While gluten-free is a booming category today, Katz Gluten Free has been on the leading edge of allergy-friendly baking since its founding in 2006. Originally founded by Mrs. Katz, who wanted to create tasty treats for gluten-intolerant kids like her own, the brand has seen double and triple digit growth years ever since. Now Katz’s donuts, cakes, and other sweet treats are distributed widely across the natural channel and among large retail chains.

A leading independent gluten-free supplier, the Katz team was still relying on their sales and customer partners for data about their own business. This limited visibility into their categories as a whole and their ability to stay ahead of the curve as a partner to retailers and distributors. Katz’s leadership realized they needed a more robust data solution to help guide future growth, and decided to expand their capabilities with Crisp.

Solution: refining the recipe for growth

The Katz team is eager to become a more data-driven company, but their plan is not to start drinking from a firehouse. As Marketing Director Roberto Cruz explains, “As a small company, our plan to ramp up to higher data and insight capability is more about evolution than revolution.” The Crisp platform makes it easy for his team to access priority metrics such as sales performance by geography, banner, and warehouse. With a live-feed of sales data down to the zip code, Roberto can now design geographically targeted campaigns in key markets, and share target locations with his media partners—insights that would only have been known anecdotally before.

With over 100 products in the Katz family, Roberto says it’s invaluable to see the product lineup as a whole and identify what is growing, what isn’t, and why. With this information, he can prioritize products as a marketer. His team can also analyze product assortment and combinations—for instance, identifying two products that sell particularly well together, and applying those insights toward another retailer. The Katz team can also leverage data in key activities such as New Product Innovation to help validate product priorities in its pipeline. With an eye on velocity, Katz’s sales team can bring these insights into buyer conversations. As he explains, “From reports, you can build insights, and then build a data-driven case for additional items, increased shelf space, or more merchandising. The key is to create value for our partners by leveraging the data to generate valuable consumer insights.”

Sweet results:

• Increased data visibility for a small team
• Ownership of broker and buyer conversations
• Geographically targeted, data-driven promotions
• New sales opportunities discovered

“With the complexity in our product line, getting product-level data easily from Crisp is invaluable as a marketer," said Roberto Cruz, marketing director, Katz Gluten Free.

About the company:

Katz Gluten Free Bake Shoppe was established in early 2006 by F. Katz, with not much more than a home model kitchen mixer, some thoroughly tested recipes, and an unyielding quest for perfection. As word of its famously delicious confections rapidly spread, so did its base of operations. Today, Katz Gluten Free operates out of a state-of-the-art facility, which has been Certified Gluten-Free by the Gluten Intolerance Group (www.gluten.net) , for its unmatched reliability in complying with strict gluten-free standards. Its facility is completely nut-free and dairy-free. All of its products are certified Kosher, and are under the stringent supervision of the OU and Rabbi Y. Gruber. As the mother of two children who are gluten intolerant, Mrs. Katz knows firsthand the hardships and daily struggles parents endure in their attempts to maintain a thoroughly gluten-free diet for their kids. She knows—as only a parent could—that the only way to minimize and avoid temptation, is by offering a variety of products that are rich in flavor, texture, and taste. That is why she constantly strives to concoct recipes that are as luscious as they are healthy.