Saskatoon-based Sweet Nutrition recently released a new line of cookies in Canada, and the company has an ambitious goal behind it.

“The plan is to be the best-selling protein cookie in the Canadian market in the next few years. We’ve been in business for eight years now, and feel like we’re turning a big corner this year, specifically with the new line,” Austin Calladine, co-founder and chief marketing officer with Sweet Nutrition, told FoodNX in an interview.

That new line is called Protein Munchables and it's being rolled out into retail stores.

“We wanted to give more of an identity to the product, which is why we gave it a name like Protein Munchables. There are so many protein snacks on the market, and protein cookies that we wanted customers not to ask, ‘Have you tried that protein cookie? It’s have you tried the new Protein Munchables?’” he said.

Taste winning over customers

The cookies will retail for $3.99 for a single-serve, and they also come in a four-pack.

“Each cookie has 10 grams of protein and seven grams of fibre but the feedback we’re getting from customers is that they’re not even looking at that, they’re just trying it, and they just love the taste,” Calladine said.

“The clean-label aspect is just really a bonus at the end of the day.”

The cookies are all natural and come in three flavours: chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip and matcha white chip. It also comes with a colourful character that the company hopes will be attractive to younger consumers, he explained.

“We have a mascot called Chippy, he’s on the top of their display, like a jacked-up cookie. That definitely gets the eyes of the kid shopping with his mom in store, and tugging at a shirt and saying he wants to try whatever that product is.”

Rooted in grandmother’s kitchen

The company was started after Calladine and his co-founder and company chief executive officer Casey Parker decided to create a protein glazed donut, which they produced out of his grandmother’s kitchen.

“We met playing hockey up in Flin Flon, Man., when we were 18 years old and became friends. We had the idea that we wanted to get in the better-for-you space so that’s when we started testing recipes and donuts was the first thing to market which we launched in 2019 into supplement stores across Canada. It had a lot of logistical issues obviously, shipping a fresh glazed, better-for-you, no-preservative product.”

While that venture didn’t quite pan out, they launched a keto-cookie product in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“It was a bit of a tough time but some years went by, and we’ve reiterated the products, and gotten some pretty notable investors along the way,” Calladine said.

It counts AGT Foods co-founder and chief executive officer Murad Al-Katib as an investor and both companies recently partnered on a new pulses product initiative. Al-Katib also serves as Sweet Nutrition’s board chair.

More production from new equipment

Sweet Nutrition recently upgraded its 2,000-square-foot factory to help boost production for the new line.

“The new automation that we have for our cookie scooping is an all-new formula, so we wanted to get away from artificial sweeteners and the new product doesn’t contain any of that.”

However, the factory is “maxed out” and at some point, over the next 12 to 24 months, it will make the move to a new facility, Calladine said.

To help introduce the new product to retail — which currently includes Circle K, Sobeys, Safeway and 7-Eleven — the firm will be travelling to four different Costco locations.

“It gives us an opportunity to sample and sell the product at their stores, and prove that it is attractive to Costco consumers, and you’ll be able to get it at a very good price. We are launching, starting in Red Deer in June 23, and two weeks at a time for each location, so eight weeks in Costco, and hopefully we can secure a full-time listing for later this year (or) early next year,” Calladine said.

“The velocities already are 10-times greater than our previous line ever was in store, so it seems like customer reception is really good.”

Riding the "protein awareness" wave

While it’s introducing a new product into the already crowded protein snack market, it hopes to benefit from “protein awareness” that is being pushed even by coffee retailers such as Tim Hortons and Starbucks.

“Most consumers find it very hard to get enough protein in a diet, so our mindset has always been, how can we make that as easy as possible and as delicious as possible? We feel that our cookie gives someone the sweet tooth that they crave from a traditional cookie, but you don’t have to worry about the calories or fat that you would get in a crumble cookie, for instance.”

But this newfound popularity is playing havoc for the lesser-known companies, according to Calladine.

“At the beginning of the year I believe we heard that Starbucks had ordered over a million pounds of (whey) protein, so it made the supply chain a little bit more difficult, and since we still are a smaller company, we haven’t been able to secure maybe the ongoing price discounts or keep up with the order quantities.”

And while it is starting small, the firm aims to keep growing and “ultimately to make Sweet Nutrition and Protein Munchables a household brand name that consumers recognize. We want to be the number-one selling protein cookie in the Canadian market, and hopefully North America over the next few years,” he said.