Yatco Targets Emerging Brands With Latest Partnership

NORTHBOROUGH, Mass. — Yatco's center store will boast new emerging consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands thanks to a new partnership between the convenience store retailer and Mable, the Boston-based wholesale platform representing more than 3,000 emerging better-for-you food brands.

Yatco's strategy is rooted in being a destination that offers a wide variety of products that appeal to everyone. Recognizing the shift in consumer demand toward healthy, unique and locally sourced snacks, the Mable and Yatco teams collaborated on a collection that would appeal to more mindful consumers.

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The unexpected new products will surprise and delight customers who otherwise may have skipped an in-store purchase during their trip to the gas station, the companies stated.

"Yatco is thrilled to partner with Mable to bring in new, innovative products to our locations. As a company, we pride ourselves on being able to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing wants and needs of our consumers. Partnering with Mable will help support our drive to provide local, unique, better-for-you products that not only are delicious but also have cool stories behind them," said Hussein Yatim, vice president of Yatco.

"We applaud Mable's innovative approach to enabling local brands to access a distribution network to reach more customers. In conjunction with elevating our snack and food offerings, this partnership will allow us to expand our assortment of goods that are of the highest quality ingredients," he added.

The new collection includes gluten-free, plant-based snack thins, vegan energy bites made in Boston, and plant-based cookie dough bars. Some Yatco locations feature revamped endcaps and mobile merchandisers while others have products integrated throughout the center store.

"We are pleased to announce our new partnership with Yatco," said Arik Keller, founder and CEO of Mable. "We celebrate Yatco for shifting to meet today's consumer demand and prioritizing getting small, better-for-you brands into the hands of more people throughout New England. We look forward to growing together and changing the perception of what consumers can expect to find when they enter a c-store."

Yatco is the latest c-store retailer to tap Mable to bring better-for-you CPG brands to guests. Earlier this year Providence, R.I.-based Neon Marketplace partnered with Mable to bring locally and regionally made specialty items to the convenience retailer's locations handful of locations in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

In an effort to support communities by sourcing products from local farms, bakeries and vendors, Alltown Fresh, part of the Global Partners family of brands, teamed up with Mable last year to use the platform across the brand's 12 c-stores across  Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.

Mable is on a mission to expand access to better foods through innovative distribution solutions. Mable helps retailers build their next generation of loyal customers through technology-enabled distribution of local, values-driven brands. The company offers standalone and integrated solutions for product discovery, invoicing and reordering.

Northborough-based Yatco operates 18 convenience store and gas station locations throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.