We’ve been partners with Kalahari from the founding of their company in 2015. Kalahari Snacks started as Kalahari Biltong, with South-African style thinly sliced air-dried beef as their flagship product. Over the past year, we worked with them to bring their first product line extension to market, Kalahari Crisps, crunchy beef chips.
Beef crisps are in a pretty new category of meat based, potato chip alternatives. There have been some brands that have made moves in the market, such as Wilde Chicken Chips, Epic Pork Rinds, Gone Rogue, and Flock Foods. Kalahari Crisps are unique in that they are beef based and tend to have a simpler ingredient deck than the competitors, as well as more protein.
Our strategy exploration for Crisps also involved looking at other protein chips such as Quest Protein Chips, Popcorners Flex, and Beanitos. We knew that the protein callout would be a large attraction to consumers.
When we started to work on packaging design, we were briefed to explore different kinds of packaging, outside of just chip bags. Kalahari wanted to see what might stand out on shelf against competitors. We looked at flat bottom pouches, a-frame bags, hexagonal boxes, and canisters.
Ultimately, the chip bag was picked, as other options presented some issues with display on shelf at certain retailers.
With the chip bag in mind, we wanted to play more with real photography of the product, fun, bright colors, and create a design that harkened back to the Biltong bags. But we wanted to make sure it didn’t look too similar in case Biltong and Crisps were merchandised in the same area. We didn’t want to create any confusion of this just being a rebrand, versus a new product line.
Since launching in the beginning of July, Crisps have been a huge success, with big sales growth for the Kalahari team. We can’t wait to see what comes next!
