Pamela Kaufman: Yes, that’s helpful. Thank you. And then I also just had a follow-up question to John’s question on Atkins performance. I guess in general, what do you believe is driving the divergence in performance between Atkins and Quest? Why do you think that the brands are seeing such different trends and doesn’t come back to the occasions and the demographics that they cater to? And what’s working well for questions? Could you apply any of those initiatives to Atkins?
Joe Scalzo: Yes, well, I’ll say they’re in different parts of their, their lifecycle, quite frankly. So if you think about the investment thesis that we had in buying quest, our fundamental belief is strong brand, large consumer target, early stages of marketing, brand awareness, penetration growth, moving from a specialty online brand to a more Food Drug mass brand, from a bar only brand to a bar and other snacking brand. And so, as part of the combined organization, we’ve been able to accelerate all those initiatives, right. And so that’s why you’re seeing distribution growth on bars, because she’s plugged in, play that into the what is essentially the Atkins Food, Drug mass, Salesforce, right. So distribution is growing, great new product pipeline, and snacking and salty snacks and chips.
In confections, right? So strong, they’ve got accelerated the brand has got acceleration, just from our ability to execute strategies that were in place when they were freestanding company. Atkins is further along in its development. So if you just take, like the largest retailer,, take the largest retailer in the world. Atkins has on average, I think 65 items in Walmart. I think at last count Quest was in the 40s. So there is — there they just different part in their lifecycle from a brand standpoint. So and I think the brand promise, right, this idea of fueling your ambitions, and your day, is a bigger brand promise than the weight management brand promise. So bigger target audience more people that you can go after bigger opportunity for household penetration.
And we’re still in the very early stages on Quest of mainstream communication via television, ramping up the spend, Atkins is just in a different parliament in its lifecycle. So I think that’s accounting for kind of what’s been driving Quest. On the Atkins side, it’s a brand that is highly dependent upon buy rate. So if you look at the brand, on average, if you’re a multiyear, buyer of the brand, your daily slash multiple times a week eater. So 100, if you’re an average buyer, you’re buying 100. If you’re a heavier buyer, you’re buying close to 200 servings in a year. So disruptions in snacking occasions, disrupt the buy rate dynamic on Atkins. And that’s what we saw through Covid. Right. So, you know, I expect us to be able to reemerge from that get our buyer a backup on the brand.
Today, it’s growing at kind of the low Ange of low end of our algorithm, we expect better from the brand. And there’s some things that we need to address to get the buy rate back now that we’re kind of seemingly out of the not at work. Pandemic type point of time, there are some things that we need to clean up in the brand from an execution standpoint to get the buy rate going and do better than where we are today.
Pamela Kaufman: Thanks. That’s very helpful.
Joe Scalzo: Yes, have a good day.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Brian Holland with Cowen and Company. Please proceed with your question.
Brian Holland: Yes, thanks. Good morning. You’ve made reference to Q2 in store merchandising and programming in a really good spot here. I know that you address last quarter some tactical issues with respect to Atkins, losing some distribution on the bars, making waves for chips and cookies talking about needing to fix that. Can you just update us on where you sort of stand in resetting the Atkins brand on shelf into spring?
Joe Scalzo: Early stages, Brian, it’ll play out over the next 6 plus months. So spring resets, going into the summer, reset to the current towards the end of the summer, we would expect most of the solutions that we developed in the last 4 or months will be fully implemented, kind of by the end of summer. I would expect — look again, we’re at the low end of our ag and so we don’t have a business in freefall. We got a business that’s growing 4%, right. So we, and we’re not happy at 4% We want the business to be better, right? And there’s some executional things that we could have done better, right. So if lost distribution on snack bars last spring, we got to fix that. That’s an innovation pipeline thing. So we have the innovation coming, it’ll start getting executed as we move through the second half of the year, on, on confections, we had a launch of dessert bars on confections that haven’t repeated like we expected it to do.
So again, innovation effects you need, you need a pipeline of products to replace those things, those things take a little bit of time. But if I just step back, the buy rate declines that are coming from those things are starting to be nicely offset by growth in shakes and meal bars, which is those are starting to come back because the innovations there. But also, as people have gone back to work there, they tend to be more meal replacement, and therefore more ideal for people going back to work. So we’re starting to see the business. Tempo pick up on those forms, offsetting most of the declines that we’re seeing, and by rate from the other two snacking product lines.
