Ancient Crunch, the better-for-you snack holding company behind MASA and Vandy, has secured full nationwide distribution at Whole Foods Market this August, pushing its total U.S. retail footprint beyond 3,000 doors. The rollout follows a test run earlier this year across 93 Whole Foods locations and adds the natural-channel heavyweight to a roster that already includes Target, Sprouts, Erewhon, The Fresh Market, and Amazon.

The Distribution Play

The Whole Foods expansion covers four SKUs: MASA Original and MASA Lime — tortilla chips made from organic, nixtamalized corn fried in 100% grass-fed beef tallow — and Vandy Original and Vandy French Onion kettle-style potato chips, cooked under the same tallow-and-no-seed-oil standard. Both brands position squarely in the fast-growing seed-oil-free segment, a subcategory that has drawn accelerating shelf-space investment from natural and conventional grocers alike as consumer scrutiny of industrial cooking oils intensifies.

Leadership Build-Out

To support the channel transition, Ancient Crunch has appointed Al Matulis as Head of Retail and Greg Reintjes Jr. as Chief Marketing Officer. Matulis brings more than two decades of consumer-brand scaling across natural, mass, e-commerce, and club channels, with prior roles at Kimberly-Clark, Kellogg's, Quinn Snacks, and Kernel Season's. He holds a background in biomedical engineering and an MBA in finance. "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 better-for-you brands," Matulis said.

Reintjes arrives from LALO Spirits, where as SVP and Head of Marketing he helped build the brand through its acquisition by Tito's Handmade Vodka. Earlier stops at Beam Suntory and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management round out a résumé weighted toward premium CPG brand-building. His mandate spans growth strategy and marketing across the full Ancient Crunch portfolio.

Why It Matters

The dual hire reflects a deliberate shift in Ancient Crunch's commercial model. The company launched primarily through direct-to-consumer channels and has been engineering a move to omnichannel retail — a transition that typically demands dedicated account management and category-marketing infrastructure that DTC-native brands often lack. Bringing in executives with Fortune 100 and high-growth-brand experience signals that co-founders Seth Goldstein and Steven Rofrano are treating the Whole Foods rollout not as a destination but as a platform for further conventional and natural-channel retail expansion.

The seed-oil-free snack segment has attracted growing retailer interest as shoppers in the natural and premium grocery channels increasingly read ingredient panels for cooking fats alongside sugar and sodium. For Whole Foods Market, stocking tallow-fried chips alongside its existing better-for-you snack sets represents a relatively low-risk trial of a trend that Food & Beverage Magazine has tracked as one of the more durable clean-label evolutions in the salty-snack aisle. Ancient Crunch's rapid door count — from initial retail test to 3,000-plus locations — suggests early velocity has been sufficient to justify accelerated distribution commitments from multiple banner buyers.

For operators and retail buyers tracking better-for-you snack trends, the Ancient Crunch model — premium positioning, traditional preparation method as a differentiator, and a two-brand portfolio under one holding company — mirrors the playbook that propelled several natural-channel snack brands to acquisition by larger food conglomerates over the past decade.

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.