True Made Foods 2021Update
2021 flew by and we are glad it’s over.
2021 threw everything at us, and we not only survived, we ended the year strong. In 2021, we experienced uncertainty, skyrocketing input and freight prices and the Delta waive. Yet, our sales are up 41% over last year, closing the year at $3.16MM. But our sales numbers do not tell the whole story, our in-store sales are surging and we are seeing new inbound demand from food service everyday.
We are also becoming much more efficient. Every dollar invested is now creating significant growth. Prior to our Republic raise, wee raised $1.7MM in 2021, which allowed us to make $3.16MM in sales. In 2022, we expect every dollar invested to add more than $2 in sales.
Here are the highlights from 2021.
Our on shelf performance has been stellar with rising velocities saving the day. Our No Sugar Ketchup dollar sales grew 121% YoY at point of sale (POS) with only a 6% increase in distribution. All of our SKUs increased velocity, measured in units per store sales over 2020, despite our categories being down ~20% over 2020 pandemic highs! (IRI Data) We also launched in two major baseball parks, Fenway and Nationals Stadium. We proved that our products could replace Heinz on the national stage and appeal to a varied set of consumers. We saw the best reception from Boston, with rapid sales growth in the Boston and Providence markets. Our Ketchup POS $ sales in Boston metro are up 138% YoY (IRI Data).
While managing the chaos of 2021, we were still able to implement some huge operational improvements. We launched a new 3PL with dual-coast warehouses. We finally got our Amazon Store up and running and plan to grow this channel aggressively in 2022. We onboarded a new, larger co-packer to run our Ketchup. They can produce in a couple days what our old co-packer took a month to do. All of these changes plus a small bump in our price to our distributors, will help us maintain gross margin in the face of the rising costs we experienced in 2021; and we will significantly grow gross margin should freight costs normalize.
In 2022, we expect to grow over 60% YoY and break $5MM in sales. The majority of our sales will come from retail sales again. We have commitments from HEB and CVS to launch our ketchup; and INFRA is adding four of our SKUs to their common planogram in 76 independent retailers. Walmart is launching our mustards in 1,000 stores. These are just some of our 2022 wins.
In 2021, we made $2.7MM in retail sales, including Walmart and Kroger sales, (88% of total sales) and we expect to make $4.1MM in 2022 (82% of total estimated sales) - a 50% increase over 2021. In 2021, our retail sales grew 40% over 2020.
Thank you all for your continued support and please keep telling everyone about TrueMade Foods!
If we want to make America a better place, we should start with the Ketchup and BBQ Sauce!