BFY brands seeks to marry better-for-you benefits with plenty of flavor.
 
BFY Brands is all about identifying the latest trends, pushing the hot buttons and thinking about healthy snacking in a different way. The cutting-edge company has discovered ways to help consumers seek a better lifestyle without feeling that they have sacrificed on taste as well. That’s driving the rebellion against conventional wisdom on healthy snacking.

“If consumers are giving up potato chips, we should deliver healthier options that give them some of the taste experience of a potato chip or crisp,” noted Jesse Shultis, vice-president of operations, BFY Brands. The company contract manufactures its signature popped snacks at its Liberty, NY, plant under its Ideal Snacks division and branded snacks under the “Our Little Rebellion” name in its nearby Middletown facility.


Our Little Rebellion is not so much a snacking evolution as a technological revolution. In many ways, this snack manufacturer’s proprietary popping technology harkens back to Henry Ford’s use of an assembly line to mass produce vehicles.

Walking through the two facilities, visitors can hear an army of hundreds of popping machines producing a combination of snacks that are low-fat, high-fiber, gluten-free and made with multigrain, pulse, vegetable, fruit, probiotics and more. These patented poppers can then help BFY Brands and its co-manufacturing customers to envelop snacks in a combination of USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project verified, supervised kosher and halal or any of the latest claims that will be touted at IFT 2017, which is being held June 25-28 in Las Vegas.

Take as an example a blueberry cobbler breakfast popper. It’s clean label with an ingredient list of oats, corn, split peas, organic blueberry juice concentrate, agava and sea salt, to name a few. Yes, it has sugar, but no high-­fructose corn syrup and nothing artificial.

BFY Brands and Ideal Snacks also promote the concept of ethical better-for-you, which seeks to create products that are not only superior for the body within but also enhancing the world around us. That’s why the business partners with 59 farmers from Nebraska to supply it with non-GMO corn.

And it even thinks of consumers differently. Sure, boomers eat snacks more often and more frequently during the day, but millennials also eat huge amounts of them. Rather, BFY Brands delves more deeply by dividing consumers into segments such as healthy foodies, simply purists and weight watchers, who all seek fresh nutrition, smart energy, controlled wellness and other need states, according to Gunther Brinkman, vice-president, contract manufacturing, Ideal Snacks.

On the flipside, taste lovers, value-conscious snackers and mindless grazers search for satisfaction and convenience. In the middle, the busy jugglers fit all need states, depending on how little time they have and what’s available at the moment.

Sure, no snack is perfect for everyone, but at BFY Brands, many are simply ideal.