British Snack Co

British Snack Co makes a range of premium crisps, popcorn and pork scratchings

Snacking brand The British Snack Co has hit a crowdfunding target as it prepares to relaunch its pork scratching range and accelerate the growth of its sales channels.

The business has raised just more than £150k from almost 200 investors on the Seedrs platform and continues to overfund.

The British Snack Co makes a range of premium crisps, popcorn and pork scratchings and has sold more than four-million bags in the past 12 months as it recovered from the pandemic.

Its British Crisp Co brand is exclusive to the out-of-home channel, selling to pub groups such as Fuller’s and café chains such as Coffee Republic.

It pivoted to the retail channel and DTC during lockdown, with its Awfully Posh brand of pork scratchings gaining listings with Sainsburys, Waitrose and Ocado.

The business said in its Seedrs pitch that it was “enjoying a period of very strong growth” and it also became profitable for the first time in August 2022.

It will put the funding towards growing the sales channels, gaining new customers and executing a ‘Project Reset’ strategy.

Thomas Lock, who founded the business in 2013, said: “The pandemic hit our sales hard, but instead of pulling back from new business acquisition during lockdown, we doubled down.

“We continued to reach out to new and existing clients with renewed vigour and fantastic results. As a result, in 2022, our sales have reached record levels and are 90% up year on year.”

He added that the Awfully Posh range was being relaunched after a product recall this year.

“We have been working very hard in the background and will be relaunching this brand in Q1 2023 with a completely different product proposition that will allow us to strongly differentiate ourselves from others operating in the pork snack category.

“The money we are raising will help us support this relaunch and our ambition to become the number one premium pork snack brand in 2023.”

Earlier this year, the business appointed Richard Robinson, previously MD of Intersnack UK and Calbee, as managing director.

All the group’s snacks are free from allergens and the crisps and popcorn range is vegan. This year, it also rolled out new fully recyclable packaging.

The business previously raised more than £200k from the crowd in 2021 to support it through the pandemic.