The Food Conglomerate’s First DTC Brand, Gooey, Rolls Out in Nearly 2,000 Stores Nationwide in Just Seven Months Since Launching
Starday Partners with America’s Largest Grocery Retailer, Kroger Stores
Starday, a modern food company built for today’s consumers who want to shop responsible, healthy food from home or wherever they are, today announced a distribution partnership with Kroger. Gooey Snacks, Starday’s popular chocolate haokzelnut spread that brings all the flavor with none of the palm oil, dairy, or artificial flavors, will be available in nearly 2,000 Kroger-owned locations including Mariano’s, Ralphs, Frys, King Soopers, among others — making it easy for people to get their favorite healthy chocolatey snack when they’re shopping in stores.
Starday launched in August 2021 with Gooey Snacks as their first brand under the Starday name. The brand aims to bring pleasure back to snacking by making responsible, better-for-you versions of chocolatey childhood favorites. The first Gooey product is an absurdly delicious chocolate hazelnut spread that is low sugar, all natural, vegan, gluten-free, and made without palm oil.
“Our large-scale partnership with Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery chain, marks a major milestone for Starday. This rollout comes approximately six months after our direct-to-consumer launch, making Gooey one of the fastest ever digital-first brands to hit national retail shelves. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Kroger and honored by their validation of our data-driven approach to creating and scaling food brands,” said Caroline McCarthy, Co-Founder and VP of Growth of Starday. “But more importantly, this partnership means Gooey is more accessible to more people. The key for us is to meet people where they are – and for a lot of people, that’s at a grocery store.”
Following on the heels of Gooey’s success, Starday has also successfully launched ALL DAY, a spice force of seasonings for the home cook, that was developed and perfected by Starday co-founder Lena Kwak, former culinary strategist and innovator at a 3-Star Michelin restaurant. 2022 will see the launch of multiple additional innovative brands and products from the Starday team.
When developing its brands, Starday analyzes thousands of data points to identify measurable areas of unmet need, leverages iterative quantitative and qualitative testing to refine key product and brand attributes, and conducts extensive prototype formulation testing. With these data points driving their creativity behind brand creation, Starday makes better-for-you food brands that consumers want to be eating, using high-quality ingredients and practices that minimize environmental impact.
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For more information on Gooey, visit gooeysnacks.com.
About Starday
Starday is a next-generation company building innovative food brands through the lens of responsibility, better-for-you ingredients, and data. Leveraging best practices from the software industry to enable speed, efficiency, and empathy in food and beverage product development, Starday creates products that reflect what consumers want to be eating. Starday was founded by Lily Burtis, Chaz Flexman, Lena Kwak, and Caroline McCarthy and is backed by world-class investors and operators, including Equal Ventures and Slow Ventures, with additional support from Haystack, Great Oaks, X Factor Ventures, Alpha Bridge Ventures and executives from companies like Instacart, Blue Apron, Away, and Olive and June. Learn more at stardayfoods.com.
