Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know
Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.
Magnolia Bakery, the iconic New York City-based bakery beloved by Carrie Bradshaw and the guys from “Lazy Sunday,” is heading to the grocery store.
It’s debuting its first CPG products—Classic Vanilla, Chocolate Chunk, and Confetti flavors of Banana Pudding Cookies—hitting Harris Teeter, The Fresh Market, DoorDash’s DashMart, and Amazon this month. They’re sold in four-packs of cookies for an MSRP of $7.99.
The move has been “a long time coming,” Magnolia Bakery CMO Eddie Revis told us, in the works for nearly two years. It was part of the impetus for its rebrand last year, with Magnolia asking itself how the redesign would look on store shelves.
- The brand also conducted a study that found that 70% of participants preferred the brand launch its items into grocery rather than opening new bakeries nearby. Plus, the fact that bakery peers Levain and Milk Bar have also made CPG pushes has been “encouraging,” Revis said.
Magnolia landed on banana pudding cookies, rather than the fan-favorite pudding itself, because IRI data revealed the cookie category, particularly the soft-baked category, was up, Revis said. Magnolia’s Banana Pudding Cookie debuted in bakeries last year, and after three months, it accounted for seven out of 10 DTC orders, he noted.
- Magnolia hopes its premium ingredients—including “real butter” and “real bananas”—and individually wrapped packaging will help differentiate it from other cookie offerings, Revis said.
“We have to look through the lens of what does the category look like, and what categories are growing in a grocery store, what categories are ripe for disruption,” he said.
From scratch: Revis said the company took a “three-pronged approach” to establishing retail partners. First, it looked at where Magnolia had the most consumer awareness, naturally the Northeast, where it plans on “saturating” shelves, he said.
Then, it considered where it had penetration through its bakery locations outside of NYC, like Chicago and Los Angeles, so Revis said it’ll also have select distribution in those areas. Finally, the company focused on “making sure that we’re meeting shoppers where they’re at” by including retailers like DoorDash and Amazon, he said.
Ultimately, Revis, a Chobani vet, said going “beyond just a promotion” within these retailers will be essential for Magnolia to reach consumers and find CPG success.
- It’s introducing a sampling program with retailer Market District in April for this reason, he said.
“That’s one thing I learned that I continue to sort of impress on the team here is being in the store and meeting the shoppers and meeting the store managers and supporting the retailers is a great investment for the long term,” Revis said. “Anybody can get a product on shelf; the challenging piece is, ‘How do you keep it there?’”