New Tyrrells owner KP Snacks hopes to revive the beleaguered crisps brand by focusing on its heritage and ‘Tyrrellising’ a variety of premium snacks.
Tyrrells joined the KP portfolio in May 2018 after being purchased by Intersnack, KP’s German owner, from The Hershey Company for an undisclosed sum.
The deal followed the sale of Tyrrells to Amplify Snack Brands for £300m in mid-2016 and Amplify’s subsequent acquisition by Hershey in December 2017. While part of the Amplify portfolio, the brand saw its value in grocery slump to £33.5m, shedding 22.7% in the 52 weeks to 9 September 2017 [Nielsen]. It has since grown to £50.9m but was in the red once again last year.
KP marketing director Kevin McNair had been working with his team “to get to the core essence” of Tyrrells, he told The Grocer. “Tyrrells is an amazing brand. It’s the one that created premium hand-cooked crisps. What we need to do is go back to what made it famous and start leveraging that again.”
Tyrrells is the first brand of posh crisps in the KP portfolio, sitting alongside the likes of McCoy’s, Hula Hoops and Pom-Bear. McNair’s team was looking to “Tyrrellise all sorts of different snacks so you can justify to the consumer why this is worth paying more for” he said. “We have a better quality crisp, so from a product attribute perspective, it’s great.”
From Tyrrells’ farm in Herefordshire, “we can take a potato and get it into a bag and into a store in 46 minutes. That’s an amazing field-to-store story - and not a lot of food companies can say that” added McNair, who is keeping a marketing team on the farm. “It’s important given the heritage of the brand.”
KP would also seek to “leverage that British quirkiness” of Tyrrells, he said. “We have a role to talk about that and bring it to life through the flavours we bring to market, the packaging and the communications.”
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