Why food subscription startup Wildgrain is planning a January advertising blitz
As soon as December hits, many direct-to-consumer brands ramp up their marketing spend to maximize fourth-quarter sales. But Wildgrain, known for its subscription boxes that offer frozen breads, pasta and pastries that arrive ready to bake, is more focused on January.
January is an important month for Wildgrain — the company said it acquired between 15,000 to 30,000 new subscribers last January — and is using this month to lay the groundwork to bring both new subscribers, as well as lapsed ones, back into the fold come January. Between December 2023 and January 2024, Wildgrain’s month-over-month growth hit 412%, which the company expects to surpass this year. Wildgrain usually begins testing various changes to its marketing channel mix at the beginning of October and ramps up its budget in January, which is when its ad spending typically peaks.
Wildgrain first launched in early 2020, right before the pandemic began. As such, the company’s co-founder, Ismail Salhi, told Modern Retail that Wildgrain initially had trouble understanding the behavior of its subscribers due to Covid skewing purchasing patterns.
After digging in further, the company found that existing Wildgrain subscribers tend to pause during the summer. While some start to reactivate in September once back-to-school season hits, October is when this organic revenue really starts to accelerate, Shalhi explained, followed by November, due to the fact that it is a popular month for cooking and baking. December is the company’s most profitable month of the year due to holiday gifting orders that come from reactivating members. But January is still a boon for Wildgrain because it’s a time when the company acquires a lot of new customers, and channels like Meta aren’t as crowded. Shalhi chalks up the January demand for Wildgrain in part due to the fact the colder weather inspires more people to cook and bake at home.
“The way I’d describe it is that January, February and March have become a ‘mini Covid’ period for us, where people are hunkered down more at home and are traveling less,” Salhi said.
Focusing on the first quarter
Wildgrain developed its advertising strategy based on these holding patterns and is increasingly investing in ads to optimize this customer acquisition strategy during the Q5 period, which refers to promotions that extend into January. This approach has helped the company financially. “We have been profitable since 2023 with a pretty healthy EBIDTA and are cash-flow positive and debt-free,” Salhi said.
Wildgrain doesn’t offer heavy Black Friday sales, and most of its Thanksgiving-related campaigns kick off at the beginning of November. Around this time, the brand offers $40 off the first subscription box and runs its popular free croissants-for-life promotion. Those who sign up during this promo period receive four free croissants with every box — the equivalent of $144 yearly value — for as long as they stay active members.
In early December, a similar pattern begins for Christmas prep shopping.
“December ends up being our most profitable month, just because our average order value is so much higher with gifting,” he said.
Wildgrain co-founder Johanna Hartzheim said the company also pushes reactivation during the holiday time by reminding customers that gifting is only available for subscribers. Currently, non-members are only able to send Wildgrain gift cards with monetary value. Existing subscribers can directly send one-time or multi-month boxes as gifts. “We do a lot of seasonal cookies and bundles,” she said, like peppermint chocolate biscuits and ginger molasses and snickerdoodle cookies.
That organic sales growth also gives Wildgrain the room to test and line up the various advertising channels it plans to use from early January through March. “There is a void we see in terms of CPMs,” Salhi said, noting that a lot of big retailers stop spending money on Meta the first week of January after they close their fourth-quarter spending.
What’s more, Wildgrain’s value proposition overlaps with New Year’s health and wellness goals, as people look for fresher ingredients or better-for-you products to cook with. “This is how we end up spending roughly 75% of our annual marketing dollars in Q4 and Q1,” Salhi said. For context, he said, “Last year we spent $3 million on Meta in January alone, compared to the summer when it drops to a few hundred thousand dollars.”
A cycled approach
Wildgrain also has a seasonal approach to its ad channels; it turns off many channels that don’t perform well during the slow second and third quarters. Then those channels are tested again when the September ad cycle restarts. This channel mix now includes podcast advertising and connected TV, which Wildgrain began testing for the first time in 2023. “We do affiliates and influencers, including larger influencers most recently,” Salhi said.
During these cycles, Salhi said the brand tries to experiment with three or four new channels and keep the top-performing one to scale further. “This year, we’re doing Snap and in-app [mobile] advertising,” he said, which ramped up in the last few weeks. The idea is to get these ad campaigns lined up so that they’re primed to run in January. “We have most of our TV and podcast segments booked already,” Salhi said.
Much of the January messaging is based on what worked in the previous New Year campaigns. During this run, a lot of the content revolves around unboxing and focuses on the health benefits of fresh food, in contrast to the indulgent holiday campaigns.
“In January, we move towards the core of the bread offerings,” Salhi said, pushing products like sourdough. For the first time this year, the brand will promote its newly launched gluten-free and vegan boxes.
For brands like Wildgrain, deploying its ad budget during less busy periods can be more effective in grabbing customers’ attention.
Lauren Beitelspacher, professor of marketing at Babson College, said the holiday season can be difficult to reach new customers because they’re inundated with discounts and deals.
“However, consumers are paying more attention to ads during the holidays than other times of the year because they are looking for deals or suggestions for unique gifts,” Beitelspacher said. After the New Year, brands can reach customers through compelling content and give them ideas to redeem gift cards or make exchanges. Along with a newfound focus on wellness, Beitelspacher said many people are also spending less time and money on gatherings this time of year.
For Wildgrain, Salhi said the company will build its marketing budget by taking advantage of a less crowded advertising field after the holiday season dies down. He said this can be done profitably by retaining new customers throughout the year, even if they take breaks during the slow months. “When people try the product, and like it, they tend to stick around for a long time,” Salhi said.