”
Breaking into the US market wasn’t without its challenges, says Rodda, but the key was having someone on the ground, like Begoun, to advise on strategies and decisions for the company to make its start.
BACK TO OZ
Launching the products back in Australia, however, has had a slower reception from local buyers and retailers.
“There’s a saturated market in Australia and it’s very crowded,” Rodda told F&DB.
“Every major retailer has a private label, and then you’ve got Pringles out there. We have a clean and gluten-free product but the retailers didn’t see that as enough.
34 | Food&Drink business | September 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
“ Since the start of this year, we’re in around 8000 stores in the US. We were put into Walmart in February and as of August, we are in Whole Foods nationally.”
Expo West, Rodda and Parry were put in contact with Elliot Begoun, founder of consultancy company The Intertwine Group. Begoun helped map out the US market, its stores, channels and demographics, particularly for natural food brands.
Rodda says after Begoun’s
“The opportunity just came up in the US, serendipity I guess, and we decided to go for it.”
Somehow, someone from Tiger Airways heard about the company’s US success and contacted Rodda to see if it could do something for them.
The Good Crisp Co started to