Nightfood Holdings, Inc. announced that the company is proceeding with production of full-size, individually wrapped Prime-Time Chocolate Chip cookies for hotel and airline amenity opportunities.
In recent weeks, the company received confirmations of interest in testing full-size Nightfood cookies as amenities by both a global airline and a national hotel chain.
Because of the timeline and potential impact of these opportunities, the company has made the production of the individually wrapped 25-gram cookies a top priority, resulting in the rescheduling of production of Nightfood mini cookies in Snoozerdoodle and Date Night Cherry Oat flavors.
“While we’re excited to launch those other two flavors to expand our mini cookie line, making this change to the production schedule was a very easy decision,” commented Nightfood CEO Sean Folkson. “I believe we’ve been presented with two separate game-changing opportunities, each of which has been in the works for months, and both of which I expect to begin this winter.”
In an amenity arrangement, airline and hotel partners would buy Nightfood cookies in bulk and then give them away to their passengers and guests. This creates potential for immediate scale along with predictability of demand.
Management believes amenity arrangements can be a powerful complement to hotel lobby market distribution, where Nightfood ice cream continues its strong sales performance relative to competitor’s pints and where additional distribution is expected of both Nightfood ice cream and cookies. The hotel amenity opportunity is an offshoot of discussions with a leading global hotel company about Nightfood distribution in their lobby shops.
The company estimates that cookies offered as a dessert amenity on a global airline could deliver the revenue equivalent of retail distribution in hundreds of hotel lobby markets, and cookies offered as a check-in amenity in a national hotel chain could deliver the revenue equivalent of retail distribution in thousands of hotel lobby markets. Amenity distribution would also be expected to result in significantly higher consumer trial and more rapid awareness of the brand and the category, since Nightfood branded products would be given to all passengers and guests, without the need for those travelers to make a purchase decision.
Management expects positive results from these anticipated tests, based on the fact that all previous corporate-level tests conducted within the hospitality vertical have been declared a success by the testing entities. However, there is no guarantee these tests will be successful. There is also the possibility that one, or both, of the tests may not occur according to the current timeline, or at all.
Nightfood recently launched pouches of mini cookies, each containing two servings of cookies. That mini cookie pouch format was strategically chosen for hotel lobby shops due to the larger packaging billboard with which to drive consumer purchase decision at point of sale along with the significantly higher price point that format can command. Pouches of Nightfood Prime-Time Chocolate Chip mini cookies are expected to soon be in national hotel distribution for lobby shop resale.
However, individually wrapped, full-size cookies are more appropriate as amenities because they are single-serve and are significantly less expensive to produce and ship than a two-serving pouch of mini cookies.
Similar to the successful 2021 hotel lobby shop testing of Nightfood ice cream pints, which led to the ice cream securing national hotel distribution and the commencement of the rollout of the ice cream in hotel lobby shops, these cookies-as-amenity tests are expected to entail a temporary trial period where product is provided at Nightfood’s expense, with the goal of long-term commercial partnerships with the testing entities.
