Cracker brand Firehook expands with collabs and new look

US cracker brand Firehook collaborates with luxury condiment brand Truff, olive oil company Graza and chili crisp pioneer Fly by Jing, to attract consumers into the category, as the company rebrands and expands beyond its initial placement at the grocery store perimeter. Firehook and Truff partnered on a limited edition parmesan truffle cracker, available at Publix, Ahold and other retailers for a limited time. Firehook “wanted to go big” with its partner collaborations and sought “groundbreakers in their own category,” Ellen Howse, CMO at Firehook explained. Truff was one of the brands that boosted truffle flavors into mainstream appreciation, she added. “There are collaborations where you put these two very bizarre brands together, but I feel like those are much more media opportunities,” she elaborated. “If you are really trying to satisfy consumers, you want them to come back time and time again. You really need to pair two brands together, where those flavors both get consumers excited for different reasons,” she added. Last year, private equity firm Forward Consumer Partners acquired Firehook with a three-pronged plan of increasing consumer awareness and demand, expanding sales and moving beyond the store’s perimeter, as previously stated . Unlike many other cracker brands, Firehook is placed in the perimeter bakery because of its plastic container and positioning as a premium product, but it is working toward the center of the store. As part of the acquisition, Howse joined as Firehook’s CMO, having a strong CPG background that included Godiva, Nabisco, Dewey’s Bakery and others. Howse worked on Firehook’s collaborations and a rebrand to bolster awareness. Firehook was often “lost in the perimeter” with its old branding, and consumers were unsure if the product was a branded or private label product, Howse admitted. As part of the rebrand, the new product label added the company name in orange and reoriented claims horizontally for readability. Additionally, the company name is larger and background imagery was replaced with simple imagery of ingredients (garlic cloves, thyme leaves, etc.) to identify the product’s flavors. “People know us for our crackers. They know us for our quality, our taste and the crunch of our crackers. They can play back everything about the crackers, but there was a disconnect between the crackers and the brand,” Howse elaborated. Firehook’s rebrand and collaboration efforts come as the cracker category ”has not seen a lot of growth," with “a lot of the major brands struggling right now,” Howse explained. However, premium brands are a bright spot in the market, she noted. Super premium snacks and private label snacks grew 0.2 and 0.7 percentage points, respectively, while mainstream brands dropped 1.1 percentage points for the year ending Jan. 26, per Circana data . ”We are trying to create these eating experiences for consumers that make them feel like they are still getting their snack fix, but it is a more elevated experience,” she elaborated.