Lil’ Drug Store Products Expands Into Healthy Snacks

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Lil’ Drug Store Products Inc. (LDSP) expands into the healthy snacks category, furthering its commitment on meeting convenience store shopper and retailer needs.

In the company’s latest step, it will offer a greater variety of better-for-you snacks and has become the exclusive convenience channel marketer of Popchips and Sensible Foods Crunch Dried Fruit snack brands.

Although the c-store channel remains a top retail destination for consumer snack occasions, healthy snack categories are underdeveloped in c-stores, LDSP stated. For example, dried fruit snack sales in c-stores remain only 5 percent of revenue in grocery and mass retailers, while sales of meat snacks are nearly equal in both c-stores and mass retail channels. Nielsen retail sales data reports indicate nearly 16 percent growth year-over-year since 2011, estimating continued category growth thanks to the millennial consumer.

“Many convenience store retailers have let us know they want to offer ‘better for you’ snacks, but don’t know which items to carry,” explained Doug Marquardt, Lil’ Drug Store Products director of marketing. “Now retailers have one single source in LDSP that they can trust to help them gain incremental sales for their healthy snack category.”

Each of the snack brands LDSP selected has better-for-you benefits like added protein, less fat and lower calories, as well as being flavorful, according to the company.

“Lil’ Drug Store Products is an industry leader with a proven record of successfully building brands and we’re honored to partner with them,” said Dan O’Koniewski, channel marketing director, Popchips. “There’s tremendous potential for the Popchips brand to thrive in this channel.”

Founded in 1974, Cedar Rapids-based Lil’ Drug Store Products is convenience channel products distributor.