The last decade has been a golden era for cool foods sold directly to consumers online. Think Fly By Jing, the wildly popular Sichuan chili crisp, or Magic Spoon, the grain-free, low-carb cereal that’s gained cult status. But after achieving their niche cool factor via podcast ads, fancy shopping stores, and rave reviews in food media, these brands share an unlikely target: the supermarket shelves at Walmart.
With more than 4,600 stores across the United States, Walmart is the definition of a retail giant. Known for its “Everyday Low Prices,” the chain is the country’s dominant grocery retailer. In 2023 alone, Walmart sold over $264 billion worth of groceries, more than twice as much as its two biggest competitors combined. That ubiquity is part of what has given the store such a “regular” image, a place for boring staples, not virally popular chili chips.
But it’s clear Walmart is interested in changing that image. The retailer has recently made a point of putting more high-end products on its shelves, like New York-based ice cream purveyor Van Leeuwen and Motor City Pizza Company’s Detroit-style frozen pies, to attract more affluent customers. And even the hottest brands looking to grow can’t ignore the impact that landing on Walmart’s shelves could have on their business.
When Walmart first contacted Jing Gao, founder of Fly By Jing, a few years ago, she wasn’t quite ready to take her self-described “small business,” launched on Kickstarter in 2018, and merge with such a large retailer. “There were a lot of things to sort out in the supply chain, and for the first two years, I was the only employee in my company,” she says. “It was just too much for one person to handle.” Joining a retailer like Walmart is not a decision a company can make lightly. Gao had to focus on building what she calls a “world-class supply chain” to ensure she could source enough high-quality spices to supply thousands of new stores with her product.
In 2023, after Fly By Jing had grown, solidified its supply chain, and hired more employees, Gao was ready for Walmart. She was already selling her chili chips at retailers like Whole Foods and Costco, but Walmart was completely new territory. Jing needed to invest in an electronic data interchange (EDI) system to communicate inventory and billing information with Walmart, something many startups don’t have. Fly By Jing also needed to come up with an “Everyday Low Price”—Walmart doesn’t do sales and promotions like other grocery stores—that would be both attractive to Walmart customers and profitable for her business.
“We were finally at a point in our business where we were ready for that volume,” she says. “As good as we were doing, the majority of Americans still don’t even know what Chili Crisp is and have never heard of Fly By Jing. Walmart would allow us to reach those customers.”
The brand launched in about 2,000 Walmart stores in April 2024, and while it’s too early to tell, Gao is pleased with how the first few months have gone. “A lot of our Walmart stores are in places where we don’t traditionally reach people, and it’s been really interesting to see that we’re doing pretty well in those markets, probably because they just didn’t have access to the product before,” she says. “I would say we’re pretty pleased with how things have gone.”
Coco5, a coconut water-based sports drink whose owners include professional basketball stars Devin Booker and Charles Barkley, has had a similar experience with Walmart. Before Coco5 arrived at Walmart in July 2023, it sold its products directly to consumers through its website and expanded to retailers like Amazon and Whole Foods, but neither offered the exposure Walmart could offer. Since launching, the company has seen consistent month-over-month sales increases at the retailer.
“If you don’t come from a big brand like PepsiCo or Gatorade, people just don’t know your product, no matter how good you are,” says co-owner Jim Reynolds. “The advantage of Walmart is that it’s in every small town, every big city, from Alaska to Florida. We saw the benefits overnight. It really allowed us to go from a regional brand to a national brand.”
According to a Walmart spokesperson, the company has an entire team dedicated solely to supporting these “emerging brands.” This allows the company to tailor its marketing and merchandising approach to each individual product. Some products receive elaborate on-shelf displays, while others receive digital advertising support through social media or the Walmart app. Walmart also operates the Walmart Connect program, a proprietary advertising platform that allows brands to target their marketing spend to Walmart customers, both through in-store marketing materials such as signage and digital display advertising in the Walmart app.
In return, Walmart gets access to a broader customer base and the opportunity to be associated with the exciting brands that people care about. In particular, the company has been open about its desire to appeal to a more affluent customer base, the type of shoppers who can spend more money on high-quality spices. “Walmart is committed to making quality food accessible by expanding our assortment of national, independent and private label offerings to bring customers exciting products and on-trend flavors at an incredible value,” the spokesperson said. “Independent and emerging brands allow us to respond directly to our customers’ cravings and meet their evolving needs and preferences.”
Both Gao and Reynolds speak highly of their relationship with Walmart, saying the company offers a lot of support to new brands looking to get on shelves. Each brand gets its own Walmart representative to help with logistics and pricing issues, which Reynolds found invaluable. “They don’t leave you on an island. You have someone there from day one,” he says. “They get it, they know where we are, and they want us to succeed. They were able to help our operations team plan, package and ship products appropriately, so we didn’t have any issues.”
After nearly a year in 2,000 Walmart stores, Reynolds and the Coco5 team only now feel they’re ready to be available in all 4,600 stores. “The worst thing you can do as a brand is sell out of product,” he says. “If you can’t support that growth, you’re in trouble and you’re out of business real quick. We’ve had time to figure out how to support it properly, we’ve learned what works, and we’re growing sales at Walmart every week. Only then could we come to terms with expanding into a larger number of stores.”
Bachan’s Japanese barbecue sauce is already available in all 4,600 stores after first launching at Walmart in May 2023. Once a direct-to-consumer company, Bachan’s enjoyed success in supermarkets like Whole Foods and Costco before being added to Walmart’s line. While expanding to Walmart made financial sense, the company, which touts its line of sauces as a premium product, had some concerns about customer perception. “To be honest, there were some concerns on our side,” says Bachan founder Justin Gill. “We’re primarily a natural foods brand and we also have a premium price point, but the more I learned about Walmart as an organization, the more stores I visited, the more comfortable I felt.”
Gill was also able to lower the price of Bachan’s when his brand expanded to Walmart – a bottle costs $12.99 on Bachan’s website and only $7.98 at Walmart. The extra production volume that Walmart orders require makes the product more affordable in general, meaning Gill and other independent brands can get their product to more people. It can be a risk to lower prices, but for Bachan’s, that risk has paid off.
Expanding into major retail chains also gave Gao the opportunity to lower her prices. When she announced the Walmart launch, prices dropped 35 percent — a jar of Fly By Jing Chili Crisp cost about $15 when the brand launched. Today, you can get a jar at Walmart for $9.98. “It’s extremely expensive to make high-quality products, especially as a small startup,” Gao says. As her company grows, it can operate more like its larger competitors in the spice department with lower prices and greater availability.
“It just made sense to go to America’s cheapest grocery store, which has much cheaper prices everywhere,” says Gao. “At a time when the Unilevers of the world are raising their prices, we are significantly lowering ours.”
Ultimately, independent brands find their way onto Walmart shelves for the same reasons as any other product: to get as many eyes on their chili chips, coconut water drink, or barbecue sauce as possible. And while Walmart continues to invest in attracting the cool indie brands everyone loves, the retailer is engaging in a distinctly unique form of reputation management by vicariously soaking up their cool. If Walmart has more of the products we see on Instagram and TikTok, why wouldn’t shoppers be more inclined to visit Walmart if they can buy their favorite chili chips there? And affordable food?
