Gazette.net

Bethesda’s Schulman ditched banking for more nutritious pursuits
by C. Benjamin Ford Staff Writer Published: Friday, July 1, 2011

For a business executive, Mary Schulman can work some odd hours.

“That’s my biggest challenge of all,” Schulman says of juggling being a mother of two young daughters and running a business. “If there was two of me that would be fantastic. It’s a balance that all working moms have to strike.

“I do have a lot of my own flexibility. My best hours of working are often from 10 p..m. to 12 a.m., because that’s after I get the kids to bed.”

With the help of $200,000 from initial investors, plus $500,000 from friends and family, Schulman, who was expecting her first child, co-founded Snikiddy Snacks in 2005 with her mother. Her goal was two-fold: to produce healthful snacks and establish a new career in which she would happier than her employment at the time, in investment banking. They hit upon the idea of using her grandmother’s recipes to offer tastier and more healthful snacking options than what was on the market.

Since then the Bethesda company has grown rapidly as has her family with annual sales topping $10 million.

“She’s a fabulous founder,” said CEO Colin Sankey, a former brand manager for food giant Nestlé. “She’s such a great advocate for the brand. She had a great vision. She’s a rare entrepreneur that has a pragmatic sense to her.”

Seth Goldman, co-founder and CEO of Honest Tea, also of Bethesda, has crossed paths with Schulman and her business at trade shows and events. He said Bethesda has become quite a center for businesses that offer healthful alternatives for food and drink.

“You’ve got a very conscious community here,” he said.

The snacks have received praise for taste and nutrition from numerous parenting magazines and Food Network celebrity Rachael Ray, who featured them as a snack of the day. In a review of healthful snacks on The Wall Street Journal’s Food & Drink blog in January, many other companies’ products were described as “bag after bag of Styrofoam-textured veggie puffs, cardboard-ish flax seed cakes and some surprisingly fattening kale chips,” while Snikiddy’s baked fries were hailed for combining “the crunchy pleasure of cheese puffs with french-fried-potato taste.”

To lower costs and prices about 50 cents per item the company has shifted away from organic ingredients, but still focuses on recipes without additives or food coloring, Schulman said. Snikiddy Snacks, with 11 employees, outsources production and does not disclose the manufacturer.

For consumers, organic certification is more important when it comes to meat, vegetables, fruits and dairy products than snack foods, she said.

“We have a product that people are looking for,” Schulman said. “They’re looking for a healthier snack product.”

As executive vice president of marketing for the company, Schulman also is responsible for working to place the snacks in supermarkets. Wegmans and Whole Foods Markets are two of the chains that carry them.

“You have to prove to the grocer this is going to be a success for them,” she said. “A lot of the time you have to start on the bottom shelf and prove yourself to them and crawl your way to the top.”

Good shelf placement is important, as is making certain that grocers reorder when the shelf is empty, she said. Best of all is getting placed on the end-cap of a supermarket aisle.

“That’s confirmation that this is a good product,” she said.

“I always make the comparison [of selling her product] to hearing a song. The first time you hear it you might not like it. The second time you think it’s all right and the third time you’re singing along,” Schulman said. “Part of the growth has been time. We have increased distribution. We’re sold in 5,000 grocery stores now.”

That could increase as more grocers look for healthful products to sell.

For example, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group, said it is concerned about the growing problem of childhood obesity. Even before the American Pediatric Association released a new report on the problem, the grocers association had pledged to remove 1.5 trillion calories from the nation’s food supply by 2015.

“A healthy diet and more physical activity, rather than bans or restrictions, are the keys to a healthy lifestyle,” the association said.

Schulman said her products are part of that trend because they are lower in sugars, fats and calories than other snack foods.

Being David against the Goliaths of the snack food industry can be a competitive advantage in many ways, Schulman said.

“As much as we’ve grown, and it’s been great growth, we’re still very small … so we still have the capabilities that come from being young and nimble,” she said.

For example, the company moved away from cookies and focused on its cheese puffs and baked fries because that’s what was selling, she said.

The company also can add new flavors and cut out those not selling as well faster than bigger companies can, she said.

“Our cookies were absolutely delicious,” Schulman said. “I miss them as a consumer myself. But as a business, it didn’t have the rapid growth of the salty snack category.”

Download Press ReleaseGazette.pdf

← Back to Media