News August 11, 2020
HPG Launches New Food Gift Brand
Batch & Bodega combines snacks from small-batch brands with HPG hard goods to create attractive giftable kits.
With the holiday gifting season just around the corner, Top 40 supplier HPG (asi/61966) has announced the launch of a new brand that executives assert will raise the bar for how food gifts are done in the promo products industry.
Announced on Tuesday, Aug. 11, HPG’s Batch & Bodega line bundles exclusive, award-winning snacks from small-batch brands from across the United States with best-selling hard good products from HPG to create what the company said is unique and attractive giftable kits – or “batches.”
The “Speakeasy” is one of the food gift kits available from HPG’s Batch & Bodega.
Jason Lucash, SVP of marketing and innovation at HPG, noted that nearly all aspects of the batches can be customized, from the hard goods to the high-end packaging to the complimentary handwritten notecards. One-piece minimums, zero setup fees, and three-day turnarounds are part of the Batch & Bodega value proposition, explained Lucash, who spearheaded the creation of the line.
“Partnering with small batch manufacturers across the country via Batch & Bodega and bringing them exclusively into the industry provides distributors and their clients a solution to support fellow small businesses and to provide tasty, on-trend solutions to make clients’ brands shine,” Lucash told Counselor.
HPG CEO Chris Anderson said that early marketing testing of Batch & Bodega with distributors has gone extremely well. As such, HPG has invested heavily in inventory in anticipation of a strong fourth quarter holiday sales season.
“Our distributor partners have quickly learned that Batch & Bodega’s combination of expertly curated snacks, combined with the best in promotional hard goods, makes for a tastefully authentic and lasting individual experience – an experience that has become all the more relevant in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Anderson.
Small-batch food brands that Batch & Bodega features include fourth generation-owned Byrd’s Cookie Company from Savannah, GA, toffee cracker startup Legally Addictive out of Brooklyn and Bobo’s Mountain Sugar from Weston, VT.
Lucash and his team spent a year scouring the country for brands with top-notch products and compelling backstories to feature in the Batch & Bodega line.
“The initial idea came when I was walking around the streets of New York doing trend research and saw all these amazing snack/foodie brands in all the hot locations like Chelsea Market, Green Market, etc. and thought, ‘There’s all these awesome brands that should be bundled together and sold in our industry,’ ” Lucash explained. “After months of development and talking to tons of the manufacturers, we came up with our initial launch partner list of 27 makers from geographically diverse locations across the country and with amazing stories behind them.”
With reported 2019 North American promotional product revenue of $205.7 million, Braintree, MA-based HPG ranked 9th on Counselor’s latest list of the largest suppliers in the promotional products industry.