Stuart Graham popped round to Asian Trader Towers just prior to KP Snacks publishing its full-year results, which happily revealed 4.4 per cent revenue growth – no mean feat in the current economic climate. As I was to discover, this achievement was likely due to the market strategy and entrepreneurial energy of the employees, and as far as the c-channel goes, the efforts of Stuart Graham. He was celebrating a year in post after taking over from a regular on these pages, Matt Collins, who moved upstairs to his well-deserved reward as Sales Director.
Stuart, as we strapped him into the interrogation chair (only joking), recalled that we once referred to Matt in a headline as King of Snacks, and wondered what his moniker might be. We are still working on that, but maybe the Maestro of Munch has a good, snacky ring to it.
The last time we interviewed Matt it was at Lords, where KP Snacks has made a great success of its England Cricket partnership and sponsorship of The Hundred tournament. It was also not too long after a crippling cyber-attack that was the herald of a much wider campaign against UK commerce, and from which others including M&S and Co-op have now suffered. Thankfully, all is back to normal now and it’s just the economy and ever-tighter markets and margins that are the problems facing the sector.
“These are challenging times for consumers and for retailers and there are lots of drivers behind that,” says Stuart. “There’s an expression I heard years ago, which I like to keep in mind: in the past, you've only had to be good to be great in the channel. Now, you've got to be great to be good. Growth is harder than ever and you have to do a really great job. Those big 10 per cent leaps in growth are rarer to come by.”
In light of that, it is doubly impressive that KP Snacks achieved an almost five per cent uplift last year. But then, KP seems to be on a roll, inking stellar partnerships and sponsorships and purveying its extremely wide range of snacks with merchandising aplomb, while trying in a non-brand way to improve the category with its ranging philosophy. All this in a priority category that is resilient, scalable and worth £5.3bn annually.
How did Stuart arrive in the midst of all this (his first public appearance in post was at the launch of the Wicked movie partnership with Butterkist in late 2024)? Where did he come from; where did he start?
“I’m from Leicester,” he explains, “grew up there as a big rugby fan. My hero was a guy called Rory Underwood who played rugby for Leicester and for England and flew RAF planes for a living. That was the dream when I was a youngster. I've ended up about as far away from that as you could imagine.”
So, from rugby to sponsoring The Hundred – how did that happen?
“My dad cut out a job advert for a territory manager sales role. I thought, I’d better apply for that, because dad sent it and he’ll ask me about it. I applied, got the job, and that's how I ended up in FMCG.”
He started out with Kellogg's, but his plan was to move to the Reading area, for reasons no longer relevant. “I applied for a job with PepsiCo with the incentive of moving there, and so I have to admit I did used to work for the competition.
“After the interview they said, ‘Great news, we want to offer you a job. But it's not in Reading, it's in Scotland’. That wasn't really in my plan, but they flew me to up there to meet the team and I ended up taking the job, so I lived in Scotland for a while and that's when I first started working in snacks.
“In fact,” he continues, “I've worked in impulse categories most of my career: soft drinks, ‘confect’, biscuits, and crisps and snacks. I've worked in different channels with different customers. I've worked in category management, shopper marketing, revenue management and so on.”
KP Snacks’ Stuart Graham on Growth and Snacking Strategy
Stuart says that joining KP Snacks was almost like coming home: “I joined a year ago, and it's been like a reunion in many respects. A lot of the faces are the same, even people I've not seen for five or 10 years have been so welcoming.”
The industry is different to what it was a decade ago, Stuart believes – we are back to the notion of having to be great these days just to be good – running just to stand still, like the Red Queen’s race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.
“The world has changed, but a lot of things haven't,” he says. “The role of relationships and the complexity of the channel are still quite difficult. I think having that experience and knowledge with businesses in different categories has been really helpful. It doesn't get any easier. It doesn't get any slower, that's for sure. But it's been great to join KP.
"It's always a good barometer when you speak to friends and family, and they say, ‘What are you doing now, Stu?’ 'Working for KP.’ ‘Oh, the nuts!’ And I say, well, it’s more than just nuts. 'Oh, what else do you do?’ So, you go through the portfolio, and they come alive because you start talking about products that they love to eat – and eat regularly. We'll talk about happy snacking moments. I think that's what we talk about, that's our purpose: to create and elevate those occasions, whether it's on your own, together or out and about.”
At your convenience
About Matt Collins and his guidance, Stuart is very complimentary: “I think working with and for a sales director that really knows this channel, really cares about it and puts it at the front of his plans and the business’s plans, helps a lot. And I think as a business, obviously, [convenience and impulse] is a channel that we take incredibly seriously. We over index here. I think it's where we're at our best and our strongest.”
He says C&I plays a hugely important role in KP Snacks' business and that they over-index in the channel with a 24.6 per cent MAT share in Impulse, growing four per cent ahead of Total Convenience.
“Snacks is a massive category, generally, penetration is 98 per cent to 99 per cent” – almost unbelievable figures, except that they are true. Hula Hoops is the fourth biggest brand in Impulse, with 98 per cent penetration, for example.
So, is there a “special relationship” between KP and indies that is cemented by the nature of the channel – the treats temple on the street corner the mults cannot compete with when the impulse to snack strikes?
“Almost everybody eats snacks more than once a week,” says Stuart. “They're eaten and enjoyed by almost everyone, very often, and they're impulsive and a tasty treat for people. When they're on that store mission to the local store, whether it is paying a bill, buying a newspaper, buying a lottery ticket, then it's an impulse purchase that somebody wants to enjoy as a treat in that moment. It plays a big role and is very important to the c-channel, both in terms of sales and margin.”
KP Snacks’ Stuart Graham on Growth and Snacking Strategy
He says the role KP can play is huge, because of its very broad and very well-established range of brands and products that play across many different occasions. “Where we're at our best,” he says, “is when people are buying the product that they want to eat, that they're buying for themselves to consume right now.”
Part of the strategy to keep KP at the cutting edge of snacks was its implementation of one of the first retailer panels – KP SnacKPartners – where certain successful, well-known and sagacious indie figures were invited to join a consultation team to liaise with KP on all sorts of matters, in order for the company to keep an ear to the ground on what was happening in the channel, and to stay on top of developments and trends, thus front-running innovation.
“We all talk about cases, packs, competitions, flavours, merchandising, and what's going on in the trade. There are 55,000 retailers out there and we've got a panel that are based in different geographies with different types of stores and different fascias, different routes to market, and so they act as a really good cohort for us to understand their world,” he says. “I think it keeps us real. It's easy to be excited by a marketing plan on a PowerPoint, but then looking at how that works across the broader and often small store environments is vital.”
Partly because of the knowledge gained at the regular meetings – which Asian Trader was sometimes privileged to attend – in 2023 KP Snacks produced its “25 to Thrive” ranging advice, which proved to be extremely successful in practical terms. By mid-2024, three retailers they had followed reported a marked uplift in their Bagged Snacks sales, with an average growth of +15.3 per cent – outstripping those “elusive” ten per cent spikes mentioned earlier.
“We've just refreshed 25 to Thrive,” adds Stuart. “We're very clear that it has to be category focussed and brand agnostic. This time around we've looked at 50 products, which is what an average store typically sells across a snacks range. And if you are going to sell 50, what should be the right 50? What's the role of core and NPD within that?”
What’s different this year is the introduction of an Excite & Engage guide, which is not just about the right products, but how to merchandise them and how to activate the category effectively, “so that we talk about location, merchandising, fixture, layout, promotions, etc.”
Excite and Engage is based around three simple, actionable steps: choosing the right brands and promotions, maximising visibility and amplifying in-store. It shows how added value and visibility can boost impact and sales. It states that with 73 per cent of shoppers buying snacks with value for money in mind, and nearly half (47 per cent) influenced by promotions and discounts, stocking the right brands with compelling on-pack offers can still significantly boost sales.
It also points out the continued relevance of PMPs in c-stores, with 62 per cent of retailers saying that PMPs increase sales, and with PMPs accounting for the top ten best-selling SKUs.
“Helping retailers to understand the right products to sell, how to lay them out and giving them good, simple advice on an important category is where 25 to Thrive and Excite and Engage comes into its own in explaining how to make an important category work as effectively as possible, while keeping it simple.”
I ask whether all this helps retailers to also keep abreast of the tsunami of regulations and legislation the government is pouring out over the retail sector.
"I guess the big one in that for us has been non-HFSS, which is obviously the legislation kicking in now around healthy snacking and Better For You,” says Stuart. “popchips is quite a beacon brand for us in our portfolio around non-HFSS and we've seen reformulation in other categories. It's obviously a big focus for us. We're really clear that we produce great tasting snacks, and that will remain the case, but we've got commitments to ensure 55 per cent of our portfolio is non-HFSS compliant, or less than 100 calories by 2030. That's the journey we're on.”
Tie-ins and trends
The other journey concerns the varied selection of tie-ups, partnerships and sponsorships that KP has undertaken – importantly on a brand-by brand basis rather than on a company-level. The partnership with the England and Wales Cricket Board helps get all-weather pitches for youngsters commissioned across the country Under the “Everyone In” banner. The Hundred sponsorship has been a phenomenally successful branding for KP of a top-line sporting competition. Darts champion Luke Littler has just joined as a figurehead for KP Nuts, and Butterkist has its movie tie-in with Wicked – what was the thinking there?
“It's about the synergy with movies,” replies Stuart, "and big nights in and darker evenings and so on. There's a natural affinity between popcorn and movies. Wicked was certainly bigger than I expected, one of the success stories of last year. We were delighted. Part two is coming soon, and there's going to be big on-pack features across the Butterkist PMP range in convenience. There'll be opportunities to win a trip to the northern lights and a whole raft of other prizes as well. We’re using that license to really bring news and excitement to the core Butterkist portfolio. So that'll be big.”
KP Snacks’ Stuart Graham on Growth and Snacking Strategy
Earlier this year KP Snacks ran a “Bank of McCoy’s” on-pack promotion, featuring massive cash and stock prizes for both consumers and retailers across McCoy’s PMP and Grab Bag formats, with a £100k prize vault and instant cash wins of up to £1,000, plus free crisps. It was another great success and fitted in perfectly with the consumer trend toward spicy flavours that McCoy’s champions.
“Hot spices have definitely emerged," says Stuart: in fact, McCoy's Hot 'n' Spicy has generated nearly £1.5m RSV in just six months, and "Spicy" is a dominant flavour profile, representing the second fastest-growing in the category.
“If you go back maybe 10 years, we always would have talked about top three flavours, Ready Salted, Cheese and Onion and Salt and Vinegar. I don't think Salt and Vinegar is in there now. It's still a big flavour, but hot and spicy has come to the fore, alongside cheesy and dairy flavours. Beef is where KP does really well, for example with McCoy's Flame Grilled Steak and Hula Hoops Barbecue Beef as well.”
A big smoky, meaty meal in a bag?
“That’s the flavouring profile we excel in. It's certainly my go-to.”
The nights are drawing in, clocks going back, so I ask what are the plans for autumn and Christmas and to take advantage of the upcoming season?
"Yes,” Stuart smiles. “BNI, sharing and then Christmas. I guess one of the benefits for us of the portfolio of brands and products we've got is we do play in that space. For both of those times of year and occasions, we talk about popcorn, nuts, pretzels and sharing, basically, and so from a c-channel perspective, we've got a huge convenience-specific campaign. We're partnering with Luke Littler, the darts champion, with a Win £180 every 180 minutes on-pack coming across our PMP nuts range. So that's landing very well and is starting to be activated in wholesale depots, and will be in stores really soon.
KP Snacks’ Stuart Graham on Growth and Snacking Strategy
KP has also just gone live with an NFL partnership as well, and then there was Tom Grennan for popchips, which gives KP presence at musical events such as the Latitude Festival and The Isle of Wight Festival.
“We are supporting the individual brands rather than the parent company, and that's why we've got the volume of partnerships we do,” Stuart explains, and it’s a brilliant way to segment the market and grow sales for each.
So KP and convenience are good for each other?
“We take the channel really seriously. We've got a team of people who are super experienced, who remain passionate and ambitious with really strong relationships,” says Stuart. “When I first joined the job, a wholesaler said to me, 'You know, we work with a lot of suppliers who tend to put their younger grads into this channel. It's the place where they get bit of learning and get to carry the bag and own an account. Whereas with KP, you've got a team that really gets this channel.’”
Onward with snacks, then!
“I think Snacks has been on a pretty consistent run of growth over a long period,” he concludes. “It continues to grow and outperform other impulse categories, has shown its resilience through a sustained period of challenges with covid and cost of living and so on, and is outperforming the market. But it's also true that, as we seem to say every year, it's not getting any easier.”
As Stuart says, these days you’ve got to be great to be good.