The last decade or so has been a golden era for cool food products sold directly to consumers online. Think of Fly By Jing, the wildly popular Sichuan chile crisp, or Magic Spoon, the grain-free, low-carb cereal that’s earned a cult following. But after attaining the niche cool factor via podcast ads, chic shoppy shops, and food media raves, these brands have one unlikely destination in common: the grocery aisles at Walmart.
With more than 4,600 stores across the United States, Walmart is the definition of a retail behemoth. Known for its “Every Day Low Prices,” the chain is the country’s dominant grocery retailer. In 2023 alone, Walmart sold more than $264 billion in groceries, more than double the sales of its two closest competitors combined. This ubiquity is part of what’s given the store such a “normie” image, a place for boring essentials, not virally popular chile crisps.
But it’s clear that Walmart is interested in changing that image — the retailer has recently emphasized bringing more high-end offerings to its shelves, like New York-based ice cream purveyor Van Leeuwen and Motor City Pizza Company’s frozen Detroit-style pies, in an effort to attract more affluent customers. And even the hippest brands looking to grow can’t ignore the impact that landing on the shelves at Walmart might have on their businesses.
When Walmart first reached out to Jing Gao, the founder of Fly By Jing, several years ago, she wasn’t quite ready for her self-described “tiny company,” which got its start on Kickstarter in 2018, to get involved with such a large retailer. “There were a lot of supply chain things to work out, and I was the only employee at my company for the first two years,” she says. “It was just way too much for one person to deal with.” Going into a retailer like Walmart isn’t a decision any company can make lightly. Gao had to focus on building what she calls a “world-class supply chain” to ensure that she could procure enough high-quality spices to stock thousands of new stores with her product.
By 2023, after Fly By Jing had grown, solidifying its supply chain and hiring more employees, Gao had decided she was ready for Walmart. She already sold her chile crisp in retailers like Whole Foods and Costco, but Walmart was an entirely new frontier. Jing had to invest in an EDI system, or electronic data interchange, to communicate inventory and billing information with Walmart, something many start-ups don’t have. Fly By Jing also had to come up with an “Every Day Low Price” — Walmart doesn’t do sales and promotions like other grocery stores do — that would be both appealing to Walmart customers and profitable for her company.
“We were finally at a point in our business where we were ready for that kind of volume,” she says. “As well as we were doing, the majority of Americans still don’t even know what chile crisp is, and had never heard of Fly By Jing. Walmart was going to allow us to reach those customers.”
The brand debuted in around 2,000 Walmart stores in April 2024, and though it’s a bit early to tell, Gao is pleased with how the first few months have gone. “A lot of the Walmart stores we’re in are in places where we were traditionally not reaching people, and it’s been really interesting to see that we’re doing pretty well in those markets, probably because they just didn’t have access to the product before,” she says. “I’d say we’re pretty happy with how things have gone.”
Coco5, a coconut water-based sports hydration drink that counts professional basketball stars Devin Booker and Charles Barkley among its ownership group, has had a similar experience with Walmart. Before arriving in Walmart in July 2023, Coco5 sold directly to consumers via its website, and had expanded into retailers like Amazon and Whole Foods, but neither offered the exposure that Walmart could. Since the launch, the company has seen consistent sales increases at the retailer month-over-month.
“When you’re not coming from a major brand like PepsiCo or Gatorade, no matter how good you are, people just don’t know about your product,” co-owner Jim Reynolds says. “The benefit of Walmart is that it is in every small town, every big city, from Alaska to Florida. We saw the benefits overnight. It truly allowed us to jump from a regional brand to a national brand.”
According to a Walmart spokesperson, the company has an entire team dedicated to supporting these “emerging brands,” which allows it to tailor its marketing and merchandising approach for each individual product. Some get elaborate on-shelf displays, others get digital advertising support via social media or the Walmart app. Walmart also operates the Walmart Connect program, a proprietary advertising platform that allows brands to direct their marketing dollars specifically to Walmart customers, both via in-store marketing collateral like signage, and digital display ads on the Walmart app.
In return, Walmart gets access to a broader consumer base and the opportunity to associate with the exciting brands that people care about. In particular, the company has been open about its desire to attract a more affluent customer base, the kind of shoppers who have extra cash to drop on premium condiments. “Walmart is on a mission to make quality food accessible by expanding our assortment of national, independent, and private label offerings to bring customers exciting items and on-trend flavors at an incredible value,” the spokesperson said. “Independent and emerging brands allow us to respond directly to our customers’ cravings and meet their evolving needs and preferences.”
Both Gao and Reynolds are incredibly complimentary of their relationship with Walmart, saying that the company offers a great deal of support for new brands looking to end up on their shelves. Each brand gets its own Walmart rep, who helps with logistical and pricing concerns, something that Reynolds found invaluable. “They don’t leave you on an island. You have someone there from day one,” he says. “They get it, they understand where we’re at, and they want us to be successful. They were able to help our operations team appropriately plan, wrap, and ship products so that we didn’t have any hiccups.”
After nearly a year in 2,000 Walmart stores, Reynolds and the Coco5 team only now feel like they’re ready to be available in all 4,600 locations. “The worst thing you can do as a brand is have your product out of stock,” he says. “If you can’t support that growth, you’re in trouble, and you’re out of that store real quick. We’ve had the time to see how we can support it appropriately, we’ve learned what works, and we’re growing sales every single week at Walmart. Only then were we able to feel okay with growing into a larger quantity of stores.”
Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue sauce has already expanded to all 4,600 locations after first arriving in Walmart in May 2023. Bachan’s, once a direct-to-consumer business, had experienced success in supermarkets like Whole Foods and Costco before being stocked in Walmart. But while expanding into Walmart was a move that made financial sense, the company, which touts its line of sauces as a premium product, did have some concerns about how it would be perceived by customers. “To be honest, there was a bit of concern on our end,” says Bachan founder Justin Gill. “We’re primarily a natural brand, and we’re also at a premium price point, but the more I learned about Walmart as an organization, the more stores I went and visited, the more comfortable I became.”
Gill was also able to drop the price of Bachan’s as his brand expanded into Walmart — a bottle on the Bachan’s website is $12.99, and only $7.98 at Walmart. The added production volume that Walmart orders demand generally makes the product more affordable, which means that Gill and other independent brands can get their product in front of more people. It can be a risk to lower prices, but for Bachan’s, that risk has paid off.
Expanding into major retailers offered Gao the opportunity to reduce her prices, too. When she announced the Walmart launch, with it came a 35 percent price decrease — a jar of Fly By Jing Chili Crisp cost around $15 when the brand launched. Now, you can score a jar at Walmart for $9.98. “It’s extremely expensive to produce high-quality goods, especially as a small start-up,” Gao says. As her company grows, it can operate more like her larger competitors in the condiment aisle with lower prices and broader availability.
“It just made sense to go into America’s most accessible grocery store with a much more accessible price everywhere,” Gao says. “In a time when the Unilevers of the world are hiking up their prices, we’re decreasing ours significantly.”
Ultimately, independent brands find their way to the shelves at Walmart for the same reasons that any other product does: to get as many eyeballs on their chile crisp or coconut water drink or barbecue sauce as possible. And as Walmart continues to invest in attracting the cool indie brands that everyone loves, the retailer is engaging in a decidedly unique form of reputation management, absorbing their cool by proxy. If Walmart has more of the products that we see on Instagram and TikTok, why wouldn’t shoppers be more inclined to visit Walmart if they can grab their favorite chile crisp and affordable groceries?
. | Semantic Scholar)