Social enterprise Thankyou is pulling out of one of their main categories. Daniel Flynn, Thankyou’s co-founder, recently announced that the social enterprise will no longer be selling their food categories as of April 2018.
In 2013, the group set out to create a market-leading food range to help get food aid to people in need. By 2017, they had been “fighting” for three years in the food category and had not won. They ultimately decided on the tough decision to rather invest in other areas of Thankyou that are already winning and lose the food range.
Those areas include bottled water, baby care and body care. Flynn said that while their food products were good it was just not enough for customers to be brand loyal.
“I think more and more every market is becoming more saturated and muesli and bars have become very promotionally driven,” he told Inside FMCG.
“It is partly the market but it was also us not being innovative enough in that space. It started to diminish what our main goal was about.”
The co-founder said that they may bring the food category back in the future but if they do “we won’t just join the queue, we will change the food game”.
Retailers were surprised at the decision and Flynn jokes that “supermarkets will get more shelf space”.
The group will also be focused on innovating their water bottle products with a “game-changing idea”. Thankyou is also “going hard” with Christmas this year and going bigger than ever with their online hampers.