Candy Industry posts many confectionery and candy products to our site throughout the year, but one product stood out from the rest in our analytics research: American Licorice Company's Sour Punch Pickle Roulette.
Sour Punch debuted the Pickle Roulette tray on its eCommerce store for April Fool's Day 2023. Within two days of the launch, the item was sold out. Over 1,600 orders—1,500 being new customers—were placed, in less than 48 hours. It bolstered a 1,542% increase in the brand's D2C site traffic. With this success, the item has now become an everyday item, available at a wide variety of retailers nationwide.
The theme for the item was centered around the roulette-style gameplay, where consumers were asked to "taste to test your odds." Each tray holds a variety of green candy flavors: Green Apple, Lemon Lime, Watermelon, and Pickle.
The product launch included: New Pickle Roulette flavored Sour Punch tray, packaging graphics, social media posts (organic and paid), a landing page, e-blast, SMS Message, video assets, and influencer content.
The brand also leveraged the power of ShortStack to create a spin-to-win giveaway where contestants entered for the chance to win a discount, free tray, or Pickle Ball set. This campaign produced 50,394 unique views, 41,847 leads, and 21,798 email opens—an open rate of 52%. Compared to the brand's April Fool's Day campaign in 2022, it saw a growth of over 400% and an increase in engagement by almost 20%.
The social media announcement garnered:
- Over 7.2 Million impressions (*note that Sour Punch had only about 2.2 million followers at the time)
- Over 520,000 engagements
- Over 55,000 reactions
- Over 43,000 comments
- Over 39,000 link clicks
- Shared over 24,000 times
We were able to talk to Kyle Stout, senior product manager, American Licorice Company, about the product:
"Pickle Roulette was launched on April Fool’s day in 2023, appearing to be a joke, but an actual product for purchase on ecommerce. The idea was to bring innovation to an existing item while providing a fun experience for the consumers. Since the straws are all the same color green, you never know when you’re going to get pickled!
Our plan was to produce Pickle Roulette as a limited, one time offer on Ecommerce for April Fool’s Day only. Within a couple days of launch, we sold out of the product we produced and the demand increased as consumers were extremely excited and wanted to try it out. Pickle Roulette has since been added as an everyday flavor to our Sour Punch lineup in both straws and bites.
We are always looking to test new flavors and packs of Sour Punch for everyday and seasonal. We typically aim to have 1-2 LTO products a year.
The roulette concept has spurred ideas for other products, such as Ghost Pepper Roulette, that was launched on ecommerce as an LTO for Halloween 2023. We may have a few other roulette items in the works for future launches.
Winning this award fuels our passion to keep creating innovative products that surprise and delight consumers."
American Licorice Co. is on the current Candy Industry “Global Top 100 Candy Companies” list. Click here to view the current “Global Top 100” rankings.
