Ancient Crunch, parent company of seed-oil-free snack brands MASA and Vandy, is converting a 93-store Whole Foods Market pilot into a full nationwide rollout this August — placing its better-for-you chip portfolio in more than 3,000 U.S. retail doors when combined with existing accounts at Target, Sprouts, Erewhon, The Fresh Market, and Amazon.
The distribution surge shifts Ancient Crunch decisively from a direct-to-consumer business into a conventional omnichannel retail operator. To execute at that scale, the company has appointed Al Matulis as Head of Retail and Greg Reintjes Jr. as Chief Marketing Officer, two hires with deep backgrounds in natural and conventional grocery channel development.
The Leadership Additions
Matulis brings more than two decades of consumer-packaged-goods experience, including leadership roles at Kimberly-Clark, Kellogg's, Kernel Season's, and Quinn Snacks across natural, mass, e-commerce, and club channels — the exact channel stack Ancient Crunch is now targeting. "I am excited by the opportunity to help lead Ancient Crunch's evolution from a DTC-driven business to an omnichannel focused house of beloved BFY brands," Matulis said. "We're building a best-in-class retail organization to support the incredible momentum we're seeing."
Reintjes arrives from LALO Spirits, where as SVP and Head of Marketing he helped scale the brand ahead of its acquisition by Tito's Handmade Vodka. Before that, he held brand management and commercial strategy roles at Beam Suntory. His appointment signals that Ancient Crunch is treating portfolio brand-building — not just product distribution — as a core growth lever. "Consumers are demanding high quality food made from natural ingredients," Reintjes said, citing the macro shift in CPG purchasing behavior that is also reshaping foodservice ingredient sourcing.
The Product and Channel Story
The Whole Foods assortment covers four SKUs across both brands: MASA Original and Lime — tortilla chips made from organic, nixtamalized corn cooked in 100% grass-fed beef tallow — and Vandy Original and French Onion, kettle-style potato chips using the same tallow-based cooking process and no seed oils. The seed-oil-free positioning aligns with a measurable uptick in consumer label scrutiny that has also pushed foodservice operators to re-examine frying and finishing oils on their own menus.
For food-and-beverage retailers and distributors tracking the better-for-you snack segment, the Ancient Crunch trajectory reflects a broader pattern: brands built on DTC and specialty-natural platforms — Erewhon, Bristol Farms, SunLife Organics — increasingly using those early adopter accounts as proof of concept to unlock conventional and premium grocery chains. The 93-store Whole Foods pilot follows that playbook precisely, functioning as a sell-in validation before the chain-wide commitment.
Co-founders Seth Goldstein and Steven Rofrano framed the expansion in category terms. "We've always believed there was a massive opportunity to bring real-food snacks back to grocery shelves," they said in a joint statement. "Expanding nationwide at Whole Foods Market is an exciting milestone, and we're just getting started."
For foodservice-adjacent buyers and distributors, the rapid door expansion — and the caliber of retail talent now on the org chart — suggests Ancient Crunch is positioning for the kind of club and mass-channel conversations that typically follow a successful natural-grocery scale-up. The company has not disclosed revenue or velocity figures, but the speed of the Whole Foods progression from test to national in a single calendar year indicates strong sell-through during the pilot period.
Coverage of adjacent better-for-you supplier and ingredient trends and natural-channel retail moves continues across Foodservice News.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
