“We will have more than doubled the company from a revenue perspective” in 2024, Breezy Griffith, co-founder and CEO of SkinnyDipped, told FoodNavigator-USA. “We have also really built out our snack-faction products. Our dark chocolate peanut butter cup has gained a tremendous amount of distribution — it has been one of our top sellers.”
Sugar reduction ‘evolved into an awareness around blood sugar’
Launched in 2016, SkinnyDipped provides a range of low-sugar snacks and confections from covered nuts to chocolate bites to the recently launched topless peanut butter cup. Earlier this year, SkinnyDipped rebranded, fueled by its Series A round, which placed heavier emphasis on product certifications and an aquatic font design.
Over the years, SkinnyDipped tapped demand for low- or -no-added-sugar products to find market success and spur innovation, Griffith explained.
Most shoppers (60%) are interested in sugar reduction in bars and snacks, while 44% are seeking the same in candies and chocolate, according to ADM data from nearly 14,000 consumers across 15 countries.
“We never set out to make a product that was zero grams of sugar and zero this, but rather we thought about it as how do we reduce the sugar in our product significantly, but where consumers do not notice that it has less sugar than something that might be a typical confection from a legacy brand,” Griffith said.
We have been really focused on making sure that we can cover our needs and leaning on our suppliers working to contract out at the best prices possible for our chocolate.
Breezy Griffith, co-founder and CEO of SkinnyDipped
Additionally, consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated about watching their sugar intake, as they actively monitor their blood sugar, she noted.
“We built the brand around what we think of as longer-term macro trends rather than super niche short-term trends. I think that the desire for consumers to reduce sugar has evolved into an awareness around blood sugar, as we can see with the rise of all the GLP-1s,” Griffith elaborated.
‘We are working really hard to try to hold our pricing’
Like other confection brands, SkinnyDipped is navigating a volatile cocoa market, in which prices soared this year. However, SkinnyDipped felt a “minimal” impact from sugar price fluctuations given the small amount of sugar the company uses in its products, Griffith explained.
“Educating ourselves as a team as best we can as to what has been the drivers behind the market has been really important. We have been really focused on making sure that we can cover our needs and leaning on our suppliers working to contract out at the best prices possible for our chocolate,” she elaborated.
Amid these supply chain challenges, SkinnyDipped is keeping an eye on the macro-economic conditions, as consumers seek value amid high food prices and news that inflation ticked up in November.
“We are working really hard to try to hold our pricing because we do work really hard to make sure our products are affordable to the masses and to as many people as possible. That has not been easy, but it is something that we are doing our best to stay committed to,” she elaborated.
SkinnyDipped blows the lid off its peanut butter cups
To create better-for-you indulgences, SkinnyDipped launched a topless version of its dark chocolate peanut butter cup earlier this month, available exclusively at Amazon for $22.99 for a 4-pack of three-ounce bags. The product contains 3 grams of sugars, 2 grams of protein per cup, no artificial sweeteners or sugar alcohols and will roll out to select retailers in 2025.
The idea to launch a topless version of its peanut butter cups came after the marketing team brainstormed April Fool’s jokes but realized that they had the technology to create the product, Griffith explained.
“We thought, ‘Would not it be funny if we could take the chocolate top off our cup and call it a topless cup?,’” Griffith said.
In the first quarter of 2025, SkinnyDipped will add “new innovation with an entirely new flavor profile,” as the company expects strong top-line growth across its confection portfolio. Additionally, the brand is going to “drive some larger, broader scale awareness” through various marketing activities, since the company achieved a “really strong in-market availability,” she added.
