All You Can Eat

Food-to-food licensing, in which food and restaurant brands extend into non-core food and beverage sectors that represent a good fit with their flavor profile or positioning, continues to proliferate. Taking a look at some of the deals announced within the last year and a half shows the wide variety of food and beverage categories impacted:

• Ready-to-drink beverages. Starbucks partnered with Anheuser-Busch InBev for a ready-to-drink line of Teavana teas in the U.S.—Pepsi is its longtime licensee for RTD coffees—while Dunkin Donuts licensed the Coca-Cola Company for its line of RTD coffee beverages.
• Salty snacks. Nathan’s Famous expanded its licensed line with Inventure Foods to include a potato chip flavored like hot dogs with ketchup, mustard, and relish. In the U.K., Britvic signed Yumsh Snacks and Unilever signed Joe & Seph’s, both for flavored popcorn, the first tied to the beverage brand Tango and the second to the yeast-based spread Marmite. And Heinz licensed Walkers for a limited-edition range of sandwich-flavored crisps in flavors such as Cheese Toastie & Worcester Sauce, Sausage & Brown Sauce, and Cheese, Cucumber & Salad Cream.
• Shelf-stable baked goods. Krispy Kreme teamed with TSW Foods for a line of bagged sweet snacks, single-serve pies, and honey buns, and Eight O’Clock Coffee for Coffee Thins cookies, all for convenience store distribution. The Girl Scouts licensed Quaker for Chewy Granola Bars in Thin Mint and Carmel Coconut cookie flavors. And, in the U.K., Hershey signed Lightbody Ventures for Reese’s peanut butter biscuits (cookies).
• Candy. Classic cookie brand Moon Pie partnered with Taste of Nature for Moon Pie Bites candies, while Unilever U.K. paired with Kinnerton Confectionery for premium chocolates under the Magnum ice cream bar brand.
• Kits and mixes. Krispy Kreme and General Mills are selling a Betty Crocker cake mix in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts’ Original Glazed flavor. And MegaMex Foods licensed its Herdez salsa brand to Idahoan Foods for instant refried beans in four flavors.
• Frozen foods. Hidden Valley Food Products selected Mr. Dee’s to make frozen potatoes under the Hidden Valley salad dressing brand. The U.K. restaurant chain Pizza Express licensed its name to Iceland, a supermarket chain focused on frozen foods, for pizzas and other entrées. And Perfetti Van Melle authorized Unilever for an assortment of flavored ice cream in Europe tied to its candy brand Chupa Chups.
• Refrigerated meats. McCormick licensed its Grill Mates brand to Bar-S Foods for a line of flavored, smoked sausages, while Tony Roma’s barbeque chain expanded its array of meats with Rupari Foods to add new flavors of ribs and pulled pork.

Though this list is not comprehensive, it illustrates both the high level of activity in food-to-food brand-extension licensing and the diversity of categories affected.

Despite the large number of deals already in place, there seems to be plenty of room for more licensing in the food and beverage industry. The Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association estimates that retail sales of licensed food and beverages reached $8.975 billion in the U.S. and Canada in 2015. That represents only 1.15% of the $776 billion in retail sales of food and beverages overall in those two countries that year, according to figures from their respective governments.