Baking&Snack - March 2014 - 16

No 'Kind' words for Clif Bar's Mojo
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it can also
prompt legal action. Case in point: Snack bar maker Kind LLC,
New York, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan seeking to
prevent Clif Bar & Co., Emeryville, CA, from marketing and selling its Mojo branded snack bar in updated packaging that Kind
alleges comes too close to mimicking its products.
Specifically, Kind said the Mojo product's new packaging copies several elements of Kind's packaging, including the rectangular, transparent window on the front panel, the horizontal stripe
along the front of the packaging, two vertical color stripes at both
ends of the package and a bulleted list of health attributes.
"Rather than innovating as Kind has done, Clif is poised to
launch the Mojo bars in packaging that abandons the traditional
look and feel of the Clif and Mojo brands and instead co-opts the
look of Kind," the company said in a statement. "As stated in the
lawsuit, the new Mojo trade dress reflects a new and dramatic
leap over the line in what appears to have been a calculated progression of incremental changes, designed each time to get closer
and closer to the trade dress of Kind bars and farther and farther
from the package design elements that would associate the product with the Clif brand."
Justin Mervis, Kind's vice-president and general counsel, said,
"Kind will vigorously defend its hard earned goodwill and brand
value against anyone that seeks unfairly to dilute or detract from
the Kind brand.
Clif Bar & Co. did not respond to a request for comment regarding the lawsuit.
- Keith Nunes, Food Business News

A Big Lots of a deal for Hostess
Big Lots, a closeout retailer operating 1,526 stores in the US and
five in Canada, signed on to be the official "thrift store outlet" for
Hostess Brands.
Kansas City, MO-based Hostess Brands closed its 600 Hostess
brand thrift store outlets as part of the 2012 bankruptcy of the
former Hostess Brands, Inc. Now, Big Lots, Columbus, OH, will
receive weekly shipments of the company's snack cakes that it will
sell at up to 40% off the suggested retail price.
"The thrift outlets were extremely popular," said David Campisi,
CEO of Big Lots. "We are thrilled to team up with this
iconic brand and give customers a
new destination to find outstanding savings on the products
they know and love."
Andy Stein, chief customer officer of Big Lots, said the
assortments will be different each
week and will vary by store.
16 Baking & Snack March 2014 / www.bakingandsnack.com

Flowers outlines
new market strategy
While 79% of US consumers have access to the expansive bread,
bun, roll and snack cakes portfolio of Flowers Foods, that total
still suggests room for growth, according to the company.
Using Flowers' expansion efforts in California as an example,
Allen Shiver, president and CEO of Flowers Foods, Thomasville,
GA, explained the company's strategy for growing in new markets during a February conference call.
"What we have accomplished in California to date, to me, is
a very good example of our team's ability to grow in new markets," he said. "We had a multi-phased roll-out and now serve all
the major supermarkets in California. Our internal goals were
exceeding those. Our team is in place for future growth. I really
think if you look at the map, you can see many of the markets
that we have recently moved into are some of the largest population centers in the country. And we understand how to build our
brands, and we understand how to develop our business in those
markets."
Flowers Foods entered Southern California with a small presence when it acquired Holsum Phoenix in 2008. The company
added to its West Coast presence in 2012 when it acquired the
Sara Lee and Earthgrains brands in California from Grupo
Bimbo, Mexico City.
Mr. Shiver said Flowers has "a long track record" of being able
to build its presence in new markets. The company also has benefited from a solid reputation with retailers.
Flowers' share of the US bread market is about 14%, up from
10% in mid-2012. Mr. Shiver said he expects that share to continue to move up.
"The key is making sure that we do that in a controlled, organized fashion, so that we can make sure that the earnings are
there to coincide with the sales growth," he explained.
Reflecting on fiscal 2013, Mr. Shiver called it "a real exciting
year."
"We have kind of a peg down in many new markets, and
we are going to be developing those markets," he said. "The
acquisition of the Hostess brands really helps us do that. If
you look at the bakeries that we acquired, geographically some
of the bakeries that are sitting idle are in really key markets
across the country.
"And as we build market share, and as consumer demand
increases, we will talk more about reopening those plants," Mr.
Shiver continued. "We are off to a very good start with the opening of the Henderson (NV) bakery, and those have gone extremely well. We are really excited about our product quality coming
out of the plants. I expect the share in California to grow significantly, as we are selling bread produced by our plant versus copackers. So really pointing to California as an example of doing
a job, expanding the DSD (direct-store delivery) footprint, our
plans are to do the same thing in other markets."
- Eric Schroeder, Milling & Baking News

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Baking&Snack - March 2014

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