I recently had the pleasure of travelling to Ohio to lead a project with the team managing the remarkable Uncrustables brand. For readers living outside of North America, Uncrustables is a brand of prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that are bought frozen, but ready to eat after an hour at room temperature. And sales are flying. According to Food Business News “Uncrustables had sales of approximately $800 million in fiscal 2024 and management expects it to reach $1 billion by the end of fiscal 2026” (1).
So what are the secrets to success? As production capacity has struggled to keep up with demand, Uncrustables has not been able to pull the usual growth levers of heavy price promotions and aggressive brand stretch. This is, therefore, very much a best-in-class example of sustainable core brand growth.
Post by Jon Goldstone, Managing Partner (Global).
1. Develop a Highly Distinctive Product
I must admit that I was sceptical before trying an Uncrustables sandwich. I love a home-made peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, but I wasn’t sure about a prepared frozen version! I was blown away. The bread is pillowy soft and there is the perfect balance of Jif peanut butter and Smucker’s strawberry jam. Over the course of a couple of jet lagged hours I worked my way through most of the range. Other favourites include PB and Raspberry Jam and PB and Honey.
Repeat rates are fantastic. This is testament to the care that is taken in ensuring the best product quality. And the unique round shape with edge crimping is patented, which means that there is very little high quality Own Label or branded competition.
2. Solve a real consumer problem
The Uncrustable product turns being frozen into an advantage. The sandwich can be popped in a lunchbox in the morning and will be ready to eat come lunchtime. This benefit is clearly communicated on pack with the flash “Thaw and Eat!”. Parents can have a stock of Uncrustables in the fridge, ready for a week of lunchboxes. This solves a real consumer problem: “Morning Mayhem, Managed,” as the website says!
3. Focus on a High Penetration Occasion
Uncrustables single-mindedly focuses on lunchtime as the key moment, for the very good reason of the sheer number of occasions that they can compete for. What is smart here is defining the market not in product terms but rather based on the occasion. Furthermore, focusing on this key occasion and being famous for it drives awareness and penetration, with people free to then eat the product when they want. As Smucker’s SVP for Consumer Foods, Rebecca Scheidler, said in a recent interview, “There are 11 billion school lunches. A little over half of them are packed at home and, today, Uncrustables sandwiches are only in 8% of those packed lunches. Lunch is a perfect entry point for the brand.” (2)
4. Leverage Seasonal Activation to Drive Trial
Uncrustables has done a great job of driving mental availability and trial through limited edition seasonal SKUs. For example, a recent Valentines Day pack was a huge viral hit that successfully raised awareness amongst consumers that may not normally have noticed the brand on shelf. This approach helps overcome the issue of poor visibility in the frozen aisle. Not only are the products obscured by a glass door, but the frozen aisle has low penetration, low linger times and very low engagement levels. Not the best place to be driving awareness at the first moment of truth.
“Love is all A-round” is a wink of the eye that plays to the shape of the product too!
5. Fan the Flames of Growth with High Profile Influencers
If all the above sounds strategically sound but unremarkable, the way the Uncrustables brand has leveraged social media and high-profile influencers sets it apart.
The spark for a social media fire was a spontaneous, unpaid mention of the brand in New Heights, the popular podcast of NFL stars and brothers Travis and Jason Kelce, back in October 2023. The brothers sang the praises of the Uncrustables brand, in a podcast viewed by 1.3 million people on YouTube (see below). This is a great example of how a brilliant product can spark social media coverage which goes beyond influencer marketing to create “influencer advocacy“. We posted here on another example, Justin Bieber’s shout-out to the Popsicle brand. “Rather than spending loads of time and buckets of cash paying a famous person to promote your brand, invest in a creating a brilliant product worth talking about for free,” we recommended.
Uncrustables did a great job of fanning the flames of this fire. The company sponsored the next three episodes of New Heights and sent Travis a gift box of sandwiches. Later, the brand aired its first-ever paid TV ad on Monday Night Football, featuring a Chiefs-versus-Eagles match. Over the years, Uncrustables has been declared the NBA’s ‘Most Valuable Sandwich’ and been spotted being enjoyed mid-performance by Drake.
6. Prioritise Physical Availability
Historically Uncrustables has gained strong distribution in retail. Walk the frozen aisle of any large US grocery store and you will inevitably discover a good range. The number of flavours and pack sizes has gradually extended over the years to satisfy the demands of different tastes and household set-ups.
However, the next phase of growth is predicted to come from away-from-home. With Uncrustables already available as part of the lunchtime offer in K12 schools (complying with all the right nutritional criteria) the next push is into the convenience channel. “Thanks to the acquisition of Hostess Brands we are now able to expand meaningfully into a new whitespace — convenience stores. This new channel not only provides more availability for our brand, but it also unlocks the benefit of immediate consumption,” Rebecca Scheider stated (2).
As Uncrustables progresses to $1 billion sales and opens a new production plant to keep up with demand, it is a good time to celebrate how a humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich has become one of America’s fastest growing food brands and one of the best ever examples of driving core brand growth.
If you want to explore growing the core, we offer a short course on the topic here, which you can complete in a couple of hours. The course is fully refunded if you go on to take the full brandgym Mastering Brand Growth Program which you can learn about on our brandgym Academy site.
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