Yumnuts Naturals is a Norwalk-based packaged-nut company making its way onto shelves with a healthy message and dry-roasted cashews.
Tyler Ricks, CEO, and Jerome Metivier, chief financial officer of Yumnuts, joined with father and son nut purveyors Gary and Mike Cochrane to build on a distressed consumer nut business, Island Nuts. Ricks and Metivier at the time had recently finished working for Bear Naked, a Norwalk granola company, helping to ease that company into its 2007 sale to Kashi, a Kellogg Co. subsidiary.
“Mike and Gary come from a traditional nut brokerage background,” said Ricks. “They have relationships with suppliers; they basically broker the sale of Brazil nuts and cashews into the U.S. They started Island Nuts in 2002.”
Gary Cochrane has since helped refound the business as Yumnuts and left to pursue other business opportunities. His son, Mike, still holds a board role at Yumnuts and is a large shareholder of the company.
Ricks began his career at Fischer Price and PepsiCo, spending 10 years in sales and marketing working on various soda accounts.
“My last role was with Lipton Tea,” said Ricks. “That”™s where I met Jerome. He was on the Unilever side of the business and I was on the Pepsi side as a joint venture. That was really my first exposure to the healthier side of the beverage portfolio.”
Ricks said working in a healthy arena opened his eyes to wanting his own family”™s importance of a healthy lifestyle to be reflected in his work.
“It was an inflection point for me as a marketer to want to help others live a healthier lifestyle,” said Ricks. His wife is the director of a fitness club.?Rick”™s moved from PepsiCo to Bare Naked on principal. Bear Naked at the time was a growing granola concern.
“I spent two and a half years there,” said Ricks. “I was the head of sales and marketing and in that time we grew the company from about $10 million to $45 million.”
Metivier soon joined the Kashi and when it was sold to Kellogg they both stayed on to ease the integration.
Metivier and Ricks were looking for a healthy lifestyle-focused, entrepreneurial, early-stage company.
“Ultimately we met with a bunch of different entrepreneurs in the area, each of whom had a good product and idea, but didn”™t have the expertise, knowledge and experience to build a company,” said Ricks “That”™s where we met Mike. He had a very small company, Island Nuts, and we began to work on a strategy with him.”
The partnership was cemented in September 2008 and Yumnuts was launched in March 2009.
Fairfield County angel investors were brought in on the project, some of whom helped to build Bear Naked early on.
“Not many big companies could do much innovation when the market is tight,” said Metivier. “It”™s was a great opportunity.”
The Yumnut cashews come from India. Cashews grow from the bottom of a fruit called a cashew apple mostly in Asia, Africa and Brazil.
“The nut category has a lot of tail wind right now because people are finally understanding that it”™s a healthy category with positive fats, good source of minerals and good source of protein,” said Ricks.
According to Ricks, 73 percent of American households buy nuts and 56 percent of those households buy cashews. Peanuts are still the most-bought nut.
“The No. 1 healthy snack from consumers is nuts and seeds,” said Ricks. “We chose cashews because the market had white space and was different and there is a very fast speed to market.”
Ricks said the cashews are consumers most-preferred nut, but it has one of the least amounts of flavor styles.”
Yumnuts is out to change that with current flavors including honey, toasted coconut, chocolate, sea salt, chili lime and spicy Cajun.
“The chocolate are not chocolate covered but are dusted in cocoa powder,” said Ricks.
Yumnuts appeared first at local markets throughout Fairfield, Palmer”™s Market in Darien being the first.
“We ultimately started to expand to Whole Foods and some of the other top-tier grocery stores like Stop and Shop, Food Emporium, D”™Agostino”™s, Fairway Markets, and Stew Leonard”™s,” said Ricks.
Yumnuts has been in Stew Leonard”™s since January.
“I could rattle off some impressive sales data about how well the product is selling at the store, but the bottom line is that my wife and kids love it,” said Stew Leonard Jr., CEO of Stew Leonard”™s. “We think Yumnuts is a real winner.”
Yumnuts are dry roasted and all natural.
“Most flavored nuts use oil to stick the coating to the nut; we don”™t,” said Ricks. “All of our seasonings are all natural. We focus right now just on cashews.”
Ricks said the brand will expand to other nuts and nut-based offerings in the future.
“We”™ve built it into a business where we have about 1,500 stores,” said Ricks. “We”™re growing really fast from that early stage. We”™re really trying to disrupt the category. Planters has been the 800-pound gorilla for years and years.”
Ricks said consumers aren”™t as tolerant of unhealthy add-ons like oil roasting and heavy salting that at one time were selling points.
“The bigger companies are trying to transform their portfolio,” said Ricks. “Even some of the new ones use aspartame in their products to sweeten or buying cashews and paying a premium for a much higher quality nut and then roasting it in peanut oil. They don”™t do it because that”™s what consumers want; they do it because it”™s the cheapest.”
