Outstanding Foods, the company behind PigOut Pigless Pork Rinds, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by SternAegis Ventures, which previously led Outstanding Foods’ $5 million round of financing last July.
In addition to PigOut, Outstanding Foods recently launched the plant-based TakeOut Meal-In-A-Bag Puffs snacks. Coming in varieties such as “Pizza Partay” and “Hella Hot,” these puffs are non-GMO, gluten free, certified plant-based, soy-free and contain 21 grams of protein per bag. On its website, Outstanding Foods claims you can eat a bag as a meal. And while I do like their PigOut snacks, I’m not sure I’d serve myself a bag of “Chill Ranch” puffs for dinner anytime soon.
In today’s press announcement, Outstanding Foods said it will use the new funding to expand its retail footprint and its direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing efforts. Outstanding was part of the CPG D2C boom we saw last year, in which PepsiCo, Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and a host of smaller snack brands all made their products available for direct sale to consumers.
Launching D2C sales channels made a lot of sense in 2020 as the pandemic spurred on both initial panic buying (causing empty shelves at local stores) and had people minimizing any trips outside their homes. The pandemic also had us craving snack foods, so the ability to get them delivered to our door was a smart play that not only generated revenue for brands, but also allowed brands to fully own the customer relationship and data.
But Outstanding isn’t putting all its pigless pork rinds in one online basket, the company’s snacks are currently available in real world stores such as Walmart, Kroger, Whole Foods and southwest 7-11 locations.
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