Knack Snacks began with a simple question: why do so many snacks still force people to choose between something that tastes great and ingredients they actually feel good about?
For founder Brittany Boeckle, that question came not from a trend report or white paper, but from a very real snacking moment. After moving from the US to the UK, she found herself drawn to the chocolate-coated malt ball snacks British consumers know and love, but quickly became frustrated by the gap between how good they tasted and how they made her feel.
“I was sitting on my couch eating a bag of chocolate-coated malt balls and getting a stomach ache from the sugar,” she says. “They tasted great, but I remember thinking, there has to be a better way to do this.”
“There are still so many products making health claims that sound better than what is actually in the product,” Brittany says. “You turn the pack around and half the ingredients feel impossible to understand, while the rest do not always match the healthier message on the front.”
Having already built food businesses before, Brittany recognised the gap quickly. Traditional confectionery delivered nostalgia, familiarity and taste, while many functional snacks prioritised nutrition at the expense of enjoyment. Very few products successfully bridge that gap.
That gap became the starting point for Knack Snacks, which launched in 2022.
From consumer insight to product idea
Rather than inventing a new category, Brittany set out to rethink one people already understood.
Brittany Boeckle, founder and CEO of Knack Snacks
“I had discovered chocolate-coated malt ball snacks in the UK and loved them,” she explains. “But I also knew there was an opportunity to approach them differently.”
The aim was not to remove indulgence, but to be more deliberate about formulation, ingredients and balance. Knack Snacks was never positioned as a sports nutrition brand. Instead, it focused on everyday snacking and moderation.
Early in development, Brittany explored malted centres but decided against them. Instead, Knack Snacks uses a high-protein puff centre, keeping the light, crunchy eating experience consumers recognise while creating a more balanced nutritional profile.
“It is not necessarily what we are doing that makes us special,” she says. “It is how we are doing it.”
Turning an idea into a product
As with many early stage food businesses, development began at home. Before thinking about scale, Brittany wanted to understand how the product behaved over time and whether it could realistically be produced consistently.
“It started as a bowl in my kitchen,” she says. “I would test it at home, give it time to settle, then send it to the manufacturer to see whether it could scale.”
Chocolate proved to be the biggest challenge. Most comparable products rely heavily on chocolate, which makes it difficult to reduce sugar without using substitutes. For Knack Snacks, the challenge was finding the right inner-to-outer coating ratio: enough chocolate to deliver the taste people wanted, without making the product so sugar-heavy that it defeated the point.
“The coating was the hardest part,” she explains. “You cannot create a lower-sugar product with that much chocolate unless you start using fake sugars and that was not what we wanted to do.”
Alongside taste and texture, shelf life became a priority.
“You learn how fats behave, how products age and how everything interacts,” she says. “There are no shortcuts for that.”
Finding the right manufacturing partner followed a similar process. Brittany spoke to manufacturers across multiple countries before settling on a UK based partner that could meet both the technical requirements and the wider ethos of the brand.
“They could do what we needed at scale and they were also a zero food waste facility,” she says. “They upcycle food waste into new products where possible and anything not suitable for human consumption goes to farms. That really mattered to us.”
Laying the right foundations early
While the product was still being refined, Brittany was already thinking ahead to what the business would need in order to grow.
“Getting the foundations right early makes everything else easier,” she explains.
Brand development, packaging and compliance were treated as part of the same process. That approach also shaped the decision to join GS1 UK and use GS1 barcodes from the outset.
“If you have a consumer packaged product, put a barcode on it,” she says. “If the product is not scannable, you are immediately limiting where it can go. You cannot even bring it to a third party logistics partner if they cannot scan it in.”
Brittany had already used GS1 barcodes across her previous companies, so for Knack Snacks, the decision was straightforward. It was not just an admin step, but part of building the business properly from day one.
Learning the market before scaling
After launch, Knack Snacks took a deliberate approach to growth. Rather than pushing immediately into retail, the focus was on learning how customers responded to the product.
“For the first couple of years, it was about understanding customers, refining the product and getting things like shelf life right,” Brittany says.
Marketing spend was kept deliberately low, with growth driven through sampling, events and word of mouth.
“You cannot try something through a screen,” she explains. “People need to taste it. That is where the product starts to make sense.”
Alongside this, Knack Snacks began selling through online marketplaces and smaller wholesale platforms, allowing the business to test processes and demand before pursuing larger retail opportunities.
Building recognition over time
As the business matured, the impact of that measured approach became more visible.
“There was a point where more people already knew the brand when we met them,” Brittany says. “That felt like a real milestone.”
For Brittany, this mattered because it signalled trust rather than novelty. In the UK especially, she notes, that recognition rarely comes quickly.
“People want to understand what they are buying and who they are buying it from,” she explains. “That means showing up consistently and doing what you say you will do.”
Preparing for the next stage
With investment secured and production scaled, Knack Snacks is now entering a new phase.
“Shipping, tariffs and delays affect everyone,” Brittany says. “You have to plan carefully and stay flexible.”
Those pressures have reinforced the value of the foundations put in place earlier. “When things change outside your control, having strong operational basics makes a big difference,” she explains.
Protecting product integrity remains non-negotiable.
“The goal is to build something that can scale without a bigger company needing to come in later and change the ingredients or compromise the quality,” she says.
Advice for fellow founders
Reflecting on the journey so far, Brittany is clear about what has made the biggest difference.
First, she stresses the importance of getting the basics right early. Decisions around product data, packaging and compliance may feel secondary in the early days, but they quickly become critical as a business starts to grow.
“Think about where you want the business to go, not just where it is today,” she says. “Putting the right foundations in place early gives you far more flexibility later on.”
That also includes protecting the brand itself. Brittany originally planned to launch under a different name, but after discovering the name had been taken, she had to rethink the brand before launch. The experience ultimately led to Knack Snacks, a name that gave the company room to grow beyond one product format.
“If you know the name you want, trademark it,” she says. “Do it early.”
She also encourages founders to spend as much time as possible with their product and customers before scaling too quickly. “Nothing replaces real feedback,” she explains. “You learn far more by watching how people respond to your product than by looking at numbers alone.”
Finally, Brittany emphasises patience.
“The first few years are hard,” she says. “You have to really love what you are building, because that is what keeps you going.”
For Brittany, the reward is seeing the product connect with real people.
“When you see your product on a shelf, or someone tells you it helped them make a better everyday choice, that is what you do it for,” she says.