Can you tell us a little of the history of your brand?
Proper Nutty was founded in 2013 in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in a tiny space where only superb quality peanuts were roasted, smunched, a pinch of Cornish Sea Salt added and then popped in a jar or tin. Eleven years on, our space has changed but the process and ingredients haven’t.
We continue to choose nothing but the best quality ingredients, and we believe passionately in delivering a product that offers the highest possible percentage of nuts to give shoppers the best nut butter experience possible. All our nuts are also ground within a few minutes of being roasted to ensure maximum freshness.
How is Proper Nutty performing?
Really well. We’re in high double digit growth and we’re expanding our distribution month on month after creating a loyal following in major grocery in the likes of Morrisons, Co-op, Ocado and, most recently, Asda. We are currently seeing significantly increasing demand across wholesale and independent convenience, which is really great to see as we feel this is a channel that can really benefit from the added value that we are bringing to the peanut butter fixture.
Over the last year, our sales have increased by 28%1.
What makes Proper Nutty unique?
Three things: we’re smunchy (which is a best of both between smooth and crunchy), we don’t use any plastic (nope, not even our tape) and we only use a maximum of two ingredients (peanuts and salt).
How much is the peanut butter category worth?
Currently worth around £148 million in retail alone, peanut butter accounts for £1 in every £4 spent on jams and spreads2, so it’s big business.
The real opportunity to grow that figure, though, is at the more premium end of the category, so it’s really important for retailers and wholesalers to make sure they are offering a premium option that can help to maximise sales and profits.
What trends are driving peanut butter category growth?
Peanut butter is a very robust category and it performs really well during challenging economic times like these because, for about 24p, shoppers can get a meal or snack made up of great quality peanut butter, bread and butter.
Meanwhile, macro trends that support the demand for peanuts are around health, nutrition, real food (i.e. not being ultra processed) and breakfast being back on the rise as the most important meal of the day, eaten by 93% of Brits at home3.
But whatever the trend driver for choosing peanut butter, our own research shows that taste is king when choosing a product or brand at shelf, and that almost half (43%) of shoppers often switch between smooth and crunchy. This means it’s important to stock both types as well as catering for the smunchers who love both smooth and crunchy in a single sitting.
We also know that more than eight out of 10 (84%) of our shoppers eat peanut butter at least twice a week, so they are heavy users and therefore a valuable proposition to retailers with a high frequency and higher than average basket spend.
What are the biggest usage occasions for peanut butter?
There are lots such as smoothies, shakes, baking and savoury but really most people put it on toast or in a sandwich.
Within this, breakfast is a massive occasion for us – 80% of peanut butter shoppers say they enjoy peanut butter frequently on toast, 18% add it to porridge and 15% and 14% respectively use it in smoothies and protein shakes, which are most frequently consumed at breakfast4.
The full list of uses for peanut butter is as follows:
– 80% eat on toast
– 48% in a sandwich
– 32% straight from the jar (like Ted Lasso)
– 28% baking
– 18% in porridge
– 15% in smoothies
– 14% in protein shakes
Why is Proper Nutty updating its packaging at this time?
We’ve found that offering a clean ingredients deck when trying to attract shoppers’ attention, and our research shows that offering delicate salt levels alongside the natural creaminess and sweetness of our products have been key motivators for choosing Proper Nutty.
I’m a big believer in iterating your biggest selling point at shelf, so it’s really important that we shout about the fact that, as well as coming in plastic-free packaging, all our products are free of palm oil, contain no added sugar, are suitable for those following vegetarian and vegan diets.
As a result, we’ve been tweaking our packaging for the last three years but this latest change is to really shout about our ingredients. We have nothing to hide so we’re now literally putting them front and centre. What new products and listings do you have for Winter 2024?
We recently launched our new Dark Roast Smunchy variant, featuring dry roasted, salted nuts for a deeper flavour, which is our first listing in Asda and now available to order more widely. It features dry roasted, salted nuts for a deeper flavour and early signs are that it is really striking a chord with shoppers looking to try something new.
How can wholesalers maximise peanut butter sales?
Peanut butter can play a brilliant role for wholesalers by increasing basket spend. Merchandise it with host foods such as morning goods and bread and you’ll turn a £2 basket into a £5 shop very easily.
Also, if you have space, then stock a mixture of standard and large pack offerings. Our Smunchy and Slightly Salted Smunchy offerings, for example, come in both 280g jars (RRP: £3.29) and 1 kg tins (RRP: £8.35), offering shoppers the opportunity to make a significant saving per 100g if they want to, whilst also offering our retail and wholesale partners the opportunity to make a higher price per unit sale.
How do you work with wholesalers to grow sales?
We love to work with all of our retail partners and have a suite of point of sale, promotions and incentives available BUT we pride ourselves on being fun, interesting and different so would embrace any ideas… If you want to know more then just get in touch with our distributor, RH Amar, or with me directly. In fact, here’s my email address: simon@propernutty.co.uk
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