How Partake Foods recession-proofs its merchandise

It’s not a secret that your average grocery-store item is more expensive today than it was a year ago. That’s not the case for Partake Foods, a vegan, allergy-friendly snack brand.

Partake’s retail shelf price hasn’t changed in the past year, founder and CEO Denise Woodard told Retail Brew, because the company’s operations department secured annual contracts for key ingredients.

Partake has felt price increases across smaller secondary and tertiary ingredients. Woodard told us the brand’s R&D and innovation team made adjustments to formulas as a means to maintain margins. Woodard declined to disclose where those margins fall, but said it’s a figure that the company feels “good about.”

She added the industry is experiencing the “worst oat crop” in decades. “If there’s indeed a crisis on oats, can we instead lean more heavily on one of the other flours that we use, whether that be buckwheat or cassava?” Woodard said. “We’re seeing increases across every single ingredient.”

• Partake, founded in 2016, has seen 100% YoY growth since 2020, although Woodard declined to disclose specific figures. The brand has secured $7.5 million in funding, and finds itself in more than 9,000 stores, including Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Target. The latter has been forthcoming with its inventory and supply issues as consumer demand has shifted elsewhere. Woodard explained that Partake has leaned on its partnership with Target, and, for the most part, it is business as usual.

Beth Hanson, VP of retail sales, said the company works closely with its inventory analysts and category managers at retailers to understand what their needs are. As the business has scaled, Partake has implemented a sales and operations planning process to understand what they are forecasting and what ingredients to order.

With this process, Partake recently introduced a lunchbox multipack, as well as a pancake and waffle mix earlier this year.

Hanson said ensuring Partake has enough product on hand requires “an open stream of communication between our ingredient suppliers and vendors based on what we are hearing from our retail partners and what we are seeing at retail.”

Looking ahead: Woodard said the next six months to a year will be a difficult time given the larger macroeconomic environment. During that time, Partake and its roughly 20 employees will look for potential new opportunities with retail partners and continue creating in the innovation space. Also, acquiring funding and growth capital has been a challenge for the company that predates the pandemic, and Woodard said it will be a priority moving forward.—KM