Snack Maker Gets Taste of Life With Amazon

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Snack Maker Gets Taste of Life With Amazon
Wrapped Up: Offerings from This Bar.

This bar might soon save more lives.

Culver City snack maker This Bar Saves Lives is one of seven U.S. consumer product businesses that were chosen this month by Amazon.com Inc. to receive free advertising, a loan and access to Amazon’s fulfillment services as part of the e-commerce company’s effort to illustrate how small businesses can grow on the website.

The e-tailer wants to help the businesses reach $1 million in sales in six months on Amazon Marketplace, where businesses can sell their products directly to customers rather than to Amazon. Amazon takes a cut of any sales and charges for each order fulfilled.

Amazon and This Bar began talking after the snack maker, which donates a meal packet to a hungry child for every bar sold, started selling its products on Amazon Marketplace about three months ago, said Ryan Devlin, who co-founded This Bar in 2013.

“We very quickly realized that it was probably the best way to get our products out into the hands, minds and ultimately mouths of millions of Americans across the country,” said Devlin.

He declined to share revenue, but last year This Bar reported it was projecting $10 million in revenue for 2017. He said the company’s sales via Amazon had increased 500 percent in the past three months.

Before joining Amazon, the company had been focusing on selling its products through its website and Marina del Rey-based online retailer Thrive Market as well as in brick-and-mortar retailers including Starbucks Corp. and Whole Foods Market Inc., which Amazon bought in August.

Online marketplaces are becoming increasingly important in e-commerce, according to a report this month by market researcher Forrester Research Inc. The study says that half of online retail sales took place on a marketplace last year.

Half of the items that Amazon sells are from small businesses using its Marketplace, according to a press release by the company this year.

All of the services it is offering to This Bar are also available to other small businesses, said Amazon spokesman Erik Farleigh.

“We wanted to show that small businesses are having incredible success at Amazon, no matter the product or where they’re based,” Farleigh said. “A lot of people think of Amazon as a big company; I like to think of it as a lot of little companies.”

For the snack bar company, the most valuable element is visibility, Devlin said. The company will show up in sponsored ads featured on search result or product detail pages as well as on Amazon’s deal pages.

“For every bar somebody buys on Amazon, it will give food to a child in need,” said Devlin. “That is just as exciting to us as the path toward $1 million in revenue (through Amazon). It’s going to impact tens of thousands of lives.”

This Bar also plans to take Amazon up on the loan offer, although the size hasn’t been determined yet, Devlin said. Amazon Lending gives businesses that want to sell through its Marketplace short-term loans of $1,000 to $750,000 to scale up quickly in order to meet customer demand, according to a recent press release from Amazon. The company has lent $3 billion to more than 20,000 small businesses since 2011.

“The fact that they’re able to offer support and avoid the death knell of going out of stock – that’s a really valuable additional tool that’s part of the package,” Devlin said. “It serves them, because they don’t want to be out of stock, and it serves us.”

Hospitality Welcome

A former DineEquity Inc. executive is taking on several roles at Miracle Mile hospitality firm SBE Entertainment Group.

Daniel del Olmo, former president of international operations at the Glendale-based parent company of IHOP and Applebee’s Neighborhood Bar and Grill, has been hired as chief executive of Disruptive Restaurant Group, a subsidiary of SBE, the parent company said this month. Del Olmo confirmed the news last week.

Del Olmo also will take the lead at Umami Burger, an upscale burger chain in which SBE has a majority stake, and at SBE’s nightlife division, the firm said.

His appointment comes as SBE, which acquired Morgans Hotel Group Co. last year for $805 million, expands internationally. SBE said it plans to open 19 restaurants and five lounges within the next six months, according to a press release. It has 74 restaurants worldwide and 42 nightclub lounges.

SBE reported revenue of $285 million in 2015.

Disruptive’s portfolio includes sushi eatery Katsuya, Mediterranean restaurant Cleo and seafood venue Bazaar Mar by Jose Andres.

SBE is owned, in part, by Chief Executive Sam Nazarian.

Del Olmo stepped down from his role at DineEquity earlier this year. Prior to that, he held several positions at Parsippany-Troy Hills, N.J.-based hospitality firm Wyndham Worldwide Corp.

Staff Reporter Caroline Anderson can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 556-8329.

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